I both agree and disagree. While I dislike those gamers that race to end-game and then complain there's nothing to do, I sympathize with people that don't want to grind incessently to hit level cap.
How many console games have we played in the past that had few, if any levels, short of levels as in actual "stages" of the game. I don't remember a level cap stopping me from playing the hell out of Castlevania (the earlier ones)and hitting the cap in games like Ultima and Wizardry back in the Nintendo days didn't stop me from exploring the rest of the world and trying to collect everything. For a more recent example, I enjoyed the content of Guild Wars far, FAR after I hit level cap.
I think caps in levels should be reached fairly quickly, but for me that's because I want to experience the content of the game without leveling up getting in the way. In other words, the game should be worth playing regardless of level cap, not because of it. There's no excuse for 'content locust'-type people, but I certainly don't miss the EQ1 days of leveling, either.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Games need to focus on game play and not gear and levels. This ideal that you have to grind out levels to get to the end game and then grind to get two and three and even four sets of gear is beyond absurd - in fact there is no word currrently in use today that can discribe the stupidity of this design model.
A game should start from day one and never end. There is no "end game" because there is no way to win. Not in an MMORPG.
Wanna know why people keep playing games like WOW? Because now they are invested in their characters. Doesn't matter if game X comes out and is the new shiney. They'll go play it, max level, see the game is no better than WoW(most cases worse than WoW), then go right back to WoW because WoW is the better game and they have invested time into it and they have community there. If the right game came along, they'd ditch WoW and stay with the new game.
Something I have said in my blog is we need games that focus on building communities using game play mechanics to do it. Focus on game play and players will stay. What reason is there for someone to stay in a game like SWTOR or Rift? What can the players latch onto inside the game itself that will help them build a community? There is not even faction pride in SWTOR. Atleast WoW has that. Bioware doesn't even use that as a means to tie the players together.
These genre needs a wake up call.
Games do not need to be grindy, they do not need levels, nor do they need to use gear as carrots on a stick to keep people playing. They just need better game play to keep people playing.
GAME PLAY TRUMPS ALL.
Well said! It is soul and heart which people keeps in games, not endgame mechanics.
Rift's numbers are up a bit too. I don't think its as much about the community as it is, that TOR failed to offer anything interesting or new, and had too many barriers to enjoy the game. The leveling was one thing, but the lack of seeing the "mass" part of the game was frustrating. The only time i saw people, who were suppose to be my teammates, i ended up hating them because we are fighting for resources. The only way to get away from the scavanger gameplay that plagues most MMOs was to do the instance, but then, i'm playing by myself and why not play Skyrim then where i can get stronger stories and deeper gameplay.
Poeple don't play those games because they are boring and shitty, that's all, i'm sorry, it have little relation with the leveling speed.
Grind is the stupidiest stuff ever done in mmo, but since its the easiest to code and give the best addicitive factor, dev teams abused it to no end, until they discovered they can apply it to RMT.
And grind don't come from repetition, but from stupid repetition, thats quiet a difference here.
Those mmo are just very poorly designed, thats all that is there. There is not a single reason why those games fail, they are plenty of them, there is nothing to hold them in the background, no backbone, no though, nothing, if there is a single reason thats the one. Its like grind xp games, dev team discovered that the simpliest code could be used to make repeatitive task on some Pavlov reflex, and they over abused it in mmo history. But people are not dogs as Pavlov used for his tests.
You want to come back to this kind of crap? jez. If you want interesting mmo, ask to have interesting mmo, ask to have good repetitive task, the kind of task that don't make you loose but rather gain interest as you play, not the contrary. People play chess, checkers, go... for centuries, there is nothing more repetitive, those games have like a couple of moves for you to grasp, the same moves you'll do over and over again each time, you can't even do simplier than go of checker game. Are they grindy? not even close. Those games are about playing, not about paying monthly sub, thats maybe why those mmo fail?
I leveled much more quickly in WoW than in SWTOR. What game are you playing?
Wow didn't always have the easy leveling design. When it first came out, it was based on other games and a bit slower.
I miss slow leveling. I miss enjoying the game. It's why its hard for me to adjust WOW players to a traditional tabletop dnd game. I had one guy, every session "did i level yet? when do i level? how do we level?."
I'm like dude, the group just discovered the library that holds the key to the keep. The game is about the adventure, not the power of your character.
With 80 levels, I hope guild wars 2 is a slow levelling experience. It should be, after all, the main problme with slow leveling is the worry that you can't find players to play with at your level. This is a problem in every game, but most games now days answer it by making endgame so easy to get to, that you endure not finding parties at lul times because you know you'll be able to play with everyone at endgame.
Thus , everyone rushes to endgame so they can play with everyone else. I know thats been my families mindset. But wouldn't a game be cool, if you could play it with everyone at any level. Thats what GW2 is saying.
I played in beta and got to level 8, first night. Played a Necromancer in EQ and it took me two months to get off the newbie log.
As an oldschool gamer myself, I'd have to agree wholeheartedly with the current leveling speed.
Indeed, the JOURNEY to END LEVEL was the game, not the end game itself. Being challenged while leveling should be what MMO's are about, not going through trivial content and facing the challenge with no further advancement possible.
I sincerely dislike this newer generation of gamers who only want to play for the sake of proving their superiority to other players, rather than immerse themselves in a ROLE-PLAYING GAME (wow, how that word ROLE has died out) and play FOR THE SAKE OF CHALLENGE.
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
I leveled much more quickly in WoW than in SWTOR. What game are you playing?
Wow didn't always have the easy leveling design. When it first came out, it was based on other games and a bit slower.
I miss slow leveling. I miss enjoying the game. It's why its hard for me to adjust WOW players to a traditional tabletop dnd game. I had one guy, every session "did i level yet? when do i level? how do we level?."
I'm like dude, the group just discovered the library that holds the key to the keep. The game is about the adventure, not the power of your character.
With 80 levels, I hope guild wars 2 is a slow levelling experience. It should be, after all, the main problme with slow leveling is the worry that you can't find players to play with at your level. This is a problem in every game, but most games now days answer it by making endgame so easy to get to, that you endure not finding parties at lul times because you know you'll be able to play with everyone at endgame.
Thus , everyone rushes to endgame so they can play with everyone else. I know thats been my families mindset. But wouldn't a game be cool, if you could play it with everyone at any level. Thats what GW2 is saying.
I played in beta and got to level 8, first night. Played a Necromancer in EQ and it took me two months to get off the newbie log.
Wow dude, don't confuse complex gaming with bad playing. EQ was longer, but not even close to being that hard.
great article. i more or less agree with you. It took me 2 expansions before i finally hit max level in wow. i'm THAT casual. and even then i didn't bother with end game content until max lvl in cata which i thought was just pathetic. I did EVERY quest in the under water zone and as a result had completely out leveled 2 of the other new content zones. I ended up doing only a few quests in desert zone, twilight zone and because i spent a lot of the time queued up for dungeon pugs i wound up hitting 85 without completeing a single other zone's content. Then i tried to do what the majority of wow players do and grind rep for gear and junk to eventually prepare me for raiding but i grew bored of that after about a month and just stopped. it was just what i always expected my reaction to end game content to be. I felt i was just wasting time getting gear that would instantly become trivialized after doing the first handful of quests from the next expansion.
eq2 i found to be a much more enjoyable pace to leveling than wow, but i never have been in a big hurry to hit higher levels. typically if i enjoy a zone i will do all the quests and not really care that i'm out leveling the content or gear. hense why i did the entirety of the underwater wow zone even when i was already lvl 84. but i do recall the older games with much more extreme speeds of slow leveling. E&B had a max level of 150 would have taken me decades because it combined exploration combat and trade as all sperate ways to gain levels. And i was, in fact, around back when people getting level 60 in wow was considered an achievement (and i don't me a stupid little box that pops up giving you e-peen points) and hell just having a mount was a big deal. now you can get one at lvl 20 or some such for like 20 silver. AND they weren't even the faster speed if i recall...
So great article, valid points, and good discussion from these comments. everyone seems to have something to say and from what i've read it is painfully obvious that everyone has something different they prefer while playing any MMO. You just cant make an MMO that will suit everyone's needs or wants, but that isn't to say you can't make an MMO that is not infallible to the right player group.
What is this End-Game you speak of? Is it the repeated running of the same lvl 50 dungeon? Killing a specific mob over and over again? Constant PvP queues? Themepark MMO's with End-Game is an oxymoron. By design, they cant exist. Its amazing to me these companies havent caught on yet. It seems the only way to make end-game plausible is to make it dynamic, otherwise you just have a high-level-grind-machine. Maybe GW2 will do it right. These devs should stop looking at these games like products and start treating them as an art form. Maybe thats just wishful thinking.
Levelling is NOT fun. All it does is separate players. That's why I rush to endgame in these games. To play with friends. When we're all levelling up we never get to experience the game together. Give me an end game only game now! I'm fed up with this pointless levelling. The game starts at endgame, the journey starts at endgame. Levelling is just a painfully prolonged tutorial these days.
I remember the days when i was playing Anarchy Online. It took me a full year to level up my fixer, and alien level 30 was just a dream, almost unreachable goal, but that did not bother me one bit. I had a lot of lowbie alts, just for fun, and i remember just sitting and chatting with my clan m8's for hours. There was almost no solo content back then, and we did everything together, but you were never ordered to stay in a raid for hours, you came and went as you pleased. Clan invited you to a raid even if your lvl was to low, and sometimes raid was doomed from the start, but we just didn't care. People are making you believe MMO's are a serious business, a second life, a second job. I don't need that. I already have a life and a job. I just come to have fun, and there is not much fun in new MMO's anymore.
I agree 100%, leveling needs to be severly slowed down. And for PvPs sake they need to remove level bonuses/penalties so that a low level character can be of some use against a higher level one.
Basically what should happen is that they need to bring back the exp curve, and death penalties, of games like Everquest and Asheron's Call and gamers need to realise that they need to find enjoyment in the journey and not the end.
I don't think the death penalty being harsh is a benefit and I know the arguments about it so don't try to re-sell those points.
The idea behind the XP-curve being harder sounds like a move in the right direction. Would it be better to force players to earn more xp via grinding the same mob over and over OR to give large XP bonuses for first time a character experiences certain things. For example, the first time you arrive at a location, the first time you kill a mob of a specific named type, clearing a dungeon for the first time. This gets people moving around the world AND exploration bonuses.
I also think there should be side-levels/skill for characters that you have to improve. PVP experience should advance your pvp-only skills. Raiding should improve your raid-only skills. Other grouping should advance general grouping skills and perhaps base skill. Solo play should improve basic skills.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
I agree that the "content locusts" who blast through the game skipping half of the content and then whining are terrible, but I don't think slowing the leveling process way down is going to help. If you double the level grind, it will take those people ten days instead of five and they will STILL be whining and complaining before you know it. It will really make no difference. The rest of us, however, that have more things to do than just sit and play games all day, every day, will really be left out. I suspect that a large percentage of players have jobs and responsibilities and just don't have the time to make playing an MMO their second job.
I say stop worrying about the people that race to the finish line so that they can complain about lack of content. You would have to ruin the fun for a large majority of players to ever hope to satisfy them and then they would just find something else to complain about. Make the best game you can, with the most content you can, and if it is good we will hang around.
Currently playing: Rift Played: SWToR, Aion,EQ, Dark Age of Camelot World of Warcraft, AoC
I played AC since 2000, I honestly have not found a game to fill that space it has in my heart. I remember having multiple characters from level 11 to 68, it wasn't about leveling it was about enjoying the game with people. Knowing I could be 10 levels under my friend but still do quests with them and do well (with level 6 buffs Lugian Cit FTW).
If AC ever did a reboot and kept its skill system, levelin system, armor system and brought back the original magic discovery system I would play it until it died off again.
Gaming community: IRONFIST New World: Lilith - US East WoW Guild: IRONFIST <Burning Legion> Alliance(We transferred to Illidan) WoW Guild: IRONFIST <Illidan> Horde SWOTR: IRONFIST <Satele Shan> Empire/Republic
You play through scores of levels and are provided with content and fun... Then you approach the max level of the game and things change....
Content slows (we are talking a good 8 levels before max level even)
World drops become worthless (often this happens about 15 levels before max level -- At level 40 you can get a solo lucky drop that is very close to the best currently available -- at level 70 you can't get a drop better than a trash drop on a raid.)
You acquire all the skills your character will have (again this often happens before max level)
You have been everywhere geographically (I have usually explored the entire world significantly before max level)
Quests dry up
Playstyles narrow (Lets say you soloed monsters 6 levels above your level in a slow manner... You were set up to be able to do it in whatever game... Well when the highest level monster is equal to your level then you are stuck killing those. Sometimes there are no solo monsters in games even 2 levels BELOW the level of the characters... This hurts the solo tank or solo healer more than it does a solo dps who is built to be able to carve through legions of lower monsters)
---------------
Even if there is a level cap, I think they should always have a few areas where monsters are well above the level of the characters -- even DEADLY so... If the level cap is say 60 -- there should be zones where the monsters are upwards of level 70 in all flavors. They shouldnt stop at level 58 for a level 60 cap.
-----
At any rate I typically find that I get to the endgame and it ends up the end of the game for me.
This process is happening right now in vindictus... Fun game but at the end it ends up a big farming session. Pretty much all the themeparks end up as a big farming session at the endgame.
About the only themepark I was able to stick with for raids in a fairly big way was the original everquest -- at least they set the game up so the MAJORITY of the content was at max level. AAs to gain and lots of zones to progress through... In fact that was a constant complaint by some that so much of the content was only seeable by a small few who were able to get that far. At least EQ had some avenues of advancement at max level and more than a smattering of dungeons to run over and over and over and over.
Warhammer was the only one I really stayed for PVP(RVR) for a longish period. Only thing that really booted me from that game was a "bad" server merge where I ended up being vastly outnumbered all the time for no fun.
Oh well -- The most recent casualty looks to be Vindictus... I had a fun romp up to level 69.4 but essentially I have been everywhere and the quests are done and I dont want to spend large amounts of time and money getting mega endgame equipment (already have 12k/7k -- getting the extra k to be able to go on boats to run the same zones over and over isnt really my cup of tea).
I am convinced the people shouting and stomping their feet about having nothing to do once they had hit level 50 in lotro during the shadow of angmar days heavily influenced the way that the legendary item and radiance systems were implemented with the mines of moria expansion.
It seemed to me that the devs added grind and gates to try and remedy the whines of folks that were expecting a fledgling mmo to have the same level of end game content as games that had existed for years. That decision was a mistake and it was mostly downhill from there in my opinion.
Ignore these gamers, they are like a thirst that can never be quenched and definitely don't compromise gameplay to try and eek out a few more months worth of sub from them as it is the casual bread and butter sub players that get punished for it.
Same goes for a quicker death in games and MMOs in general. You have to learn from your mistakes.
Getting carried through a whole game, like in SWToR in which is literally nothing difficult, is no fun. No fun at all.
There is a huge number of people who want to level an extremely long time to get into endgame, but that costs more development time for a game. Which costs again more money to develop. Conclusion? Developers throw out their games, their content rapidly, to soath the "easy or casual gamers" needs.
Its nothing special that tons of threads pop up in forums like this one, where people including those casual gamers argue about what they get fed in MMOs these days. It's nothing bad or negative guys, it's just a part in your waking-up - when you finally realize how developers actually fool you.
Be more critical and you will get your indepth content and harder difficulties and takes-more-time-to-achieve-something in games.
Just step away from this "quick buying" mentality.
I find this attitude rather annoying. Why do some people think they have become enlightened in some way? We're talking about computer games and past times, not religion or government conspiracy.
Actually, in SW:TOR if the leveling system were a bit slower it would work well, at least at the later levels as it slows significantly in the middle section than appears to just pick right back up in the 40s.
Great game, lot's of content, unfortunate bugs at the end-game. Over all best MMO to come out since WoW, and the leveling experience in SW:TOR trumps the one in WoW. Dialogue/voice overs, etc = long over-due in this genre.
Same goes for a quicker death in games and MMOs in general. You have to learn from your mistakes.
Getting carried through a whole game, like in SWToR in which is literally nothing difficult, is no fun. No fun at all.
There is a huge number of people who want to level an extremely long time to get into endgame, but that costs more development time for a game. Which costs again more money to develop. Conclusion? Developers throw out their games, their content rapidly, to soath the "easy or casual gamers" needs.
Its nothing special that tons of threads pop up in forums like this one, where people including those casual gamers argue about what they get fed in MMOs these days. It's nothing bad or negative guys, it's just a part in your waking-up - when you finally realize how developers actually fool you.
Be more critical and you will get your indepth content and harder difficulties and takes-more-time-to-achieve-something in games.
Just step away from this "quick buying" mentality.
I find this attitude rather annoying. Why do some people think they have become enlightened in some way? We're talking about computer games and past times, not religion or government conspiracy.
Are the developers of a game that you so enjoy not allowed to be as greedy as the government that lies to you? Honest question.
You know Isabel many player will disagree with you.
Unfortunately the developers tend to listen to those kind of players, that's why we don't have a good MMORPG since WoW came out.
Developers though should read carefully your post because that' s the secret of the longevity all the latest MMOs cannot achieve.
To be completely honesst I find ridicolous that developers expect players to stick around for a long period of time when they can max a character in a month or less.
To me that's commercial suicide, you want people to stay subscribed for a year when you allow them to burn all the content in a month.
They have to be quite optimistic or really stupid................
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Same goes for a quicker death in games and MMOs in general. You have to learn from your mistakes.
Getting carried through a whole game, like in SWToR in which is literally nothing difficult, is no fun. No fun at all.
There is a huge number of people who want to level an extremely long time to get into endgame, but that costs more development time for a game. Which costs again more money to develop. Conclusion? Developers throw out their games, their content rapidly, to soath the "easy or casual gamers" needs.
Its nothing special that tons of threads pop up in forums like this one, where people including those casual gamers argue about what they get fed in MMOs these days. It's nothing bad or negative guys, it's just a part in your waking-up - when you finally realize how developers actually fool you.
Be more critical and you will get your indepth content and harder difficulties and takes-more-time-to-achieve-something in games.
Just step away from this "quick buying" mentality.
I find this attitude rather annoying. Why do some people think they have become enlightened in some way? We're talking about computer games and past times, not religion or government conspiracy.
Are the developers of a game that you so enjoy not allowed to be as greedy as the government that lies to you? Honest question.
They can be as greedy as they like. I am perfectly capable of self will, I choose to buy and play an MMO. If I dont like it big fricken deal. Some of you guys talk as if people are getting brainwashed into handing over their houses and pension plans. get real, get a perspective on life. If paying £50 for a game, getting 30-40 hours game play out of it and moving on is such an ordeal ----- don't play.
"Ohhh I've seen the light! Don't buy these games, the companies are evil wrong doers who only want your money!" No shit, like every other retail related business on the planet.
Know what I hate about EvE and hated about SWG and EQ?
Grinding... tiers of gear based on grinding... they call(ed) themselves sandboxes while putting in the grind of a themepark game.
True sandbox = no grind.
No end game, no beginning game, no grind, just... game....
I think developer created content is fine and is neccessary, but not as the sole form of content in a game. I'd be really happy with a game that had you do awesome, phased/instanced, personal, voiced-over quests with awesome story and a highly cinematic flair... every like 5-10 levels.
And leave the time/space in between up to you and your imagination/play style.
Earth and Beyond actually did this, I thought it was a wonderful idea.
Comments
I both agree and disagree. While I dislike those gamers that race to end-game and then complain there's nothing to do, I sympathize with people that don't want to grind incessently to hit level cap.
How many console games have we played in the past that had few, if any levels, short of levels as in actual "stages" of the game. I don't remember a level cap stopping me from playing the hell out of Castlevania (the earlier ones)and hitting the cap in games like Ultima and Wizardry back in the Nintendo days didn't stop me from exploring the rest of the world and trying to collect everything. For a more recent example, I enjoyed the content of Guild Wars far, FAR after I hit level cap.
I think caps in levels should be reached fairly quickly, but for me that's because I want to experience the content of the game without leveling up getting in the way. In other words, the game should be worth playing regardless of level cap, not because of it. There's no excuse for 'content locust'-type people, but I certainly don't miss the EQ1 days of leveling, either.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Rift's numbers are up a bit too. I don't think its as much about the community as it is, that TOR failed to offer anything interesting or new, and had too many barriers to enjoy the game. The leveling was one thing, but the lack of seeing the "mass" part of the game was frustrating. The only time i saw people, who were suppose to be my teammates, i ended up hating them because we are fighting for resources. The only way to get away from the scavanger gameplay that plagues most MMOs was to do the instance, but then, i'm playing by myself and why not play Skyrim then where i can get stronger stories and deeper gameplay.
Poeple don't play those games because they are boring and shitty, that's all, i'm sorry, it have little relation with the leveling speed.
Grind is the stupidiest stuff ever done in mmo, but since its the easiest to code and give the best addicitive factor, dev teams abused it to no end, until they discovered they can apply it to RMT.
And grind don't come from repetition, but from stupid repetition, thats quiet a difference here.
Those mmo are just very poorly designed, thats all that is there. There is not a single reason why those games fail, they are plenty of them, there is nothing to hold them in the background, no backbone, no though, nothing, if there is a single reason thats the one. Its like grind xp games, dev team discovered that the simpliest code could be used to make repeatitive task on some Pavlov reflex, and they over abused it in mmo history. But people are not dogs as Pavlov used for his tests.
You want to come back to this kind of crap? jez. If you want interesting mmo, ask to have interesting mmo, ask to have good repetitive task, the kind of task that don't make you loose but rather gain interest as you play, not the contrary. People play chess, checkers, go... for centuries, there is nothing more repetitive, those games have like a couple of moves for you to grasp, the same moves you'll do over and over again each time, you can't even do simplier than go of checker game. Are they grindy? not even close. Those games are about playing, not about paying monthly sub, thats maybe why those mmo fail?
I played in beta and got to level 8, first night. Played a Necromancer in EQ and it took me two months to get off the newbie log.
As an oldschool gamer myself, I'd have to agree wholeheartedly with the current leveling speed.
Indeed, the JOURNEY to END LEVEL was the game, not the end game itself. Being challenged while leveling should be what MMO's are about, not going through trivial content and facing the challenge with no further advancement possible.
I sincerely dislike this newer generation of gamers who only want to play for the sake of proving their superiority to other players, rather than immerse themselves in a ROLE-PLAYING GAME (wow, how that word ROLE has died out) and play FOR THE SAKE OF CHALLENGE.
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
Wow dude, don't confuse complex gaming with bad playing. EQ was longer, but not even close to being that hard.
When playing WOW, I knew of many people (at least 3) that lvl to max, delete their toon, and did it again.
great article. i more or less agree with you. It took me 2 expansions before i finally hit max level in wow. i'm THAT casual. and even then i didn't bother with end game content until max lvl in cata which i thought was just pathetic. I did EVERY quest in the under water zone and as a result had completely out leveled 2 of the other new content zones. I ended up doing only a few quests in desert zone, twilight zone and because i spent a lot of the time queued up for dungeon pugs i wound up hitting 85 without completeing a single other zone's content. Then i tried to do what the majority of wow players do and grind rep for gear and junk to eventually prepare me for raiding but i grew bored of that after about a month and just stopped. it was just what i always expected my reaction to end game content to be. I felt i was just wasting time getting gear that would instantly become trivialized after doing the first handful of quests from the next expansion.
eq2 i found to be a much more enjoyable pace to leveling than wow, but i never have been in a big hurry to hit higher levels. typically if i enjoy a zone i will do all the quests and not really care that i'm out leveling the content or gear. hense why i did the entirety of the underwater wow zone even when i was already lvl 84. but i do recall the older games with much more extreme speeds of slow leveling. E&B had a max level of 150 would have taken me decades because it combined exploration combat and trade as all sperate ways to gain levels. And i was, in fact, around back when people getting level 60 in wow was considered an achievement (and i don't me a stupid little box that pops up giving you e-peen points) and hell just having a mount was a big deal. now you can get one at lvl 20 or some such for like 20 silver. AND they weren't even the faster speed if i recall...
So great article, valid points, and good discussion from these comments. everyone seems to have something to say and from what i've read it is painfully obvious that everyone has something different they prefer while playing any MMO. You just cant make an MMO that will suit everyone's needs or wants, but that isn't to say you can't make an MMO that is not infallible to the right player group.
What is this End-Game you speak of? Is it the repeated running of the same lvl 50 dungeon? Killing a specific mob over and over again? Constant PvP queues? Themepark MMO's with End-Game is an oxymoron. By design, they cant exist. Its amazing to me these companies havent caught on yet. It seems the only way to make end-game plausible is to make it dynamic, otherwise you just have a high-level-grind-machine. Maybe GW2 will do it right. These devs should stop looking at these games like products and start treating them as an art form. Maybe thats just wishful thinking.
Levelling is NOT fun. All it does is separate players. That's why I rush to endgame in these games. To play with friends. When we're all levelling up we never get to experience the game together. Give me an end game only game now! I'm fed up with this pointless levelling. The game starts at endgame, the journey starts at endgame. Levelling is just a painfully prolonged tutorial these days.
I remember the days when i was playing Anarchy Online. It took me a full year to level up my fixer, and alien level 30 was just a dream, almost unreachable goal, but that did not bother me one bit. I had a lot of lowbie alts, just for fun, and i remember just sitting and chatting with my clan m8's for hours. There was almost no solo content back then, and we did everything together, but you were never ordered to stay in a raid for hours, you came and went as you pleased. Clan invited you to a raid even if your lvl was to low, and sometimes raid was doomed from the start, but we just didn't care. People are making you believe MMO's are a serious business, a second life, a second job. I don't need that. I already have a life and a job. I just come to have fun, and there is not much fun in new MMO's anymore.
Yeah, lets completely ignore the horrible amount of bugs thats makes doing anything at max level an eye gouging chore.
I quit not because I leveled too fast but because of the bugs. Every single corner, every single aspect of SW:TOR is riddled with bugs.
So, yeah, go ahead and blame TORs current downfall on leveling too fast and not on the real culprit: a game being pushed out before it was ready.
I don't think the death penalty being harsh is a benefit and I know the arguments about it so don't try to re-sell those points.
The idea behind the XP-curve being harder sounds like a move in the right direction. Would it be better to force players to earn more xp via grinding the same mob over and over OR to give large XP bonuses for first time a character experiences certain things. For example, the first time you arrive at a location, the first time you kill a mob of a specific named type, clearing a dungeon for the first time. This gets people moving around the world AND exploration bonuses.
I also think there should be side-levels/skill for characters that you have to improve. PVP experience should advance your pvp-only skills. Raiding should improve your raid-only skills. Other grouping should advance general grouping skills and perhaps base skill. Solo play should improve basic skills.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
I agree that the "content locusts" who blast through the game skipping half of the content and then whining are terrible, but I don't think slowing the leveling process way down is going to help. If you double the level grind, it will take those people ten days instead of five and they will STILL be whining and complaining before you know it. It will really make no difference. The rest of us, however, that have more things to do than just sit and play games all day, every day, will really be left out. I suspect that a large percentage of players have jobs and responsibilities and just don't have the time to make playing an MMO their second job.
I say stop worrying about the people that race to the finish line so that they can complain about lack of content. You would have to ruin the fun for a large majority of players to ever hope to satisfy them and then they would just find something else to complain about. Make the best game you can, with the most content you can, and if it is good we will hang around.
Currently playing:
Rift
Played:
SWToR, Aion,EQ, Dark Age of Camelot
World of Warcraft, AoC
I played AC since 2000, I honestly have not found a game to fill that space it has in my heart. I remember having multiple characters from level 11 to 68, it wasn't about leveling it was about enjoying the game with people. Knowing I could be 10 levels under my friend but still do quests with them and do well (with level 6 buffs Lugian Cit FTW).
If AC ever did a reboot and kept its skill system, levelin system, armor system and brought back the original magic discovery system I would play it until it died off again.
Gaming community: IRONFIST
New World: Lilith - US East
WoW Guild: IRONFIST <Burning Legion> Alliance(We transferred to Illidan)
WoW Guild: IRONFIST <Illidan> Horde
SWOTR: IRONFIST <Satele Shan> Empire/Republic
I despise the end-game.
You play through scores of levels and are provided with content and fun... Then you approach the max level of the game and things change....
Content slows (we are talking a good 8 levels before max level even)
World drops become worthless (often this happens about 15 levels before max level -- At level 40 you can get a solo lucky drop that is very close to the best currently available -- at level 70 you can't get a drop better than a trash drop on a raid.)
You acquire all the skills your character will have (again this often happens before max level)
You have been everywhere geographically (I have usually explored the entire world significantly before max level)
Quests dry up
Playstyles narrow (Lets say you soloed monsters 6 levels above your level in a slow manner... You were set up to be able to do it in whatever game... Well when the highest level monster is equal to your level then you are stuck killing those. Sometimes there are no solo monsters in games even 2 levels BELOW the level of the characters... This hurts the solo tank or solo healer more than it does a solo dps who is built to be able to carve through legions of lower monsters)
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Even if there is a level cap, I think they should always have a few areas where monsters are well above the level of the characters -- even DEADLY so... If the level cap is say 60 -- there should be zones where the monsters are upwards of level 70 in all flavors. They shouldnt stop at level 58 for a level 60 cap.
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At any rate I typically find that I get to the endgame and it ends up the end of the game for me.
This process is happening right now in vindictus... Fun game but at the end it ends up a big farming session. Pretty much all the themeparks end up as a big farming session at the endgame.
About the only themepark I was able to stick with for raids in a fairly big way was the original everquest -- at least they set the game up so the MAJORITY of the content was at max level. AAs to gain and lots of zones to progress through... In fact that was a constant complaint by some that so much of the content was only seeable by a small few who were able to get that far. At least EQ had some avenues of advancement at max level and more than a smattering of dungeons to run over and over and over and over.
Warhammer was the only one I really stayed for PVP(RVR) for a longish period. Only thing that really booted me from that game was a "bad" server merge where I ended up being vastly outnumbered all the time for no fun.
Oh well -- The most recent casualty looks to be Vindictus... I had a fun romp up to level 69.4 but essentially I have been everywhere and the quests are done and I dont want to spend large amounts of time and money getting mega endgame equipment (already have 12k/7k -- getting the extra k to be able to go on boats to run the same zones over and over isnt really my cup of tea).
I am convinced the people shouting and stomping their feet about having nothing to do once they had hit level 50 in lotro during the shadow of angmar days heavily influenced the way that the legendary item and radiance systems were implemented with the mines of moria expansion.
It seemed to me that the devs added grind and gates to try and remedy the whines of folks that were expecting a fledgling mmo to have the same level of end game content as games that had existed for years. That decision was a mistake and it was mostly downhill from there in my opinion.
Ignore these gamers, they are like a thirst that can never be quenched and definitely don't compromise gameplay to try and eek out a few more months worth of sub from them as it is the casual bread and butter sub players that get punished for it.
I find this attitude rather annoying. Why do some people think they have become enlightened in some way? We're talking about computer games and past times, not religion or government conspiracy.
Actually, in SW:TOR if the leveling system were a bit slower it would work well, at least at the later levels as it slows significantly in the middle section than appears to just pick right back up in the 40s.
Great game, lot's of content, unfortunate bugs at the end-game. Over all best MMO to come out since WoW, and the leveling experience in SW:TOR trumps the one in WoW. Dialogue/voice overs, etc = long over-due in this genre.
Are the developers of a game that you so enjoy not allowed to be as greedy as the government that lies to you? Honest question.
3 words people.
Player Driven World.
You know Isabel many player will disagree with you.
Unfortunately the developers tend to listen to those kind of players, that's why we don't have a good MMORPG since WoW came out.
Developers though should read carefully your post because that' s the secret of the longevity all the latest MMOs cannot achieve.
To be completely honesst I find ridicolous that developers expect players to stick around for a long period of time when they can max a character in a month or less.
To me that's commercial suicide, you want people to stay subscribed for a year when you allow them to burn all the content in a month.
They have to be quite optimistic or really stupid................
Four words: Design one that works.
Most of the examples we have are terribad.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
They can be as greedy as they like. I am perfectly capable of self will, I choose to buy and play an MMO. If I dont like it big fricken deal. Some of you guys talk as if people are getting brainwashed into handing over their houses and pension plans. get real, get a perspective on life. If paying £50 for a game, getting 30-40 hours game play out of it and moving on is such an ordeal ----- don't play.
"Ohhh I've seen the light! Don't buy these games, the companies are evil wrong doers who only want your money!" No shit, like every other retail related business on the planet.
^This
I'd take it a step further though -
Player Driven World that isn't about Grinding.
Know what I hate about EvE and hated about SWG and EQ?
Grinding... tiers of gear based on grinding... they call(ed) themselves sandboxes while putting in the grind of a themepark game.
True sandbox = no grind.
No end game, no beginning game, no grind, just... game....
I think developer created content is fine and is neccessary, but not as the sole form of content in a game. I'd be really happy with a game that had you do awesome, phased/instanced, personal, voiced-over quests with awesome story and a highly cinematic flair... every like 5-10 levels.
And leave the time/space in between up to you and your imagination/play style.
Earth and Beyond actually did this, I thought it was a wonderful idea.