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Smedley: "EverQuest Next will be the world's largest sandbox-style MMO ever made"
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What are you even doing looking at Everquest then, you're complaining about PVE and raiding, that is EQ, it's why EQ is still alive, in EQ 90% of the players are PVE raiders nowadays, log into the guild lobby and check out the gear, everything is PVE raided gear with very few exceptions.
I hope EQNext is less about raiding and more about adventuring, but currently that's not the case.As for your question, what you lose if you fail to mobs are players, who leave the guild, PVE guilds constantly compete with each other and you need enough players to fill 54 spots every night, with 40 or less you're not killing anything and your guild dies, no on stays in a guild that drops below 40. Applying to a new guild means you lose all your DKP. In many guilds you don't see new loot for months after applying.
Maybe your wish will be granted, that EQNext is some FFA PVP game where there isn't any raiding, but then you probably have a higher chance of winning the lottery and getting hit by lightning.
Dont get me wrong. You can do raiding in a sandbox. Just not tiered raiding with gear drop, because with that you will more or less make crafting for Armor/Weapons obsolete. And crafting is one of the fundaments of a working sandbox.
And the next question would be.. is raiding for Raiders interesting, when you dont get the best gear out of it and instead of it just some money or resources, or both?
But... seriously i cant wait for a more indeepth features list for this game. Some expect it to be a sandbox, some expect it to be a Raiding game, some expect it to be PvE only and so on and so forth.
Theyve already said a couple of times that they are moving away from kill,level,loot type gameplay that were used to so well have to wait and see.to be honest i think everyone will be wrong and are going to get a game based primarily on environmental worldbuilding and pve territory control. pvp and raiding might fit in there somewhere but wont be the focus of the game.
There is no way they are going to throw away the raid or die endgame, that is EQs core audience, but keeping that stops it being a sandbox, as sandboxes don't have a 2 phase leveling game then end game, sandboxes just are.
Expect a big open world low instanced themepark like eq1, but with sandbox elements revolving around crafting, building and teraforming.
i honestly dont think there will be instances. I think theyll be replaced by pve invasions...which gives players a reason to build walls, defences, battering rams, castles, guard armor, and everything else inbetween. Sort of like a sandbox style of GW2's dynamic events on steroids. When the orks invade and burn down your house..who you gonna cry to then?I wonder if action combat will become the new trend in MMOs. Aside from combat mechanics, even if EQN doesn't do great, one has got to assume it'll do better than the avg sandbox title launched over the last few years if for no other reason than it will be different. Others will no doubt imitate. So even if EQN doesn't scratch that sandbox itch you crave, a following game will no doubt. Love or hate EQN as a concept, but it will set a ball in motion.
a renaissance of sandy action.
the only reason i believe EQN will have full action combat is because they already achieved that with planetside 2 on a massive scale with the same engine. Why would they go backwards?
I love the combat in vindictus, but I don't like that it's solo play, I don't like how easy it is, I don't like that it hinders socialising, in fact I probably hate everything about it except for the mob interaction combat it has which was really refreshing.
I still prefer slow combat from EQ, but if they could incorporate a bit of action I wouldn't mind, EQ is static as hell, although I think that's where it gets it's strength from too, it lends itself to raiding and grouping.
Pretty easy fix actually. players craft weapons and armor to start. However Master crafters could take Raid Drops, Remold them, and improve them. Reconfigure stats. ETC ETC.. There are plenty of ways to make crafters relevant in a RAID oriented system.
Vanguard Crafters had some amazing abilities, and the crafting system in that game is one of the more in depth systems around.
Seeing as how thats an SOE game. I figure they will probably be taking some ideas from it.
As for me. I dont expect much of anything.
What I would like to see is a PVPVE with Massive Dynamic Events, In Depth faction systems that guilds could become interweved with. Open world Raid mobs, and Open world dungeons that could be competed for. With a hybrid Class/skill leveling system much like Tabula Rasa had with a core group of basic skills, more advanced skills would require becoming a class, and classes allowing you to take certain basic skills higher in level.
A crafting system that is seperate from your adventuring skills (vanguard anyone).
as I have said PVPVE, a mix of Aion, Tabula Rasa, and GW2. All of this technology has been done before. Now its time to blend it for EQN.
Can you also imagine if they were to put RTS style AI in the game for certain races or factions.. That would build their own camps on the map that the players would have to eradicate to stop them from becoming a threat. RIFT did this to some degree. The Technology for all of this here today. It just needs to be implemented together.
I think a big thing they need to do is decide just what audience they are going to primarily cater to. State it, draw a line in the sand, and hold to their guns. Too many games over the last decade have failed misserably because they try and cater to many different audiences, and it just simply doesn't work out.
Just one for instance, It's too hard to cater to both hardcore PVE fans and Open world PvP fans in the same game. Classes and skills end up being adjusted for PvP which impacts PvE. Etc etc.
Brad Mc Grind the Jolly Green Ranger is responsible for some of the most egricious game mechanics in MMOs. The industry was set back years. The problem was that he did not appreciate the difference between 'hardcore' and 'mindless repititious grind'. Who can forget 'camping' for Jboots, sitting in line for 2 days straight in a tiny aquare room waiting for your crack at the spawn. or the marvellous meditation mechanic, looking at a blank screen for half of your play time. The big thing that EQ1 had going for it was the graphics, great for the time, a real feeling of being in the world. A lot of the game systems where absolutely horrible, throwing aside a lot of mechanics that could already be found in MUDs and replacing them with mindless grindy time sinks.
An ego quite out of line with talent.
I am not complaining about PvE or raiding. I just stated that in my mind PvE is dull due to lack of risk vs. reward scenarios (P.S nice -snip- on that Siege PvP part, which would have explained what I was after). The thing I exactly hate about PvE, is the mindset that evolves around it. Such elitism to occur for the sake of bragging rights from defeating a script, people leaving the guild if you have some set backs etc. (I've been part of PvE raiding group, so I am speaking from experience). And on the contrary, there are PvP guilds you join for years and the ruthless murderers possess more loyalty, ironic.
I'm done with it. I bet many others are done with it. And "currently", we have Smedleys word, where kill, loot, kill loot, slay dragon boss for the 282 time for tier 800 gear won't exist. (He specificly mentioned "kill dragon x times for 800 tier gear". So, typical instanced raiding does not occur. But I bet there are open world bosses, the question is, will carebears (If someone frowned at this word, please refer to page 68-70, I've posted a carebear's term there, read it through and through) cause a shit storm if SoE attempts to incorporate raiding with open world and PvP, especially if they implement death penalties? Naturally, its most likely that SoE will create seperate servers for PvE and PvP, so I am asking this in regards on PvP servers.
For Smedley's "plans" he reveals something:
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/10/20/soe-live-2012-john-smedley-on-eq-next-and-soes-future/
[QUOTE]This is a very interesting question. I think it's at the core of why what we're doing is sustainable. I'll go right to the heart of the matter. You get to the point where we make an expansion, and when I say we, I mean the entire MMO community. You make your expansion, the real hardcore players consume it in a month, and they're doing the raids over and over and over until the next round of live content that we put in. Typically, three or four times a year, we as MMO companies put new endgame in there to keep the raiders happy.
We absolutely need to build that style of content into every game we make because players want that. We're not talking about the end of raids, the end of this incredibly high-level content. We're talking about changing the nature of the world around it so that there's a lot more to do "in between" expansions. A good example, but a very narrow example, is battlegrounds in WoW or EQII, where players get bored doing it over and over again. But imagine the entire world as part of the interaction. Imagine seasons changing. Imagine if you're a Druid and you need to literally seek out reagents for your spells or worship your deity in a glade somewhere off in the wilderness, but you don't know where. Or image forests growing back after they're burned to the ground by invading forces. What we want is a dynamic world that gives all those other possibilities and doesn't just say OK, go to raid X with group composition of X, Y, Z, and kill the dragon for the 52nd time to get the tier 800 gear. It's this rinse-and-repeat gameplay that's got to change, and so we're changing it.[/QUOTE]
I like the "seek reagents part", Smedley clearly has been glancing at Ultima Online.
Really? Like EQ2 you mean? I wonder who's dreaming here?
A bit of logical fallacy going on here, just because a term is coined after something exists does not mean that something can not be described by that term. In any case I remember the term themepark being used on a list serve that Kosnner hung out on in 79 not coined by him if memory serves. Since you ask, no linky needless to say.
Incidetally, anyway you look at it EQ was 'gated' through and through. Whether that prevents it being a sandbox I'll leave up to those who seem more concerned about that.
If that was the case why is eq2 absolutely nothing like planetside1
i think we can all agree that the past are there and the wise one look to learn from it. if we take deep a look at Smedley past we can safely say that he is greedy and a professional bullshitter, so i wont hold my breath until some real facts come to the light of the day.
Smed has all but begged for forgiveness and not only stated he has learned from past mistakes but has made a small measure of headway into proving it with his approach to the PS2 development and beta.
He displays the traits of a man that was pulled into a bigger office than his own and was told "Unfuck yourself, your team, and your projects, or we will find someone that can." left that office and immediately wiped clean several dry-erase boards back in the development offices, called meetings, and puckered buttholes.
PS2 and EQN are using the same game engine, Forge Light
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/111555-EverQuest-Next-and-Planetside-2-To-Use-New-Forge-Light-Engine
EQ2 fan sites
Rift, fallout3, oblivion and warhammer all use the same engine
Xcom, apb, dcuo, dust 514 and both borderlands use the sane engine
For instance, if you can buy the key item from another player in order to access a raid/dungeon/area then that's sufficiently sandboxy.
Anyway, with respect to PvP - I'm still expecting SOE to introduce EVE-style "security zones". These allow players to choose the level of risk and the style of PvP that suits their preferences. I'd expect EQN's "lo-sec" PvP option to be faction-based rather than "FFA but with NPC standings hits" like EVE's though.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
I wouldn't mind that but EQ had that at the beginning, EQ was open world raiding, the instances were a result of guilds griefing others. Guilds stayed up all night to make sure they got the spawn and grief'd others. Smedley tends to say a lot fo stuff, but he's not the main designer of the project, while open world bosses are nice, they caused issues in the past and that's why practically all raiding became instanced.
Instances raiding has caused its own issues. IE cookie cutter characters, everyone has the same gear in the high end. EQ there were actually REAL rare items due to very long world spawn timers. Even then some items would drop only very rarely. This created much more diversity between high levels between high levels. Instead of everyone being mirror copies of each other. Open world bosses will actually help encourage guild warfare if open world pvp is involved.
While I enjoy a good instance especially for its story telling capability. I have to say adventuring in hard challenging open and social environments even with contested mobs is a win in my book.
Look I just wanna run around and make some bandages and arrows and shitslap some afk medding robe with a wurmslayer i crafted myself, thats not too much to ask for.
The comparisons between PS2 and EQN are strictly based on the graphics, lighting and physics that are in the Forgelight engine. You can find a video of Smed going down the list of features in FL.
I think you are spot on, other than the engine there probably won't be much in common between PS2 and EQN.