I need to jump in here to discuss the difference between 'hard' and 'tedious' because so many of you, including the author of the article, still confuse the two.
So do you, as well.
There is a reason that games evolved from EQ 1 to include quest markers, and it wasn't about ease versus difficulty, it was to remove unnecessarily and unfun, tedious gameplay.
There's really nothing tedious about directionless quests, that makes no sense at all. It's more about world sense/immersion. If someone asks you to find someone, they are not going to tell you where exactly they are, that makes no sense. If someone tells you to kill gazelles, you're expected to know the terrain enough to know where they are. It had nothing to do with tedium, and everything with encouraging exploration and paying attention to the world. I personally find quests a lot more fun when I have to spend some time to figure out what I have to do or where or how. Otherwise, I don't really see the point of quests, I can grind mobs on my own if I want to...
If you want everything spelled out for you that's your choice, but you have it available to you and asking devs to add to your exploits is silly. You already are looking for the easy way out and you found it, nobody should help you with that.
I'm not disputing that having to figure out where to go can't be engaging, it can be. I'm simply stating the facts that the vast majority of people are not going to spend the time to do it. They are going to jump onto the internet, find exactly where to go, and go there, simple as that.
The developers realized that and so they added in quest marking because they knew most people weren't going to spend the time to figure it out on their own anyway. I would submit to you, that YOU can easily disable this feature in most games if you wish and therefore YOU can have all the fun in the world figuring out where to go on your own. I may not want that and so I can leave the quest marker enabled and get on with it, or pick and choose when I use it and when I don't.
The reality is if the feature is in the game you're going to use it to!
I agree 100% with your list Suzie. An item I would add is housing. I would compromise on the full sandbox with housing too. Although owning a plot of land in the world would be neat, I wouldn't want to see a world as populated with houses as ultima. Maybe a game with both sandbox and themepark type housing. Have some instanced versions of housing in towns but also give a limited number of spots in the world where players can build houes. The ability to build a complete player built, and run, city would be nice.
Pretty much agree with everything here Suzie. The only thing that doesn't matter to me is giving it a nod to the original. But that's because I never played EQ1 or EQ2. As long as the other four bullet points are there then I'd be fine.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
I need to jump in here to discuss the difference between 'hard' and 'tedious' because so many of you, including the author of the article, still confuse the two.
So do you, as well.
There is a reason that games evolved from EQ 1 to include quest markers, and it wasn't about ease versus difficulty, it was to remove unnecessarily and unfun, tedious gameplay.
There's really nothing tedious about directionless quests, that makes no sense at all. It's more about world sense/immersion. If someone asks you to find someone, they are not going to tell you where exactly they are, that makes no sense. If someone tells you to kill gazelles, you're expected to know the terrain enough to know where they are. It had nothing to do with tedium, and everything with encouraging exploration and paying attention to the world. I personally find quests a lot more fun when I have to spend some time to figure out what I have to do or where or how. Otherwise, I don't really see the point of quests, I can grind mobs on my own if I want to...
If you want everything spelled out for you that's your choice, but you have it available to you and asking devs to add to your exploits is silly. You already are looking for the easy way out and you found it, nobody should help you with that.
I'm not disputing that having to figure out where to go can't be engaging, it can be. I'm simply stating the facts that the vast majority of people are not going to spend the time to do it. They are going to jump onto the internet, find exactly where to go, and go there, simple as that.
The developers realized that and so they added in quest marking because they knew most people weren't going to spend the time to figure it out on their own anyway. I would submit to you, that YOU can easily disable this feature in most games if you wish and therefore YOU can have all the fun in the world figuring out where to go on your own. I may not want that and so I can leave the quest marker enabled and get on with it, or pick and choose when I use it and when I don't.
The reality is if the feature is in the game you're going to use it to!
Sadly I sort of agree with this and that really pisses me off. However I still say create games that don't guide you or hold your freaking hand and eventually the modern McMMO playerbase will, as my dad said "Shit or get off of the toilet". Always hated the fact that the majority of modern MMO's that espouse exploration still manage to put everything on rails and bread crumb players along a trail of linear shame. Games like GW2 and soon TESO remove any vestige of thoughtful exploration use guiding measures to hold their players hands. Such a shame.
If the majority of MMO's start going the way of old school hardness then eventually the demographic of the genre will change as well.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
As long as we are clear on what difficult means. I am personally past the point where difficult means camping a VT key spawn for 24 hours in a row. That isnt difficult, its aggravating and tiresome. - I would love difficult combat, and tiered end game raid zones. I would like competitive pve, meaning more than gearscore, but non instanced raids with spawn competition and punishing failure. I am fine with death penalty, infact I encourage it. I absolutely want to feel that there are consequences for playing poorly, wether solo or in a team.
I think the Western gaming industry has completely moved on from tedious camp spawn rates. While I love the idea of clearing placeholders to make a Named spawn, having a more reasonable rate makes it less of a job. EQ2 has areas where this is managed quite well, although the game itself is progressively becoming simpler.
Consequences to death are good in my books. I think it makes you more conscious of what you are doing insofar as situational and environmental awareness. Most importantly, by not wanting to die, you will learn how to play your character more effectively.
At the same time, I absolutely do NOT want to spend my life in game camping some crap mob for ages and ages. - I dont want to have to devote every single free moment in order to be competitive with those who do have the freedom to play that way. - I want the difficulty to be surmountable by skillfull play, not high gearscore. I would prefer the game be inclusive so that if you play your class greater than average, you can go raiding and grouping with the people who can play for hours and hours and hours. - The barrier of gear is a pathetic stagnation of the genre.
Currently, games allow you to rush through all the content without a care in the world, with the unfortunate consequence of producing lazy, unskilled players who rely on gear over personal ability. I'd like to see that trend reversed. Oh, gear is important, but don't let it be the sum of the whole. Gear should not be a crutch, rather a facilitating point where player skill then takes over. Having gear that enables you to roll mindlessly through everything has certainly attracted its players to certain games, but there really are enough of those on the market right now.
I would love to see solo quests every 5-10 level or for every important raid where new mechanics were introduced, demanding that the person meet a scaled environment, that they would need to handle on their own, before being let loose on the next part of the social map. - It would just be insanely wonderful.
- Rather than camping keys, you'd need to learn your class really well, learn situational awareness, perhaps how to interact and move a certain way during some part of the fight, all on your own. - Without a lockout, or cooldown, I see no reason why gearscore, or camping key shards, should be a superior way to gate content. - Having bosses get more and more hp as a way of scaling to the fact players get better dps due to better gear, is just mindbogglingly lazy development.
I'm not sure if I entirely agree with you here. Your quest idea sounds like a gating mechanism of tests that a player needs to "pass" in order to access the next tier of content. I think the content of the game itself should do that, rather than being so overt as you suggest. As you enter a new area with higher levels of mobs, introduce layer after graduated layer of AI. The problem of lack of player skill will solve itself.
I don't think making bosses HP sponges is the way to go either, so I do agree with you on this point. Standing in a spot and casting 10 damaging spells rather than 3, or swinging your sword an extra few times doesn't translate to greater design or skill. Its just a lazy time gate. GW2 seems to do this a lot, while using a cripplingly ridiculous amount of mob attacks that knock you around. Its poor design by dev's that decided to take the easy road rather than be clever.
I am quite interested to see how EQN manages all of this. Is it going to be challenging? Or is it going to be a FreeRealms/EQ hybrid marketed towards a very wide and soft playerbase. We'll find out soon enough.
I would submit to you, that YOU can easily disable this feature in most games if you wish and therefore YOU can have all the fun in the world figuring out where to go on your own.
Not really, no. Because in those games, the quests aren't written to provide clues. More often than not, there's no way to figure out where to go based on the quest text. So it's either use the marker, or look it up on the internet.
You might want to take a look at TSW. They don't have quest markers and the quests are considered by most to be the game's best feature. They actually involve problem solving in many cases, and some of the quests are extremely difficult. TSW has an in-game browser, so you can look up the answers if you want to, though the browser is ostensibly there as a tool to solve the quests rather than "cheat".
EQN doesn't need to have that level of difficulty, but having quest text that provides clues or instructions would be a nice change over the quest markers.
I would love to see solo quests every 5-10 level or for every important raid where new mechanics were introduced, demanding that the person meet a scaled environment, that they would need to handle on their own, before being let loose on the next part of the social map. - It would just be insanely wonderful. - Rather than camping keys, you'd need to learn your class really well, learn situational awareness, perhaps how to interact and move a certain way during some part of the fight, all on your own.
FFXIV:ARR does exactly this with the main storyline "boss" fights (I did 3 separate ones between level 1 and 15) and the class quests every 5 levels. Some were actually hard, like, I died and had to retry them once or twice.
And with the Guildhests (starting at level 10) the game literally teaches you to function in a group before you even get to the Dungeon quests with mini-encounters teaching basics like clearing packs of trash mobs, picking up adds, kiting bosses and utilizing environmental triggers.
And then the game forces you into group dungeons to progress the main story, which each (3 in a row) with more and more interesting and complex mechanics.
After playing through them, experiencing this approach - it's like... duh! Why doesn't every game do this?
My #1: Don't make characters that look like you ripped them out of a child's cartoon. I want to feel like I'm a part of that world, and NOT like I'm watching sunday cartoons with my nephew.
Why is everyone getting their hopes up over this title? I had a love/hate relationship with EQ1, which I played for 4 years or so, 2 of them very very hardcore. EQ1 was fun. EQ1 was tedious and boring. EQ1 had the thrill of the rare drop. EQ1 had the soul crushing boredom of farming rare spawns hoping for the rare drop from the rare spawn... EQ1 had SO MANY broken quests that you had to use 3rd party guides just to see if you were spinning your wheels or not.
But none of that matters.
It's being designed for the PS4.
That makes all this wishing for this and that moot. It's being designed for console gamers. Just keep that fact firmly in view, and you can move on from worrying about what EQN is or isn't.
I need to jump in here to discuss the difference between 'hard' and 'tedious' because so many of you, including the author of the article, still confuse the two.
So do you, as well.
There is a reason that games evolved from EQ 1 to include quest markers, and it wasn't about ease versus difficulty, it was to remove unnecessarily and unfun, tedious gameplay.
There's really nothing tedious about directionless quests, that makes no sense at all. It's more about world sense/immersion. If someone asks you to find someone, they are not going to tell you where exactly they are, that makes no sense. If someone tells you to kill gazelles, you're expected to know the terrain enough to know where they are. It had nothing to do with tedium, and everything with encouraging exploration and paying attention to the world. I personally find quests a lot more fun when I have to spend some time to figure out what I have to do or where or how. Otherwise, I don't really see the point of quests, I can grind mobs on my own if I want to...
If you want everything spelled out for you that's your choice, but you have it available to you and asking devs to add to your exploits is silly. You already are looking for the easy way out and you found it, nobody should help you with that.
I'm not disputing that having to figure out where to go can't be engaging, it can be. I'm simply stating the facts that the vast majority of people are not going to spend the time to do it. They are going to jump onto the internet, find exactly where to go, and go there, simple as that.
The developers realized that and so they added in quest marking because they knew most people weren't going to spend the time to figure it out on their own anyway. I would submit to you, that YOU can easily disable this feature in most games if you wish and therefore YOU can have all the fun in the world figuring out where to go on your own. I may not want that and so I can leave the quest marker enabled and get on with it, or pick and choose when I use it and when I don't.
The reality is if the feature is in the game you're going to use it to!
Sadly I sort of agree with this and that really pisses me off. However I still say create games that don't guide you or hold your freaking hand and eventually the modern McMMO playerbase will, as my dad said "Shit or get off of the toilet". Always hated the fact that the majority of modern MMO's that espouse exploration still manage to put everything on rails and bread crumb players along a trail of linear shame. Games like GW2 and soon TESO remove any vestige of thoughtful exploration use guiding measures to hold their players hands. Such a shame.
If the majority of MMO's start going the way of old school hardness then eventually the demographic of the genre will change as well.
I can see both sides of this and find merit in either of them.
One thing I loved in EQ was having to research zones, print up maps, and really plan for something. As was pointed out above, it added to immersion. The only maps of zones that existed were rough schematics or hand sketches that dedicated players posted on their websites. Armed with that, and a series of /locs you set off.
While I enjoyed doing that, Dev's realized that a lot of other people were doing that as well and decided to just include in-game maps and quest pointers for convenience. I don't necessarily see that as being a bad thing. All that did was save me time looking at an outside source for the same information. However, the current evolution is to now have your in-game map lit up like a Christmas tree with glowing markers and arrows. Now, I can see that being helpful to a lot of people, but there is something to be said for having to do some of the thinking for yourself.
Oh look another fantasy MMO, that's a rehash of the same MMO with the same elements of the other 2,329,982,000 MMOs on the market. Well except Firefall and The Secret World. They're actually unique.
[mod edit]
So incredibly over, swords, dragons and kids stuff..
Good for you that there plenty of SciFi games coming. Your point in this post is? Some people are so effing stupid, it makes me shake my head at humanity.
EDIT: I am so incredibly excited for Swords, Dragons and fantasy based game play. (see wut I did there)
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Why is everyone getting their hopes up over this title? I had a love/hate relationship with EQ1, which I played for 4 years or so, 2 of them very very hardcore. EQ1 was fun. EQ1 was tedious and boring. EQ1 had the thrill of the rare drop. EQ1 had the soul crushing boredom of farming rare spawns hoping for the rare drop from the rare spawn... EQ1 had SO MANY broken quests that you had to use 3rd party guides just to see if you were spinning your wheels or not.
But none of that matters.
It's being designed for the PS4.
That makes all this wishing for this and that moot. It's being designed for console gamers. Just keep that fact firmly in view, and you can move on from worrying about what EQN is or isn't.
We don't know that for sure.
Isn't TESO also going cross-platform? They are making separate servers for the PS4 players, so (to quote you) its a moot point.
Worrying about speculative maybe's is draining. We'll find out in a week what's going on.
Why is everyone getting their hopes up over this title? I had a love/hate relationship with EQ1, which I played for 4 years or so, 2 of them very very hardcore. EQ1 was fun. EQ1 was tedious and boring. EQ1 had the thrill of the rare drop. EQ1 had the soul crushing boredom of farming rare spawns hoping for the rare drop from the rare spawn... EQ1 had SO MANY broken quests that you had to use 3rd party guides just to see if you were spinning your wheels or not.
But none of that matters.
It's being designed for the PS4.
That makes all this wishing for this and that moot. It's being designed for console gamers. Just keep that fact firmly in view, and you can move on from worrying about what EQN is or isn't.
We don't know that for sure.
Isn't TESO also going cross-platform? They are making separate servers for the PS4 players, so (to quote you) its a moot point.
Worrying about speculative maybe's is draining. We'll find out in a week what's going on.
TESO also lost my interest with the consoles being supported. Basically, if you have to make it work on a controller, it isn't "complex" enough to satisfy my MMORPG type needs. Sports games on consoles? Just fine. RPG's? Not so much.
While the PC version and PS4 version of EQN won't necessarily reside on the same servers/worlds, the design of the game has to go to the "lowest common denominator" which would be the console. They aren't going to develop game systems just for the PC version.
Just a random observation, but what a lot of people want sounds a whole lot like Vanilla WoW.
When WoW first launched the game was not as hard as EQ, but by today's standards the game was very hard.....a nice happy-medium you might say.
The world felt huge and because it was seemless (minimal loading screens) it felt like you really could go exploring.
There were markers to designate quest givers, but no in-game map markers to tell you exactly where to go.
It's sounding a lot to me like EQN could launch with many similarities to vanilla WoW, but open it up to be more sandboxy, add in player and guild housing, keep the lore from EQ and lots of people would be happy.
Make MMO's Hard Again- This is something that has been eating at me for some time now. Actually to a point where I believe devs are blind or just not listening or watching the industry. Wow for example, Vwow subs going up, up and never down, BC big pump in subs because first expansion, WOLK and CAT (here is where Blizzard screwed up) everything easy, dungeons, raids and quest all really simple and good for people that come play for a few hours a week.
Key: if it isn't hard nobody gives a shit- New raid and guild downs the boss in days not months, level cap in a week not months, nothing is important or epic anymore.
I too hope Sony listens to this and makes a more hard core game then what people are putting out today.
I need to jump in here to discuss the difference between 'hard' and 'tedious' because so many of you, including the author of the article, still confuse the two.
So do you, as well.
There is a reason that games evolved from EQ 1 to include quest markers, and it wasn't about ease versus difficulty, it was to remove unnecessarily and unfun, tedious gameplay.
There's really nothing tedious about directionless quests, that makes no sense at all. It's more about world sense/immersion. If someone asks you to find someone, they are not going to tell you where exactly they are, that makes no sense. If someone tells you to kill gazelles, you're expected to know the terrain enough to know where they are. It had nothing to do with tedium, and everything with encouraging exploration and paying attention to the world. I personally find quests a lot more fun when I have to spend some time to figure out what I have to do or where or how. Otherwise, I don't really see the point of quests, I can grind mobs on my own if I want to...
If you want everything spelled out for you that's your choice, but you have it available to you and asking devs to add to your exploits is silly. You already are looking for the easy way out and you found it, nobody should help you with that.
I'm not disputing that having to figure out where to go can't be engaging, it can be. I'm simply stating the facts that the vast majority of people are not going to spend the time to do it. They are going to jump onto the internet, find exactly where to go, and go there, simple as that.
The developers realized that and so they added in quest marking because they knew most people weren't going to spend the time to figure it out on their own anyway. I would submit to you, that YOU can easily disable this feature in most games if you wish and therefore YOU can have all the fun in the world figuring out where to go on your own. I may not want that and so I can leave the quest marker enabled and get on with it, or pick and choose when I use it and when I don't.
The reality is if the feature is in the game you're going to use it to!
So, you're calling on the devs then, to spend time coding an extra feature, just so you can not have to look something up? I'd much rather have them spend time developing new content. Personally, I'd much rather read a quest that says, "Look past the manmouth mountains to find the widget" and have to figure out where the manmouth mountains were, or ask someone in game to show me, than to look it up, or instantly have an 'x' show up on my map, so I blindly follow to the marker, ignoring the rest of the world till I get there. Having these features in the game promotes lazy players, and if players aren't going to explore what the devs create, what motivation is there for the devs to create interesting features?
By your same logic, they ought to just tell people where the quests are, and have them teleported right there. I mean if the devs know you're not going to explore, and just go straight to the spot, why bother creating anything in between?
If you make exploration rewarding, people will explore. If you make it worthwhile for someone to find the mountains, or a better route through the mountains, they'll do it. If you put in items, quests, and interesting features, people will wander about and find them. If you get people to wander about and find interesting things, the devs will create more interesting things. Players will adapt to finding quest locations if you make finding the quest locations interesting. "It's good to have an end to journey to, but it's the journey that matters; in the end." ~ Ernest Hemingway. If the game makes the journey worth it, players will take it.
Lots- no, make that tons...TONS of non-combat related activities and content.
No Monty Haul system. Magic items should be rare. Enchantments should be temporary and finely crafted (player crafted) steel swords should be worth their weight in gold, or, well, steel.
Danger! Bravery is born and HEROES are made when people are afraid to do what they need to do, but do it anyway.
_____________________________ "Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit"
Games are too easy now a days.. Thus I took a break. Make people earn what they have not just grind for 3-5 days and get max level and/or pay 2 win station cash store =P
EQ1 with latest graphics and camera angles + character models like in Rift + crafting from Vanguard + enormous world like in Vanguard + multple action bars like in EQ2 + death like in EQ1 with the old style corpse drag and XP loss + difficulty of questing requiring research like in old days of EQ1.
Items were a lot more rewarding when you might only upgrade a slot every 10 levels or more. Make magic items more rare and don't constantly shower us with loot throughout the leveling process, that way we not only appreciate each item a bit more. Now to ween people off the mentality that WOW created here, may be a bit trickier.
All those points sound like they're coming from the mouth of an old EQ1 player hoping for those glory days back. EQNext won't be EQ1 with new graphics, hate to burst your bubble. It's got to take some queues from more modern games in order to fit in.
Comments
I'm not disputing that having to figure out where to go can't be engaging, it can be. I'm simply stating the facts that the vast majority of people are not going to spend the time to do it. They are going to jump onto the internet, find exactly where to go, and go there, simple as that.
The developers realized that and so they added in quest marking because they knew most people weren't going to spend the time to figure it out on their own anyway. I would submit to you, that YOU can easily disable this feature in most games if you wish and therefore YOU can have all the fun in the world figuring out where to go on your own. I may not want that and so I can leave the quest marker enabled and get on with it, or pick and choose when I use it and when I don't.
The reality is if the feature is in the game you're going to use it to!
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Sadly I sort of agree with this and that really pisses me off. However I still say create games that don't guide you or hold your freaking hand and eventually the modern McMMO playerbase will, as my dad said "Shit or get off of the toilet". Always hated the fact that the majority of modern MMO's that espouse exploration still manage to put everything on rails and bread crumb players along a trail of linear shame. Games like GW2 and soon TESO remove any vestige of thoughtful exploration use guiding measures to hold their players hands. Such a shame.
If the majority of MMO's start going the way of old school hardness then eventually the demographic of the genre will change as well.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
I think the Western gaming industry has completely moved on from tedious camp spawn rates. While I love the idea of clearing placeholders to make a Named spawn, having a more reasonable rate makes it less of a job. EQ2 has areas where this is managed quite well, although the game itself is progressively becoming simpler.
Consequences to death are good in my books. I think it makes you more conscious of what you are doing insofar as situational and environmental awareness. Most importantly, by not wanting to die, you will learn how to play your character more effectively.
Currently, games allow you to rush through all the content without a care in the world, with the unfortunate consequence of producing lazy, unskilled players who rely on gear over personal ability. I'd like to see that trend reversed. Oh, gear is important, but don't let it be the sum of the whole. Gear should not be a crutch, rather a facilitating point where player skill then takes over. Having gear that enables you to roll mindlessly through everything has certainly attracted its players to certain games, but there really are enough of those on the market right now.
I'm not sure if I entirely agree with you here. Your quest idea sounds like a gating mechanism of tests that a player needs to "pass" in order to access the next tier of content. I think the content of the game itself should do that, rather than being so overt as you suggest. As you enter a new area with higher levels of mobs, introduce layer after graduated layer of AI. The problem of lack of player skill will solve itself.
I don't think making bosses HP sponges is the way to go either, so I do agree with you on this point. Standing in a spot and casting 10 damaging spells rather than 3, or swinging your sword an extra few times doesn't translate to greater design or skill. Its just a lazy time gate. GW2 seems to do this a lot, while using a cripplingly ridiculous amount of mob attacks that knock you around. Its poor design by dev's that decided to take the easy road rather than be clever.
I am quite interested to see how EQN manages all of this. Is it going to be challenging? Or is it going to be a FreeRealms/EQ hybrid marketed towards a very wide and soft playerbase. We'll find out soon enough.
Not really, no. Because in those games, the quests aren't written to provide clues. More often than not, there's no way to figure out where to go based on the quest text. So it's either use the marker, or look it up on the internet.
You might want to take a look at TSW. They don't have quest markers and the quests are considered by most to be the game's best feature. They actually involve problem solving in many cases, and some of the quests are extremely difficult. TSW has an in-game browser, so you can look up the answers if you want to, though the browser is ostensibly there as a tool to solve the quests rather than "cheat".
EQN doesn't need to have that level of difficulty, but having quest text that provides clues or instructions would be a nice change over the quest markers.
FFXIV:ARR does exactly this with the main storyline "boss" fights (I did 3 separate ones between level 1 and 15) and the class quests every 5 levels. Some were actually hard, like, I died and had to retry them once or twice.
And with the Guildhests (starting at level 10) the game literally teaches you to function in a group before you even get to the Dungeon quests with mini-encounters teaching basics like clearing packs of trash mobs, picking up adds, kiting bosses and utilizing environmental triggers.
And then the game forces you into group dungeons to progress the main story, which each (3 in a row) with more and more interesting and complex mechanics.
After playing through them, experiencing this approach - it's like... duh! Why doesn't every game do this?
No PVP on PVE servers
No F2P or have P2P servers.
No bitchers.
Why is everyone getting their hopes up over this title? I had a love/hate relationship with EQ1, which I played for 4 years or so, 2 of them very very hardcore. EQ1 was fun. EQ1 was tedious and boring. EQ1 had the thrill of the rare drop. EQ1 had the soul crushing boredom of farming rare spawns hoping for the rare drop from the rare spawn... EQ1 had SO MANY broken quests that you had to use 3rd party guides just to see if you were spinning your wheels or not.
But none of that matters.
It's being designed for the PS4.
That makes all this wishing for this and that moot. It's being designed for console gamers. Just keep that fact firmly in view, and you can move on from worrying about what EQN is or isn't.
I can see both sides of this and find merit in either of them.
One thing I loved in EQ was having to research zones, print up maps, and really plan for something. As was pointed out above, it added to immersion. The only maps of zones that existed were rough schematics or hand sketches that dedicated players posted on their websites. Armed with that, and a series of /locs you set off.
While I enjoyed doing that, Dev's realized that a lot of other people were doing that as well and decided to just include in-game maps and quest pointers for convenience. I don't necessarily see that as being a bad thing. All that did was save me time looking at an outside source for the same information. However, the current evolution is to now have your in-game map lit up like a Christmas tree with glowing markers and arrows. Now, I can see that being helpful to a lot of people, but there is something to be said for having to do some of the thinking for yourself.
Let's hope EQN finds a happy middle-ground.
Good for you that there plenty of SciFi games coming. Your point in this post is? Some people are so effing stupid, it makes me shake my head at humanity.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
We don't know that for sure.
Isn't TESO also going cross-platform? They are making separate servers for the PS4 players, so (to quote you) its a moot point.
Worrying about speculative maybe's is draining. We'll find out in a week what's going on.
TESO also lost my interest with the consoles being supported. Basically, if you have to make it work on a controller, it isn't "complex" enough to satisfy my MMORPG type needs. Sports games on consoles? Just fine. RPG's? Not so much.
While the PC version and PS4 version of EQN won't necessarily reside on the same servers/worlds, the design of the game has to go to the "lowest common denominator" which would be the console. They aren't going to develop game systems just for the PC version.
Just a random observation, but what a lot of people want sounds a whole lot like Vanilla WoW.
When WoW first launched the game was not as hard as EQ, but by today's standards the game was very hard.....a nice happy-medium you might say.
The world felt huge and because it was seemless (minimal loading screens) it felt like you really could go exploring.
There were markers to designate quest givers, but no in-game map markers to tell you exactly where to go.
It's sounding a lot to me like EQN could launch with many similarities to vanilla WoW, but open it up to be more sandboxy, add in player and guild housing, keep the lore from EQ and lots of people would be happy.
Make MMO's Hard Again- This is something that has been eating at me for some time now. Actually to a point where I believe devs are blind or just not listening or watching the industry. Wow for example, Vwow subs going up, up and never down, BC big pump in subs because first expansion, WOLK and CAT (here is where Blizzard screwed up) everything easy, dungeons, raids and quest all really simple and good for people that come play for a few hours a week.
Key: if it isn't hard nobody gives a shit- New raid and guild downs the boss in days not months, level cap in a week not months, nothing is important or epic anymore.
I too hope Sony listens to this and makes a more hard core game then what people are putting out today.
Peace
Lascer
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
So, you're calling on the devs then, to spend time coding an extra feature, just so you can not have to look something up? I'd much rather have them spend time developing new content. Personally, I'd much rather read a quest that says, "Look past the manmouth mountains to find the widget" and have to figure out where the manmouth mountains were, or ask someone in game to show me, than to look it up, or instantly have an 'x' show up on my map, so I blindly follow to the marker, ignoring the rest of the world till I get there. Having these features in the game promotes lazy players, and if players aren't going to explore what the devs create, what motivation is there for the devs to create interesting features?
By your same logic, they ought to just tell people where the quests are, and have them teleported right there. I mean if the devs know you're not going to explore, and just go straight to the spot, why bother creating anything in between?
If you make exploration rewarding, people will explore. If you make it worthwhile for someone to find the mountains, or a better route through the mountains, they'll do it. If you put in items, quests, and interesting features, people will wander about and find them. If you get people to wander about and find interesting things, the devs will create more interesting things. Players will adapt to finding quest locations if you make finding the quest locations interesting. "It's good to have an end to journey to, but it's the journey that matters; in the end." ~ Ernest Hemingway. If the game makes the journey worth it, players will take it.
No Monty Haul system. Magic items should be rare. Enchantments should be temporary and finely crafted (player crafted) steel swords should be worth their weight in gold, or, well, steel.
Danger! Bravery is born and HEROES are made when people are afraid to do what they need to do, but do it anyway.
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"Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit"
Rare magic. A fine steel, player crafted sword should be worth it's weight in gold or, well, steel.
Danger! Brave heroes are born when people are afraid to do what they need to do, but do it anyway.
_____________________________
"Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit"
I agree with the OP 100%.
Games are too easy now a days.. Thus I took a break. Make people earn what they have not just grind for 3-5 days and get max level and/or pay 2 win station cash store =P