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No levels: Down with gear!
nennafir
Member UncommonPosts: 313
With no levels being announced, I hope that the game does not focus on gear with levels not being there. RuneQuest is a perfect example of a game that does not focus on gear even though there are no levels.
As I have already said in a previous post, the focus on gear is IMO the single biggest mistake of current MMOs.
When you read sagas, does someone succeed because of their gear? Usually, no. They succeed because of their drive and persistence.
An item of armor that gives you +5 in various buffs in just silly. What does this even mean? It is nonsensical. Please, please, let people just be people. We live and find success based on our abilities, our friends, and what we do. Magical gloves that make me smart are absurd and a real immersion breaker. Let people just explore the world and progress from there in a natural manner.
In Tolkien, for example, there are a few magic rings (and swords) but that is basically it. Frodo succeeds based on his inherent personality. If Frodo won out because he (by step after step) upgraded his armor to the point that he would be able to survive Mordor, I think I would just barf.
The gear focus of current MMOs is an immersion breaker and absurd on the face of it. Why are my pants helping me be smarter? Who knows? It makes absolutely no sense at all.
I am worried that with the absence of levels EQN will be overly gear focused. I hope this will not be the case.
Comments
That's what we're getting!
Seems that gear, like skills, will give us horizontal progression.
Ie, I have boots of fire resistance, now I find boots of frost resistance. But should I wear the heavy plate sabatons or the boots of levitation instead?
Do you really think there can be no progression without gear?
Can't you look at the vast supply of fantasy literature and realize how misguided this is?
[mod edit]
It's high fantasy!!! Items are magically infused to enhance strength, or intelligence or whatever stat. This isn't RL!! Did you ever play table-top AD&D? Dungeons & Dragons was the motivation for EQ, UO, DAoC and the rest of the High Fantasy MMORPG settings.
I played AD&D, and MERP, Traveller, Rolemaster etc, and the motivation for playing those games was to share an adventure in a fantasy world with your friends. The difference is that whereas the numbers used to facilitate the adventure in pnp, the focus on loot has led to a situation where the adventures now facilitate the numbers. A modern MMO is a game in which players tolerate repetitive and tedious 'quests' in order to acquire loot with those bigger numbers. It's a very silly situation.
Last I check no Knight in any story or real life killed their enemies with their bear hands. They were constantly looking for any leg up usually from gear or in stories legendary items like excalibur.
So in a fantasy world yes I do expect to need to get better gear to improve. But, hey that's just me.
Loot-centric games are everywhere. It's what creates the endless gear grind that I'm absolutely sick of. There are endless mediocre MMOs that do it already.
We need a game that's skill-based. Let skills/abilities and attributes determine a character's "power," not their level and armor. The last thing the market needs is yet another gear grind MMO. Everybody wants to complain about WoW clones and the like, yet keep asking for WoW clones. smh
I must agree with you.
Your equating loot with how a game plays. WoW and EQ1 were both loot centric games, yet played completely different. I am with you that I also want something new. I have been playing a basically same type of game since 1999. It is time for MMOs to make the next big leap forward in player interaction. Loot can be very imaginative and rewarding without the need for a loot grind. I think you are making a mistake in blaming a variety of loot options as the culprit for your unhappiness with recent MMOs. Implementation is the problem as is the options how you play to get items.
It is really just a matter of opinion though. Some people love getting loot and others prefer obtaining a laundry list of skills and others prefer just living a story. Although, I highly doubt EQ will deviate from lootcentric game style though as it has been a the foundation for EQ for 20 years.
Looks like the "no level" is sort of a lie. They just call them tiers... See this interview (it's a great interview for the class system)
Darrin McPherson, Lead Designer: So our progression system is not based on levels, it’s based on tiers. There’s a shallow tier pool, because one of our focuses is on horizontal gameplay. We definitely have vertical gameplay, where a player increases in power in a particular class, but remember, there’s 40 classes. There’s a lot of classes out there to gain, and each one of these is advanced individually.
It’s based on player accomplishments. It’s not skill based, so you don’t have to use your mace over and over again to level your mace skill up. But your tier three warrior, in order to advance to tier four, has to collect a full suit of tier three armor. You have to have spent enough points in that class. You have to have accomplished a certain amount of things in the game in order to have advanced.
It’s not grinding XP. It’s not completing a thousand quests or whatever it is. That’s just not how it is. And we reward you with advancement in lots and lots of different ways. Whether it be participating in a Rallying Call, or doing quests, or engaging in any emergent AI that happens to be near you.
I want to play an MMO for the adventure, not so I can collect my next "epic" gear that gives me +3 more stamina. If you want gear that makes you look cool, whatever. The focus needs to be on the adventure, on being in the world. It needs to stop being about grinding dailies all day long so you can maybe be invited to the raid so you can maybe get your epic helm.
I want developers crafting a world where I create my stories. I differentiate myself with the skills and abilities I learn, and the stories I create.
Great interview, I hadn't read this yet.
Doesn't just talk about how progression works but also some stuff about crafting, itemization, rallying calls, the AI and other such tidbits.
Hmm that explanation sounds both horizontal in that you collect more classes but vertical progression in each class you attain. Even better I assume skill points will be earned in many different ways then combat, exploration and participation in the rally calls ect.
What made it work in classic EQ was that loot was rare and came slowly...it wasn't like WoW or alot of other MMOs where you fart and out pops a long sword of dragon slaying.....In EQ1 you worked for alot of your stuff, often by grouping or raiding....ALso if theres no gear or levels what is my carrot? Without those two things I dont see any reason to play...
I like this further explanation. while gear doesn't have to always be the drive, I find some games it drops too much and others not enough, you have to have something to work for. I hope they do it right, otherwise you will have another game where folks sit around thinking to themselves what do I do now. EQ1 may have not been 100% gear for some folks, but I know a lot of people that went to the same camp day after day and it wasn't just to chat, it was usually to try for the "rare" item. A goal or desire they had, something that kept them logging in and playing.
"Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better." parrotpholk
For the sake of the adventure? For the sake of going out and experiencing something that is yours and yours alone? To say "I was there when ___ was built! There were orcs all over, etc etc." And that's not some stagnant, static story. That's YOUR story.
Do you just play MMOs to collect gear and achievements?
Name the top 5 most successful MMOs ever.
Guaranteed they all have levels, gear progression, or both. There's a reason for that, because if you are going to achieve some bad ass new armour at the end of the quest, it makes you work even harder.
Would you go to work everyday, just for the satisfaction of knowing you're doing a job. Or do you like a paycheque at the end of that work week?
Killing dragons is my shit
I play hockey for the sake of the game, because the game is fun. I don't get paid to play it.
Your mentality isn't very progressive. It's the very reason MMOs have stagnated. You just want more of the same. I'm tired of that. If you want that kind of gameplay, there are tons of MMOs on the market for you.
in GW1 i did
gear was not the objective and GW1 was a very popular online game with over 7 million sold
GW1 is not an mmo but i played it like one
EQ2 fan sites
No character progression through levels or gear improvement and alternate experience point type systems equates to no motivation to put effort or time into the game, or characters.
Resulting in a super-casual shitfest that's already a failure without even going to beta.
No character devotion or involvement equates to no progression.
No progression means no forced social interaction, no character attachment or community formation.
Basically by being F2P, having no levels or gear oriented progression they're skipping to the late-life stage of WoW's current state, which was caused by a population drop, casualization of content and making individual character progression and player skill irrelevant simply to please the inadequate masses. Which leaves nothing but shit. No real guilds, no community, no effort, no fun.
This might as well be another Korean item mall MMO, which is a shame as EQN was our last real chance for an actual MMO in the proper sense, without content dumbed down for retards. We might as well all go play on P99.
You seem to know a lot about how characters grow! Please, tell us how the classes work.