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Old school design flaws... are they real problems !
delete5230
Member EpicPosts: 7,081
Seems a lot of people say first and second generation mmos had too many flaws.
What problems ?
- Maybe you need to use the SOCIAL PANEL and ask for friends and groups ?
- Maybe, you actually have to ask for help now and then ?
- Maybe you need to join a guild in order to get the materials for crafting ?
- Maybe you need to use the auction to make money ?
- Maybe you simply cant achieve something, no matter how hard you try ?
- Maybe you need to be social to run dungeons to keep up with gear ?
- Maybe you had to travel to your destination ?
- Maybe life in game is not easy all the time ?
- Maybe specialized classes can't solo ?
- Maybe you need to study to learn how to do something ?
- Maybe you need to play the game "nine months" instead of "two months" if time is a problem ?
****** So, automatic everything is the answer ? ******
I'm not talking about bugs, that's a different topic.
What problems ?
- Maybe you need to use the SOCIAL PANEL and ask for friends and groups ?
- Maybe, you actually have to ask for help now and then ?
- Maybe you need to join a guild in order to get the materials for crafting ?
- Maybe you need to use the auction to make money ?
- Maybe you simply cant achieve something, no matter how hard you try ?
- Maybe you need to be social to run dungeons to keep up with gear ?
- Maybe you had to travel to your destination ?
- Maybe life in game is not easy all the time ?
- Maybe specialized classes can't solo ?
- Maybe you need to study to learn how to do something ?
- Maybe you need to play the game "nine months" instead of "two months" if time is a problem ?
****** So, automatic everything is the answer ? ******
I'm not talking about bugs, that's a different topic.
Comments
This is made up by people here !
I remember this girl that was always on. She had a dynamic personality and very social, never ventured from the city unless it was a major exciting group event. but she never seemed to level up....... You know what ?....... She was having fun her own way..... I miss her !
TRY THIS ON A MEGA SERVER
Some things are better today, others worse.
Short term fun is up, long term fun is down (and almost completelly gone).
One thing that usually is way better now for instance is that you don't have to spend hours in the moat killing rats before being able to do anything else. That part wasn't fun and didn't add anything to the game.
On the other hand is any kind of gear below max level pointless today. In the old games we worked to get gear like that since it increased our chances of survival (and made us look cooler), today it doesn't matter since it will be useless in an hour and everything is so easy anyways that the upgrade matters little if at all.
Just examples, saying that the new games suck while the old were awesome or the other way around is neither true. I been around since M59 and I seen some really great mechanics and some really terrible as well, usually in the same game.
MMOs today are more user friendly and that is fine but they moved all challenge to the endgame which is a huge shame.
And challenge does not mean grind. Speaking of grind, there is as much grind today as it was in 1996, the difference is that they moved all grind into the endgame instead of spreading it around which also is bad.
I don't have as much time today as I had in 1996 but I can still live with a slower game that takes a year to reach max level if I play casually, I don't see why that is a problem as long as leveling is fun. People today only think of the endgame but as long as you have fun, does it matter if you ever reach it?
Or so many players have come to believe.
For many players, the concept of playing (and paying) for the same game month after month is foreign, they just aren't going to do it so developers are encouraged to find a way to get as much money from them up front or as early as possible after joining, and the designs and monetization models often reflect this.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Outlaw basements ?
MAGA
I have been examining the oft repeated claim that Everquest is tedious and not actually hard. In some ways it is but in others it is not and I think it is quite involved in that the tediousness is very much a part of it being hard too.
Let me give you some examples I encountered while playing and you decide is this tedious or hard. The first is about my Shaman in Halas. It's a Barbarian place that is cold and full of ice and you start at an area that is sometimes patrolled by a high level skelly that walks around the newbie area from time to time and he looks exactly like the other newbie mobs called the 'decayed skeletons'. He has a rather amusing name that starts with 'vengeful' and followed by either soloist, lyricist or composer but the soloist part always made me think he died repeatedly while soloing and is mad enough to kill newbies every chance he can. I know it's about music but it still amused me to think he died soloing in Everfrost.
The problem in Everfrost is that the mobs are scarce at some point you run out of blue con mobs and you cannot kill the even con and the yellow con will eat you for breakfast. At this point you can move and go to Qeynos which means you have to brave Blackburrow a dungeon which you can and probably should. The place also does not have that many players at times I was the only low level player there.
I am telling you this story not because I like reading my words in print (which I do too) but because I decided to try some of the even cons and as long as some high levels threw some buffs on me like spirit of the wolf for running speed I was able to kite some polar bears and snow leopards. When that wore off I died and I lost most of what I had earned while buffed. Now that is painful the death I mean and then going back and kicking myself for trying to play alone. No one to group with though because of the hours I play but I suppose if I had made a track to Commonlands it would be better. I think it should be hard when you solo and because there is no in game map you pay very careful attention to where you are in case you die and have to get your corpse back. I noticed that while I was dying the misses were really hurting me. This is why you do not take on an even and higher level mob. Your skills are really bad and raising them is the tedium to me as they go up exceedingly slow. My sense heading is maxxed to help me because there are no maps but I can minimize the client and check online of course but where's the fun in that.
Contrast this with the Human Necromancer I made in Freeport and I spent two days just raising my faction to make it so no one randomly kills me in the city I was born in. Then I walk out to Commonlands and a Cleric wench from Qeynos (another faction) decided I cannot even pass by her hut and killed me three times and I lost the level I had earned. Things like this make you very aware of where you are and check every single person you see before blindly going up to them or pass by their shack because apparently they can see through walls.
My guild is under the city of Freeport and if I used the wrong entrance I will be greeted by drowned citizens whose damage over time is insane and even if you get away you die after zoning to the dot. See everything about Everquest is harder than what is it in today's games. It is a combination of learning your surroundings and being very much aware of it and dying and losing experience teaches you to treasure the time you spend on learning about your surroundings and avoiding the loss. See the loss makes you wary and careful and that is why people describe it as tedious but it is not actually, because if you did not risk the loss there is no possibility of teaching people the concept of being aware.
This also goes for the boat rides and other long forms of travel that can result in your death and having to go back all that way to get your corpse because the place you respawned was very far from where you died.
The system has many tedious, very trying and grindy stuff but it is enmeshed in the game making the whole a very rewarding experience because every level is not easily earned and all the money and equipment you end up owning means a heck of a lot more.
There are however some aspects of Everquest I absolutely feel should be changed. They should not allow people to camp areas exclusively for hours. This is an aspect of the game that simply has to go. No one should be allowed to tie down an area and its loot to their exclusive use and enjoyment. It is absolutely unfair and encourages bullying and high levels camping areas they are farming while denying groups that are level appropriate their chance at it.
We will make sure that people can play the game on shorter session and we will focus on people playing with friends but at the same time we will make it take really long time for people to gather up so that you can't really play with your friends on shorter sessions.
We will focus our attention on group content but we will also provide raid content and enough solo content, the game will primarily be a PvE game but at the same time its going to have PvP and we will make all those things on a smaller budget than everyone else.
Low server population can be a really huge issue but we will make sure there won't be low server populations, not by technical solutions but by being such awesome people that will adjust amounts of servers so that it can't cause a problem, unlike everyone else that failed at it in the past.
As for the other things, there are some pros and cons for everything you listed.
Social panels are there for a reason. That reason being it was awful to try to find a group for a dungeon for 4 hours straight if you weren't in a guild that had players on at the time. I understand you lose some of the community due to not physically talking to get into things or get groups but when you sit there and have to keep yelling in chat LFG (DUNGEON NAME) or LFM (DUNGEON NAME) 2/5. It just got old. Talking to people and making friends still exists, you just have to go out of your way to do it, just like you did back then. You can still play a game like you used to you just have to make yourself not use all the conveniences that might or might not be in the game.
The Auction house argument is bad. You still use auction houses to make money. I don't know 1 game that you can physically make enough without using the auction house. Now I miss sitting and selling items in a marketplace. I enjoyed walking around looking for items with people in a market. It was fun for me to sift and look for deals. But I can see why auction houses became popular, I would say Auction houses ruined markets for me because it became too easy to sell things and less focused on interaction.
I 100% agree with traveling. I loved back when I had to run places in games. It made you have to walk around and look at the world. It made you have to see what was around you (or if the game had an auto run you could always just half pay attention) but even then it still felt like you were doing something. Auto travel and teleportation make it too instant for me. I wish there was still walking. Although I can go walk somewhere myself so the option is always there.
You can say all you want nobody will put up with a hard "lifestyle" or game, but the thing is, it's somewhat true. The group that want a difficult game is niche, and the wants for those players deviate as well. So the problem with making a "hard" game is the fact that it's already niche, but the group wants so many different features you won't ever be able to appeal to all of the players. The easy games tend to get the most population just because it appeals to a way wider audience, it isn't just the people from back in the day who are used to it being that way, it's the people who are looking for something new, looking to get a spouse into a genre they might not normally play. MMO's have changed for a reason, that reason mainly being money. The games cost so much to develop now, that if a developer wants to make it they have to have conveniences. If not then they look to kickstarter.
Yes, all of them between the hours of 6am-10pm EST. Most of the night shift too when I or they played some OT hours
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I remain the purist, still only playing one game at a time (even with single player games now) but there are few like me these days, even here.
I agree, I think the era of large numbers of players deciding large amounts of time to a single game are long past.
No doubt there is a niche that will still will but my guess is it won't be large.
Heck, I don't think I fall into the long term player category and I might even even start playing "two" games at a time..whoo hoo
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
They have flaws of course but as i always said , "you add too many salt and say salt is bad is just stupid" .
Poison also medicine , you use it wrong and things turn bad .
Didn't play many of the games revered by the old timers around here. Their design 'flaws' outweighed the game's enjoyment for me. As it did for others, I am sure.
Once I found a game that I really liked and bonded with, my sub lasted most of seven years.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Well, only kidding about knowing all 2000, but I always did keep a good 30 people on friends, and knew at least 100.
Back then I worked 4 days on and 4 days off, add that I had all day endurance to play. Don't know what happened. now only about two hours is good for me.
I'm getting married tomorrow afternoon, so maybe even less !
And mega server is a practical problem of many servers dieing. I think it is more of a reality. I like the idea of having seperate server but when some servers get too large or too small you start seeing problems.
The reason they are so is more that Western companies think short term, they want a game out fast and get in a sum quick because the Ceo wont stay forever and want his bonus. Getting in a good income for 15 years is just not as tempting as getting in a huge sum for 1 year and run the game on life support after that even though the long term games earns more money during it's longer life.
Japanese companies have a different culture and work long term and you can see that in their MMOs as well.
AAAMEOW said: That is assuming people always know what they want before they have it and it is far from always the case. Games like Minecraft would never existed if devs just made more of what the players liked in the past. You can make a rather good estimate of mechanics you actually played but anything new is unkown just like anything the players never tried before.
I personally like mega servers for the reason you stated. MMOs are social games and don't work if there aren't enough players around.
But while things like a LFG function answers a need there are other solutions to it, people just ask for something they know even if it in many cases can be solved far better.
The way to actually make something new and better is to ask yourself what purpose popular mechanics have and try to figure out a better way to solve the need.
The whole LFG function were probably made that way, in the early games guilds filled that role but people in smaller guilds had to constantly shout in the chat to get players so someone thought of a simpler way to handle it but it doesn't mean it is the only one or even the best, just easier then the older ways.
And some things are more fun for a short while but becomes boring after that. Replacing your gear was fun back in the old games but it is not very fun anymore since the games drown you in slight upgrades all the time. If you give people all their ask for fast they will get tired of it very soon.
Instead what i am seeing is developers that don't want to spend the money or time or effort to make a really good rpg with mmo elements,instead try to change the actual genre into something that is both not a mmo nor a rpg.
The reason people look at vanilla Wow is because they are thinking back BEFORE it's true face "end game" showed it's ugly face.However when i look back it maybe had lot's of rpg elements but it was a poor MMO,as it was predominantly meant to solo all the time.Wow failed at the core basic delivery of a RPG game,no home no starting reason,like a city fro example,just drop you down in the middle of nowhere.
Point being that YES vanilla in games is likely better than anything opted towards end game but it still does not mean it was a good solid design,average at best.
I dreamed of seeing this genre advance into something great,where everyday we felt like we really were in a living world.FFX was that awesome example,you felt like a part of the world,sometimes sleeping,playing Blitzball,it was not about gear grinds or end game.I have hoped devs could achieve a similar type game but in a MMO atmosphere and not a bunch of yellow markers over npc heads to follow in a linear fashion.
I have given up hope of seeing that great truly Triple A mmorpg in my lifetime,oh well,someday some of you or your kids will see that great game and look back and realize ALL of these mmorpg's were not really that good.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Part of my enjoyment of old games vs new ones is that they were flawed. It allowed you to work around the issues yourself instead of everything being very static and uncompromising. It is often like that in different technologies. The most experimental time periods are the most exciting and fun. Once things become streamlined and polished they kind of lose that thrill. They are just another product being produced that works well, but isn't as interesting. For example imagine when chemists were first discovering the elements and creating their own tools. That is kind of what early MMOs and video games were like.
Lulz...
Congratz though....Feb will be 35 years for me.
(Was I ever not married? )
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon