Originally posted by Stone_Fountain Shroud of the Avatar does not have levels. It is turning out to be something different that I expected. I'm looking forward to it's release.
Keey your eyes on Shards Online, too. I believe it'll be skill-based progression and has quite a few cool features.
This isn't the solution, sorry. I've said it before and I'll say it again, what I see as one of the best systems currently is Destiny. You serve up 15-20 hours of content and then you simply open up the gameplay and let people do what they want. It definitely has it's own downfalls, things that could be overcome with PC, such as ACTUAL communication with people, but the concept, the framework is sound.
Sorry, OP, I'm definitely not up for models with artificially-inflated progression models specifically designed to have me paying for the next 10 years. I think that the problem is that we look back fondly on some of the older games like vanilla WoW, EQ, SWG, and we think, "MAN!! That was so epic" therefore that MUST be what's missing right now. I really don't think that's the case. Anyone who remembers those days clearly remembers complaining and lamenting at length about the grind. The main difference is that you were usually whining about it with friends.
The biggest issue with levelling systems, in my opinion, is that you create an ever-increasing gap between you and your friends. If you play more than them then you'll, ultimately, be chasing a bigger carrot and you won't look back, leaving them behind. Create story content where everyone is at the same level in 15 or 20 hours and that is removed. Gear-based progression is still there, the developer will need to be more dedicated to new content creation, but it's a step toward re-creating community, which is what's missing.
Uh, no.
I remember those days crystal clear, and there was no lamentations over a grind. Not for me or either of the guilds I played with (I had max level characters on two servers). Every day was a new adventure. New people, new places, new objectives. Freedom from having to follow some pre-determined path.
Based on your post, I stand in doubt that you have first hand experience from the days of EQ and SWG. You sound just like other players here who played modern games and went back and tried to play those games on some emu server or in the current changed form and did not get to see what it was actually like for yourself.
Uh, SWG's worst moment outside of the NGE is when they introduced the Jedi Village and everyone and their mother was grinding out their Jedi. It took players away from every activity, especially PVP. SWG was a much better game before that, especially from a community perspective. Prior to that it was nothing like EQ and it's endless grind mentality of level dinging being the content, there was plenty of lamentations over it back then at least in regard to SWG. Did you ever play SWG?
It was pretty much the same for DAOC as well, once they made gear grinds a thing there, much better game before that on a community level. EQ players may have liked the idea of endless grinding, it certainly wasn't favorable to all OS MMO gamers back then.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
What people call 'Grind', I used to call 'Playing the Game'.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
I remember the days, it is what drew me into the genre.
Was sick of playing offline rpgs and them ending all the time, or running out of things to do after a week. When I first walked into the mmo scene the biggest draw to me was I could not complete it. I could play for 40hrs a week for years and never run out of ways to progress my character. EQ was great... then FFXI came along and stole my life for 10yrs, 20,000+hrs of non-afk gameplay put into that game (And I still was not even near finished with everything).
I do not have that playtime anymore, but even at 25hrs a week now I can finish almost all the weekly content in a mmo in about a day to 2 max everyweek. I can get a max level Job/Character in 2-3 days normally. In almost every mmo out there now I could start a new character and be able to do the top tier endgame within a month, this use to take years. I am a content locust as people say.... or as you can call it what was the norm for a mmo player back in the day.
This is one of the reasons why I feel the p2p model is dying. Everything is ultra watered down now, the goal has shifted to remove the grind, which is required to have unlimited gameplay. We went from a genre with 1000s of hours of content a week you could do to a 6hr/week tiered raiding system of the linear themepark. How can the devs keep up with people like me when I can complete content that is taking 6 months to develop in 1-3 weeks. IN order for a game to be worth a sub now... they would need to launch a full scale content patch almost bi-weekly to monthly to keep up with the most hardcore playerbase. Obviously that is beyond the capabilities of any game company. But still why would I want to pay $15/month for 8days worth of content? that should cost me $4.25. P2P MMOs today are a ripoff.
MMOs honestly are not different then offline games now. You play through it, then toss it aside and move to the next one. I do not want to do this... but the genre is forcing me to do it. The mmo genre has not evolved... it devolved into a console style genre. I mean come on... skyrim launched with more gameplay then most mmos do now days.
This isn't the solution, sorry. I've said it before and I'll say it again, what I see as one of the best systems currently is Destiny. You serve up 15-20 hours of content and then you simply open up the gameplay and let people do what they want. It definitely has it's own downfalls, things that could be overcome with PC, such as ACTUAL communication with people, but the concept, the framework is sound.
Sorry, OP, I'm definitely not up for models with artificially-inflated progression models specifically designed to have me paying for the next 10 years. I think that the problem is that we look back fondly on some of the older games like vanilla WoW, EQ, SWG, and we think, "MAN!! That was so epic" therefore that MUST be what's missing right now. I really don't think that's the case. Anyone who remembers those days clearly remembers complaining and lamenting at length about the grind. The main difference is that you were usually whining about it with friends.
The biggest issue with levelling systems, in my opinion, is that you create an ever-increasing gap between you and your friends. If you play more than them then you'll, ultimately, be chasing a bigger carrot and you won't look back, leaving them behind. Create story content where everyone is at the same level in 15 or 20 hours and that is removed. Gear-based progression is still there, the developer will need to be more dedicated to new content creation, but it's a step toward re-creating community, which is what's missing.
Uh, no.
I remember those days crystal clear, and there was no lamentations over a grind. Not for me or either of the guilds I played with (I had max level characters on two servers). Every day was a new adventure. New people, new places, new objectives. Freedom from having to follow some pre-determined path.
Based on your post, I stand in doubt that you have first hand experience from the days of EQ and SWG. You sound just like other players here who played modern games and went back and tried to play those games on some emu server or in the current changed form and did not get to see what it was actually like for yourself.
Uh, SWG's worst moment outside of the NGE is when they introduced the Jedi Village and everyone and their mother was grinding out their Jedi. It took players away from every activity, especially PVP. SWG was a much better game before that, especially from a community perspective. Prior to that it was nothing like EQ and it's endless grind mentality of level dinging being the content, there was plenty of lamentations over it back then at least in regard to SWG. Did you ever play SWG?
It was pretty much the same for DAOC as well, once they made gear grinds a thing there, much better game before that on a community level. EQ players may have liked the idea of endless grinding, it certainly wasn't favorable to all OS MMO gamers back then.
My post was more about EQ than SWG, but thats kind of cherry picking one aspect of SWG.
As a whole in EQ, people were not worried about how long things took. Every day I went different places and did different things. Sometimes I pvped over a dungeon, sometimes I farmed in one zone or another. I never looked at it as a painful grind and never heard anyone complain that it was such.
Point is, there were many ways to enjoy those early games and at least in EQ, none of them felt like a grind regardless of how long it took to accomplish certain things. There was simply too much variation from day to day.
Originally posted by Dullahan As a whole in EQ, people were not worried about how long things took. Every day I went different places and did different things. Sometimes I pvped over a dungeon, sometimes I farmed in one zone or another. I never looked at it as a painful grind and never heard anyone complain that it was such.Point is, there were many ways to enjoy those early games and at least in EQ, none of them felt like a grind regardless of how long it took to accomplish certain things. There was simply too much variation from day to day.
You mean you could kill stuff over here or kill stuff over there? Yeah so much variety....
Uh, SWG's worst moment outside of the NGE is when they introduced the Jedi Village and everyone and their mother was grinding out their Jedi. It took players away from every activity, especially PVP. SWG was a much better game before that, especially from a community perspective. Prior to that it was nothing like EQ and it's endless grind mentality of level dinging being the content, there was plenty of lamentations over it back then at least in regard to SWG. Did you ever play SWG?
It was pretty much the same for DAOC as well, once they made gear grinds a thing there, much better game before that on a community level. EQ players may have liked the idea of endless grinding, it certainly wasn't favorable to all OS MMO gamers back then.
My post was more about EQ than SWG, but thats kind of cherry picking one aspect of SWG.
As a whole in EQ, people were not worried about how long things took. Every day I went different places and did different things. Sometimes I pvped over a dungeon, sometimes I farmed in one zone or another. I never looked at it as a painful grind and never heard anyone complain that it was such.
Point is, there were many ways to enjoy those early games and at least in EQ, none of them felt like a grind regardless of how long it took to accomplish certain things. There was simply too much variation from day to day.
Most of that I can agree with, at least in regard to SWG, as I never played EQ.. It was the community that made the game in SWG, yet it wasn't a hard game or really a grinders game (prior to the villa).
What made it special was most players were willing to cooperate to make it better, as well as more worth while. if people treated it like they do modern games it would have been nothing at all. Thankfully it wasn't approached like that.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
As a whole in EQ, people were not worried about how long things took. Every day I went different places and did different things. Sometimes I pvped over a dungeon, sometimes I farmed in one zone or another. I never looked at it as a painful grind and never heard anyone complain that it was such.
Point is, there were many ways to enjoy those early games and at least in EQ, none of them felt like a grind regardless of how long it took to accomplish certain things. There was simply too much variation from day to day.
You mean you could kill stuff over here or kill stuff over there? Yeah so much variety....
Theoretically that is still a greater choice then what you get in MMOs now. Now you jump into the game and it tells you to go here and do this or kill that. That isn't really a choice. The only real choice I can think of is weather or not you want to solo quest, group, or PvP. Those choices were available in old MMOs, but you also had to make the decision of where to go want what to try and kill. You could try to kill the guards of a city if you wanted to. You might be Kill on Sight in another place because of your race or beliefs. Killing certain NPCs might change your faction with a certain people in the game. I'm not saying older games were better in everything, but they did offer more choice IMO. We haven't even talked about racial differences that actually matter and the ability in some games to distribute stats yourself instead of automatically having them assigned. Then there were certain skills like tracking that don't exist anymore. You could also search for NPCs with quests.
Thousands of people complained about grind in eq. The boards and zone chat was constantly full of it and was a major reason why so many tried aab d left.
I remember one memorable post when wow came out that said no more eq he was done sticking a fork in his eye.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
This isn't the solution, sorry. I've said it before and I'll say it again, what I see as one of the best systems currently is Destiny. You serve up 15-20 hours of content and then you simply open up the gameplay and let people do what they want. It definitely has it's own downfalls, things that could be overcome with PC, such as ACTUAL communication with people, but the concept, the framework is sound.
Sorry, OP, I'm definitely not up for models with artificially-inflated progression models specifically designed to have me paying for the next 10 years. I think that the problem is that we look back fondly on some of the older games like vanilla WoW, EQ, SWG, and we think, "MAN!! That was so epic" therefore that MUST be what's missing right now. I really don't think that's the case. Anyone who remembers those days clearly remembers complaining and lamenting at length about the grind. The main difference is that you were usually whining about it with friends.
The biggest issue with levelling systems, in my opinion, is that you create an ever-increasing gap between you and your friends. If you play more than them then you'll, ultimately, be chasing a bigger carrot and you won't look back, leaving them behind. Create story content where everyone is at the same level in 15 or 20 hours and that is removed. Gear-based progression is still there, the developer will need to be more dedicated to new content creation, but it's a step toward re-creating community, which is what's missing.
Uh, no.
I remember those days crystal clear, and there was no lamentations over a grind. Not for me or either of the guilds I played with (I had max level characters on two servers). Every day was a new adventure. New people, new places, new objectives. Freedom from having to follow some pre-determined path.
Based on your post, I stand in doubt that you have first hand experience from the days of EQ and SWG. You sound just like other players here who played modern games and went back and tried to play those games on some emu server or in the current changed form and did not get to see what it was actually like for yourself.
Uh, SWG's worst moment outside of the NGE is when they introduced the Jedi Village and everyone and their mother was grinding out their Jedi. It took players away from every activity, especially PVP. SWG was a much better game before that, especially from a community perspective. Prior to that it was nothing like EQ and it's endless grind mentality of level dinging being the content, there was plenty of lamentations over it back then at least in regard to SWG. Did you ever play SWG?
It was pretty much the same for DAOC as well, once they made gear grinds a thing there, much better game before that on a community level. EQ players may have liked the idea of endless grinding, it certainly wasn't favorable to all OS MMO gamers back then.
My post was more about EQ than SWG, but thats kind of cherry picking one aspect of SWG.
As a whole in EQ, people were not worried about how long things took. Every day I went different places and did different things. Sometimes I pvped over a dungeon, sometimes I farmed in one zone or another. I never looked at it as a painful grind and never heard anyone complain that it was such.
Point is, there were many ways to enjoy those early games and at least in EQ, none of them felt like a grind regardless of how long it took to accomplish certain things. There was simply too much variation from day to day.
Ok, so let me just be clear. You say it's cherry picking, but then go on to describe how "people weren't worried about how long it took". Basically you're describing a grind, but the fact that it was new and shiny and you were doing it with people who were equally as psyched about it, meant it didn't really feel like a grind. Let's not forget the distinct lack of MMORPGs at that time, even by 2006 or 2007. I guarantee, you place any old game out on todays market and it's going to feel grindy. People made the "old" MMOs fun. Maybe pathfinding has ruined some of that. It's nice I can eat a sandwich while I'm automatically walking somewhere, but it doesn't really do much for exploration. However, I feel like the mentality of gamers in the genre has changed, too.
Either way, I'm not too concerned. If they keep releasing old school RPGs like Pillars of Eternity then I might never play an MMO again anyway
This isn't the solution, sorry. I've said it before and I'll say it again, what I see as one of the best systems currently is Destiny. You serve up 15-20 hours of content and then you simply open up the gameplay and let people do what they want. It definitely has it's own downfalls, things that could be overcome with PC, such as ACTUAL communication with people, but the concept, the framework is sound.
Sorry, OP, I'm definitely not up for models with artificially-inflated progression models specifically designed to have me paying for the next 10 years. I think that the problem is that we look back fondly on some of the older games like vanilla WoW, EQ, SWG, and we think, "MAN!! That was so epic" therefore that MUST be what's missing right now. I really don't think that's the case. Anyone who remembers those days clearly remembers complaining and lamenting at length about the grind. The main difference is that you were usually whining about it with friends.
The biggest issue with levelling systems, in my opinion, is that you create an ever-increasing gap between you and your friends. If you play more than them then you'll, ultimately, be chasing a bigger carrot and you won't look back, leaving them behind. Create story content where everyone is at the same level in 15 or 20 hours and that is removed. Gear-based progression is still there, the developer will need to be more dedicated to new content creation, but it's a step toward re-creating community, which is what's missing.
Uh, no.
I remember those days crystal clear, and there was no lamentations over a grind. Not for me or either of the guilds I played with (I had max level characters on two servers). Every day was a new adventure. New people, new places, new objectives. Freedom from having to follow some pre-determined path.
Based on your post, I stand in doubt that you have first hand experience from the days of EQ and SWG. You sound just like other players here who played modern games and went back and tried to play those games on some emu server or in the current changed form and did not get to see what it was actually like for yourself.
I remember them and there was a ton of complaints. Maybe your guild didn't mind but the majority of people did
Originally posted by Flyte27 Originally posted by FoomerangOriginally posted by DullahanAs a whole in EQ, people were not worried about how long things took. Every day I went different places and did different things. Sometimes I pvped over a dungeon, sometimes I farmed in one zone or another. I never looked at it as a painful grind and never heard anyone complain that it was such.Point is, there were many ways to enjoy those early games and at least in EQ, none of them felt like a grind regardless of how long it took to accomplish certain things. There was simply too much variation from day to day.
You mean you could kill stuff over here or kill stuff over there? Yeah so much variety....Theoretically that is still a greater choice then what you get in MMOs now. Now you jump into the game and it tells you to go here and do this or kill that. That isn't really a choice. The only real choice I can think of is weather or not you want to solo quest, group, or PvP. Those choices were available in old MMOs, but you also had to make the decision of where to go want what to try and kill. You could try to kill the guards of a city if you wanted to. You might be Kill on Sight in another place because of your race or beliefs. Killing certain NPCs might change your faction with a certain people in the game. I'm not saying older games were better in everything, but they did offer more choice IMO. We haven't even talked about racial differences that actually matter and the ability in some games to distribute stats yourself instead of automatically having them assigned. Then there were certain skills like tracking that don't exist anymore. You could also search for NPCs with quests. I have a ton of choices in the MMO I am playing now. Most of them don't involve killing things, just like my old MMO.
Originally posted by DullahanAs a whole in EQ, people were not worried about how long things took. Every day I went different places and did different things. Sometimes I pvped over a dungeon, sometimes I farmed in one zone or another. I never looked at it as a painful grind and never heard anyone complain that it was such.Point is, there were many ways to enjoy those early games and at least in EQ, none of them felt like a grind regardless of how long it took to accomplish certain things. There was simply too much variation from day to day.
You mean you could kill stuff over here or kill stuff over there? Yeah so much variety....
Theoretically that is still a greater choice then what you get in MMOs now. Now you jump into the game and it tells you to go here and do this or kill that. That isn't really a choice. The only real choice I can think of is weather or not you want to solo quest, group, or PvP. Those choices were available in old MMOs, but you also had to make the decision of where to go want what to try and kill. You could try to kill the guards of a city if you wanted to. You might be Kill on Sight in another place because of your race or beliefs. Killing certain NPCs might change your faction with a certain people in the game. I'm not saying older games were better in everything, but they did offer more choice IMO. We haven't even talked about racial differences that actually matter and the ability in some games to distribute stats yourself instead of automatically having them assigned. Then there were certain skills like tracking that don't exist anymore. You could also search for NPCs with quests.
I have a ton of choices in the MMO I am playing now. Most of them don't involve killing things, just like my old MMO.
Why don't you list some of them then instead of just posting that there are things. That would be more useful to everyone reading.
Every choice that was available in eq is available in today's games plus more. Now there are battlegrounds gathering more quests that i can cost to follow or not, dune gangs have of mini gangs like swtor space missions, housing and building ( yes i know some old games had that to.) More character design
There is far far more choices than just follow the queast
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Originally posted by VengeSunsoar Every choice that was available in eq is available in today's games plus more. Now there are battlegrounds gathering more quests that i can cost to follow or not, dune gangs have of mini gangs like swtor space missions, housing and building ( yes i know some old games had that to.) More character design
There is far far more choices than just follow the queast
What games have factions?
What games have racial differences that are meaningful?
I"m sure I could come up with more. I listed a whole bunch in an earlier thread.
Originally posted by HabitualFrogStomp I think levels on the whole need to go. As long as there is a number and gamers only get their nut off if they make it bigger, it's going to go this way. Remove the levels, focus on the social aspect (like SWG attempted to) and don't be scared to design games like that just because SWG failed.
As long as you have any numbers that "get better" over time you have levels.
If there is better gear than what you have you have levels.
Any type of progression is "levels".
Levels aren't the issue. Having greater disparity between players is more of "that" issue.
I like the feeling that my character has gotten stronger over time. That greater disparity is good for my experience in the game.
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?"
This isn't the solution, sorry. I've said it before and I'll say it again, what I see as one of the best systems currently is Destiny. You serve up 15-20 hours of content and then you simply open up the gameplay and let people do what they want. It definitely has it's own downfalls, things that could be overcome with PC, such as ACTUAL communication with people, but the concept, the framework is sound.
Sorry, OP, I'm definitely not up for models with artificially-inflated progression models specifically designed to have me paying for the next 10 years. I think that the problem is that we look back fondly on some of the older games like vanilla WoW, EQ, SWG, and we think, "MAN!! That was so epic" therefore that MUST be what's missing right now. I really don't think that's the case. Anyone who remembers those days clearly remembers complaining and lamenting at length about the grind. The main difference is that you were usually whining about it with friends.
The biggest issue with levelling systems, in my opinion, is that you create an ever-increasing gap between you and your friends. If you play more than them then you'll, ultimately, be chasing a bigger carrot and you won't look back, leaving them behind. Create story content where everyone is at the same level in 15 or 20 hours and that is removed. Gear-based progression is still there, the developer will need to be more dedicated to new content creation, but it's a step toward re-creating community, which is what's missing.
Uh, no.
I remember those days crystal clear, and there was no lamentations over a grind. Not for me or either of the guilds I played with (I had max level characters on two servers). Every day was a new adventure. New people, new places, new objectives. Freedom from having to follow some pre-determined path.
Based on your post, I stand in doubt that you have first hand experience from the days of EQ and SWG. You sound just like other players here who played modern games and went back and tried to play those games on some emu server or in the current changed form and did not get to see what it was actually like for yourself.
Uh, SWG's worst moment outside of the NGE is when they introduced the Jedi Village and everyone and their mother was grinding out their Jedi. It took players away from every activity, especially PVP. SWG was a much better game before that, especially from a community perspective. Prior to that it was nothing like EQ and it's endless grind mentality of level dinging being the content, there was plenty of lamentations over it back then at least in regard to SWG. Did you ever play SWG?
It was pretty much the same for DAOC as well, once they made gear grinds a thing there, much better game before that on a community level. EQ players may have liked the idea of endless grinding, it certainly wasn't favorable to all OS MMO gamers back then.
My post was more about EQ than SWG, but thats kind of cherry picking one aspect of SWG.
As a whole in EQ, people were not worried about how long things took. Every day I went different places and did different things. Sometimes I pvped over a dungeon, sometimes I farmed in one zone or another. I never looked at it as a painful grind and never heard anyone complain that it was such.
Point is, there were many ways to enjoy those early games and at least in EQ, none of them felt like a grind regardless of how long it took to accomplish certain things. There was simply too much variation from day to day.
Ok, so let me just be clear. You say it's cherry picking, but then go on to describe how "people weren't worried about how long it took". Basically you're describing a grind, but the fact that it was new and shiny and you were doing it with people who were equally as psyched about it, meant it didn't really feel like a grind. Let's not forget the distinct lack of MMORPGs at that time, even by 2006 or 2007. I guarantee, you place any old game out on todays market and it's going to feel grindy. People made the "old" MMOs fun. Maybe pathfinding has ruined some of that. It's nice I can eat a sandwich while I'm automatically walking somewhere, but it doesn't really do much for exploration. However, I feel like the mentality of gamers in the genre has changed, too.
Either way, I'm not too concerned. If they keep releasing old school RPGs like Pillars of Eternity then I might never play an MMO again anyway
Well I call everything in a mmorpg a grind. I don't see it as a negative and my framing it that way takes the negative power away from the word. Why does everything have to be looked at as a negative?
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?"
As a whole in EQ, people were not worried about how long things took. Every day I went different places and did different things. Sometimes I pvped over a dungeon, sometimes I farmed in one zone or another. I never looked at it as a painful grind and never heard anyone complain that it was such.
Point is, there were many ways to enjoy those early games and at least in EQ, none of them felt like a grind regardless of how long it took to accomplish certain things. There was simply too much variation from day to day.
You mean you could kill stuff over here or kill stuff over there? Yeah so much variety....
Versus today where everything is trivial and can be accomplished mostly alone, yes it was 100x the variety. Now its just a long line of boring quests and following the path laid out for you with very few chances of dying until you hit end game roughly a week after you start the game.
At flyte i didn't say there weren't differences in the games. I said there was more choice. Faction is part of character selection as are recall differences. Once i gave picked my class and race and am playing the game i have more choice in how i play and what i choose to do.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
The "real" MMO failed when much more enjoyable alternative appeared and everyone jumped ship from "real" MMO.
The real MMO's still have at least 50% of their membership after a decade or more. They have not become less popular, they simply failed to attract the instant gratification players that you see swarming from game to game.
You cannot succeed in the long term by appealing to the instant gratification crowd, all you can do is make a money grab and cash in before they move on to the next game. A lot of publishers are aware of this, and games are not being designed for long-term players. They are literally designing around the 2-3 month cash grab.
Even if that was true (and its not lol, random nimber is random number)
WoW has 100000% of their membership after 10 years (and yes we know wows numbers)
AND large part of those 100000% are exact same players that yours 50%.
You were sayin?
So WOW has 540 million players? news to me...
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
I do remember and some things I miss while others not so much.
The actual use of running dungeons before max level is one thing I miss, you actually needed the gear which lasted a long time and you got plenty more XP for itthan just grinding (or questing for the few quests that games like M59 had).
Then other things were not so great, standing 8 hours spawn camping sucked, you were there with a bunch of other so it wasn't hard but it was a easy and fast way to level up.
Leveling was actually too slow in the first few MMOs so they speeded it up but the problem is that they didn't stop when they should have (somewhere in the middle between DaoC and vanilla Wow). It shouldn't take a year of hard work to get a max level character but neither should it take a few weeks of easy casual playing with zero risk.
Why does things always go from one extrem to the the other? And the annoying thing is that all western MMOs being made tend to take the same time (as it was in the early days as well).
My problem with modern MMOs is that 95% is made for the exact same group of players while the last 5% is made for the super hardcore FFA full loot PvP players but there is actually a pretty large group wanting something in between. Sure, the super casuaql players are several times larger but when every game goes for them most get slimmer picking then one aiming for the in between would get.
Originally posted by Flyte27 Originally posted by FoomerangOriginally posted by Flyte27Originally posted by FoomerangOriginally posted by DullahanAs a whole in EQ, people were not worried about how long things took. Every day I went different places and did different things. Sometimes I pvped over a dungeon, sometimes I farmed in one zone or another. I never looked at it as a painful grind and never heard anyone complain that it was such.Point is, there were many ways to enjoy those early games and at least in EQ, none of them felt like a grind regardless of how long it took to accomplish certain things. There was simply too much variation from day to day.
You mean you could kill stuff over here or kill stuff over there? Yeah so much variety....Theoretically that is still a greater choice then what you get in MMOs now. Now you jump into the game and it tells you to go here and do this or kill that. That isn't really a choice. The only real choice I can think of is weather or not you want to solo quest, group, or PvP. Those choices were available in old MMOs, but you also had to make the decision of where to go want what to try and kill. You could try to kill the guards of a city if you wanted to. You might be Kill on Sight in another place because of your race or beliefs. Killing certain NPCs might change your faction with a certain people in the game. I'm not saying older games were better in everything, but they did offer more choice IMO. We haven't even talked about racial differences that actually matter and the ability in some games to distribute stats yourself instead of automatically having them assigned. Then there were certain skills like tracking that don't exist anymore. You could also search for NPCs with quests.I have a ton of choices in the MMO I am playing now. Most of them don't involve killing things, just like my old MMO.Why don't you list some of them then instead of just posting that there are things. That would be more useful to everyone reading. Why, so you can scrutinize their relevance according to your own preferences? No thanks, not playing that game today.
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Keey your eyes on Shards Online, too. I believe it'll be skill-based progression and has quite a few cool features.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Uh, SWG's worst moment outside of the NGE is when they introduced the Jedi Village and everyone and their mother was grinding out their Jedi. It took players away from every activity, especially PVP. SWG was a much better game before that, especially from a community perspective. Prior to that it was nothing like EQ and it's endless grind mentality of level dinging being the content, there was plenty of lamentations over it back then at least in regard to SWG. Did you ever play SWG?
It was pretty much the same for DAOC as well, once they made gear grinds a thing there, much better game before that on a community level. EQ players may have liked the idea of endless grinding, it certainly wasn't favorable to all OS MMO gamers back then.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I like this quote from a sig a few years back:
What people call 'Grind', I used to call 'Playing the Game'.
It was a time sink just like anything else. Now people call it a "journey", lol. No.
I remember the days, it is what drew me into the genre.
Was sick of playing offline rpgs and them ending all the time, or running out of things to do after a week. When I first walked into the mmo scene the biggest draw to me was I could not complete it. I could play for 40hrs a week for years and never run out of ways to progress my character. EQ was great... then FFXI came along and stole my life for 10yrs, 20,000+hrs of non-afk gameplay put into that game (And I still was not even near finished with everything).
I do not have that playtime anymore, but even at 25hrs a week now I can finish almost all the weekly content in a mmo in about a day to 2 max everyweek. I can get a max level Job/Character in 2-3 days normally. In almost every mmo out there now I could start a new character and be able to do the top tier endgame within a month, this use to take years. I am a content locust as people say.... or as you can call it what was the norm for a mmo player back in the day.
This is one of the reasons why I feel the p2p model is dying. Everything is ultra watered down now, the goal has shifted to remove the grind, which is required to have unlimited gameplay. We went from a genre with 1000s of hours of content a week you could do to a 6hr/week tiered raiding system of the linear themepark. How can the devs keep up with people like me when I can complete content that is taking 6 months to develop in 1-3 weeks. IN order for a game to be worth a sub now... they would need to launch a full scale content patch almost bi-weekly to monthly to keep up with the most hardcore playerbase. Obviously that is beyond the capabilities of any game company. But still why would I want to pay $15/month for 8days worth of content? that should cost me $4.25. P2P MMOs today are a ripoff.
MMOs honestly are not different then offline games now. You play through it, then toss it aside and move to the next one. I do not want to do this... but the genre is forcing me to do it. The mmo genre has not evolved... it devolved into a console style genre. I mean come on... skyrim launched with more gameplay then most mmos do now days.
My post was more about EQ than SWG, but thats kind of cherry picking one aspect of SWG.
As a whole in EQ, people were not worried about how long things took. Every day I went different places and did different things. Sometimes I pvped over a dungeon, sometimes I farmed in one zone or another. I never looked at it as a painful grind and never heard anyone complain that it was such.
Point is, there were many ways to enjoy those early games and at least in EQ, none of them felt like a grind regardless of how long it took to accomplish certain things. There was simply too much variation from day to day.
You mean you could kill stuff over here or kill stuff over there? Yeah so much variety....
Most of that I can agree with, at least in regard to SWG, as I never played EQ.. It was the community that made the game in SWG, yet it wasn't a hard game or really a grinders game (prior to the villa).
What made it special was most players were willing to cooperate to make it better, as well as more worth while. if people treated it like they do modern games it would have been nothing at all. Thankfully it wasn't approached like that.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Theoretically that is still a greater choice then what you get in MMOs now. Now you jump into the game and it tells you to go here and do this or kill that. That isn't really a choice. The only real choice I can think of is weather or not you want to solo quest, group, or PvP. Those choices were available in old MMOs, but you also had to make the decision of where to go want what to try and kill. You could try to kill the guards of a city if you wanted to. You might be Kill on Sight in another place because of your race or beliefs. Killing certain NPCs might change your faction with a certain people in the game. I'm not saying older games were better in everything, but they did offer more choice IMO. We haven't even talked about racial differences that actually matter and the ability in some games to distribute stats yourself instead of automatically having them assigned. Then there were certain skills like tracking that don't exist anymore. You could also search for NPCs with quests.
I remember one memorable post when wow came out that said no more eq he was done sticking a fork in his eye.
Ok, so let me just be clear. You say it's cherry picking, but then go on to describe how "people weren't worried about how long it took". Basically you're describing a grind, but the fact that it was new and shiny and you were doing it with people who were equally as psyched about it, meant it didn't really feel like a grind. Let's not forget the distinct lack of MMORPGs at that time, even by 2006 or 2007. I guarantee, you place any old game out on todays market and it's going to feel grindy. People made the "old" MMOs fun. Maybe pathfinding has ruined some of that. It's nice I can eat a sandwich while I'm automatically walking somewhere, but it doesn't really do much for exploration. However, I feel like the mentality of gamers in the genre has changed, too.
Either way, I'm not too concerned. If they keep releasing old school RPGs like Pillars of Eternity then I might never play an MMO again anyway
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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I remember them and there was a ton of complaints. Maybe your guild didn't mind but the majority of people did
Theoretically that is still a greater choice then what you get in MMOs now. Now you jump into the game and it tells you to go here and do this or kill that. That isn't really a choice. The only real choice I can think of is weather or not you want to solo quest, group, or PvP. Those choices were available in old MMOs, but you also had to make the decision of where to go want what to try and kill. You could try to kill the guards of a city if you wanted to. You might be Kill on Sight in another place because of your race or beliefs. Killing certain NPCs might change your faction with a certain people in the game. I'm not saying older games were better in everything, but they did offer more choice IMO. We haven't even talked about racial differences that actually matter and the ability in some games to distribute stats yourself instead of automatically having them assigned. Then there were certain skills like tracking that don't exist anymore. You could also search for NPCs with quests.
I have a ton of choices in the MMO I am playing now. Most of them don't involve killing things, just like my old MMO.
Why don't you list some of them then instead of just posting that there are things. That would be more useful to everyone reading.
More character design
There is far far more choices than just follow the queast
cost is choose.
Dune gangs is some games
queast is quest
What games have factions?
What games have racial differences that are meaningful?
I"m sure I could come up with more. I listed a whole bunch in an earlier thread.
I like the feeling that my character has gotten stronger over time. That greater disparity is good for my experience in the game.
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?"
Well I call everything in a mmorpg a grind. I don't see it as a negative and my framing it that way takes the negative power away from the word. Why does everything have to be looked at as a negative?
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?"
Versus today where everything is trivial and can be accomplished mostly alone, yes it was 100x the variety. Now its just a long line of boring quests and following the path laid out for you with very few chances of dying until you hit end game roughly a week after you start the game.
So WOW has 540 million players? news to me...
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I do remember and some things I miss while others not so much.
The actual use of running dungeons before max level is one thing I miss, you actually needed the gear which lasted a long time and you got plenty more XP for itthan just grinding (or questing for the few quests that games like M59 had).
Then other things were not so great, standing 8 hours spawn camping sucked, you were there with a bunch of other so it wasn't hard but it was a easy and fast way to level up.
Leveling was actually too slow in the first few MMOs so they speeded it up but the problem is that they didn't stop when they should have (somewhere in the middle between DaoC and vanilla Wow). It shouldn't take a year of hard work to get a max level character but neither should it take a few weeks of easy casual playing with zero risk.
Why does things always go from one extrem to the the other? And the annoying thing is that all western MMOs being made tend to take the same time (as it was in the early days as well).
My problem with modern MMOs is that 95% is made for the exact same group of players while the last 5% is made for the super hardcore FFA full loot PvP players but there is actually a pretty large group wanting something in between. Sure, the super casuaql players are several times larger but when every game goes for them most get slimmer picking then one aiming for the in between would get.
Theoretically that is still a greater choice then what you get in MMOs now. Now you jump into the game and it tells you to go here and do this or kill that. That isn't really a choice. The only real choice I can think of is weather or not you want to solo quest, group, or PvP. Those choices were available in old MMOs, but you also had to make the decision of where to go want what to try and kill. You could try to kill the guards of a city if you wanted to. You might be Kill on Sight in another place because of your race or beliefs. Killing certain NPCs might change your faction with a certain people in the game. I'm not saying older games were better in everything, but they did offer more choice IMO. We haven't even talked about racial differences that actually matter and the ability in some games to distribute stats yourself instead of automatically having them assigned. Then there were certain skills like tracking that don't exist anymore. You could also search for NPCs with quests.
I have a ton of choices in the MMO I am playing now. Most of them don't involve killing things, just like my old MMO.
Why don't you list some of them then instead of just posting that there are things. That would be more useful to everyone reading.
Why, so you can scrutinize their relevance according to your own preferences? No thanks, not playing that game today.