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UO should have been our future

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  • DisastormDisastorm Member Posts: 318
    Originally posted by Axehilt

    Originally posted by Disastorm


    I am still surprised when I hear people say that the only way mmos can be fair is if the people that play longer have a greater advantage.  That actually sounds like the opposite of fair to me.



     

    People say RPGs aren't RPGs without advancement, but I've never heard anyone say they're not fair without advancement.

    Also, I think you've developed an awfully warped perception of what hardcore means.  "Hardcore" has never been well defined (nor will it ever be) but it's always referred to those who invested more (more time, more energy, more skill) into gaming than others.  It would be wrong to assume that it's ever meant anything beyond that, or that it was ever more specific a definition than that.

    I actually have heard a few people say that on (either these or onrpg) forums before thats why I mentioned it.  Anyway, I've been playing games for over 17 years and I really don't think hardcore used to mean that.  I was always under the impression hardcore meant someone who is highly skilled at a game.  They are well acquainted with the game mechanics, and strategies, and are typically better than the average player.  Does this really sound like a warped idea of hardcore?  You are right though, there never was an official definition.

  • BlazzBlazz Member Posts: 321

    Axehilt: I agree that WoW raids aren't typically easy, due to the advanced and often quite complex strategies involved.

    A lot of "hardcore" raiders get these places on farm status within a few weeks, whereas if they were actually playing the game and working the fight out themselves, like the people on test realms do (and then post vids/walkthroughs of), then it would take a few months instead.

    It'd be like learning how to do a rubix cube by yourself, with no help. But instead, you have forty, or now twenty five (or even ten..) people looking at the rubix cube, all noticing little things, telling you to try something else, move your main finger topwise. Topwise.

    See, people are stupid. We can't help that, all we can possibly do is keep stupid people from playing the game, or educate them slowly with a good beginning tutorial, and add layers of complexity over time, rather than all at once. WoW does this fairly well, but, as shown by the adventures of Jeanne (sp?) - it does have some flaws, and could use a better, perhaps more cinematic tutorial - maybe even something seperate from the game itself. It could be a metagame or sorts, perhaps...

    ...hmm, anyway, yes. WoW raids are hard, but what people are doing is looking at guides in order to win the raids almost instantaneously, rather than actually figure it out themselves, because they're lazy and goal oriented.

     

    Also, in response to Alterac Valley, yeah, what the hell is up with that? You'd think that at level 51+ the player base would be a little more intelligent, but whatever. Idiots.

    I am playing EVE and it's alright... level V skills are a bit much.

    You all need to learn to spell.

  • RajCajRajCaj Member UncommonPosts: 704
    Originally posted by nariusseldon

    Originally posted by superslaya

    Originally posted by Armisael191


    Not everyone likes the idea of playing a video game and losing hours of progress just because someone who is bored decided to kill you and loot your stuff while you were busy doing something else.
    Some people don't want to be interrupted while playing, can you fault them for that? No. How would you like it if while you were trying to gank someone a friend walked in your room and turned off your computer? Not fun, is it?
     

     

    See, thing about UO is that you NEVER kept days worth of gear on you. I had a house with many items and when I died, I recalled and restocked, but never did a single death take me back for days. If this was the case for you, then my friend you played like a newbie, and there is no other way to say it. I can hardly even think of what I might wear or use that could be both worth a fortune and stolen. Shit, most of the time I suited up in horned leather armor with a bag of regs and went to light the neighborhood up. The last question you provided suggests to me that you also ran around alone, again your fault. I never went anywhere without at least one other person.

     

    Exactly why UO has a bad design. You will never be wearing anything valuable on your person. It defeat the purpose of item progression in a MMORPG.



     

    Wrong....

    Even the top tier items were replaceable.  When a person suited up in armor / weapons / potions, they had to make a consious decision on how much am I willing to risk for the resulting reward?

    I can put on all my top gear and weapon and increase my chances of succeeding in a fight by a certian %, or I can risk little and have less of an "edge" against anyone I ran into.

    If you were confident enough in your skills.....you carried around your Sunday's best.  If you had some back up with you, it might be okay to dust off that Vanquishing Axe.  If your running solo, then maybe you put on the regular stuff.

    Your problem is that you are stuck on item progression in a MMORPG.  The sun and the moon do not have to rise and fall because of that next piece of armor or weapon.  In Ultima Online, items served as a means to some end. (The end being the experience you were afforded by having the items).  In games like WOW, you do the raiding, and PvPing to get the Items.

  • MatataMatata Member Posts: 16
    Originally posted by Blazz


    Axehilt: I agree that WoW raids aren't typically easy, due to the advanced and often quite complex strategies involved.
     

     

        I am sorry if this post seems like highjacking the thread, been following it for quite some while...which has been pretty entertaining to be brutally honest .

      Anyway... I really can't see how WoW raid strategies can be described as complex. I the vast majority, if not all , of the cases is a variation of the  "Stand/Avoid area X and/or take action Y" variety. In the most complex case it might be a combination of ac ouple of such simple steps.

      WHat might be giving the illusion of complexity is:

    a)the laziness of some gamers

    b)the fact that they are too embarrassed to ask what to do, in case the appear ignorant

    c)gamer in question is plain dumb

    d) a combination of the above.

     

    Now to return to what the OP said, I am also part of the, what seems to be, a minority that would prefer a sandbox, free-form, non-linear, with player driven content MMO over the themepark variety. And by that I do not mean a game focused entirely on PvP ala Darkfall.

  • RajCajRajCaj Member UncommonPosts: 704
    Originally posted by Matata

    Originally posted by Blazz


    Axehilt: I agree that WoW raids aren't typically easy, due to the advanced and often quite complex strategies involved.
     

     

        I am sorry if this post seems like highjacking the thread, been following it for quite some while...which has been pretty entertaining to be brutally honest .

      Anyway... I really can't see how WoW raid strategies can be described as complex. I the vast majority, if not all , of the cases is a variation of the  "Stand/Avoid area X and/or take action Y" variety. In the most complex case it might be a combination of ac ouple of such simple steps.

      WHat might be giving the illusion of complexity is:

    a)the laziness of some gamers

    b)the fact that they are too embarrassed to ask what to do, in case the appear ignorant

    c)gamer in question is plain dumb

    d) a combination of the above.

     

    Now to return to what the OP said, I am also part of the, what seems to be, a minority that would prefer a sandbox, free-form, non-linear, with player driven content MMO over the themepark variety. And by that I do not mean a game focused entirely on PvP ala Darkfall.

    You forgot letter e....

     

    e) The acumulated quality of gear the raid has isn't good enough for the encounter

    By that, I mean that the Tank doesn't have enough Dodge/Block/Parry or Stamina (for more HP).  The Healer doesn't have enough Healing Power, Mana Regenration or Intelligence (for more MP). 

    Regardless.....upping the HP and MP on encounters (bosses and trash encounters) and calling it "more difficult" is pretty lazy.

    With all that said, lets give credit where credit is due.  I haven't played many other PvE focused games, but WOW is the first game I've seen where dungeon bosses varried up their attacks other than just beating on the person who has the highest threat.  While scripted, the fights are still interesting the first 20 times you do them.

    Figuring out who needs to be where and what level of damage is needed does take a bit of figuring out, but after the strat has been posted somwhere.....it does become as simple as "Stand Here" "DPS Here" "Tank Here" thing.

  • MatataMatata Member Posts: 16

      I never claimed that wow encounters were not interesting or fun. SUre they were at times, and I suppose most of us have some fond memories of some of them. But they never were what you might call 'mentally challenging' 

     

    And while on that subject,  I am not a WoW hater or anything. I like and enjoyed the game for what it was and do not bitch about what it wasn't. It never proclaimed to be a sandbox. It is just that some of us, when given the option, would prefer a different kind of game and approach to our gaming experience and sometimes lament on what it would be like if the MMO industry had taken and developed the sandbox approach a bit further than UO (and possibly pre-NGE SWG).

     

     

    PS: I know there is EVE around, and I like SF as much as fantasy, but can't get hooked to a game were my avatar is a spacecraft.... Now if CCP takes the 'EVE' route in making the rumoured World of Darkness MMO 

  • KalvasflammKalvasflamm Member Posts: 48

    Wow, what a thread ^^

    To the original poster: UO is - at least - my future. Tried a lot of other MMOs in the last few years, looked at them for a few weeks, LOLed big time, and everytime immediately returned to UO. I don't see a single game on the horizon that could change that.

    UO is - at least - for me unrivalled when it comes to depth and sheer fun. It wipes the floor with every other MMO out there. Honestly, you shouldn't even compare them, it's not like comparing a rolls royce with a Audi, it's like comparing bycicles with cars.

    Coming back - after a break for a weeks - to the WBB is everytime like coming home. At night I sometimes listen to all the folks riding along the WBB. It makes me feel happy. I can not understand why people choose to play games like WoW, where it all comes to one thing: Be better than other players: get better gear, see more of the content, get more achievements, LOL. Honestly Dudes, what you are playing is Real Life, so stop the bullshit and make room for your imagination.

    To quote Spock: UO was and will ever be your friend :)

  • JosherJosher Member Posts: 2,818
    Originally posted by Matata

    Originally posted by Blazz


    Axehilt: I agree that WoW raids aren't typically easy, due to the advanced and often quite complex strategies involved.
     

     

        I am sorry if this post seems like highjacking the thread, been following it for quite some while...which has been pretty entertaining to be brutally honest .

      Anyway... I really can't see how WoW raid strategies can be described as complex. I the vast majority, if not all , of the cases is a variation of the  "Stand/Avoid area X and/or take action Y" variety. In the most complex case it might be a combination of ac ouple of such simple steps.

      WHat might be giving the illusion of complexity is:

    a)the laziness of some gamers

    b)the fact that they are too embarrassed to ask what to do, in case the appear ignorant

    c)gamer in question is plain dumb

    d) a combination of the above.

     

    Now to return to what the OP said, I am also part of the, what seems to be, a minority that would prefer a sandbox, free-form, non-linear, with player driven content MMO over the themepark variety. And by that I do not mean a game focused entirely on PvP ala Darkfall.

    So every encounter in every single player RPG since the begining isn't complex either then?  They all involve hitting the right buttons at the right times, learning the AI behavior and having the right stats to do it.   The complexity is in figuring it all out. If thats not complex, than NOTHING is=) 

    Football is just moving a ball 10 yards at a time for 100 yards.  Pretty simple right?  Soccer is just hitting a ball into a goal? Tennis is just hitting a ball back and forth over a net until the other guy misses?  Talk about nerdifying a game...sheesh=)  No wonder I don't dig sandbox MMOs.  Everyone on this board who likes them seems to view games on an entirely different thought process, hehe.

  • Marcus-Marcus- Member UncommonPosts: 1,010
    Originally posted by Josher

    Originally posted by Matata

    Originally posted by Blazz


    Axehilt: I agree that WoW raids aren't typically easy, due to the advanced and often quite complex strategies involved.
     

     

        I am sorry if this post seems like highjacking the thread, been following it for quite some while...which has been pretty entertaining to be brutally honest .

      Anyway... I really can't see how WoW raid strategies can be described as complex. I the vast majority, if not all , of the cases is a variation of the  "Stand/Avoid area X and/or take action Y" variety. In the most complex case it might be a combination of ac ouple of such simple steps.

      WHat might be giving the illusion of complexity is:

    a)the laziness of some gamers

    b)the fact that they are too embarrassed to ask what to do, in case the appear ignorant

    c)gamer in question is plain dumb

    d) a combination of the above.

     

    Now to return to what the OP said, I am also part of the, what seems to be, a minority that would prefer a sandbox, free-form, non-linear, with player driven content MMO over the themepark variety. And by that I do not mean a game focused entirely on PvP ala Darkfall.

    So every encounter in every single player RPG since the begining isn't complex either then?  They all involve hitting the right buttons at the right times, learning the AI behavior and having the right stats to do it.   The complexity is in figuring it all out. If thats not complex, than NOTHING is=) 

    Football is just moving a ball 10 yards at a time for 100 yards.  Pretty simple right?  Soccer is just hitting a ball into a goal? Tennis is just hitting a ball back and forth over a net until the other guy misses?  Talk about nerdifying a game...sheesh=)  No wonder I don't dig sandbox MMOs.  Everyone on this board who likes them seems to view games on an entirely different thought process, hehe.



     

     

    Somewhat like those who view UO as only a full loot gankfest?

  • RajCajRajCaj Member UncommonPosts: 704
    Originally posted by Josher

    Originally posted by Matata

    Originally posted by Blazz


    Axehilt: I agree that WoW raids aren't typically easy, due to the advanced and often quite complex strategies involved.
     

     

        I am sorry if this post seems like highjacking the thread, been following it for quite some while...which has been pretty entertaining to be brutally honest .

      Anyway... I really can't see how WoW raid strategies can be described as complex. I the vast majority, if not all , of the cases is a variation of the  "Stand/Avoid area X and/or take action Y" variety. In the most complex case it might be a combination of ac ouple of such simple steps.

      WHat might be giving the illusion of complexity is:

    a)the laziness of some gamers

    b)the fact that they are too embarrassed to ask what to do, in case the appear ignorant

    c)gamer in question is plain dumb

    d) a combination of the above.

     

    Now to return to what the OP said, I am also part of the, what seems to be, a minority that would prefer a sandbox, free-form, non-linear, with player driven content MMO over the themepark variety. And by that I do not mean a game focused entirely on PvP ala Darkfall.

    So every encounter in every single player RPG since the begining isn't complex either then?  They all involve hitting the right buttons at the right times, learning the AI behavior and having the right stats to do it.   The complexity is in figuring it all out. If thats not complex, than NOTHING is=) 

    Football is just moving a ball 10 yards at a time for 100 yards.  Pretty simple right?  Soccer is just hitting a ball into a goal? Tennis is just hitting a ball back and forth over a net until the other guy misses?  Talk about nerdifying a game...sheesh=)  No wonder I don't dig sandbox MMOs.  Everyone on this board who likes them seems to view games on an entirely different thought process, hehe.



     

    There is no reason you couldn't have the Lich King boss fight encounter in a SandBox MMO.

  • BrianshoBriansho Member UncommonPosts: 3,586

    What's with the whining about ganking? If you learned how to play the game you knew how to not get ganked. I didn't pvp much and I knew how to get out of situation. Why cry? It's like whining because you keep dying in Team Fortress 2 and you expect no one to ever attack you. If it's a feature of the game why not learn how to play the game?

    Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!

  • JosherJosher Member Posts: 2,818
    Originally posted by RajCaj

    Originally posted by Josher

    Originally posted by Matata

    Originally posted by Blazz


    Axehilt: I agree that WoW raids aren't typically easy, due to the advanced and often quite complex strategies involved.
     

     

        I am sorry if this post seems like highjacking the thread, been following it for quite some while...which has been pretty entertaining to be brutally honest .

      Anyway... I really can't see how WoW raid strategies can be described as complex. I the vast majority, if not all , of the cases is a variation of the  "Stand/Avoid area X and/or take action Y" variety. In the most complex case it might be a combination of ac ouple of such simple steps.

      WHat might be giving the illusion of complexity is:

    a)the laziness of some gamers

    b)the fact that they are too embarrassed to ask what to do, in case the appear ignorant

    c)gamer in question is plain dumb

    d) a combination of the above.

     

    Now to return to what the OP said, I am also part of the, what seems to be, a minority that would prefer a sandbox, free-form, non-linear, with player driven content MMO over the themepark variety. And by that I do not mean a game focused entirely on PvP ala Darkfall.

    So every encounter in every single player RPG since the begining isn't complex either then?  They all involve hitting the right buttons at the right times, learning the AI behavior and having the right stats to do it.   The complexity is in figuring it all out. If thats not complex, than NOTHING is=) 

    Football is just moving a ball 10 yards at a time for 100 yards.  Pretty simple right?  Soccer is just hitting a ball into a goal? Tennis is just hitting a ball back and forth over a net until the other guy misses?  Talk about nerdifying a game...sheesh=)  No wonder I don't dig sandbox MMOs.  Everyone on this board who likes them seems to view games on an entirely different thought process, hehe.



     

    There is no reason you couldn't have the Lich King boss fight encounter in a SandBox MMO.

    As long as that sandbox had instances and balanced skills, so you couldn't just bring 1000 people to the fight and roll the boss or easily exploit him. Remember, those kind of bosses are designed under specific parameters for them to work like they do.  A sandbox doesn't exactly constrain you all that much.

  • SkarothlockSkarothlock Member Posts: 89

    I agree that ganking is not a huge issue in a game, you learn to avoid it or counter it (join a guild, hunt with friends... or play the premier gank class/skill set).  On top of that, if you don't like a game with pvp as its focus, you don't play.

    Skaroth

    See the violence inherent in the system!

    image
  • SkarothlockSkarothlock Member Posts: 89

    To the whole, WoW raids aren't challenging argument:

    If you "cheat" and your whole raid looks at the strategy guide and watches the videos then there is no intelectual challenge.  If, on the other hand, you go into the encounter blind, it is very challenging because your whole raid will have to be very observant as to what killed them.. a lot of things can be going on in a boss encounter.  Then you have the challenge of organizing your team in such a way that they learn form the information you are gaining (as you are getting your ass kicked) so that you are able to move past that section of the fight... In WoW, many bosses are multi-stage fights.  It would take you a long time, even with good players to defeat each boss, this is especially true for casual guilds who do not have the opportunity to stay on a boss all week until he is learned and downed.

    Challenge is, facing a difficult problem that requires thought and effort to be solved.  The above is a challenge.  Is it also challenging to go farm materials when there are pkers out to get you, yes.  Because you enjoy one form of challenge over the other doesn't mean that one is more challenging than the other.

    WoW's challenge is taken away by information web sites.  If you really want challenge in WoW raiding, join a guild that will not look at the videos and walkthroughs... sure your "progression" will be slowed but your challenge, and feeling of accomplishment, will be much greater.

    WoW is a race now.. which is sad, because it really is a good game. (am done with it though)

    Skaroth

    See the violence inherent in the system!

    image
  • Marcus-Marcus- Member UncommonPosts: 1,010
    Originally posted by Josher

    Originally posted by RajCaj

    Originally posted by Josher

    Originally posted by Matata

    Originally posted by Blazz


    Axehilt: I agree that WoW raids aren't typically easy, due to the advanced and often quite complex strategies involved.
     

     

        I am sorry if this post seems like highjacking the thread, been following it for quite some while...which has been pretty entertaining to be brutally honest .

      Anyway... I really can't see how WoW raid strategies can be described as complex. I the vast majority, if not all , of the cases is a variation of the  "Stand/Avoid area X and/or take action Y" variety. In the most complex case it might be a combination of ac ouple of such simple steps.

      WHat might be giving the illusion of complexity is:

    a)the laziness of some gamers

    b)the fact that they are too embarrassed to ask what to do, in case the appear ignorant

    c)gamer in question is plain dumb

    d) a combination of the above.

     

    Now to return to what the OP said, I am also part of the, what seems to be, a minority that would prefer a sandbox, free-form, non-linear, with player driven content MMO over the themepark variety. And by that I do not mean a game focused entirely on PvP ala Darkfall.

    So every encounter in every single player RPG since the begining isn't complex either then?  They all involve hitting the right buttons at the right times, learning the AI behavior and having the right stats to do it.   The complexity is in figuring it all out. If thats not complex, than NOTHING is=) 

    Football is just moving a ball 10 yards at a time for 100 yards.  Pretty simple right?  Soccer is just hitting a ball into a goal? Tennis is just hitting a ball back and forth over a net until the other guy misses?  Talk about nerdifying a game...sheesh=)  No wonder I don't dig sandbox MMOs.  Everyone on this board who likes them seems to view games on an entirely different thought process, hehe.



     

    There is no reason you couldn't have the Lich King boss fight encounter in a SandBox MMO.

    As long as that sandbox had instances and balanced skills, so you couldn't just bring 1000 people to the fight and roll the boss or easily exploit him. Remember, those kind of bosses are designed under specific parameters for them to work like they do.  A sandbox doesn't exactly constrain you all that much.



     

    In my opinion, thats the big difference in sandbox and themepark..

    You want to go kill that boss with 1000 people, go ahead.. but you're on "easy mode"...

     

    if the encounter calls for 6 people, bring 6 people or try with 5...

    You make the game what you want, not what they tell you.

  • RajCajRajCaj Member UncommonPosts: 704
    Originally posted by Josher


    As long as that sandbox had instances and balanced skills, so you couldn't just bring 1000 people to the fight and roll the boss or easily exploit him. Remember, those kind of bosses are designed under specific parameters for them to work like they do.  A sandbox doesn't exactly constrain you all that much.



     

    There are mechanics that could be introduced to limit "zerging" on bosses.  AOE effects, max number player lockouts, etc.

    Lineage 2 had a pretty good compromise on Open Dungeon / Instanced Dungeon with the Antharas Boss fight. 

    Antharas was the main boss of an open dungeon.  Guilds had to fight for access to the main bosses room, but only one guild (or alliance) could enter at one time.......without going into too much detail, it allowed for competition over endgame content and rewards among guilds but preserved an interuption free scripted boss fight.

    As for the itemization.....there is a way to make boss fights more challenging and difficult other than raising the HP and other stats on a monster to a point that it requires your raid to have God Mode Gear that might pose balance issues in other areas of the game.

    Make the monster change strats on the raid based on the strat thats being used against it, or some other dynamic AI.

  • RajCajRajCaj Member UncommonPosts: 704
    Originally posted by Skarothlock


    To the whole, WoW raids aren't challenging argument:
    If you "cheat" and your whole raid looks at the strategy guide and watches the videos then there is no intelectual challenge.  If, on the other hand, you go into the encounter blind, it is very challenging because your whole raid will have to be very observant as to what killed them.. a lot of things can be going on in a boss encounter.  Then you have the challenge of organizing your team in such a way that they learn form the information you are gaining (as you are getting your ass kicked) so that you are able to move past that section of the fight... In WoW, many bosses are multi-stage fights.  It would take you a long time, even with good players to defeat each boss, this is especially true for casual guilds who do not have the opportunity to stay on a boss all week until he is learned and downed.
    Challenge is, facing a difficult problem that requires thought and effort to be solved.  The above is a challenge.  Is it also challenging to go farm materials when there are pkers out to get you, yes.  Because you enjoy one form of challenge over the other doesn't mean that one is more challenging than the other.
    WoW's challenge is taken away by information web sites.  If you really want challenge in WoW raiding, join a guild that will not look at the videos and walkthroughs... sure your "progression" will be slowed but your challenge, and feeling of accomplishment, will be much greater.
    WoW is a race now.. which is sad, because it really is a good game. (am done with it though)
    Skaroth

    I agree with much of what you said....expecially the last part about it being a race. 

     

    It's fine and all in theory to say that if people want a real challenge, they can attempt boss fights blind.....but the reality is a very different thing.

    Endgame raiding guilds require that you have a certian level of gear before they will even consider your membership.  If your gear isn't good enough, your considered a liability to the group and will not be asked to join. 

    Hell.....its hard these days to get in a simple 5 man heroic dungeon run without overgearing the instance. Group leaders will not let you join because it will require a longer dungeon run. 

    Gearscore is a 3rd party service that creates a numeric rating of each piece of armor / weapon and generates a total score.  if your score isn't at a certian level, you get booted from the group before you've even had a chance to display your ability to play your character.

    Aside from the minority, most people are in such a hurry to get GEAR.....which is a drawback of a gear centric system.

  • JosherJosher Member Posts: 2,818
    Originally posted by Marcus-

    Originally posted by Josher

    Originally posted by RajCaj

    Originally posted by Josher

    Originally posted by Matata

    Originally posted by Blazz


    Axehilt: I agree that WoW raids aren't typically easy, due to the advanced and often quite complex strategies involved.
     

     

        I am sorry if this post seems like highjacking the thread, been following it for quite some while...which has been pretty entertaining to be brutally honest .

      Anyway... I really can't see how WoW raid strategies can be described as complex. I the vast majority, if not all , of the cases is a variation of the  "Stand/Avoid area X and/or take action Y" variety. In the most complex case it might be a combination of ac ouple of such simple steps.

      WHat might be giving the illusion of complexity is:

    a)the laziness of some gamers

    b)the fact that they are too embarrassed to ask what to do, in case the appear ignorant

    c)gamer in question is plain dumb

    d) a combination of the above.

     

    Now to return to what the OP said, I am also part of the, what seems to be, a minority that would prefer a sandbox, free-form, non-linear, with player driven content MMO over the themepark variety. And by that I do not mean a game focused entirely on PvP ala Darkfall.

    So every encounter in every single player RPG since the begining isn't complex either then?  They all involve hitting the right buttons at the right times, learning the AI behavior and having the right stats to do it.   The complexity is in figuring it all out. If thats not complex, than NOTHING is=) 

    Football is just moving a ball 10 yards at a time for 100 yards.  Pretty simple right?  Soccer is just hitting a ball into a goal? Tennis is just hitting a ball back and forth over a net until the other guy misses?  Talk about nerdifying a game...sheesh=)  No wonder I don't dig sandbox MMOs.  Everyone on this board who likes them seems to view games on an entirely different thought process, hehe.



     

    There is no reason you couldn't have the Lich King boss fight encounter in a SandBox MMO.

    As long as that sandbox had instances and balanced skills, so you couldn't just bring 1000 people to the fight and roll the boss or easily exploit him. Remember, those kind of bosses are designed under specific parameters for them to work like they do.  A sandbox doesn't exactly constrain you all that much.



     

    In my opinion, thats the big difference in sandbox and themepark..

    You want to go kill that boss with 1000 people, go ahead.. but you're on "easy mode"...

     

    if the encounter calls for 6 people, bring 6 people or try with 5...

    You make the game what you want, not what they tell you.

    You can always do an instance with less people.  You just can't exploit it by zerging a boss down, like in EQ.  The game telling you NO EXPLOITING is called good game design by most standards.  Allowing people to easily exploit the game isn't.   Sorry, but if you want to break a game, go play a single player one, where your actions don't effect others.  Its one of the underlying core issues with sandboxes.  Exploiting is basically considered OK.

  • Marcus-Marcus- Member UncommonPosts: 1,010
    Originally posted by Josher

    Originally posted by Marcus-

    Originally posted by Josher

    Originally posted by RajCaj

    Originally posted by Josher

    Originally posted by Matata

    Originally posted by Blazz


    Axehilt: I agree that WoW raids aren't typically easy, due to the advanced and often quite complex strategies involved.
     

     

        I am sorry if this post seems like highjacking the thread, been following it for quite some while...which has been pretty entertaining to be brutally honest .

      Anyway... I really can't see how WoW raid strategies can be described as complex. I the vast majority, if not all , of the cases is a variation of the  "Stand/Avoid area X and/or take action Y" variety. In the most complex case it might be a combination of ac ouple of such simple steps.

      WHat might be giving the illusion of complexity is:

    a)the laziness of some gamers

    b)the fact that they are too embarrassed to ask what to do, in case the appear ignorant

    c)gamer in question is plain dumb

    d) a combination of the above.

     

    Now to return to what the OP said, I am also part of the, what seems to be, a minority that would prefer a sandbox, free-form, non-linear, with player driven content MMO over the themepark variety. And by that I do not mean a game focused entirely on PvP ala Darkfall.

    So every encounter in every single player RPG since the begining isn't complex either then?  They all involve hitting the right buttons at the right times, learning the AI behavior and having the right stats to do it.   The complexity is in figuring it all out. If thats not complex, than NOTHING is=) 

    Football is just moving a ball 10 yards at a time for 100 yards.  Pretty simple right?  Soccer is just hitting a ball into a goal? Tennis is just hitting a ball back and forth over a net until the other guy misses?  Talk about nerdifying a game...sheesh=)  No wonder I don't dig sandbox MMOs.  Everyone on this board who likes them seems to view games on an entirely different thought process, hehe.



     

    There is no reason you couldn't have the Lich King boss fight encounter in a SandBox MMO.

    As long as that sandbox had instances and balanced skills, so you couldn't just bring 1000 people to the fight and roll the boss or easily exploit him. Remember, those kind of bosses are designed under specific parameters for them to work like they do.  A sandbox doesn't exactly constrain you all that much.



     

    In my opinion, thats the big difference in sandbox and themepark..

    You want to go kill that boss with 1000 people, go ahead.. but you're on "easy mode"...

     

    if the encounter calls for 6 people, bring 6 people or try with 5...

    You make the game what you want, not what they tell you.

    You can always do an instance with less people.  You just can't exploit it by zerging a boss down, like in EQ.  The game telling you NO EXPLOITING is called good game design by most standards.  Allowing people to easily exploit the game isn't.   Sorry, but if you want to break a game, go play a single player one, where your actions don't effect others.  Its one of the underlying core issues with sandboxes.  Exploiting is basically considered OK.



     

     

    Exploiting what exactly?

    Who are you cheating by doing this? No one but yourself really, you went in and killed a 6 man boss with 10 people,  I'm sure the community will be very proud.... How exactly is this affecting others...? 

     Unless you're still living in your gear-based game of course....

    Don't take this the wrong way, because not only would I not exploit it, but i probably wouldn't even do a PvE dungeon, but thats just me...

    Now, are there other things to take into consideration by not having it instanced? Yes, of course there is, but you weren't talking about those things (btw, i dislike instances as well)

  • Lizard_SFLizard_SF Member Posts: 348

    Man, I wish I could score the backward-pointing rose-colored glasses franchise for MMORPG.com. I'd make a fortune.

    Let's look at UO as it REALLY was, shall we?

    One skill -- magic -- dominates *everything*. I wanted to play a non-spellcasting character, and was pretty much told "U R moron", except they probably spelled "moron" wrong, too. Beyond that, everything from FOTM, except that they patched so frequently back then in a desperate attempt to make the game playable it was more like FOTW.

    Due to very poor game design, you could get to 7*GM in 2-3 days of play. There was very little to aspire to since you could "max out" trivially. (This is part of what led to the incorrect impression that UO was supposed to be a PVP game -- there was pretty much nothing else to do.)

    The "morality" system was a pathetic sick joke, leading to things like "red names" macro-pickpocketing each other for an hour to "Go blue". Or they'd just give their stolen goods to a blue alt. (Not to mention the 200 or so ways you could trick someone into attacking a guard, or that blues could use to harass/grief, knowing they couldn't be attacked.)

    The quests. Yes, folks, there WERE quests in UO at launch. They were all "Hello, yournamehere! I need RandomItem! I'll give you RandomGold for it!" On more than one occasion, I bought the item the quest giver needed FROM the quest giver, then turned it into him for a healthy profit. Programming at its finest!

    You could pick cotton and spin it into wool... which sold for less than the cotton. Now, I agree the labor theory of value is bunk, but unprocessed raw material shouldn't sell for less than processed in ANY economy. This is a minor point, but it's typical of the overall poor design of the major game systems, poor design that many people look back on as "features". The broken morality system wasn't "broken", it encouraged you to be "clever". The uncounted exploits -- things like gaining immunity by standing in a wall of fire in a peaceful zone where it couldn't damage you -- were "features". Standing on server boundaries and killing people as they lagged across them was "tactics". The various bugs in the trade interface, house security, and so forth "made the game challenging". Standing at a point the guards couldn't reach and fireballing people, while your buddies looted with impunity, since looting corpses originally carried no morality hit? "Canny play".

    The useless skills: There were eight potions, each color-coded for your convenience. You had a skill which would let you identify a potion by taste. The point of this was....? Now realize that "Potion Tasting" and "Magic" came from the exact same pool of skill points. Gee, which should I work on raising? Hm, hm, hm.... (Remember Camping skill? Or cartography, BEFORE they added in treasure maps, and all you could do was waste paper and ink making a map which showed you, uhm, the same thing you saw on the cloth map included in the game?)

    The unbelievably broken spawn engine. UO promised a "real ecology" where players could impact the world. Kill all the rabbits, and the wolves would move into town, etc. What actually happened was that the rate of slaughter and especially hoarding meant the sophisticated resource recycling engine never, ever, worked, and it was quietly dropped and replaced with a more standard spawn system in short order -- just not quickly enough to stop some people from quitting because they could spend an hour hunting and not find so much as a rabbit to kill.

    Banks piled high with the corpses of bald thieves, created and disposed of by the hundreds, in the hopes of grabbing a key or other valuable from some poor sucker. (Not to mention people running everywhere, because if you stood still to talk to someone, someone else would pick your pocket. Great way to build community, folks.)

    Ultimately (heh), the real problem with UO is that it didn't know what it wanted to be. It was marketed first to fans of the Ultima CRPG series, who expected a deep and rich roleplaying experience, heavily story driven and focused on morality. Then it was invaded by hordes of battle.net kiddies, who thought that if there was something moving in a game, whether it was a rabbit, a merchant, or another player, the only thing to do with it was kill it. People put up with UO for a year or so, as the devs promised to fix everything, but then EQ came along and sucked out all the people who wanted to go kill monsters and follow storylines, and without unarmed miners to kill, the PKers had nothing to do. The Trammel/Felucca split proved, beyond doubt, that most people DIDN'T want to experience the thrills of living in virtual Mogadishu for 12.00/month, and those who did were fickle and problematic audience.

    Ultima is still around because eventually it did fix most bugs, balance most issues, and decided to focus on world/community/sandbox, and held onto those players who liked that sort of thing, but it never became as big as the early reaction meant it COULD be. EQ quickly reached many times the player base UO had, and thus became the model for almost every successful (and many unsuccessful)  games to follow, culminating, of course, in WoW.

    Eventually, someone will find a way to combine sandbox/community play with a rich questing/story environment, and I think *that* game will be the one to dethrone WoW. What it won't be, though, is "UO 2.0". It will need to challenge a number of conventions, and do so in a way which is playable by the masses, not just by the people willing to devote 10 hours a day to a game. Someone mentioned Fallen Earth -- after a lot of soul-searching, I decided not to turn my trial into a full sub, mostly because the game basically allows you to max out nearly every skill, and a world of basically self-sufficient crafter-combatants doesn't seem sustainable to me. But it's definitely on the right track, combining a lot of quests and storylines and a rich world background with an environment that encourages, "Hey, let's see what's over there!" freeform gameplay and self-directed character development.

  • Marcus-Marcus- Member UncommonPosts: 1,010
    Originally posted by Lizard_SF


    Man, I wish I could score the backward-pointing rose-colored glasses franchise for MMORPG.com. I'd make a fortune.
    Let's look at UO as it REALLY was, shall we?
    One skill -- magic -- dominates *everything*. I wanted to play a non-spellcasting character, and was pretty much told "U R moron", except they probably spelled "moron" wrong, too. Beyond that, everything from FOTM, except that they patched so frequently back then in a desperate attempt to make the game playable it was more like FOTW.
    Due to very poor game design, you could get to 7*GM in 2-3 days of play. There was very little to aspire to since you could "max out" trivially. (This is part of what led to the incorrect impression that UO was supposed to be a PVP game -- there was pretty much nothing else to do.)
    The "morality" system was a pathetic sick joke, leading to things like "red names" macro-pickpocketing each other for an hour to "Go blue". Or they'd just give their stolen goods to a blue alt. (Not to mention the 200 or so ways you could trick someone into attacking a guard, or that blues could use to harass/grief, knowing they couldn't be attacked.)
    The quests. Yes, folks, there WERE quests in UO at launch. They were all "Hello, yournamehere! I need RandomItem! I'll give you RandomGold for it!" On more than one occasion, I bought the item the quest giver needed FROM the quest giver, then turned it into him for a healthy profit. Programming at its finest!
    You could pick cotton and spin it into wool... which sold for less than the cotton. Now, I agree the labor theory of value is bunk, but unprocessed raw material shouldn't sell for less than processed in ANY economy. This is a minor point, but it's typical of the overall poor design of the major game systems, poor design that many people look back on as "features". The broken morality system wasn't "broken", it encouraged you to be "clever". The uncounted exploits -- things like gaining immunity by standing in a wall of fire in a peaceful zone where it couldn't damage you -- were "features". Standing on server boundaries and killing people as they lagged across them was "tactics". The various bugs in the trade interface, house security, and so forth "made the game challenging". Standing at a point the guards couldn't reach and fireballing people, while your buddies looted with impunity, since looting corpses originally carried no morality hit? "Canny play".
    The useless skills: There were eight potions, each color-coded for your convenience. You had a skill which would let you identify a potion by taste. The point of this was....? Now realize that "Potion Tasting" and "Magic" came from the exact same pool of skill points. Gee, which should I work on raising? Hm, hm, hm.... (Remember Camping skill? Or cartography, BEFORE they added in treasure maps, and all you could do was waste paper and ink making a map which showed you, uhm, the same thing you saw on the cloth map included in the game?)
    The unbelievably broken spawn engine. UO promised a "real ecology" where players could impact the world. Kill all the rabbits, and the wolves would move into town, etc. What actually happened was that the rate of slaughter and especially hoarding meant the sophisticated resource recycling engine never, ever, worked, and it was quietly dropped and replaced with a more standard spawn system in short order -- just not quickly enough to stop some people from quitting because they could spend an hour hunting and not find so much as a rabbit to kill.
    Banks piled high with the corpses of bald thieves, created and disposed of by the hundreds, in the hopes of grabbing a key or other valuable from some poor sucker. (Not to mention people running everywhere, because if you stood still to talk to someone, someone else would pick your pocket. Great way to build community, folks.)
    Ultimately (heh), the real problem with UO is that it didn't know what it wanted to be. It was marketed first to fans of the Ultima CRPG series, who expected a deep and rich roleplaying experience, heavily story driven and focused on morality. Then it was invaded by hordes of battle.net kiddies, who thought that if there was something moving in a game, whether it was a rabbit, a merchant, or another player, the only thing to do with it was kill it. People put up with UO for a year or so, as the devs promised to fix everything, but then EQ came along and sucked out all the people who wanted to go kill monsters and follow storylines, and without unarmed miners to kill, the PKers had nothing to do. The Trammel/Felucca split proved, beyond doubt, that most people DIDN'T want to experience the thrills of living in virtual Mogadishu for 12.00/month, and those who did were fickle and problematic audience.
    Ultima is still around because eventually it did fix most bugs, balance most issues, and decided to focus on world/community/sandbox, and held onto those players who liked that sort of thing, but it never became as big as the early reaction meant it COULD be. EQ quickly reached many times the player base UO had, and thus became the model for almost every successful (and many unsuccessful)  games to follow, culminating, of course, in WoW.
    Eventually, someone will find a way to combine sandbox/community play with a rich questing/story environment, and I think *that* game will be the one to dethrone WoW. What it won't be, though, is "UO 2.0". It will need to challenge a number of conventions, and do so in a way which is playable by the masses, not just by the people willing to devote 10 hours a day to a game. Someone mentioned Fallen Earth -- after a lot of soul-searching, I decided not to turn my trial into a full sub, mostly because the game basically allows you to max out nearly every skill, and a world of basically self-sufficient crafter-combatants doesn't seem sustainable to me. But it's definitely on the right track, combining a lot of quests and storylines and a rich world background with an environment that encourages, "Hey, let's see what's over there!" freeform gameplay and self-directed character development.



     

    Nice rant.

     

    I  played a macer some time after release, and did very well thanks..

    Yea, the game was released with bugs, what was it, 13 years ago? It was I believe, the 3rd graphical MMO created, and the biggest of its time... Not too shabby in my opinion.  Well, theres games being released today with just as many bugs and just as many problems..

    You mentioned the rose colored glasses.. Personally, I look at UO for the world it created, not just the nuts and bolts of the game itself..  The point of the thread is further development of this type of game, not recreating the game itself...

     

  • BrianshoBriansho Member UncommonPosts: 3,586
    Originally posted by nariusseldon

    Originally posted by superslaya

    Originally posted by Armisael191


    Not everyone likes the idea of playing a video game and losing hours of progress just because someone who is bored decided to kill you and loot your stuff while you were busy doing something else.
    Some people don't want to be interrupted while playing, can you fault them for that? No. How would you like it if while you were trying to gank someone a friend walked in your room and turned off your computer? Not fun, is it?
     

     

    See, thing about UO is that you NEVER kept days worth of gear on you. I had a house with many items and when I died, I recalled and restocked, but never did a single death take me back for days. If this was the case for you, then my friend you played like a newbie, and there is no other way to say it. I can hardly even think of what I might wear or use that could be both worth a fortune and stolen. Shit, most of the time I suited up in horned leather armor with a bag of regs and went to light the neighborhood up. The last question you provided suggests to me that you also ran around alone, again your fault. I never went anywhere without at least one other person.

     

    Exactly why UO has a bad design. You will never be wearing anything valuable on your person. It defeat the purpose of item progression in a MMORPG.

     

    UO had skill progression. In the early version of the game you didn't know how you were leveling skills until you did a trial and error on what you could do/make. This was more rewarding and helped make character skill hybrids unique. No two people had to exact same character build.

    Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!

  • JosherJosher Member Posts: 2,818
    Originally posted by Lizard_SF


    Man, I wish I could score the backward-pointing rose-colored glasses franchise for MMORPG.com. I'd make a fortune.
    Let's look at UO as it REALLY was, shall we?
    One skill -- magic -- dominates *everything*. I wanted to play a non-spellcasting character, and was pretty much told "U R moron", except they probably spelled "moron" wrong, too. Beyond that, everything from FOTM, except that they patched so frequently back then in a desperate attempt to make the game playable it was more like FOTW.
    Due to very poor game design, you could get to 7*GM in 2-3 days of play. There was very little to aspire to since you could "max out" trivially. (This is part of what led to the incorrect impression that UO was supposed to be a PVP game -- there was pretty much nothing else to do.)
    The "morality" system was a pathetic sick joke, leading to things like "red names" macro-pickpocketing each other for an hour to "Go blue". Or they'd just give their stolen goods to a blue alt. (Not to mention the 200 or so ways you could trick someone into attacking a guard, or that blues could use to harass/grief, knowing they couldn't be attacked.)
    The quests. Yes, folks, there WERE quests in UO at launch. They were all "Hello, yournamehere! I need RandomItem! I'll give you RandomGold for it!" On more than one occasion, I bought the item the quest giver needed FROM the quest giver, then turned it into him for a healthy profit. Programming at its finest!
    You could pick cotton and spin it into wool... which sold for less than the cotton. Now, I agree the labor theory of value is bunk, but unprocessed raw material shouldn't sell for less than processed in ANY economy. This is a minor point, but it's typical of the overall poor design of the major game systems, poor design that many people look back on as "features". The broken morality system wasn't "broken", it encouraged you to be "clever". The uncounted exploits -- things like gaining immunity by standing in a wall of fire in a peaceful zone where it couldn't damage you -- were "features". Standing on server boundaries and killing people as they lagged across them was "tactics". The various bugs in the trade interface, house security, and so forth "made the game challenging". Standing at a point the guards couldn't reach and fireballing people, while your buddies looted with impunity, since looting corpses originally carried no morality hit? "Canny play".
    The useless skills: There were eight potions, each color-coded for your convenience. You had a skill which would let you identify a potion by taste. The point of this was....? Now realize that "Potion Tasting" and "Magic" came from the exact same pool of skill points. Gee, which should I work on raising? Hm, hm, hm.... (Remember Camping skill? Or cartography, BEFORE they added in treasure maps, and all you could do was waste paper and ink making a map which showed you, uhm, the same thing you saw on the cloth map included in the game?)
    The unbelievably broken spawn engine. UO promised a "real ecology" where players could impact the world. Kill all the rabbits, and the wolves would move into town, etc. What actually happened was that the rate of slaughter and especially hoarding meant the sophisticated resource recycling engine never, ever, worked, and it was quietly dropped and replaced with a more standard spawn system in short order -- just not quickly enough to stop some people from quitting because they could spend an hour hunting and not find so much as a rabbit to kill.
    Banks piled high with the corpses of bald thieves, created and disposed of by the hundreds, in the hopes of grabbing a key or other valuable from some poor sucker. (Not to mention people running everywhere, because if you stood still to talk to someone, someone else would pick your pocket. Great way to build community, folks.)
    Ultimately (heh), the real problem with UO is that it didn't know what it wanted to be. It was marketed first to fans of the Ultima CRPG series, who expected a deep and rich roleplaying experience, heavily story driven and focused on morality. Then it was invaded by hordes of battle.net kiddies, who thought that if there was something moving in a game, whether it was a rabbit, a merchant, or another player, the only thing to do with it was kill it. People put up with UO for a year or so, as the devs promised to fix everything, but then EQ came along and sucked out all the people who wanted to go kill monsters and follow storylines, and without unarmed miners to kill, the PKers had nothing to do. The Trammel/Felucca split proved, beyond doubt, that most people DIDN'T want to experience the thrills of living in virtual Mogadishu for 12.00/month, and those who did were fickle and problematic audience.
    Ultima is still around because eventually it did fix most bugs, balance most issues, and decided to focus on world/community/sandbox, and held onto those players who liked that sort of thing, but it never became as big as the early reaction meant it COULD be. EQ quickly reached many times the player base UO had, and thus became the model for almost every successful (and many unsuccessful)  games to follow, culminating, of course, in WoW.
    Eventually, someone will find a way to combine sandbox/community play with a rich questing/story environment, and I think *that* game will be the one to dethrone WoW. What it won't be, though, is "UO 2.0". It will need to challenge a number of conventions, and do so in a way which is playable by the masses, not just by the people willing to devote 10 hours a day to a game. Someone mentioned Fallen Earth -- after a lot of soul-searching, I decided not to turn my trial into a full sub, mostly because the game basically allows you to max out nearly every skill, and a world of basically self-sufficient crafter-combatants doesn't seem sustainable to me. But it's definitely on the right track, combining a lot of quests and storylines and a rich world background with an environment that encourages, "Hey, let's see what's over there!" freeform gameplay and self-directed character development.

    As good a description as anyone could write.  Its only a rant to those unwilling to face the facts at the time.  Nostalgia does that.    

  • Lizard_SFLizard_SF Member Posts: 348
    Originally posted by Briansho



    UO had skill progression. In the early version of the game you didn't know how you were leveling skills until you did a trial and error on what you could do/make. This was more rewarding and helped make character skill hybrids unique. No two people had to exact same character build.

     

    Your last sentence intrigues me.

    In your world, who won the 2008 Presidential election in the United States? (I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that you have a United States and that it had an election in 2008; feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. When the Internet crosses the borders of the infinite worlds of probability, you're not safe assuming *anything*.)

    I ask because, in the world I live in, Ultima Online during the early days pretty much defined uniform builds, as the ease of maxing skills and the constant wild swings in balance meant you were always remaking your character to meet this week's "I win" combo.

  • Marcus-Marcus- Member UncommonPosts: 1,010
    Originally posted by Josher


    As good a description as anyone could write.  Its only a rant to those unwilling to face the facts at the time.  Nostalgia does that.    



     

     

    I don't believe i refuted anything he said, other than the fact that i played a macer..

     

    What facts exactly am I unwilling to face?

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