Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Everything in general, my view
delete5230
Member EpicPosts: 7,081
This is just a sketch of some thoughts I have about mmos. It's doesn't have to be a serious debate, I'm not asking for one ! I'm not trying to gain popularity. It's not about "look at me" I'm just looking for a REAL mmo and I'm stubborn about it !...... My view is we don't have any, not even one !......It's all about gimmicks, even the classics are shells of what they once were with feeble attempts to apply band aids to make them modern. Want proof ?.....Try and play any one and see how crazy easy they are.... It's almost like a joke !... Easy makes people want to play ?
Back around 2004 > 2007 when I found my first mmo, like many I was amazed with playing with others online. My thoughts during this few years time was " Just think, it could only get better "....... To my bewilderment I never thought marketing and big business would screw everything up. I guess I was consumed by fun instead of how CEO's and shareholders would take a large portion of the pie, and the cost of making video games would sky rocket simply because it was an in-demand product.
Other thoughts:
- People will pay anything. I don't know where they get the money but they do. Go to your local mall and just try and find an older car in the parking lot in this so-called bad times...... Charge $59.99 and $15 a month...... Can't afford it ?..... Well, get a job !
- No one likes easy. Not even little ten year old Mike and his dad who play together.
- Most open world as possible, to the best of developer team's abilities....... Everyone likes that.
- Graphics, medium, concentrate on game play. The complainers with the power rigs will get over it. It's only 2017 were not their yet. as much as people have money, many don't have the hardware to keep up..... I would like to see everyone playing a good mmo.
- Large game. It's the only way people can immerse themselves into the world and community....It's the staying power !
- No Auto anything, sorry real mmo players like to work !...... Just make a tolerant travel speed..... And a good SOCIAL PANEL to find others and encourage players to use it......It's always been the best way to get players together, but no one knows about it, go figure !
- MMO's get only ONE SHOT at getting it right. This isn't new, we talk about it a lot and everyone always agrees. No one comes back next year.
More later, the family is waking up !
Back around 2004 > 2007 when I found my first mmo, like many I was amazed with playing with others online. My thoughts during this few years time was " Just think, it could only get better "....... To my bewilderment I never thought marketing and big business would screw everything up. I guess I was consumed by fun instead of how CEO's and shareholders would take a large portion of the pie, and the cost of making video games would sky rocket simply because it was an in-demand product.
Other thoughts:
- People will pay anything. I don't know where they get the money but they do. Go to your local mall and just try and find an older car in the parking lot in this so-called bad times...... Charge $59.99 and $15 a month...... Can't afford it ?..... Well, get a job !
- No one likes easy. Not even little ten year old Mike and his dad who play together.
- Most open world as possible, to the best of developer team's abilities....... Everyone likes that.
- Graphics, medium, concentrate on game play. The complainers with the power rigs will get over it. It's only 2017 were not their yet. as much as people have money, many don't have the hardware to keep up..... I would like to see everyone playing a good mmo.
- Large game. It's the only way people can immerse themselves into the world and community....It's the staying power !
- No Auto anything, sorry real mmo players like to work !...... Just make a tolerant travel speed..... And a good SOCIAL PANEL to find others and encourage players to use it......It's always been the best way to get players together, but no one knows about it, go figure !
- MMO's get only ONE SHOT at getting it right. This isn't new, we talk about it a lot and everyone always agrees. No one comes back next year.
More later, the family is waking up !
Post edited by delete5230 on
Comments
DAOC as how it was meant to be played.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I never gave DAOC much of a shot.....Thanks
Yes, it's more of a general mmo discussion. I've given up on the overall general page for the most part because mmo's are not mmos anymore. So most of my time is spent on real mmo forums as few as they are.
I agree with "the new-age casuals will end up loving Pantheon". Somewhere along the line people here feel as if the younger generation are a bunch of obnoxious kids that can't handle slower groups, and don't have the time...... Where this crap comes from, I can't say.
Midway during my teens the world changed a lot, suddenly all these things became less important, so there was time to play cowboys, bicycle around our local areas, break into abandoned houses, set up secret meetings with my averaged aged group of friends.
Meanwhile our parents were worried and I think to some degree jealous, cause we were considered a spoiled generation with that amount of spare time on our hands.
But a good handful of the friends I made then are still my friends to this day 40 years later.
When people discuss MMORPGs that has been and what is now, I see a lot of similarities between how life itself has changed for my parents generation and my own and how my own generation is different from the new generations now.
Nobody knits or stuffs socks now, we just buy them for cheap at the store, I could claim that is too easy and ask what went wrong?
But I dont think the youth of today would appreciate it a whole lot, if they were asked to knit their own socks.
They prefer the easy life in that regard.
And yet there are the very few people in between, who prefer to learn to knit, they long for the "old" days, a time where their own efforts meant keeping their feet warm.
And it is cozy to get together and knit, but what we knit now we do not use ourselves as much as its turning into gifts for grandchildren, which their parents manage to destroy the first time the wool magically ends up in a dryer. A dryer, will you believe it? Not even checking the weather before washing to make use of a good breeze an afternoon. Life has gotten so easy, nobody makes challenging lives anymore!
I think when people have trouble adjusting to the advancing world, the easy life, for those that have the privilege, I think its simply because people lose their occupations.
You are out of a spare time job, you are bored, because the new designs of MMORPGs removed all the little things that you used to spend time on.
But its simply just the way things goes, when the world changes and things are made easier, a lot of people lose the things they used to do.
We can debate whether its fair, is life this way fair, but we wont get anywhere, cause the world is not stopping. There are people who spend their time thinking up advancements and those guys are not prepared to lose their purpose or occupation.
But bottom line is, the newer generation now are happy with how the current MMORPGs are. Can you teach them the value of going back to knitting their own socks/play older MMORPGs, sure you can, but they will still buy their own socks and so they will prefer to play the MMORPGs that are designed for them as well.
These new MMORPGs are the new generations games and frankly over time even oldtimers, who find new things to pass time with along with MMORPGs, we adjust to the new designs also, learning to appreciate them.
A lot of us do anyway, some will hate the new designs forever, cause old woolen socks knitted by yourself is simply just the best, despite they make you itch and after the first wash a couple of knitted socks simply goes by the rule of never turning into the same size each. And the first time your cat play with your socks its game over. You could fix them, but the store is only a few miles away, so why bother?
Life just change. We can go back to knitting socks any time we want, your old MMORPGs are there, you can go back.
Issue just is that not many others will do so, so its kind of empty games right.
But I can easily relate. I bought a stupid bagless vacuum cleaner, glorious new world right, except it cant handle dirt, I think its actually allergic to dirt.
I want the oldfashioned vacuum cleaners and they are possible to get, but they cost twice or tripple the original price these days to get as new.
So you can get what you want, there are developers out there willing to make games with old design, but you have to pay and you have to accept that not many others will play them.
Life just moves on, its rough at times. You will just somehow have to find the positives in new things or pay the compromise if you want old things still.
Nice story. It's long to get your point across, it helps to get people to fully understand.
HOWEVER, it doesn't really apply here. MMO's didn't change for the people, they changed to make them cheaper and speed of content was faster because they are made small.
Business has a great advantage, They have the advertisement and marketing on their side. Try and find anyone of us that will pay a million bucks to counter them. It's kind of like "fake news".
Why is it still working, after all players get to vote with their wallet ?......Because people loved mmos so much they play anyway !!!!............. However, things are starting to go down hill lately, it's been too long since we had an mmo.
Thanks, I work hard at being wrong
Then the RVR fun really begins.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It's stable right I was curious about the vanilla servers on WoW and those were very unstable and I got fed up with the instability real fast.
Well, if all the bullet points are wrong, and developers continue to feed off the same old, then we will keep getting what were getting. Same old...Same old...... Then no point in having a game like Pantheon.
Lets not forget, thousands upon thousands, if not millions are not happy right now.
But why not having different kind of MMOs for different kind of players ? As long as it is profitable Pantheon might survive. We will see.
Not sure whether there are millions who are unhappy with current MMOs, but I am definately one of them and willing to give a non-mainstream MMO a chance.
If the leaders do not push the envelope or put out maximum effort,then lesser pockets will not either.This is why we have so many clones,the lesser pockets are just trying to keep up with limited budgets,no way can they do more than the leaders.
IMO the leaders are slacking,Square/Blizzard/Zenimax all lacking something in their games.
I really thought 20 years ago we would be here by now,but no way,we are not even that close.Not one single game has given us ECO systems.Just now we are starting to see remnants of housing,usually instanced.
Nobody is giving us realistic destructive surfaces and living npc's.It all takes too much computing power but with Cloud computing,it should be possible,the developer just has to be willing to absorb more cost which they seem reluctant to do.Blizzard is not even remotely close to pushing any envelopes,Square is turning into Blizzard 2.0 and Zenimax is starting to move in the right direction but ever slowly.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
it why everyone was trying jump on mobile gaming, it was/is money for little effort an as the market get saturated that's when innovation start to make a play, as you need something more to stay above they rest or keep the masses.
but to keep it simple it better to make $10, $8, $5, from slowly moving forward an making things "better" then to try an blow everything on the chance at been the "best" for $4 after cost an it goes down from their $3, $2, $1, before you got try be the "best" again.
1.0.1 It sounds like Pantheon is bringing back a lot of ‘older’ MMO game mechanics. Is Pantheon a clone of older games or a modern MMO?
Pantheon is most definitely a modern MMO with modern graphics and new and exciting features and mechanics. There are already emulators out there that are clones of earlier MMOs and Visionary Realms has no desire to make another emulator. That said, we also feel that many of the features and mechanics of previous MMOs have been abandoned in more recent games, resulting in a less challenging, compelling, deep, and social experience. Pantheon, therefore, will indeed bring back some of these conventional mechanics and ideas but with a fresh perspective, some tweaks and revisions. We also understand that while gamers’ tastes don’t fundamentally change over time, their situations, lives, and responsibilities do. Likewise, some game mechanics often associated with earlier MMOs involved inordinate amounts of downtime, overly severe penalties, too much competition over content and resources, and even downright boring or overly repetitive gameplay. Our intention, therefore, is not to bring back ‘everything’ from the old days, but rather to pick and choose those which make sense and are needed to make a fun, social, cooperative, and challenging game.
An MMO Evolved
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen will likely be a fundamentally different game compared to what you may have experienced playing other modern MMORPGs. From the moment you log in you will notice that the game is more social and has an emphasis on cooperative play. The monsters are often tougher and exploration is more involved. You will need friends in the game and your reputation can either help you progress or hinder it. Death in-game is meaningful and you’ll want to avoid it when possible. You’ll learn your surroundings and the lay of the land, spending meaningful time in each area and not just running through as quickly as possible to collect ten hides. You will need strategy, cunning and endurance to uncover all that Pantheon has to offer. You will find yourself in group and guild chats as you strategize or even just to pass the time between battles. Pantheon is social, thought-provoking, and the memories from your experiences in Terminus will last a lifetime.Atmosphere/Climate System
One of Pantheon’s tenets is ‘Engage the World!’ When we talk about being a PvE MMO, our definition of ‘environment’ means a lot more than just fighting NPCs -- players will be contending with the world itself. Some regions will be very hot or cold. Some areas within a zone might be enchanted with complete darkness, or silence (meaning spoken spells won't work), or poison or miasma. Small tornados could travel through a region, compelling players to work their way around them, not through them, lest they take significant damage. Also, certain spells may work better or worse (or even only work) depending on the climate or atmosphere -- for example, a 'Call Lightning' spell could deal more damage than a typical ‘lightning bolt’ spell but could only be cast if there is a storm in the region.Powerful Spells and Abilities: The Living Codex
In MMOs it is common to find rare items out in the world, by adventuring or by crafting, but abilities and spells are more often learned from trainers or even just given to player when his or her character levels up. In Pantheon, however, many of the more rare and exotic spells and abilities are found not at the local trainer but from a wise sage hiding in the depths of a dungeon or at the top of a remote tower.Learn more
Dynamic NPC Encounter Groups
The world is not static and unchanging – every day is not ‘groundhog’ day. Events occur that can completely change the population of a zone or the population of a group of NPCs within a zone (and the rarer the event, the rarer the rewards -- many exotic items can only be obtained when one of these zone events occur). An example: after you kill some key mobs guarding a hill giant camp, this triggers a zone event that loads up an invading force of Storm Giants who then proceed to attack the Hill Giant camp.NPC Dispositions and Behaviors
An area we have not seen much innovation in MMORPGs, almost since their inception, is the area of NPC AI. What if certain enemies had different “dispositions” that had to be discovered by the player? Many NPCs in Pantheon will have advanced behaviors, like the propensity to flee if possible, or to stand and fight to the end. Some NPCs will be inclined to help other NPCs in the area, while some will not. Some will target certain classes within the group that is attacking them. NPC’s movement speeds may vary if they feel they are outmatched. While it is too early to go into a lot of detail, some of the different dispositions we are working on include: the Alarmist, the Bully, the Craven, the Opportunist, the Protector, and the Strategist.Colored Mana System
Different classes will use different colors of mana. Some rare abilities, spells, and prayers will use more than one color of mana. These exotic abilities create an opportunity to sub-class your character, allowing players to customize their class to a degree, but without removing the interdependence between classes that is key to group content and building community.Progeny System
Players will be able to 'retire' high level characters and then create their children as new characters, but these new characters, the 'progeny', will have certain abilities, stats, etc. that make them slightly yet noticeably better than a completely brand new character (but not to the point that it unbalances things).Situational Gear
In Pantheon, there often won't simply be a weapon or piece of gear that is the absolute best item for your character’s class and level. Instead, many items will be more situational, and the player will need to ask himself, 'where am I?', 'what am I going to fight next?', and 'who in my group is what class, and what items do they have that may help defeat the next encounter?' Items that protect against climates/atmospheres (areas of extreme heat or cold, or disease, or absolute darkness) will often be important. So also will 'bane' items that are especially effective against certain types of mobs (for example, the Undead, or Dragonkind).The Perception System
One of the most profound things about Pantheon is how we are designing the game from the ground up so that the Environment truly matters – we want players to care about the world they are in, and why things are the way they are. When you think of MMOs, when is the last time you discovered the meaning, or the history, or the secrets of a person, place or event without being told by a text box? What if we’ve conceived of a way to bring players back to exploring because they are compelled by what they see in front of them - not because a blinking light tells them to go there? In Pantheon, Wizards will be able to perceive things that a Warrior cannot. Through prayer, a Cleric may gain insight into an area, or a creature, that a Rogue could never know. Through our perception system, Pantheon will redefine how the game world becomes known, and how players will work together to progress.Good points, I agree
It's oblivious without a release or even player feed back " fun factor " is speculative. And for each as an individual.
As always it comes down to faith in developers. What's different is VRealms cares about a reputation, and truly cares about players. It goes way deeper than advertising for a fast sell of a box price or having a hot key to nickel and dime in a cash shop.
I hope they get paid back for all their hard work, in fact with a chancy industry like this, that takes balls to ever get involved with in the first place, I hope they get rich.........But one thing is a guarantee THEY WANT PEOPLE TO LOVE THEIR GAME, unrelated to money !
As far a nich, I think it is much stronger than that, but that's my opinion.
One last thing. Thanks for not pulling out your mmo calculator and spewing out numbers, and going with your gut feelings.....I Like that much better
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
VR claims they want to develop a new game by using "conventional mechanics" with tweaks and revisions. That really sounds like the formula to build a clone to me. Same mechanics with new lore, tweaking things to look better and perhaps work better, but fundamentally aren't different. The same could be said of the relationship between EQ1 and PWI.
This is a two-edge argument, and a pretty weak one at that. First, they hint at, but never outright say, that these time sinks that caused problems are things that Pantheon won't have. This is the area that have had so much contention on these forums. Many players want death penalties, corpse runs and slow travel. There has been evidence of each of these elements already in the streamed videos. When is VR planning to remove these boring mechanics from their pre-pre-pre-pre-alpha version?
Second, inclusions of these older, classic systems is a crutch. Their stated "intention isn't to bring back everything..., but rather pick and choose". What happens when one of these mechanisms contains a side effect that contributed to the reason players left EQ1 in the first place? One of the biggest problems in EQ1 was that groups (the social aspect) tended to fall apart when a single character died. Death, with a return to bind and run back to corpse / group is going to cause groups to break up in Pantheon. So far, they've thrown words in support of advocating social, but we've seen already (the videos again) where characters have to run from some 'bind' / 'recovery' point to the group. Eventually, there will be content where a single character cannot return through the content to rejoin the group. That old mechanic which is tied to death seems to be poised to work against one of intents for Pantheon, being a social game.
Old mechanics very likely to cause a feeling of deja vu. That may include revisiting those reasons why EQ1 became tired to players, and why players left in the first place.
Many of the ideas in the "Pantheon Difference" could be said to be just applying a specific name for something we've seen before, a tweak of an older system with a thesaurus thrown at it. We had rain in EQ1, in Pantheon, there is Atmosphere / Climate. We've seen mobs run when nearly dead, or come in pairs, or attract passers by into a fight before, in Pantheon, that's NPC Dispositions. People have had alts before, with Pantheon, the alt process is formalized with the Progeny system. Every game that has had stats on gear has some gear that is better in some circumstances, but in Pantheon, there is Situational Gear.
Some of these ideas are interesting, but they are really nothing more than tweaks. A Colored Mana system and Living Codex sound promising, but they will do nothing more than help define the character in terms of their proficiency in magic / combat. Only the Perception system appears actually a new mechanic, but without seeing this in action, could be nothing more than a way to hide quests and lore from the player. It's all going to depend on how these are implemented, something the general public hasn't seen yet.
Right now, without seeing any of these differences in action, they are nothing more than marketing hype.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
What we can learn and hopefully the devs are aware of, is that there will be things from both games that should be utilized in Pantheon. Other things will need to be totally fresh. The single most important factors for me will always be cooperative play, higher required time devotion, and greater risk for greater reward. After that, I'm less rigid on the details.
1) They've gone into detail - both on stream and in official forums - stating EXACTLY how it is in fact fundamentally different. I'll go into more detail about this in point 2, for your thoughts require answers that largely overlap one another.
2) you Say "Many players want death penalties, corpse runs and slow travel. There has been evidence of each of these elements already in the streamed videos. When is VR planning to remove these boring mechanics from their pre-pre-pre-pre-alpha version?" These are NOT the elements/mechanics people gripe about/found boring about EQ. On the contrary, people WANT the penalties, CRs, and travel. These all add into the risk/reward feeling, which is inevitably the quintessence of what separates Pantheon, EQ, VG from the rest of MMOs. In a nutshell, they add to your immersion via forcing you to respect your environments. The subconscious fear of losing exp, money, and time to go back to your corpse forces you to walk slower, look around, communicate with your party - you end up treating in-game encounters as if you would in real life. It makes you that much more aware of the spells you choose to mem before a fight, what buffs/spells to use to get back to your corpse, it creates a player market for necromancers who can summon corpses, it removes the triviality of running back to your zone for free in ghost form after you die (dying in Wow becomes a repetitive task where your brain just compartmentalizes it as that same invulnerable, pointless waste of time prance back to the zone you died). All of this fear and respect for your environment gives you a feeling of reward when you clear a dungeon or raid that you simply don't feel in other MMOs. It's like beating a game on Easy Mode vs Hard. The dedication, practice, time spent, physical reactions etc required for Hard Mode gives it its value. The old "learn the value of a dollar." When you EARN something difficult, the feeling is special, it can't be replicated any other way and that's what this genre does. This ripple effects in hundreds of ways. You will NOT want to die. So you pay very close attention to good and bad players, group make ups, etc. Everything gets the volume turned up and microscope zoomed in with this kind of game.
What people who played this genre of MMOs are ACTUALLY are referring to when they say the boring old mechanics, they're not talking about what you listed, they're referring to specific things, such as having to sit down for extended periods of time - both in combat and out - to regen mana, which had you literally basically sitting around waiting for ~4 minutes at a times between fights. This, coupled with other tedium such as being LFG for hours unable to play, limited camps to gain experience in if you DID find a group, limited ability to camp special named mobs because hardcore players would just box/have timers perfect, inability to advance in raiding because of mob/zone unavilability. Again the tip of the iceberg, but these are the differences. Your thoughts are in the right place, just a bit black and white. Just need to splice a few more cells and get a closer look. I can definitely see from an outside perspective how some of these things would seem mundane. A lot of it is something you have to experience, so I'm glad they're giving away free trials to the game.
Your last part of this thought, on stream they specifically say rez wasn't coded into the game yet, so they set up a spawn point nearby for him to run back from.Apart from that, I have no idea what you mean by one person dying and that breaking the group up? A cleric , druid, and shaman can rez? A necro can make a rez stone with someone's soul. If people die they get rezzed like any other game.
3) Rain in EQ is what you compare to Pantheon's weather/climate system? EQ's rain was only visual.. Pantheon's is a system that ACTUALLY affects you and your party in a multitude of ways, from needing special gear, to being unable to travel through certain areas or risk freezing/overheating to death, also needing to go the the deepest depths of dungeons to use special climates with intense heat for blacksmithing etc, at this point I'm not sure if you're trolling or being serious :chuffed:
Your explanation of Alts, saying alternate characters are the same as this Progeny system. I don't see how deleting a character you maxed out in order to give a brand new character special, added abilities/stats, factions attributes, is in ANY way the same as creating an entirely new character, who is in no way connected to your main. Lastly, you mention "situational gear" being the same in other MMOs. Your reasoning is that some stats on weapons/armor are better than others. Yes, Pantheon has that like every other adventure game, but Pantheon you specifically need for instance piercing weapons against heavily armor foes, or you will do very little/useless damage (depending on a variety of factors obviously), for undead type mobs you will need weapons with bane damage, for weak unarmor skeletons for instance youd do more damage using blunt weapons. This is in no way synonymous with other MMO titles.