EQ next?

[Dumac]

i don't see how waiting hours for a rez or docking XP that you already earned is meaningful or a good idea. it would just make me not want to play any more.

Good. Maybe the casual WoW kiddies who put no effort into the game of community will get bored too.

Of course, that is the problem. No new MMO could be that tough, or they'll lose out on the cowadoody/WoW crowd.

The possibility of death, and the consequences that come with it, it was made EQ so exciting for me. Venturing into zones I've never explored before, all while keeping in the back of my mind how difficult a corpse run would be if a died.

MMOs without any real death penalty (which is basically all of them nowadays) bore me. Whats is the point? I don't even have to think - just spam buttons all day. Who care if I die or my raid wipes? Not like it matters anyway - costs me only a couple minutes.

Saying you see no reason for a penalty for dying, as well as the purpose of different scales of penalties (from old games to recent WoW), you may as well just say that you see not point in death at all. Just makes characters invincible. The different levels of penalties add different amounts of incentive to play carefully and with an ounce of thought.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I agree, EQ1 may have had too extreme of a penalty early on but current MMO are extreme in the no loss mentality. I did find some mention of Sony guys talking to people at a EQ fan fair about what they miss, like & don't like about EQ1 & 2. Hopefully they were not let go in the Sony lay offs.

 

[Blintok]

I really hope its more like EQ1 than EQ2 in terms of challenge.

so you want it to be EQ Fail?

Challenge in EQ1 was an exercise in marathon button mashing and days long mob
camp fests. I understand what you are asking for tho, make gaining of levels and
gear more meaningful. Early EQ1 was more of a tedium-fest, nothing like spending hours
just to get your damn corpse(sometimes multiples and big exp lose) just so you can get
back to (paying) to play the game again. Never again will i spend 20hrs sitting at the computer to camp one room in the hopes of finally getting the damn J-boots to drop

i hope some day a new mmog will come out with some real challenge. Meaningful quests and challenges instead of the mash buttons 1234, run over there. repeat x 1000

maybe it will be the new starwars game that moves the mmog ball forward a few notches?

 

[skace]

you're attempt at an insult doesn't make any sense to me.

He is saying that the game you would want to play/make is the same game you'd get bored of very quickly. I agree with him. However, I think some players have a hard time looking past instant gratification.

 

[Blintok]

i don't see how waiting hours for a rez or docking XP that you already earned is meaningful or a good idea. it would just make me not want to play any more.

and remember the early days when you had to beg to find someone to "bind your soul"?
nothing says fun like spending 2+hrs getting to a new area. die before being bound then
trying to get back to your corpse (now naked because all your gear is on corspe) before your corpse "poofed" and you lost all your items. yep those were the days

 

[pontifex]

He is saying that the game you would want to play/make is the same game you'd get bored of very quickly. I agree with him. However, I think some players have a hard time looking past instant gratification.

exactly, that makes no sense. just because i don't want to spend hours waiting for a rez or have some horrible death penalty has nothing to do with why I would get bored with a game.

I played Ultima Online as my 1st mmorpg (on dial up) back in like 98/99 or so. You know what made me quit? The death penalty. I died and couldn't get back to my corpse for a long time because I kept dying on the way back/couldn't find a rez. By the time I did make it back, everything I had was gone -disintegrated. I called it quits right then and there.


The reason I got bored with Rift was because I ran out of new content and got tired of doing the same shit over and over. Death penalty wasn't even on my mind when I quit.

I just see no point in making it any worse. I'll never understand you "hardcore" players...

 

[skace]

exactly, that makes no sense. just because i don't want to spend hours waiting for a rez or have some horrible death penalty has nothing to do with why I would get bored with a game.

I played Ultima Online as my 1st mmorpg (on dial up) back in like 98/99 or so. You know what made me quit? The death penalty. I died and couldn't get back to my corpse for a long time because I kept dying on the way back/couldn't find a rez. By the time I did make it back, everything I had was gone -disintegrated. I called it quits right then and there.


The reason I got bored with Rift was because I ran out of new content and got tired of doing the same shit over and over. Death penalty wasn't even on my mind when I quit.

I just see no point in making it any worse. I'll never understand you "hardcore" players...

Can't put those 2 things together can you? You couldn't get through UO's content because it was too hard. You got through Rift's content too quickly because it was too easy. Death is a major aspect of that.

Some people here are going to enjoy the fact that you quit UO instead of sticking around. You are the kind of gamer who isn't willing to think or plan. You were probably exploring way beyond your means in UO in gear you couldn't afford to replace.

I'd often explore in UO in just a robe and a lumberjack axe. Then I'd scribe the locations I'd want to revisit so I could visit them from my house and get back to them quickly. But that requires planning, doesn't it?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Haha robe & ax, that's like me playing a naked monk in EQ1 on the pvp server. Great time monks had nothing to loot.

 

[brandonb]

so you want it to be EQ Fail?

Never again will i spend 20hrs sitting at the computer to camp one room in the hopes of finally getting the damn J-boots to drop

Nobody forced you to sit and camp Jboots... You made that choice yourself. The game didn't stop you from playing, you did that willingly. You traded your leveling progress for progress in loot. God forbid you can't get both at the same time.

I never camped jboots. I went in with my wizard and ninja stole it. Thats the choice I made on the PVP server, and I had to pay the penalty for my actions. If I remember right, I lost my oracle robe in the process.

 

[nageov3t]

there are some people who crave a hardcore game, but such a game will never reach a million+ subscribers.

most game publishing companies are, believe it or not, in it for the money.

 

[s1njin]

there are some people who crave a hardcore game, but such a game will never reach a million+ subscribers.

most game publishing companies are, believe it or not, in it for the money.

That's fine.

Make the next game do both. Allow the majority of servers to run on 'easy' mode and give the rest of us servers with more hardcore rules.

Hey, if those servers take off, they can always add more. If they don't? Merge them down. But as money is the guiding principle, I can't see why you can't have both. They do it w/ PvP, why not expand that?

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

I think EQ1 was slightly excessive on some of the camp times, but if it's TOO easy, people will be max level in 2 weeks, say "what do I do now?" and quit. At least with EQ (prior to the easiness of the past few years) you felt accomplished.

To be able to run into someone today, and then again a month later and neither of you is yet max level, that creates the atmosphere a game should have.

 

[akugami]

so you want it to be EQ Fail?

Challenge in EQ1 was an exercise in marathon button mashing and days long mob

Nowhere near the click fest that is Rift. I didn't find EQ1 to be too bad in the button mashing department.

camp fests. I understand what you are asking for tho, make gaining of levels and
gear more meaningful. Early EQ1 was more of a tedium-fest, nothing like spending hours

I think there should be a progression where you can "earn" gear much like the plaques/tokens used in Rift and WoW. However, the best gear, even for group level gear should be rare drops off rare named mobs. Basically I can get a 500AC armor off the token vendor but I can get a 550AC armor off of a rare named mob that I'd have to camp and hope for it to drop said armor piece. You have your instant gratification but the hardcore players will still have their old school content of camping for the best gear.

just to get your damn corpse(sometimes multiples and big exp lose) just so you can get

Get a group? And if you had a group, you probably went into an area that was too tough for you. The world is dangerous! You can't walk from the newbie zone at level 15 to the highest zone like you can in Rift. Personally, I like it this way. Not necessarily long corpse runs, which are a pain in the ass, but the fact that there is a danger and there are consequences to dying.

back to (paying) to play the game again. Never again will i spend 20hrs sitting at the computer to camp one room in the hopes of finally getting the damn J-boots to drop

As someone else said, you made that choice. No one forced you to camp J-boots. This is speaking as someone who camped J-boots mind you.

i hope some day a new mmog will come out with some real challenge. Meaningful quests and challenges instead of the mash buttons 1234, run over there. repeat x 1000

maybe it will be the new starwars game that moves the mmog ball forward a few notches?

You want real challenge but then hate death penalties? I'm not saying death exp penalties are the best way of going about it but there has to be some tangible sort of penalty for screwing up. EQ2 didn't have quite as harsh of a penalty as EQ1 but it's still more of a penalty than WoW or Rift.

Again, there has to be a real penalty and not just 5-10 minutes of your time and a small amount of gold. In EQ1 and EQ2 if you died, you lost a lot of time due to the exp hit. But you had an out. If you had friends, you could minimize said loss. There was a penalty but there was also a way to minimize it. It's a very good system to be honest. Penalize players, but also allow them to help each other minimize any pain.

 

[nageov3t]

vanilla WoW leveling felt about perfect to me. it took me 4-5 months to hit max level (60?) with my first character, even with no death penalties. granted, I was playing mostly casually, bouncing between several alts, and messing around with crafting, but outside of one or two "dead zones" (where I was too high level for quests in one zone but too low for the next, and ended up just grinding on whatever level-appropriate mob dropped good vendor trash) it felt pretty right.

most casual WoW players I know never even saw max level (my 15 year-old cousin was actually amazed that my sister and I had multiple max-level characters and raided... he felt pretty badass at level 47 before his mom refused to pay for the game anymore)

I'm playing Rift now and leveling feels a bit too fast... I question how much of that is quest rewards giving too much XP or the fact that you can't walk 20' without gaining half a level because you're fighting through mobs every step of the way (plus unavoidable rifts, incursions, etc)

EQ, otoh, felt nightmarishly slow... less because of death penalties and more because of kill stealing, fighting with a dozen other players for every single mob, disruptive players training mobs, etc.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

One thing I will say is that I never liked the no-drop/no-trade system. Since I only played EQ I have no idea if no-trade items are par for the course for MMOs. Are they?

But I did reroll a character on EQ's Firiona Vie after a few years to get away from that shit. And guess what? Even though you can buy all kinds of gear, it doesn't cause everyone to be running around in full endgame gear. No one wants to sell anything for less than a shit load of plat lol.

 

[skace]

vanilla WoW leveling felt about perfect to me. it took me 4-5 months to hit max level (60?) with my first character, even with no death penalties. granted, I was playing mostly casually, bouncing between several alts, and messing around with crafting, but outside of one or two "dead zones" (where I was too high level for quests in one zone but too low for the next, and ended up just grinding on whatever level-appropriate mob dropped good vendor trash) it felt pretty right.

Vanilla WoW was roughly just as fast as Rift - however with a few more levels. I did it in under a month in both games.

EQ feels slower and potentially too slow, but it also managed to break the "lets just rush for end level and then worry about equipment / tradeskills / etc then" mentality.

 

[brandonb]

Yes, no-drop is very common, or the gear is bind on equip. Mainly all the junk gear is bind on equip, and anything worth wearing is no drop. On top of it, all gear has a level, you have to be this level to use it. Most quest hubs (keep in mind you grind quests all day) give you your upgrades that are no drop.

That makes everything very cookie cutter and boring as far as gear goes... No such thing as a hand me down, or a twink item, or even trading money for items.

Every lvl 15 caster will have the exact same no drop gear. Their gear will be upgraded with the next quest hubs at lvl 16. No point in even dying the armor since its going to be a waste of money and be replaced instantly anyways so you have a mismatch of colors within 10 minutes anyhow.

Repeat every single level until max level.

Every 15 mage looks and has the exact same armor as any other 15 mage.
Every 45 warrior looks and has the exact same armor as any other 45 warrior.

etc etc etc etc.

 

[skace]

One thing I will say is that I never liked the no-drop/no-trade system. Since I only played EQ I have no idea if no-trade items are par for the course for MMOs. Are they?

But I did reroll a character on EQ's Firiona Vie after a few years to get away from that shit. And guess what? Even though you can buy all kinds of gear, it doesn't cause everyone to be running around in full endgame gear. No one wants to sell anything for less than a shit load of plat lol.

No-Drop/No-Trade was non-existant when EQ first started and was more of an afterthought. However nearly every MMO that has come out since has adopted the idea. Often adding in things such as "Soulbinding" and other ridiculous ways to prevent twinking and or market flooding.

Personally, I'd rather see some sort of item decay and skill/stat/level pre-requisites to items. Than the current idea of soulbinding. Or maybe difficult quests that allow you to unbind items (which eventually re-bind to a new owner).

 

[Ross Ridge]

Every 15 mage looks and has the exact same armor as any other 15 mage.
Every 45 warrior looks and has the exact same armor as any other 45 warrior.

Just out of curiosity, are you refering to any specific MMORPG, or just most MMORPGs in general?

 

[Linflas]

Can't put those 2 things together can you? You couldn't get through UO's content because it was too hard. You got through Rift's content too quickly because it was too easy. Death is a major aspect of that.

Some people here are going to enjoy the fact that you quit UO instead of sticking around. You are the kind of gamer who isn't willing to think or plan. You were probably exploring way beyond your means in UO in gear you couldn't afford to replace.

I'd often explore in UO in just a robe and a lumberjack axe. Then I'd scribe the locations I'd want to revisit so I could visit them from my house and get back to them quickly. But that requires planning, doesn't it?

IIRC UO used recall "Runes" that you could set to recall you to almost anyplace in the world. They were objects that could be fastened down in an owned house and we used to put them in our vendor houses so people could use them as a convenient hub to get places. Also, working from memories of long ago here, when you died in UO you instantly appeared as a ghost in a B/W (OooooOOOoooo) world much like in WoW except you were right there where your corpse was. Your corpse at that point was freely lootable by any player that happened by or the PK's that killed you in the first place. You had to run to the nearest town as a ghost to get a res then run back naked except for the gray Res Robe you would be wearing after a res. The "death penalty" such as it was was really the loss of whatever you were carrying or had equipped. I know they changed a lot of that once they came out with the parallel non PvP worlds but that is how it worked when I left when EQ released.

 

[Linflas]

I am currently still playing EQ2 and for me it has the balance of risk/reward I am looking for, has decent gear available for the solo/non-hard core players, and much better gear available for the raiders and hard core groups. In addition they have some of the best player housing and storage options available of any game I have played and a vendor system that I much prefer to the auction crap in WoW. As for death consequences I like the balance they have which has both a small financial cost and an exp debit to be repayed which means I am not afraid to try new/risky things due to fear of losing hours of exp yet not so inconsequential that I completely ignore the risk.

 

[nageov3t]

Vanilla WoW was roughly just as fast as Rift - however with a few more levels. I did it in under a month in both games.

there's no way.

you "could" hit 60 within a month in World of Warcraft at launch.

most people didn't, however... in Rift, on the other hand, it seems like most people hit max level within weeks.

 

[skace]

there's no way.

you "could" hit 60 within a month in World of Warcraft at launch.

most people didn't, however... in Rift, on the other hand, it seems like most people hit max level within weeks.

I don't understand. You are saying there is no way, but then you are also saying it is possible? Are you saying it was possible but that you don't believe I did it??

WoW and Rift 1-50 feel pretty similar. WoW just made you go the additional 50-60 that Rift did not. Shrug, it is hard to compare 2005 to 2011 though.

Also, the EXP was modified in Rift after the first month. So if you are basing it on the first month, then I am not. That was broken.

 

[SZLiao214]

My first wow 60 took like 10 days of play time on a pvp server. Rift took me just over 3.

 

[nageov3t]

I don't understand. You are saying there is no way, but then you are also saying it is possible? Are you saying it was possible but that you don't believe I did it??

WoW and Rift 1-50 feel pretty similar. WoW just made you go the additional 50-60 that Rift did not. Shrug, it is hard to compare 2005 to 2011 though.

I'm saying that, on average, there's no way that even 1-50 in WoW is as short as 1-50 in Rift (at least not at launch... pre-LFG system, battlegrounds, heirloom gear, etc).

there will always be some players who are significantly ahead of the curve and whose prime limitations are the amount of hours in a day, but the fact that one "could" level up from 1-60 in a week in WoW isn't reflective of the average experience.