EQNext?

[stormlord]

Originally Posted by Taryth [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Ok . . .so content at the VERY END of the game is difficult . . .wait a sec, you mean just like WoW and EQ2? Did you think the endgame dungeons/raiding were super easy for those games, too? And guess what people call those two games?

The entire game up to lvl 50 is grinding quests that tell you EXACTLY where to go. They highlight your map. You are handed gear almost every other quest. The game isn't anything before 50, and then at 50 it manages to simply be more guided grinding along a single path of progression.
That is the definition of an easy, lame ass, shallow game.

I played from b1-b7, that was all the "preview" (read: playing everything except endgame) I needed to form my opinion.


But go ahead and assume I haven't played it yet. Because it's just so good that nobody can dislike it, right? I'm not paying $50 to find out that I don't like the last level of the game (ok, I'm sorry, the last FOUR levels . . .I didn't include the other three because they'd be exactly the same as the first 46.) I don't even like raiding, which is why I never focus on endgame as a measurement of a game's quality.

It's hard to judge a game, like whether it has meat on its bones or not. Some people like one thing while they hate another and their friend is the complete opposite.

I'll have to point to Dungeons and Dragons because it's one of the modern MMORPGs I've played, as an example.

Things I like about it:
1) The quest dungeons can be seen differently depending on class, at least at first, and are fun to go through attempting to get better at it
2) The places look good (gfx) and at times even feel good - just to be there and watch things
3) The voice-overs for quest characters are interesting and I enjoyed watching hte scripted things unfold in front of me while I hear explanations in the background for what's happening
4) I hear there're some good stories out htere (mission packs) but some of them have to be purchased via the favor points. As for my experiences, I found myself sometimes growing attached to characters that were either in quests or just meandering aimlessly and saying the same hting but somehow it inspired in me something that's hard to put into words. It's nice to see NPCs that're not for quests that stand around or sit and at least have a few words to say. Having none to see would have been worse in my view. I'd just wander around looking at them and hailing them (clicking em) to see what they say. I'd just sit there in a place wondering what the designers was thinking, and it feel almost special. That's gotta be a good thing.
5) It adds replayability that you can combine classes for 20 different levels, so you could have a whole lot of flexibility - fun to play with it
6) Theere's a lot for a player to do that's not paying
7) If you level all the way up to 20 you can get a bonus to new characters and it's cumulative. Each class has its own version. This feature adds a degree of replayability.
8) Character creation is kind of fun if you know what you're doing. I always did customized characters. The appearance section can make some different looking characters even with the same race, but in some cases it's hard to get the look you want. But it's not hard to produce a character that looks unique. Players will piece together their character as they learn. Sometimes they'll make a new one to get benefits from the different races. But you can change most things you do to your character even at level 20 so mistakes are generally affordable.

Things I didn't like:
1) I hated being rushed through quests because they're not fun unless i can be a part of it and go at my own pace but unfortunately when you join groups in DnD you're almost always rushed through it - very big major disappointment. It's sad that I have to play solo to enjoy the quests. It's antithetical.
2) No player-made content like player-cities or player-homes. For me, this is a major negative.
3) The items are kind of boring and the level limits are restrictive. If the items were at least more interesting the level limits wouldn't be as much of a bother. I much prefer Diablo's item system or EQ's because there's more stat variety, and in EQ's case many items don't have a lvl limit either. To sum it up it felt to me like most of the items were homogenous, or closely tied. Just not fun.
4) Quest areas don't change much. While named will sometimes appear or not it doesn't really change how the area plays or feels. There's just not much variety from one play through to another until you do a completely different area. I wish there was more randomness like in Diablo. Too much randomness can be a bad thing, but I think having none can also be bad.
5) The instancing is overused. This is my opinion, but the cities are the only places that feel traveled. Every other place I've seen only exists within the group, and temporarily at that. There's no persistance or feeling of continuity. While it's nice to not have to fight over things with other players, it kind of ruins the idea that I'm in a world with other people. I wish there was a better in-between. You would think with all of the smart people out there that they could figure out a way to do this without making it feel compromised.
6) The chat window is hard to use. I can't begin to explain it, but I always ended up saying things in the wrong channel or missing something because I was using it wrong. It was cumbersome and not fun.
7) Not much fluff. No fishing, no pottery, no houses, no boating, no chess boards to play chess, etc. The game is pretty much what you have in front of you. It's all game and no fluff. It feels kind of shallow. I like playing games, it's a big reason I play, but sometimes I just want to waste time.

Does DnD have meat on its bones? Depends who you ask. IMHO, it has some, but a modern version of EQ in its best days would beat it, and if you added extra fluff it'd be no contest. This is my opinion. I'm not saying everyone feels this way. I have my own set of preferences. DnD is an ok game, but no extras.

[Sparkin]

Originally Posted by Taryth [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

But go ahead and assume I haven't played it yet. Because it's just so good that nobody can dislike it, right? I'm not paying $50 to find out that I don't like the last level of the game (ok, I'm sorry, the last FOUR levels . . .I didn't include the other three because they'd be exactly the same as the first 46.) I don't even like raiding, which is why I never focus on endgame as a measurement of a game's quality.

Good post. This highlights exactly why pretty much all newer MMORPG's are failing for my taste. It has become far too widely accepted, by both players and developers, that all the leveling in these games should be a cookie cutter cakewalk of quests or w/e to the max level. If I ever invest a lot of time in another new MMO, it'll probably be because first and foremost the devs attempted to have that game actually start at level 1, not the cap.

Can't really say anything the OP listed sounds good, just my opinion. I want a game that brings real innovation, not more of the same things that everybody else is doing because WoW rakes in ridiculous cash by doing them.

[redghosthunter]

this

Originally Posted by Knuckle [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Sony spins out shit products like nobodies business.

[stormlord]

In this post I'm going to mention something I hope sony doesn't do with its future games. This assumes that sony survives the hacker attacks.

After SOF was done, UF came out. UF was a departure with respect to its high dps, high hitpoint mobs. It frustrated a number of people. SOF, by comparison, was a few notches easier. But that wasn't the worst of it. In that time period, I was still level level 80 and considering going up to 85 in the coming months.

Let me say before I start criticizing OMMs/Boomerangs that I enjoyed the OMMs. I've made a couple of posts in the past week about playing chanters in the OMMs. It was fun and reminded me what dungeon crawls were all about. I don't want it to appear that I only see black or white. That wouldn't be true. What OMMs did for me was to highlight how good Eq could be, but not inside the small world of OMMs. If you like breasts, as many men do, imagine a new game that comes out with a smiling monkey on the plastic cover and she has well shaped plump breasts. For a moment you're reminded how much you like breasts, but then it dawns on you that she's a monkey!!!! This is how I felt about OMMs. They reminded me of things I liked, but OMMs are not EQ!

So let me begin my tirade and let my furor unleash...

OMMs/Boomerangs were a departure just like UF was. But they were in the opposite direction. They were like monster missions, but even more convenient and repetitive. You could do OMMs in the comfort of POK. You could die over and over. Your gear was ignored. Your AA's were ignored. You were somebody else in the missions. So you're roleplaying a character that's roleplaying somebody else. Deja vu. And there wasn't much to see, either. Just 3 OMMs to do over and over again. So 3 missions... that's why it gets repetitive. You do it every day to get points to buy gear. I don't remember monster missions all that well, but they probably were the start of this. It's a pathetic shadow of what makes EQ the game. It's nothing compared to SOF.

The number one thing is that instead of playing through SOF from 75 to 85, or in that level range, players were in OMMs or Boomerangs. I think the intent of these was to level up players so they could enter UF with their friends. I think the intent was sincere and kindly. But I think it was misguided.

First off, the bean counters probably wanted more people buying UF. So the faster people could enter UF, the better, in their minds. Second, it might have been cheaper to make OMMs than it would have been to make SOF accessible to a smaller population of 75-85 players. But in this I am not saying it was cheap to make OMMs and Boomerangs. Boomerangs, though, would encourage people to buy UF. But I don't want to generalize too much.

What I am calling for is a SOF that would have been considerably easier. To understand the logic, all you need to know is that when UF came out a lot of people migrated to UF and SOF zones were left virtually empty. No, they were not empty, but they were a shadow of the days preceding them. So what do people who're leveling up do then if the zones are nearly empty? They don't do SOF. They do OMMs or Boomerangs. To remedy this you must make SOF easier so that it can be done by less people with lower levels.

What I would rather have seen is an increase in player offense/defense BEFORE UF was released. Then tune UF for this new offense/defense. OR just go back and lower the defense/offense of all mobs in SOF. Whichever is easier. If done properly, SOF would be eaiser for players that're leveling up and they could have played through SOF to catch up instead of playing the OMMs and Boomerangs.

Perhaps another answer is to make dynamic zones that actively respond to population over time. In this you measure the average population over a given period of time. So maybe if a zone is mostly empty for a couple weeks then the mobs become easier to kill. This way SOF would be easier after players have migrated to UF. Another thing you might consider when scaling difficulty is hte average level of the players in a zone.

None of this addresses unrelated problems I might have had with SOF itself. As i've mentioned in other posts, I hate the reliance on allah for information. With SOF, the reliance was strong as ever. To make the cored gear you pretty much had to look it up on the net or ignore the statistical differences between things. Either way, EQ wholly flunks as a modern game in this regard. It's a dinosaur.

It also doesn't address the empire of the triangle (healer, tank, dps). The early game in 1999 from 1 to 35 or thereabout is a good example of EQ's best days. That's my opinion. Back then most melees could tank somewhat. There was a feeling that you had time to recover from mistakes. Conversely, when things went wrong in the later game it ended fast. There was little time to correct. This narrowing of the gates was meant, I think, to challenge us as we gain levels. But I don't think it's fun. In my view, having time to think about an answer and executing it is better than having a high expectation with high chance for failure (for the less vigilant) and it's better than not having any challenge at all. So right here I admit I do not like high risk activities. But this does not mean I do not want challenge. I want a thinking mans game. I'm thinking something much closer to turn-based gameplay than real-time. Perhaps just give us a lot of hitpoints and flexible skills.

OMMs and Boomerangs, like UF and other things, showed me over the years that sony was putting out content that had lower and lower quality. It was almost as though the death of EQ was happening over a period of time instead of all at once and could be seen by looking at these signs. This is also a signature of mudflation. I don't know how sony is going to attack mudflation in the future, but it's my hope they do not repeat the past. Do not do this again, if you can help it. While I played the OMMs, what I really wanted was to be out there in SOF. But there just weren't enough groups and of those that were out there, they did not have enough HP/level to do the SOF content. In fact, I remember grouping with a 83 SK and some others with a couple mercs in our group. Even with that setup we wiped to named in Tosk. Inevitably, I ended up doing OMMs and most others did too. It was sad because OMMs and Boomerangs are so opposite to the spirit of EQ. They're in their own isolated worlds, with their own isolated gameplay. It's like they're an outsider that doesn't belong, almost like a cancer.

Don't let that cancer grow it's causing blindness in the dying patient. I guess it's pointless to argue over thus with respect to EQ or even EQ2, but it's not too late for future games. Maybe what I say here has meaning, maybe not. But I will keep these feelings and many others close to me. I will share them when I can, in the hopes that future games, when they fall, do not stumble in the same manner. Fight mudflation. Fight decline. Fight the cancers that result from them. Live. Don't give up until your last breath.