Simple QoL fixes that would not jeopardize classic?

[Jimjam]

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

Or in my case when I went to do the final soulfire turn in I thought I had enough faction and did not. He should just say you are not ready and spit the items back. So I totally back something like this

Current mechanic encourages you to engage in dialogue with NPCs instead of blindly spamming hand ins. + immersion +++ working as intended.

[Gloomlord]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I was CSR back in the classic era and they definitely weren't doing things like pet exp etc. due to subscriber dollars. You seem to not recall the actual history of EQ and that this was essentially the first legitimate MMO ever made...no one was making game design decisions based around subscriber numbers (the original devs didn't even think they'd get like 100k subscribers, they thought this was going to be a minor niche game played by some D&D nerds). They designed the game the way they did upfront and then made balance changes as things went along. You're just not correct when it comes to classic era EQ.

Subscriber-based game design decisions didn't start really coming into play until like Luclin. Things they've done in the 2020s with a FTP and dying game have literally no applicability or relevance to classic era EQ and "what they would've done" lol

Didn't they say the same thing about WoW back in the 2000s? That only a niche would play it and that it wouldn't be that successful?

These are just lies. Of course EverQuest was about getting drawing out subscriber money by any means necessary.

I mean, I'm playing this game regularly for the experience, but I have no qualms admitting a lot of this game is extremely dull and monotonous grinding that exists for the sole purpose of keeping people in the game longer.

[cd288]

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

Didn't they say the same thing about WoW back in the 2000s? That only a niche would play it and that it wouldn't be that successful?

These are just lies. Of course EverQuest was about getting drawing out subscriber money by any means necessary.

I mean, I'm playing this game regularly for the experience, but I have no qualms admitting a lot of this game is extremely dull and monotonous grinding that exists for the sole purpose of keeping people in the game longer.

Nope, with WoW they knew they had a potential audience and definitely made design decisions around trying to substantially increase their already high projected subscribers.

There's literally no logical sense saying devs from 1999 lied when they said they had no idea EQ would be as popular as it was. it had literally never been done before in a true MMO fashion. Shit they didn't even have enough bandwidth for the number of subscribers they had at launch. UO had about 120k subscribers, and take this quote about the devs' expectations vs that from the PC Gamer article: "But EverQuest was a cutting-edge game that required a computer with a 3D graphics card, a somewhat novel piece of hardware in 1999. The team would be excited if it sold even a quarter as many copies."

As CSR we were privy to some of the ongoing internal discussions about potential game changes and not once in the early days of EQ did I ever hear something being done with the goal of increasing subscribers. As we've seen in the height of WoW days, the way to increase subscribers isn't to make the game more grueling like EQ (and make design changes mid-game that just make things way more annoying), it's to make it easier and more straight forward, fully soloable until end game, etc.

You're looking at all of this through the lens of 2023. In 1999, no one knew what kind of a cash cow MMOs could be. The monthly subscription was basically proposed primarily as an idea to offset server costs to SOE given how expensive it was to run an online game back then. Devs thought it would be a somewhat successful RPG with less than 100k subscribers. They just built the game they wanted to see at the time, not with "how do we keep subscribers grinding and paying"

[BigPlays]

So here is what I am trying to figure out. I always hear that the devs never intended people to play the way they do, sitting at camps for hours on end. Let's take LGuk for example. From what people say the devs thought during the interviews (I have not watched any of the interviews so I am going by word of mouth from the people who did) was that players would just adventure through the dungeon, get to the mob (say arch magi) kill him them just move on.

If that is the case, it would take forever to level if you were not constantly pulling mobs and you were just making a bee line to the camp (ignoring mobs off the beaten path)

If people just did that, then yeah it would keep people playing (and paying).

It is like we are all playing EQ wrong according to the devs.

[cd288]

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

So here is what I am trying to figure out. I always hear that the devs never intended people to play the way they do, sitting at camps for hours on end. Let's take LGuk for example. From what people say the devs thought during the interviews (I have not watched any of the interviews so I am going by word of mouth from the people who did) was that players would just adventure through the dungeon, get to the mob (say arch magi) kill him them just move on.

If that is the case, it would take forever to level if you were not constantly pulling mobs and you were just making a bee line to the camp (ignoring mobs off the beaten path)

If people just did that, then yeah it would keep people playing (and paying).

It is like we are all playing EQ wrong according to the devs.

How old are you? And I don't ask that in a condescending way, but you seem to not have either been around for the classic era or been much more than a kid in the several years leading up to EQ release. Which would explain why you have this weird fixation that the devs designed EQ to keep subscribers paying.

EQ was basically a 3D, online version of MUDs/D&D. In MUDs and D&D, you get together as a group and go on adventures crawling through dungeons. As previously shown, the devs thought they might get like 30k people to play EQ max. As a result, if you open a bunch of servers there is plenty ability for a group to get together and do a crawl through the whole dungeon. Sure, that might have taken people awhile to level, but that's not why the game was designed that way.

And, again, as already stated, the subscription fee wasn't even originally intended as a huge profit driver. It was there to offset the at the time very substantial cost of running the servers etc. Once the game really exploded and subscription cost became a big cash cow for SOE, you saw them start making changes that could arguably be geared towards keeping people subscribed and stuck in the game (basically around the time of Luclin release).

[loramin]

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

So here is what I am trying to figure out. I always hear that the devs never intended people to play the way they do, sitting at camps for hours on end. Let's take LGuk for example. From what people say the devs thought during the interviews (I have not watched any of the interviews so I am going by word of mouth from the people who did) was that players would just adventure through the dungeon, get to the mob (say arch magi) kill him them just move on.

Exactly. You'd hang out at the zone entrance until you formed a group, and then that group would start moving through the dungeon, trying to find a mob that drops something cool.

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

If that is the case, it would take forever to level if you were not constantly pulling mobs and you were just making a bee line to the camp (ignoring mobs off the beaten path)

Not at all: camping gets you loot, not more XP. You get the same XP whether you kill five mobs respawning four times, or whether you wander around killing twenty different mobs.

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

It is like we are all playing EQ wrong according to the devs.

You have to remember that when the game came out, no one knew the arch magi even existed, let alone that he dropped the Shining Metallic Robes and spawned at loc 1184, -832. Plus, even if you had that loc, there wasn't a map available to show you where that loc was.

It took a lot of time adventuring in Guk before people figured the details out, and then it took an even longer time before they added that info online. Also keep in mind there wasn't just one wiki, but many different sites (with separate, piecemeal data), that data often was inconsistent (or flat-out inaccurate), and many players didn't even read those sites at all ... some actually considered it cheating!

So, while you can learn just about anything by checking the wiki today, most EQ info took years to become common knowledge on live ... and you know what happened every year? A new expansion came out, with brand new zones/mobs/items.

I'm not going to pretend that on live no one ever camped a specific mob: they absolutely did. But the ratio of people "exploring" vs farming was drastically different on live. The developers back then certainly knew what they were doing ... they just didn't account for how much more game knowledge we'd have decades later.

[Gloomlord]

Okay, but how do you explain the grindiness of EQ if it wasn't about a subscriber treadmill?

Just take a look at some bottlenecks in this game. People will sit for hours on end waiting for a rare spawn and/or a rare item drop.

How was not about drawing the longevity of a game, and thus the longevity of a subscription?

[Jimjam]

The longevity is to keep players stuck on content until the next expac is ready to drop.

The devs had to really rush dev of expacs as even with the timesinks the hardcore could rush thru content.

Also scarcity of rares made them feel more valuable to players.

[Eyry]

Key ring please

[cd288]

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

Okay, but how do you explain the grindiness of EQ if it wasn't about a subscriber treadmill?

Just take a look at some bottlenecks in this game. People will sit for hours on end waiting for a rare spawn and/or a rare item drop.

How was not about drawing the longevity of a game, and thus the longevity of a subscription?

Again, you're looking at 1999 through 2023 glasses. Nothing they did in the design of the game in 1999 was for a subscriber treadmill. They didn't even think they'd get much more than 20-30k subscribers. You're forgetting this had never really been done before; there was no concept of "grindiness" or any of this other modern day MMO parlance/ideas/strategy...they just created a game and threw a bunch of ideas together and watched what happened (making balance changes later as things progressed post-launch).

The rare drops are because that's how they wanted the game to work. They thought people should work hard for rewards in this game.