While I can agree, in principle, that for EQ1 the game did not 'start at the endgame', it was definitley more fun at the end than at the beginning...at least for me. Why? Becuase at 50 I had so many spells and abilities; alot of hitpoints and mana all of which made for a far greater variation in gameplay than having the 3 or 4 abilities you had at level 7, etc. Fights were longer, you were further away from the safety of towns and your bindpoint, etc.
So while the game did not start at 50, 50 was more fun than 40 which was more fun than at 30 which was more fun than at 20. Each time you got that new spell, new ability, when you could cast a couple extra spells because your manapool was larger, that you could take a few extra hits because your gear and hitspoints were highter...all this made the game more fun the higher you level.
And yes, there were the raids at the end which were far more fun than group content.
Vandraad said:While I can agree, in principle, that for EQ1 the game did not 'start at the endgame', it was definitley more fun at the end than at the beginning...at least for me. Why? Becuase at 50 I had so many spells and abilities; alot of hitpoints and mana all of which made for a far greater variation in gameplay than having the 3 or 4 abilities you had at level 7, etc. Fights were longer, you were further away from the safety of towns and your bindpoint, etc.
So while the game did not start at 50, 50 was more fun than 40 which was more fun than at 30 which was more fun than at 20. Each time you got that new spell, new ability, when you could cast a couple extra spells because your manapool was larger, that you could take a few extra hits because your gear and hitspoints were highter...all this made the game more fun the higher you level.
And yes, there were the raids at the end which were far more fun than group content.
I'm the exact opposite end of the spectrum. Once I hit the end game and realized the only way my character would be able to progress further was doing raid content, I left the game as it was my least favorite way to play.
Thorndeep said:Vandraad said:While I can agree, in principle, that for EQ1 the game did not 'start at the endgame', it was definitley more fun at the end than at the beginning...at least for me. Why? Becuase at 50 I had so many spells and abilities; alot of hitpoints and mana all of which made for a far greater variation in gameplay than having the 3 or 4 abilities you had at level 7, etc. Fights were longer, you were further away from the safety of towns and your bindpoint, etc.
So while the game did not start at 50, 50 was more fun than 40 which was more fun than at 30 which was more fun than at 20. Each time you got that new spell, new ability, when you could cast a couple extra spells because your manapool was larger, that you could take a few extra hits because your gear and hitspoints were highter...all this made the game more fun the higher you level.
And yes, there were the raids at the end which were far more fun than group content.
I'm the exact opposite end of the spectrum. Once I hit the end game and realized the only way my character would be able to progress further was doing raid content, I left the game as it was my least favorite way to play.
And do you know what is great about what I said and what you said? It is that we are both right, for ourselves.
Vandraad said:Thorndeep said:Vandraad said:While I can agree, in principle, that for EQ1 the game did not 'start at the endgame', it was definitley more fun at the end than at the beginning...at least for me. Why? Becuase at 50 I had so many spells and abilities; alot of hitpoints and mana all of which made for a far greater variation in gameplay than having the 3 or 4 abilities you had at level 7, etc. Fights were longer, you were further away from the safety of towns and your bindpoint, etc.
So while the game did not start at 50, 50 was more fun than 40 which was more fun than at 30 which was more fun than at 20. Each time you got that new spell, new ability, when you could cast a couple extra spells because your manapool was larger, that you could take a few extra hits because your gear and hitspoints were highter...all this made the game more fun the higher you level.
And yes, there were the raids at the end which were far more fun than group content.
I'm the exact opposite end of the spectrum. Once I hit the end game and realized the only way my character would be able to progress further was doing raid content, I left the game as it was my least favorite way to play.
And do you know what is great about what I said and what you said? It is that we are both right, for ourselves.
I couldn't agree with you more!
philo said:Just for clarity, the amount of people who participated in end game content was irrelevant
Maybe it could have been changed or improved to be more attractive to regular players, but if you want to retain players, surely you don't focus on something that most players aren't doing and hope they will start doing it?
I stopped playing EQ partly because later expansions (PoP and maybe even before) were given boring 'normal' content and concentrated more and more on the raid/gear cycle, treating normal content like a grind just to raise your level/AAs/faction so you could raid more.
philo said:The amount of content and the way it was implemented is why the focus was on end game. There were simply a greater number of playable hours of raid content than lower tier content. Largely because of the way the encounters were itemized to encourage replayability.
Doing 2 hours (or just a few minutes) of raid content over and over isn't really 'replayability' to me. A couple of hours of raid content repeated 100 times doesn't really count as a greater number of playable hours either.
philo said:EQ was known for catering to the high end in an attempt to not lose players due to lack of content. That content is still there an expansion or two down the line for players to play through when it isn't end game content anymore. It is still valuable content because of the trickle down effect.
I'm not sure old raid content becomes more viable or interesting to most players even as level cap increases. An expansion doesn't suddenly make players enjoy organising 23 other people or make them want to repeat raid encounters 100 times to get all their friends a good shot at getting some of the raid drops they will need for the next raid. Once you can take a group and explore new (higher level) zones in the expansion, you are probably getting gear that's as good as those previous max level raid drops anyway. I suppose you *might* try and take an above-level single group through an old raid encounter, but I didn't see that much.
As I've said, I did do some raiding and I enjoyed the content (the first few times), but the associated stresses were not worth it when I enjoyed other aspects of the game more. Repeating it over and over in order to earn DKP to get geared enough just to move on to the next (and even more stressful) raid just turned me off.
philo said:Games still struggle to find this balance today. That is why systems like AAs and progeny have been instated as further alternatives.
AAs and Progeny and similar systems are popular because they are more of a horizontal progression and more accessible to normal players.
Raiding was catering for a small minority and the majority would leave when it was the only thing left to do and the scene became more and more elitist and stressful. You had to join a powerful guild and join in the competitive shenanigans to keep playing and most people didn't enjoy that.
@Philo I'm somewhat playing devil's advocate here, and I really hope you don't take my waffle as some kind of attack. I want to try and explain that a lot of people - and I really believe it's the large majority of players, though I fully admit I don't know for certain - just weren't and aren't very interested in doing the traditional raid thing. It is a very different way of playing the game compared to grouping and exploring, gathering and crafting, chatting and trading, socialising, role-playing and other 'normal' RPG stuff. This is not because raiding isn't done by 'lesser' players and that they don't 'get it'. They just didn't/don't enjoy it.
I am not suggesting Pantheon should not have raids, I'm suggesting it should not be treated as it was in old school MMORPGs. I'm suggesting it should not be treated as the 'best' way of presenting content and be focused on so heavily, but should just be a 'different' way and let's maybe do it differently in Pantheon?
1) We don't have to wait until end game to do raids. Let's have some multi-group encounters at regular intervals along the level range. Let's try and involve players that aren't the sort to race to end game.
2) We don't have to make raids so gear-centric. Let's not make raids all about the gear drops and let's not exclude players that don't have great gear. Let's make them more about the enjoyment of the encounter and the skill of intra- and inter-group interaction.
3) Let's not make raids so guild-centric. Let's make it so PUGs might actually *enjoy* seeing another group in a dungeon, because they could join together to take on the boss 'raid' encounter.
4) Let's not look at 'raiding' through the narrow prism of Classic EQ or similar. There are other ways to do it that might make raid encounters just as challenging, but with less stress and elitism.
5) Etc. There have been lots of great ideas regarding improving 'raiding' in this forum.
I would love to enjoy multi-group content in Pantheon. I don't have the answers to all the related issues and I know it's a very complex subject. In this, as in many things, I give my opinion and then I Trust In Pantheon (and in VR).
I'm hoping (and I am seeing some evidence) that VR are approaching the concept with open minds and appreciating that, of course those hardcore classic EQ raiders have very valid and valuable opinions and experience regarding multi-group content, *but* it isn't *just* them that have valid opinions about it or should be the only ones catered to.
To relate it back to the OP: I am not a 'casual' player. I put *way* too many hours into games. I do appreciate 'the joy of effort'. I want a challenging (even punishing) Pantheon in many ways and I don't even mind a grind. I think most here will agree that too much 'casualisation' of MMORPGs is a large part of what has watered down and spoiled the genre, making it unchallenging and unsatisfying, *but* overly focusing on the hardcore aspects of old school MMORPGs, like the way raiding was, would, I believe, be equally disastrous.
I'm confident Pantheon can be a game that is challenging and satisfying to old school players like me - and even the hardcore - *and* to more casual players without compromising or focusing too much in either direction so as to ruin it for anyone.
For me the things that kept me coming back to EQ in early days were the friends. I never really had a big push to advance unless i needed to keep up with friends or so i could help friends out. Things that kept me going were how long the levels used to take. When they added AA's there was always something to do. The raids i liked doing were the long rediculous raids. Like NTOV that in the early days took multiple days to finish. Or doing PoG on a saturday cause it just took so long.
Lets not confuse a time sink with "effort" or "challenging" content. The effort/challenge of P99Green is competing for resources against other players, which is trash for a "modern" Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (but it is what EverQuest was, and we get that).
Just because something takes a long time doesn't mean its difficult - I have several 50+ characters on P99 Red and Blue and very little effort was needed because there is a much lower population (very little resource competition).
If you aren't lvl 20+ yet, you haven't done a "real" corpse run. I don't think you even lose exp on death until lvl 5... at which point you lose 2-3 hours of your time. Lets not confuse a time sink with effort or challenging content.
Vandraad said:While I can agree, in principle, that for EQ1 the game did not 'start at the endgame', it was definitley more fun at the end than at the beginning...at least for me. Why? Becuase at 50 I had so many spells and abilities; alot of hitpoints and mana all of which made for a far greater variation in gameplay than having the 3 or 4 abilities you had at level 7, etc. Fights were longer, you were further away from the safety of towns and your bindpoint, etc.
So while the game did not start at 50, 50 was more fun than 40 which was more fun than at 30 which was more fun than at 20. Each time you got that new spell, new ability, when you could cast a couple extra spells because your manapool was larger, that you could take a few extra hits because your gear and hitspoints were highter...all this made the game more fun the higher you level.
And yes, there were the raids at the end which were far more fun than group content.
I wholeheartedly agree Vandraad. The "journey" to "end game" wasn't nearly as fun as being high level and exploring areas that you missed out on because you were too low level or unable to go invis, adventuring cities your are KoS in or maybe farming their guards, grouping and raiding for epic quests, farming for that special item for hours once you were able to solo it (which gave you 0 exp, but it didn't matter because you no longer needed exp) or making an uber twink. That was the fun part of EQ for me.
Chiming in here as, yet, another persepctive. I discovered EQ in beta so I was there at launch. I stayed with it for 2 years and a bit (when DAoC was released). I was a casual player. I leveled a rogue to level 52 and leveled a bard to 52. Basically at the same rate. Each one had a portion of their epic quest completed.
When Velious was released it just seemed to be the creatures were three times the hitpoints for one third the experience as normal. It got tiring.
So why am I offering this perspective. Because I, and others I played with, who were there from the start, stuck with the game for those two years. We played as casuals. We never experienced absolutely everything. But what did we do? We maintained our subscription. Without fail! Every month! When it was no longer interesting we left.
That's it!
If Pantheon is going to succeed it will need subscribers! I can speak as a casual player. I paid my subscription and never second guessed it at all. When it came time to leave, I left. I can emphatically state that I don't want that to happen with Pantheon. I don't want it to be "when the time comes to leave I will leave." I don't want that time to come. I will gladly pay my subscription even though my playing time in hours per week can be counted on two hands. Regardless of playstyle, regardless of how rapid content is consumed, regardless of how many different ways someone can consume or experience content, isn't that what is absolutely going to matter in the end? Subscriptions and subscribers and a desire to play?
If someone responds that maybe "Pantheon isn't the game for me." Wouldn't it be better for me to discover that for myself and pay a subscription along the way?
Frankly, any gripe I have can easily be dismissed so long as everyone is a contributor - and by that I mean subscriber. Regardless of playstyle. Pay to play in the same world as everyone else. (easy to see where I fall on the spectrum of free trials so will leave it at that).
I think it's naive to say EQ started at max level/end game during it's prime. The amount of contested raids on a server only supported 2-3 raiding guilds... maybe 4 at max but they'd all be scrimping by at that point. Even in Velious the planes were still raided by the top guilds on the server.
Most people didn't raid. There is no way there was enough content for the majority of the playerbase to be a part of it. EQ had a massive social community.
Since it appears we have to cite our experience I raided from 1999 to GoD. I had many friends who never touched raid content and honestly the majority of my time wasn't even in raids. PoP is where the game really turned into end game content as even grouping in some of the zones required raid level gear because the mobs scaled so drastically.
philo said: You make some valid points dispo. I'm not saying it was good or bad and I'm definitely not saying I want that for Pantheon but that's how EQ was during its prime. That is 100% where the old saying: "the game begins at end game" came from. These forums produce a lot of information pertaining to EQ from people who didnt experience all aspects of the game during it's prime. That's why there is such a variety of perspectives.
*hugs* Thanks for not taking offense and being so understanding. I hope I've understood your posts and not annoyed you too much!
I'm vocal about it because I remember classic EQ becoming so raid focused and I think that was part of its downfall, not the ideal some people hold up. If the end game had been something else or different I might well have enjoyed EQ for many more years than I did.
I honestly don't remember there being any "the game begins at end game" saying, so maybe I got out just in time or maybe I just avoiding the scene by then.
There are indeed a variety of perspectives and, yes, it's perhaps not helpful to misrepresent how it was, but I do think just because a ton of players didn't experience raiding in classic EQ doesn't mean they shouldn't have valid input about how it should be in Pantheon. In fact it probably means if VR want Pantheon to be popular they need to present 'raiding' as something that everyone can and should enjoy.
It's basically just 'multi-group encounters'. Anyone can understand that concept and talk about how to make it interesting and fun.
Of course, people who have raided extensively in other games, including EQ, will have very valuable opinions on what has been good (and bad) in the past and should help with the discussion going forward. It should also be recognised though that extensive experience can lead to bias. I admit I had bad experiences and good with traditional raiding and that is a bias of it's own kind. The thing is to recognise that other people having different or even opposing opinions and experiences aren't objectively 'wrong'.
VR of course might decide that the raiding scene is to be optimised for classic raiders and that any other way would be rubbish. If so, fine. But I hope in that case they make plenty of alternate provision for other players at 'end game'.
EppE said:Since it appears we have to cite our experience I raided from 1999 to GoD. I had many friends who never touched raid content and honestly the majority of my time wasn't even in raids. PoP is where the game really turned into end game content as even grouping in some of the zones required raid level gear because the mobs scaled so drastically.
I don't really remember exactly why I stopped around PoP, but that sounds familiar. I felt I was being forced to raid to play at all.
To relate back to the OP (sorry OP if I've been part of derailing the thread) I'm not afraid of 'effort' in the game, but raiding was not 'effort' to me, it was stress. I loved grouping in the difficult high level zones. The zones that 'lead to' raid encounters could be very difficult and challenging, but rewarding and fun, though, yes, often they were simple impossible unless you had raided extensively for the right tier of gear drops.
Maybe VR just need to make sure new content doesn't scale so exponentially and raid gear isn't so relatively massively powerful.
I would prefer if raiding were made more accessible and less stressful so I could enjoy it, but maybe that's not possible, but it just needs to be de-emphasised and become just another 'alternate' advancement system.
I'd be fine with having to effectively spend twice as long grouping in difficult high level zones to get similar gear to doing traditional raid repeat cycles.
I did very little raiding in old EQ, but I spent a good amount of time raiding on the TLP servers, where you have instanced raids. Being able to plan your guild's evenings with limited available time is extremely important to me. If all raid targets are contested, then I think it is pretty clear that you will only have a small raiding community. Because how can more casual guilds (who may still have excellent players, just with limited time) compete in this situation?
If you make raid content accessible (in EQ TLP case with instanced raids with lockouts, but Pantheon has also suggested lockouts, ghosting etc) then I'm pretty sure a lot more people will be interested in trying it out.
On the OP: I agree, the sense of real achievement is something that's missing in pretty much all modern MMOs. If Pantheon succeeds in delivering this feeling, while refraining from making content artificially hard or inaccessible, then it will be a great success.
Darch said:Lets not confuse a time sink with "effort" or "challenging" content. The effort/challenge of P99Green is competing for resources against other players, which is trash for a "modern" Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (but it is what EverQuest was, and we get that).
This is not at all what I said in the OP. The challenge was that a white con mob may or may not kick my ass. And part of the challenge is enduring that long dull grind. To get to level 9 last night took forever (I started the evening as level 7), and an extreamly boring forever with my only ability being "melee attack". (Actually I do have Harm Touch also, but it's seems to be on a 30 min timer) But then when I did hit 9 I nearly messed myself.
philo said:Lots of people say "I did the raiding guild thing" as dispo said.
That is because such a large portion of the game from kunark, and growing from there, was focused on raiding the end game. Even those who have no concept of how focused the content was on end game raided a little bit.
But it's one of those things where if you weren't at least in a top 5 or 10 guild on your server and didnt raid every day for 8 or more hours for years at a time you just scratched the surface. That is how focused the content was on end game.
That is why is seems so ridiculous when people think EQ was about the leveling process. The way the end game was designed, the amount of end game content dwarfed the leveling process.
It's not about being a good or bad player or being hardcore or not. It's simply about experiencing all of the content (as was intended when players weren't over leveled/over geared) so that a person can give an accurate assessment of the game as a whole because they experienced everything in its entirety.
Again, I'm not saying I want that for Pantheon. Thats just how EQ was and that is why we see so many differences of opinion from people who didnt get the entire EQ experience...as this thread proves. It is just another example.
I played EQ from release until the 16th expansion Underfoot. And the point I think is being missed here is the fact that when people first started playing EQ it wasn't about grinding to max level and raiding the shiny stuff. It was about exploring this vast new world. Nothing like it had been created before. UO was so different, and Meridian 59 was so basic they are hardly comparable. I know for me when I played EQ yeah I was interested in leveling, I grouped in crushbone a lot on my wood elf rogue, but my main concern was getting that shiny dagger Dvinn had, I didn't collect Crushbone belts for the exp quest in Kaladim because not many people knew what they were for. As a matter of fact my main goal was to run around finding skele's with cracked staves on them because those sold the best. I slowly accumulated enough money to have a full set of banded armor, and by that time I was high enough level to group in the tower and get my own Dragoon Dirk. This took months to accomplish.
My point in all this is we weren't concerned at EQ's launch about raiding or maxing out our levels, we were going after other things that interested us, this new concept sucked us all in and the journey was under way. I dabbled in some other characters as well figuring out what all they could do, there was no website that told us what class did what and when they get which ability. You had to find out for yourself. Or ask some players in game. I know I played a Rogue, Warrior, and Magician for the first few months not even getting any of them to 15 or higher.
There was a lot of times spent running around looking for a mob to kill, servers were packed, camps were all taken, and there was waiting lists a mile long. I remember finally getting to level 40 on my wizard, only to find out Lower Guk had all the items I wanted for my character and there was 6 and 7 hour waiting lists just to get in the group and have a chance at an item that almost never drops. I also spent countless hours bartering goods, I was a wizard so I would buy items in low guk from players and take them back to Gfay (my servers EC tunnels) and sell them for a major profit. I spent a lot of time doing that to obtain the platinum to buy my own gear. I was stuck at level 40 for what seemed like a decade. I didn't know there was specs I could go kite or how to do it. Everything was new to everybody.
I know this is all rambling on and hits about a thousand bases at once, but it all leads back to one irrefutable truth. Nothing will captivate a player like EQ did to us. So yes the journey to level 50 was in fact the most difficult journey. And it was that way for a long time for people that just started the game. Now you have all the info on the internet, voice servers, walk throughs, ability lists, spell lists etc. There is no wow factor with a game. The proverbial MMORPG cherry has been popped for everyone. Right now as we speak people in pre alpha for Pantheon are logging information and waiting until the ULA is dropped to throw it on the internet. Enough videos have been released to give people an idea of what they want to do when they get in game for the first time. EQ didn't have that.
Sure raiding was fun, I do disagree with your 8 hours a day to stay on top my guild raided 3 days a week 3-4 hours on those days and we were always 3rd or 4th in progression on the server from the time raiding became a thing until the time I quit. It dipped here and there when we had to restock the raiding force because another game had launched but we always got right back into it. There wasn't even much to raid for the longest time. Everything is different now, MMO's are looked at differently, played differently, and will never be the same. You will never re-create that magic. You can make a solid game that is current and fun and will occupy a lot of people for good amount of time, but I know I will never experience anything gaming wise like what I did when I played EQ.
If you think EQ wasnt about endgame, thats just an opinion you have based on your experiences. The reason you thinknit wasnt was because leveling took a long time, because people had 0 knowledge of where to go, how to get there, and what to do.
If you look at ANY of the progression servers. The entire focus was on endgame content, so much infact that people constantly complained that it wasnt accessible to them since higher level guilds would monopolize the content. This is why the daybreak TLPs with instanced content were some of the most successful and long lasting TLPs ever. Because every guild could experience what they wanted to experience on their own time. No TLP before had more than 2 guilds killing at level content. The TLPs daybreak created, with full instanced content had 14, for a long time.
Pantheon, will effectively be similar to EQ TLPs. We already knownwhat to expect, were seasoned mmo players which means it wont take long to learn how to use pur abilities. And 1000s of us are going to have access to the game via alpha and beta. Which means as soon as the NDA is lifted. There will be website after website documenting the best way to go about playing the game and leveling. This game will very much be about endgame for a vast majority of players. You can still sit back and enjoy the leveling process tho, theres nothing wrong with that.
Yes. People went into the TLPs expecting the game to be as difficult as they remember, and it was not even close. The knowledge they gained about not only playing eq, but mmos in general alllowed them to look at the game through different eyes.
People expect pantheon to be difficult, but it will not be. It will be time consuming and challenging due to needing a group for most content, but i do not think, with the experience we have, that anything would be truely difficult.
Plus, like i said. Most people will have already played the game for many house through alpha and beta. So even on launch, players will have a plan in mind to maximize their time spent those first few days.
I think there are two ways to look at effort.
One is in each encounter. How smart is the AI, how good do I need to be at my class? I really enjoy this kind of effort.
Slow exp for the sake of ensuring people don't out pace content isn't joyful to me. I don't mind a slow paced grind, but it can have its limit.
I agree with Porygon though, over all the game will be much easier than EQ was at launch. We didn't have online maps or guides when it started, there wasn't a ton of item databases until... maybe Velious or late Kunark? Even that databases we had were extremely flawed. People didn't post or share strategies for beating encounters because they didn't want other guilds being able to progress. Today you will have streams and tutorials as soon as an encounter is beat because someone is trying to make money. You don't have to use these things, but they will be there and others will use them.
A huge reason my guild was able to progress and catch the other guilds on our server is one of our members played two accounts. He had a character in FoH and he had one in our guild so we were able to use the strats they came up with.
Porygon said:Yes. People went into the TLPs expecting the game to be as difficult as they remember, and it was not even close. The knowledge they gained about not only playing eq, but mmos in general alllowed them to look at the game through different eyes.
People expect pantheon to be difficult, but it will not be. It will be time consuming and challenging due to needing a group for most content, but i do not think, with the experience we have, that anything would be truely difficult.
Plus, like i said. Most people will have already played the game for many house through alpha and beta. So even on launch, players will have a plan in mind to maximize their time spent those first few days.
Oh, you mean Pantheon difficulty will be appreciated in a similar way?
Yeah maybe. Players (especially the ones here) are very experienced and perhaps no matter what VR come up with, it will be quickly worked out and made 'easy'.
But I'm hoping they innovate enough to keep it somewhat fresh. Some dynamism maybe. Something that can't be zerged. Something with varying toughness appropriate to the raiders. Etc.
As I've said before (and pertinent to this thread) I don't mind effort. Grind and prep. Long raids (well, up to 2 hours, if they go by their stated aim - that is long enough for one encounter!). Lots of pre-requisites. Just make them less elitist and contentionus and I'll be happy.
