Porygon said:Also, we should set the record straight. As someone who has raided high end EQ and WoW. WoW raiding is significantly more difficult. Yes the game itself is easier to an extent, but once you get to endgame, which is going to be the goal for most modern mmo players. I really really doubt pantheon will be able to even scoff at WoW in terms of difficulty.
I mean, prior to gates of discord there was a handful of fights in eq that I would even deem difficult.
+1. Why people are wanting difficulty (read 'pain in the arse to play') in all the wrong places in this MMO, bemuses me.
ok i will make a comparison that might make things clearer.
look at RL when i was growing up things were more challenging then people growing up today. thats the nature of things anyways. my army years 25 years ago i guarantee are tougher then todays. (my opinion)
so yes i raided with EQ and wow.
wow raid challenging and mythic dungeon challenging? sure if you are into playing pacman or what ever game that you need to do this then that followed by another this and another that (again my opinion)
Again this is my perosnal opinion, take it with a grain of salt.
Naunet said:Watemper said:We know how to play MMOs well now. So I hope they don't hold back on the raid boss difficulties because of corpse running.If they don't hold back on difficulty, you'll get a few wipes in and then have to go spend some oh-so-fun time farming mobs to get your level back. That sounds like the opposite of fun to me, to be honest.
Then don't raid? If you want easy content..there are games out there for that. Trust me...wiping constantly in WoW wasn't fun either, but you get through it. Same with EQ. No game is fun when wiping over and over. The point is not to dumb it down to where it takes a few attempts and then you move on. That would be a big mistake on VR's part to make easy raid bosses. Plus if the game is tough throughout leveling and they introduce a lot of their mechanics, then we should be conditioned enough through the leveling process to deal with tougher raids.
Watemper said:Then don't raid? If you want easy content..there are games out there for that. Trust me...wiping constantly in WoW wasn't fun either, but you get through it. Same with EQ. No game is fun when wiping over and over. The point is not to dumb it down to where it takes a few attempts and then you move on. That would be a big mistake on VR's part to make easy raid bosses. Plus if the game is tough throughout leveling and they introduce a lot of their mechanics, then we should be conditioned enough through the leveling process to deal with tougher raids.
I'm not afraid of wiping on raid content normally - heck, I'm the one usually telling my fellow teammates that dying repeatedly is a fact of life in raiding. But what does NOT appeal to me is that after some work on a boss fight, I'd have to go off and mindlessly grind mobs to earn back XP lost due to deaths.
Naunet said:Watemper said:Then don't raid? If you want easy content..there are games out there for that. Trust me...wiping constantly in WoW wasn't fun either, but you get through it. Same with EQ. No game is fun when wiping over and over. The point is not to dumb it down to where it takes a few attempts and then you move on. That would be a big mistake on VR's part to make easy raid bosses. Plus if the game is tough throughout leveling and they introduce a lot of their mechanics, then we should be conditioned enough through the leveling process to deal with tougher raids.I'm not afraid of wiping on raid content normally - heck, I'm the one usually telling my fellow teammates that dying repeatedly is a fact of life in raiding. But what does NOT appeal to me is that after some work on a boss fight, I'd have to go off and mindlessly grind mobs to earn back XP lost due to deaths.
First off there are rezes. So you won't lose a ton. Secondly, In EQ the warriors eating the DT would lose a level practically after a raid night. Funny thing about games like EQ, and I am sure in Pantheon, is that even with max exp you are still in groups farming end game mobs for gems, crafting material, items to sell, and more. So no matter what you will be grinding mobs endlessly. It's the fact of life in MMOS. Luckily you don't have to raid every day and you can think of EXP gaining a type of dailiy like in all the other mmos. :)
Watemper said:First off there are rezes. So you won't lose a ton. Secondly, In EQ the warriors eating the DT would lose a level practically after a raid night. Funny thing about games like EQ, and I am sure in Pantheon, is that even with max exp you are still in groups farming end game mobs for gems, crafting material, items to sell, and more. So no matter what you will be grinding mobs endlessly. It's the fact of life in MMOS. Luckily you don't have to raid every day and you can think of EXP gaining a type of dailiy like in all the other mmos. :)
"Grinding mobs endlessly" is simply not something I find fun - and no, it's not something I've been forced into in "all the other mmos". I like quests, the occasional farming some mobs for X cooking mats or skins, picking flowers, and dungeons/raids. The last one is where I find in-game combat to be the most enjoyable, and I've generally been able to fund my needs by gathering and the currency/drops earned by running dungeons/raids. Open world mobs just aren't mechanically interesting and thus aren't fun to kill mindlessly for hours on end.
I would really like to see raid content in Pantheon be punishing. Risking your hard earned exp could be the "cost" of attempting the raid.
In this case, max level players will continue to form exp partys to establish that "exp buffer" so they can go attempt raids and not level down after dying a few times. This would also give max level players incentive to level with lower level players through the mentor system because exp will almost be like a form of currency... except instead of items you are buying the opportunity to participate in a difficult raid without fear of de-level. If your group does well it doesnt cost you any exp! if not, well.... it could be expensive! lol
Raids are supposed to be the BIG battles in an MMO. I want to feel nervous going into it... like there is something on the line besides just an hour or two of my time.
Also, I hope dungeons and raid are not so heavy on mechanics (run to this spot during this attack, split apart during this attack, destroy this beacon within :30s or wipe, etc etc etc). I have always been a big believer that if a player knows their CLASS really well, they should be able to participate in any fight for the first time and be able to perform well without significant instruction.
Many MMOs I've played lately have required me to look up guides for every single dungeon/raid before hand because the mechanics are all different.
Just my opinion :)
Well said Pilch. XP can be a very precious resource as long as de-leveling is a thing and in my experience it has served as the ultimate risk vs reward factor. Managing the XP buffer is a great way to ensure that players respect their environment but it isn't so severe that it discourages players from taking risks and adventuring into new areas. This kind of death penalty is ideal, IMO.
Naunet said:Watemper said:First off there are rezes. So you won't lose a ton. Secondly, In EQ the warriors eating the DT would lose a level practically after a raid night. Funny thing about games like EQ, and I am sure in Pantheon, is that even with max exp you are still in groups farming end game mobs for gems, crafting material, items to sell, and more. So no matter what you will be grinding mobs endlessly. It's the fact of life in MMOS. Luckily you don't have to raid every day and you can think of EXP gaining a type of dailiy like in all the other mmos. :)"Grinding mobs endlessly" is simply not something I find fun - and no, it's not something I've been forced into in "all the other mmos". I like quests, the occasional farming some mobs for X cooking mats or skins, picking flowers, and dungeons/raids. The last one is where I find in-game combat to be the most enjoyable, and I've generally been able to fund my needs by gathering and the currency/drops earned by running dungeons/raids. Open world mobs just aren't mechanically interesting and thus aren't fun to kill mindlessly for hours on end.
Majority of quests make you kill things. Some quests allow you to gather things...w/e.
Also you aren't force to raid either if you find dying and losing exp soo scary. I've seen a lot of what you have been saying over several conversations I have been apart of, and all of things you want are in WoW. If that is your thing, then go there. If you don't like that game, then maybe you should really look at the ideas you are giving, because a lot of those ideas people don't like here and are already active in games like WoW.
I don't believe that any of us should have the right to tell other supporters that this game won't be right for them just because we disagree with their opinions. That is not a judgement that any of us get to make for anyone else. This community is generally awesome but when I see those sorts of comments it really makes me worry for how we are going to be perceived by the rest of the gaming public.
Watemper said:Majority of quests make you kill things. Some quests allow you to gather things...w/e.Also you aren't force to raid either if you find dying and losing exp soo scary. I've seen a lot of what you have been saying over several conversations I have been apart of, and all of things you want are in WoW. If that is your thing, then go there. If you don't like that game, then maybe you should really look at the ideas you are giving, because a lot of those ideas people don't like here and are already active in games like WoW.
I love raiding. Dungeons and raids are what I spend most of my time doing in MMOs, outside of roleplay. But what I don't like is having progress forcibly choked off because we've lost XP and then have to spend who knows how many hours doing one of the most tedious tasks in any MMO (farming open world mobs). Sit me down with my friends and a ridiculously hard boss that wipes us dozens of times throughout the night, and I'm perfectly happy. That happiness ends instantly when those wipes force me to win back the XP I'd already earned. (And it's not even just raids where this will come up... can pretty much say goodbye to taking the goofy risks and challenges for fun my husband and I like to do, like checking out an elite that's probably a bit much for our level, or attempting to 2-man a dungeon. How can we justify those things if doing so means we might have to waste a play session just grinding back XP we'd already earned?)
(It's a fine line, but "kill X" quests don't really bother me. I think it's the fact that I'm checking off a box by completing a quest that makes it enjoyable, instead of just sitting down and farming mobs.)
Anyway. I don't have to justify my preferences to you, and you don't really have any place to tell me to go elsewhere. There are many things that spurred me to back Pantheon 2 years ago. Just because there are a few things that don't appeal to me, doesn't mean that I don't have a place at this discussion table.
I loved EQ with a deep and abiding passion. But you know, I think to disregard the improvements made in the MMO genre by many games, WoW just being one of them, is foolish. Rift for example (since so many are discussing raiding) had better raiding than EQ. WoW does too. But that is because the devs built on what EQ and later DAoC (with pvp elements) did and brought things forward. There is nothing wrong with that.
If Pantheon were to perfectly recreate EQ raids there would be a small and content group enjoying yet another failing game. I don't want to see that.
In answer to the OP's question, the devs are going to need to make some concessions with modern players in mind. Using modern MMOs as an example, there is still a heck of a grind, but it's just hidden, with gated content and phased worlds. The casual players are sold a bill of sale that they're competitive with hardcore players, but of course they're not and never will be. The difference between them is massively shrunken, but it's still there.
The other thing that modern players want is diverse content. Being able to have so many different things to do ends up making a lot of different player types happy. What is wrong with that? I'm no "wowhead" either, I'm simply a player who has played a lot of MMOs and appreciated each one in the time and era in which I played them. So I do hope the devs have some ideas on building on what the successful games of today have done.
Zigzag said:I loved EQ with a deep and abiding passion. But you know, I think to disregard the improvements made in the MMO genre by many games, WoW just being one of them, is foolish. Rift for example (since so many are discussing raiding) had better raiding than EQ. WoW does too. But that is because the devs built on what EQ and later DAoC (with pvp elements) did and brought things forward. There is nothing wrong with that.
If Pantheon were to perfectly recreate EQ raids there would be a small and content group enjoying yet another failing game. I don't want to see that.
In answer to the OP's question, the devs are going to need to make some concessions with modern players in mind. Using modern MMOs as an example, there is still a heck of a grind, but it's just hidden, with gated content and phased worlds. The casual players are sold a bill of sale that they're competitive with hardcore players, but of course they're not and never will be. The difference between them is massively shrunken, but it's still there.
The other thing that modern players want is diverse content. Being able to have so many different things to do ends up making a lot of different player types happy. What is wrong with that? I'm no "wowhead" either, I'm simply a player who has played a lot of MMOs and appreciated each one in the time and era in which I played them. So I do hope the devs have some ideas on building on what the successful games of today have done.
Hey Zigzag,
Just wanted to share my thoughts on two points of your post.
1.) I agree that VR should take inspiration from the improvements of modern MMOs but that is all really a matter of preference. For me, the only improvements come from the UI and some QoL features. Almost everything else is a step in the wrong direction and that is the reason I no longer play any MMOs.
2.) Having a lot of things to do is essential for success, but I don't believe it has to cater to many different types of players. Most MMOs I've played that try to please everyone end up being okay at everything, but not excellent at anything . I would like to see Pantheon stick to the old school formula... add innovative features that new technology allows to make the world more immersive, but keeping that original MMO feel.
Best,
Pilch
Nephele said:I don't believe that any of us should have the right to tell other supporters that this game won't be right for them just because we disagree with their opinions. That is not a judgement that any of us get to make for anyone else. This community is generally awesome but when I see those sorts of comments it really makes me worry for how we are going to be perceived by the rest of the gaming public.
This! Yes!
Naunet said:Watemper said:Then don't raid? If you want easy content..there are games out there for that. Trust me...wiping constantly in WoW wasn't fun either, but you get through it. Same with EQ. No game is fun when wiping over and over. The point is not to dumb it down to where it takes a few attempts and then you move on. That would be a big mistake on VR's part to make easy raid bosses. Plus if the game is tough throughout leveling and they introduce a lot of their mechanics, then we should be conditioned enough through the leveling process to deal with tougher raids.I'm not afraid of wiping on raid content normally - heck, I'm the one usually telling my fellow teammates that dying repeatedly is a fact of life in raiding. But what does NOT appeal to me is that after some work on a boss fight, I'd have to go off and mindlessly grind mobs to earn back XP lost due to deaths.
Yea, I will take back what I said about suggesting another game. I still think all your ideas are loosely based on games that already have everything you suggested. And for some reason you are picking out the bad ones and like them. Just my opinion.
Also going off your liking to mess around. We did that too with the exp loss. I've had my old group take on some rare mobs that we didn't realize were raid mobs and died back in the day. Hell I lost a few corpses and the lower levels and learned things the hard way.
However, with risk and reward, the immersion is way more powerful. This was explained a lot more in another thread dealing with the death penalty debate. But someone linked a thread that gave a question like, What scenario brings about the most emotion? Gaining 50 dollars, or losing 50 dollars? The answer would be losing 50 dollars. You can have anywere from 5x - 7x more emotional repsonse to losing 50 dollars than gaining. Why? because you owned that 50 bucks. That was a big part of what made EQ so Immersive. The risk of losing your stuff. The part of dying sucking, until clicking rezes were a thing and trivilized death. But that feeling of losing your stuff makes you way more engaged. It makes you asses the enviroment and take everything in much more.
Avaen said:Nephele said:I don't believe that any of us should have the right to tell other supporters that this game won't be right for them just because we disagree with their opinions. That is not a judgement that any of us get to make for anyone else. This community is generally awesome but when I see those sorts of comments it really makes me worry for how we are going to be perceived by the rest of the gaming public.
This! Yes!
Just food for thought. It's usually certain groups of supporters who end up making the game worse off. Take WoW for instance. Millions left after Wrath because of supporters wanting it to be easier than it already was. Take EQ. People didn't like the travel, then POK came out and killed the game. Supporters don't design or make video games, atleast most of them, so most of the stuff they think of as being good might be good in their mind but end up ruining the game.
There is a vast difference here that noone seems to be adressing and that is the sheer size of the available market. When EQ launched the available market for this type of game was tiny in comparison to today. By the time EQ2 and WoW launched just four and a half years later, that market had exploded. The number of home computers had increased THAT much. That was 14 years ago. The sheer number of home PCs has again exploded exponentially and so too has the market for this type of gameplay. There are over 1 BILLION PCs worldwide. Even if this title is considered to be a "niche" game, you are still talking about millions of users. My understanding is that this is not going to be a "simplified gaming experience". It is meant to be tougher. It is meant to be a challenge. That does not mean that we should disuade others from trying or enjoying the game - it means that we should prepare them for a journey. Something along the line of "Hey! Welcome! This isn't going to be easy, but we have a fantastic community and there will be others here to help you with whatever you need!". Let players experience the game for a bit (usually, the first month is free) before advising them to find something else. Honestly, when I started with EQ back in 1999 it took me a couple of months before things actually started to click. I solo'd that entire time.
Nephretiti said:There is a vast difference here that noone seems to be adressing and that is the sheer size of the available market. When EQ launched the available market for this type of game was tiny in comparison to today. By the time EQ2 and WoW launched just four and a half years later, that market had exploded. The number of home computers had increased THAT much. That was 14 years ago. The sheer number of home PCs has again exploded exponentially and so too has the market for this type of gameplay. There are over 1 BILLION PCs worldwide. Even if this title is considered to be a "niche" game, you are still talking about millions of users. My understanding is that this is not going to be a "simplified gaming experience". It is meant to be tougher. It is meant to be a challenge. That does not mean that we should disuade others from trying or enjoying the game - it means that we should prepare them for a journey. Something along the line of "Hey! Welcome! This isn't going to be easy, but we have a fantastic community and there will be others here to help you with whatever you need!". Let players experience the game for a bit (usually, the first month is free) before advising them to find something else. Honestly, when I started with EQ back in 1999 it took me a couple of months before things actually started to click. I solo'd that entire time.
Yeah I completely understand that. Which is why I took my statement back. I don't delete replies unless I am told to because I don't really feel good about hiding stuff.
Sadly, although I do agree, I have seen many times supporters ruining their own games. Usually it's a loud minority that makes them cave.
Watemper said:Nephretiti said:There is a vast difference here that noone seems to be adressing and that is the sheer size of the available market. When EQ launched the available market for this type of game was tiny in comparison to today. By the time EQ2 and WoW launched just four and a half years later, that market had exploded. The number of home computers had increased THAT much. That was 14 years ago. The sheer number of home PCs has again exploded exponentially and so too has the market for this type of gameplay. There are over 1 BILLION PCs worldwide. Even if this title is considered to be a "niche" game, you are still talking about millions of users. My understanding is that this is not going to be a "simplified gaming experience". It is meant to be tougher. It is meant to be a challenge. That does not mean that we should disuade others from trying or enjoying the game - it means that we should prepare them for a journey. Something along the line of "Hey! Welcome! This isn't going to be easy, but we have a fantastic community and there will be others here to help you with whatever you need!". Let players experience the game for a bit (usually, the first month is free) before advising them to find something else. Honestly, when I started with EQ back in 1999 it took me a couple of months before things actually started to click. I solo'd that entire time.
Yeah I completely understand that. Which is why I took my statement back. I don't delete replies unless I am told to because I don't really feel good about hiding stuff.
Sadly, although I do agree, I have seen many times supporters ruining their own games. Usually it's a loud minority that makes the devs cave.
Edit: Replaced them with devs
Watemper said:Sadly, although I do agree, I have seen many times supporters ruining their own games. Usually it's a loud minority that makes them cave.
Do you have an example of a time when the minority of people called out for a change and it was honored by the developers?
Porygon said:Watemper said:Sadly, although I do agree, I have seen many times supporters ruining their own games. Usually it's a loud minority that makes them cave.
Do you have an example of a time when the minority of people called out for a change and it was honored by the developers?
Every incremental change in the past 20 years to make gameplay more convenient. Even in cases where the majority are begging for change, it doesnt mean it helped the game.
So... I think it's absolutely true that sometimes the best thing for the game is *not* to give people what they're asking for. However, saying that happens "all the time" or that it's due to "the majority begging for it" is hyperbole. Let's be real about it. The law of unintended consequences can happen regardless of where a mechanic or feature comes from.
For example - the Plane of Knowledge in EQ made a lot of sense when you think about it being designed to specifically be a jumping off point for raids into other planes - which is almost certainly what that expansion team originally intended.
The decision to add insta-click ports from PoK to all the major cities on Norrath arguably had some really bad consequences for the game overall. I think it's likely though that the original expansion team either didn't think about the fact that players might use it as a way to instantaneously travel from one part of Norrath to another, or that they realized this but didn't really think it was going to be a big deal. Hindsight is 20/20 after all.
However, that doesn't mean that we should immediately say no to every innovation, every quality of life feature, and every convenience that gets proposed. That's just dumb. For every poor implementation or unintended consequence that has harmed a game over the years, there have been multiple innovations that were really awesome. And what's bad for one game may be fine for another, because none of these things exist in a vacuum. For example, in the recent dev chat/stream, it was revealed that the current plan is NOT to have global banks. Is that a good or a bad thing? Will there be unintended consequences of that choice? Will it potentially end up being too much of a hindrance to average players or will it be an awesome thing that creates emergent gameplay and supports other aspects of the game? We can speculate, but none of us will really know for sure until we can get in and actually see how it works alongside all the *other* design choices that the team is making.
I think it's more important for Pantheon that we keep an open mind. We have a LOT of testing ahead of us before launch. Usually, features cause problems in MMOs because of poor implementation, rather than because the design idea was bad. The intent of the feature can still be achieved without negative effects - it just needs to be tweaked a bit or have limits put on it. That's harder to do once a game is launched, but Pantheon is still a long ways from launch. So, it's on all of us as supporters and eventual testers to help the dev teams to refine their implementations. When we spot something that's leading to an unintended consequence, we need to call that out - but that's not something we can really do until testing actually begins (though I feel pretty confident that the PA testers are doing it now).
For the rest of us that aren't actively testing yet, OUR role should be to talk about what the design goals for a lot of these systems should be. Not "don't do this, it will suck", but "we want whatever you to do to be able to support X, Y, and Z, because we feel that those are important." That's far more useful to the devs than us constantly arguing and fighting with each other based on experiences in games that were not Pantheon.