I read through forums and see remarks from videos that have been posted, time and time again people chime in saying how bad the combat looks. Game play means nothing to this new generation of gamers a tingle runs down their leg when they see a character jump 10' in the air doing a pirouette, slamming to the ground clicking their heals three times then lighting shooting from it's eyes destoying the landscape and killing a roving band of Ogres around them. In short MMORPGs are plain goofy now, Everquest was the first and Pantheon the Fallen will prolly be the last great MMORPG.
Immeserion is what i'm after, take away the realism and you lose the immersion. I don't know if I will be around long enough to see this game for I will prolly hang myself after seeing another game where a character flies across the world on a dragon in two minutes.
I think you're in good company here. We are pretty much all here because we are fed up with face-rolling the keyboard and being rewarded with a spectacular light show, but no challenge or involvement or immersion or social aspects.
It's a tricky concept to get right, the whole 'gritty and realistic' within a fantasy game, but VR seem to be nailing the feeling so far.
Preaching to the choir here. Goofy is being far too nice. Gamers today are spoiled rotten and jaded as hell. Games are just like every movie out these days, flashy and full of fluff while fights are all about speed and more like learning dance moves than strategic.
Bronsun said:Preaching to the choir here. Goofy is being far too nice. Gamers today are spoiled rotten and jaded as hell. Games are just like every movie out these days, flashy and full of fluff while fights are all about speed and more like learning dance moves than strategic.
This is silly. It's a large misconception that EQ had strategy and was difficult. Most people had never seen a game like this. And needed time to adapt.
Once you learned how to make a tank rotation and a proper cheal rot... nothing in the first 7 xpacs were even remotely difficult.
Imo the raids in modern MMOs are much more difficult because it requires players to be able to critically think, and the combat is much faster. Requiring faster reflexes when something actually happens.
I can assure you though, the developers of pantheon will not be able to design a raid that is going to be difficult based on mechanics. The only way to make something more difficult nowadays is with strict gear checks that will require perfect play by undefeated players.
Porygon said:This is silly. It's a large misconception that EQ had strategy and was difficult. Most people had never seen a game like this. And needed time to adapt.
Once you learned how to make a tank rotation and a proper cheal rot... nothing in the first 7 xpacs were even remotely difficult.
Imo the raids in modern MMOs are much more difficult because it requires players to be able to critically think, and the combat is much faster. Requiring faster reflexes when something actually happens.
I can assure you though, the developers of pantheon will not be able to design a raid that is going to be difficult based on mechanics. The only way to make something more difficult nowadays is with strict gear checks that will require perfect play by undefeated players.
You're certainly entitled to your opinion. As for myself, dance moves can be rehearsed to the point of muscle memory. Maybe its diffucult for you, maybe you have bad timing, but raids in WoW,Wildstar and the like are easy to me. They are just an exercise in dexerity and timing, like most games the strategy becomes a pattern. Once you understand the boss mechanic its over. What makes somethng difficult goes beyond basic timing or standard mechanics. If you are then talkng about heroic modes and up its still just about gear scores. Meh. Once boss fights are random behaviors then you may be on to something unique and challenging.
Its not fair to even bring up what these dev's can or can not accomplish compared to more funded MMO's. As for perfect play and gear checks, they are either mutually explusive or redundant the way I see them. You lost me there on how that makes anything more difficult.
I agree with Porygon on this one. EQ raids were a joke and WoW has actually been a lot better about raids than EQ and it contributed to their success. Take this and learn from it I say. Combat was not that fun in EQ it was the socialization that was fun. It was the sense of danger in the combat that was fun. As far as all of that goes though it looks like the devs are making complex classes so that you have to do things right or your dps/heals/whatever will suffer. I remember in EQ spamming my top damage spell the whole time as a wizard. It was a joke and not fun. You can call the other muscle memory but I fail to see how that is equal to EQs horrid combat system.
This is exactly why MMO's have died off, trying to copy WOW's theme park game.
There is another really important point that I think many are missing:
You've all heard of the uncanney valley. Well, realism is very much like that. When you read a book, you becmoe fully engrossed because your brain is filling in the details the way that makes sense to *YOU*. Your brain subconsciously fills in that stuff. When you put too much realism, your brain just receives it and stops being an active participant in creating your immersion and becomes a spectator.
I know it sounds very coiunter-intuitive but it's like the uncanny valley: if you go too far with slick graphics you actually detract from the suspension of disbelief and, hence the immersion.
Think about it: EQ's graphics were terrible originally. *BUT* we were fully engrossed and immersed. No, it is *NOT* because we had never seen anything like it before. In fact, we had an entire humankind of learning what to expect from the real visual world. We knew what realistic looked like. It wasn't suddenly fooling us (as if we forgot what the real world looked like). It has nothing to do with the graphics. It has everything to do with the gameplay and the world you are in. Impriove the graphics and you can make things better. Go too far and BAM!....uncanney valley.
zendrel said:I agree with Porygon on this one. EQ raids were a joke and WoW has actually been a lot better about raids than EQ and it contributed to their success. Take this and learn from it I say. Combat was not that fun in EQ it was the socialization that was fun. It was the sense of danger in the combat that was fun. As far as all of that goes though it looks like the devs are making complex classes so that you have to do things right or your dps/heals/whatever will suffer. I remember in EQ spamming my top damage spell the whole time as a wizard. It was a joke and not fun. You can call the other muscle memory but I fail to see how that is equal to EQs horrid combat system.
I'm not sure where you saw EQ even came up in my comments. Porygon brought it up, not me. I think you were reading something into my comment that wasn't there. I think Porygon was as well. :D
TheButcher said: In short MMORPGs are plain goofy now.
I have never been an MMORPG before, but I will accept the role if it is offered :-)
Bronsun said: Goofy is being far too nice.
There is no such thing as too nice. A Goofy is always as nice as he is meant to be :-)
Porygon said: It's a large misconception that EQ had strategy and was difficult ... Imo the raids in modern MMOs are much more difficult ... The only way to make something more difficult nowadays is with strict gear checks that will require perfect play by undefeated players.
While I don't totally agree with Porygon's first and second statements, I do sorta agree with the last.
One of the differences between modern MMO's and Everquest is the timing of when most Raid groups get to experience the content. In Everquest, due to the way it was Open world with long respawn timers on Bosses, only the Top guilds on a server got to experience those Bosses while they (the players) were still at the cusp of being ready for them (the Bosses). For those guilds the content was difficult and did require strategy and precision play because they were at the very lowest end of the 'Gear check' that Porygon mentions. They always pushed forward at the earliest time they could in order to race for world firsts. So they often fought those bosses with bare minimum of gear from the previous tier of Bosses.
Those who were not in these top guilds racing for world firsts, would not have access to those Bosses until much later, due to the Top guilds farming them for loot. When they did finally gain access to attempt those Bosses, they were at a much higher gear level than those first guilds were and so the Bosses seemed much less difficult, as they were at the higher end of the 'Gear check' value for that encounter.
With the Modern MMOs, who use various ways to make content much more open for all players to experience without competition, more players are able to gain access and attempt the Boss encounters at those minimum gear check levels. Thus, they get to experience the difficulty of those encounters when they can't bully through it with top gear. So they are forced to strategize and play at their peak precision in order to succeed.
This leads people to the assumption that those Modern MMOs are more difficult than Everquest was.
Now I am not going to debate the complexity of encounters, as each new MMO is able to feed off the previous ones and make much more engaging and complex encounters than the older titles such as Everquest. But just because modern MMOs have more dynamic and complex encounters, does not take away from the difficulty of those Everquest encounters when done by those guilds who were pushing the boundries and often completing the content with gear much below what the Devs ever expected them to be able to accomplish it with.
As it pertains to Pantheon. These Dev's have the experience of years of MMO development and they lived through all of the same encounters over the years that many of us have. I have faith that they can learn from ALL of those lessons from ALL of those games and give us something that will be compelling, and difficult, and FUN at the same time. All while sticking to their vision and their faith that a social MMO will be what us players ultimately want.
For me, mods took a lot out of raiding. I didn't like that they removed a lot of the player knowledge and awareness needed and just auto timed everything for you. That seemed exceptionally lame. I hope they don't allow mods that monitor everything in a raid for you. I don't mind ones that allow you to customize your UI or other cosmetic effects but I would rather have the game be set up to stop all mods from working then allow for some and people be able to make easy mode mods because of that.
Truthfully, are any raids really hard? Or just unknown? Some took longer to become familiar with whether it was controlling an event to suit your strategy (EQ) or learning the right behavior to win (Dance Dance Warcraft). I will say Vanguard has some really challenging Raid targets in its last years with the Overland targets. I had a lot of fun with some like Fengrot and Karax. Even when you knew the startegy, it wasn't a garanteed win.
Just in general, and in a topic that is greater than this thread which is combat focused, I also hope they don't listen to players and stick to their vision.
It has become abundantly clear over the last 20 years of mmorpgs that players don't know what is best for a game.
philo said:Just in general, and in a topic that is greater than this thread which is combat focused, I also hope they don't listen to players and stick to their vision.
It has become abundantly clear over the last 20 years of mmorpgs that players don't know what is best for a game.
Couldn't agree more, which would mean since I'm a player, agreeing with you is bad for the game and...
Ok enough loops. Most mmos are in a state I don't want to play them anymore because players were listened from every edge of the playerbase. You can try to stick to a vision, but not to millions of self centered visions at the same time.
TheButcher said:I read through forums and see remarks from videos that have been posted, time and time again people chime in saying how bad the combat looks. Game play means nothing to this new generation of gamers a tingle runs down their leg when they see a character jump 10' in the air doing a pirouette, slamming to the ground clicking their heals three times then lighting shooting from it's eyes destoying the landscape and killing a roving band of Ogres around them. In short MMORPGs are plain goofy now, Everquest was the first and Pantheon the Fallen will prolly be the last great MMORPG.
Immeserion is what i'm after, take away the realism and you lose the immersion. I don't know if I will be around long enough to see this game for I will prolly hang myself after seeing another game where a character flies across the world on a dragon in two minutes.
Totally agree with you.
Those flashy mechanics like you describe are fine for some games. I just don't want to see them in Pantheon. Sometimes I swear people want every game to have every feature of every other game.
Those who were not in these top guilds racing for world firsts, would not have access to those Bosses until much later, due to the Top guilds farming them for loot. When they did finally gain access to attempt those Bosses, they were at a much higher gear level than those first guilds were and so the Bosses seemed much less difficult, as they were at the higher end of the 'Gear check' value for that encounter.
How, exactly, did the follow on guilds get better gear if the server-firsts were hogging all the spawns? Your theory really doesn't hold water...
@Zy
The first guilds race to the highest content without being fully equipped. There simply was not the required time to gear everyone as much as possible. While the newest content was being monopolized that leaves extra time for others to acquire gear.
You also get to the point where new content is added, further increasing gear options.
It was a decent description of how it always works in any challenging, level playing field, game at the cutting edge.
TheButcher said:I read through forums and see remarks from videos that have been posted, time and time again people chime in saying how bad the combat looks. Game play means nothing to this new generation of gamers a tingle runs down their leg when they see a character jump 10' in the air doing a pirouette, slamming to the ground clicking their heals three times then lighting shooting from it's eyes destoying the landscape and killing a roving band of Ogres around them. In short MMORPGs are plain goofy now, Everquest was the first and Pantheon the Fallen will prolly be the last great MMORPG.
Immeserion is what i'm after, take away the realism and you lose the immersion. I don't know if I will be around long enough to see this game for I will prolly hang myself after seeing another game where a character flies across the world on a dragon in two minutes.
Frankly, it’s not appropriate to compare MMOs from different countries with vastly different cultural backgrounds. It’s like comparing anime to disney.
Additionally if you just stick to US based MMOs, the same complaint you have can be easily applied to when hardcore EQ1 players saw WoW appear 5 years later. Here was a new cartoony, instanced, fluff MMO, targeted at children, promising easy gameplay.
The OP blames modern MMOs for his losing immersion. I would counter by saying take responsibility for your own immersion. Don’t blame the pixels.
Most would probably agree once games, all games, went down the FTP/RNG rabbit hole, all gamers lost. And a whole new generation of players grew up thinking you should pay and RNJesus your way to MMO greatness.
philo said:Just in general, and in a topic that is greater than this thread which is combat focused, I also hope they don't listen to players and stick to their vision.
It has become abundantly clear over the last 20 years of mmorpgs that players don't know what is best for a game.
It's equally clear that MMO developers don't always know what's best for the game either. Take Barbarians in DAoC for example. Or WoW:TBC Tanks and Healers and Elemental Shaman.
Balance is hard but sometimes the players do know best. VR has the unenviable task of trying to find the right balance between their vision of the game and what the players will actually pay to play. Those two things are not always aligned and, worse, every player is at least a little different from the next in terms of preferences in a game.
I assume from your statement that the majority in the thread mentioned disagree with your own viewpoint which more closely aligns with the current thinking around VR's stance on the topic. Naturally you'll wish VR's current viewpoint to win because it overlaps with your own. But if the majority want something different it makes good business sense to switch directions even at risk of alienating a minority. This is known as triage and smart companies will exercise this tactic often.
Most of us here are thoroughly seasoned veterans of MMORPGs. We've seen first hand what works, what doesn't, and what happens when the game company listens to the players too much and too little. I wish VR all the luck in the world (for totally selfish reasons) but it's important not to take a hard-line stance either for or against implementing player feedback.
To be fair ... VR has spelled it out clearly that a big part of their vision involves "listening to player feedback in testing." This obviously doesn't extend to every single part of the game but there are plenty of aspects of development where they will tune things based on feedback. I suggest that players get involved in the testing environment when possible because that's when your feedback will be more critical than ever.
It's equally clear that MMO developers don't always know what's best for the game either. Take Barbarians in DAoC for example. Or WoW:TBC Tanks and Healers and Elemental Shaman.
What was the problem with thoses in TCB? They were all viable at this time of the game, and often complementary. More worried about Retpal and mana issues or spell damage scaling Crusader strike back then.
Can't speak for DAoC however, weren't they "berserkers" ? I heard left hand skill was OP for some time.