EQ Never

LadyVex_sl said:

OR, conversely, it could be that for some ungodly reason, when everyone else played EQ, enjoyed it, and looked for the genre to advance, others stagnated and decided that EQ was the golden age and that they should just stay in that little corner forever.

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The problem is that said advancement happened in the way that brought in the most new consumers. And that's a good thing, don't get me wrong. But it's a very specific road, and it's the reason why you see such compartmentalized, highly accessible design influences in the game. Again, the Mcdonalds hamburger is a highly accessible piece of food, even the onions on it go through a process to reduce the onion taste, so it can agree with more people--or the ketchup/mustard has a precise "amount" placed by a contraption, that's be studied to be the least offensive mix of those condiments (I'm serious.). This is what WoW has done to the genre, it's built systems meant specifically to broaden the appeal by diminishing the various negatives people see in the MMO space (Time, Work ect.)

And again, that's fine. But there were systems in place in EQ that were pretty primitive and never built up on, because the market went to broad route (Which was inevitable, it's far more profitable.) HOWEVER, now that the market has expanded, there are probably fairly profitable markets based on developing those systems that got left to die during the first "MMO evolution". There is room for the steak place, to. And the thing is, people who eat at Mcdonalds, also sometimes dine on steak, being "sophisticated" doesn't mean you like one or the other, it means you can likeboth.

WoW's design is a needed fixture in the MMO space, I hope every designer draws a lot of their accessibility options from them. But it would be wise for designers, now that said space is so saturated, to start developing some of the systems that were left by the wayside as being too "negative" to broad audiences. Someone who can develop those systems and marry them to WoW's bland accessibility, is going to make the equivellent of Chipotle or Five guys/In and out. The market is ripe for this "sophistication"--but that doesn't mean Mcdonalds is going out of business, people can partake in both.

Liking EQ/games that appeal like EQ did doesn't make you sophisticated. You're not delving the depths of some plunder that the rest of us are just too stupid to appreciate.

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But it does...Sophistication is simply learning to appreciate more nuanced things. Someone who can play EvE AND WoW is more sophisticated than someone who just plays WoW. Right? They know far more mechanics, systems and can play with a far more diverse skill set. Thatissophistication. That doesn't mean they are "better" than the person who plays WoW, though--it just means they are more "worldly" when it comes to MMO's. You're assigning intelligence to the moniker, but it doesn't have to be intelligence which prevents another person from enjoying an MMO like that, it could be something as simple as time or money or taste.

Many people don't go to the opera not because they wouldn't enjoy it, but because it's expensive and takes time. That doesn't make them stupid. Sophistication is only married to intelligence because intelligence isusually a byproduct of being exposed to many new things(Which is what sophistication is)--I doubt you could assign that "byproduct" to MMO's, though.

I keep reading all of those posts, and updates, and the petitions that keep asking for everything that made EQ what it was, but I cannot imagine them going back to that. It won't sell, and christ, it shouldn't. It was revolutionary because it go in while the getting was good.

This is like some hipster level shit of MMOs. I'm flabbergasted.

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I don't think anyone is really asking for what EQ was. I think people are asking someone to go back, look at all the systems that were abandoned during the last big market shift, and develop those systems--possibly marrying them into what WoW made. That's not being a "hipster", that's seeing an opportunity to expand the current space. Personally, as I said before, I think the market is absolutely ripe for a shake up--You're right, old EQ wouldn't work, but taking some EQ like systems, plugging them into a proven, accessible model and developing that? Yeah, I think you'd have a money maker on your hands. It's time for the market to evolve again, and part of that evolution is exploiting more niche markets that WoW's can't quite scratch while maintaining it's extremely broad appeal.

Animus_sl said:

I'm afraid the days of EQ-style travel are gone. I still hate fast-travel in any game up to this day, but there are too many people that refuse to deal with the lack of it for developers not to placate them.
'

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EVE has slow travel and it works for them. I don't care one way or the other, as long as it works within the game world created by the devs.

The main issue with current fast travel games is that so much of their other systems are also the same. Fast travel by itself isn't bad, but when everything else in the game is a carbon copy of generic mmo 3999, then of course everyone gets bored within a couple of weeks.

Don't argue with Lithose because he'll trap you in a sophisticated semantics argument.

Slow style travel doesn't have to be an inconvenience, it just needs to be player driven. In time, it can be a source of income and means to interact with players. MMO's just need to avoid having tools and utilities such as LFG to automatically port or have objects in every town, zone, guild hall, etc. that will take you all over the earth. Some games I can understand it if it is part of the story. If i'm playing a Stargate or Star Trek MMO, I can understand flying my ship using warp speed or teleporting but, I really think games such as EQ benefit from more primitive means.

Muligan_sl said:

MMO's just need to avoid having tools and utilities such as LFG

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They should also eschew the internet and encourage their players to meet up and play the paper and dice version of the game with their neighbors. Because when I think multiplayer I think of neglecting methods to get people together often.

Agraza_sl said:

They should also eschew the internet and encourage their players to meet up and play the paper and dice version of the game with their neighbors.

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LOL.

Seriously though, as others have said--travel and systems need to make sense in the game world. In WoW, not having an AH would be idiotic, the game's design lends itself to an AH. In UO, the design lends itself to vendors. Or on that note, UO always felt very "big" and yet had one of the fastest, easiest instant travel systems in any MMO I have played, ever. The thing is, it's travel system was designed well within the world, that's all you need. That key statement "within the world". As long as designers make things that make sense in their world, it usually works--the problem comes when designers start looking at each aspect of the "world" as a separate game (Which is where WoW is headed in my opinion.).

But yeah, you don't need slow travel to make the world feel whole. I believe it COULD work, but it all depends on what kind of game "world" you want to make.

The only game where I've seen travel times and shit work is in EVE. Now how do you take that style of travel (across planets, through gates, setting up private networks etc) and put it into a Fantasy style game where it's not retarded and you have to spend 10-20 minutes running in a straight line? Even EVE gave you autopilot.

I think internal consistency would be better phrasing. It's brought up in fantasy/sci-fi settings all the time in relation to works of fiction.

It's a good question Draegan and on the same note: IF you did have long travel; do you make travel AUTOMATED or do you force the player to have to control his character?

1. If it's to be automated, you need a lot of interesting things for the player to do while he/she rides whatever they're riding just so they don't feel like they're wasteing time or bored. Think horizontal progression. Crafting, Tradeing with other players, working on certain things, perhaps trying to solve some puzzle/riddle in their quest book that have them stumped, etc etc.
2. If it's to be a manual run somewhere, you still need a lot of interesting things for the player to run through/nearby and progress in some way shape or form. They would obviously be different as you would have to be moving. Maybe certain towns where you can rarely find very powerful materials for sale by the vendors or perhaps opportunities to find rare mobs and incredibly rare loot along the way. Who knows. Lots of possibilities.

The trick is making it NOT boring through means of horizontal progression somehow and you make everyone happy. The world will feel large and like an actual world and journeys will feel long and "adventurous" and people will feel like they're improving their characters and doing something worthwhile instead of just sitting there staring bored as hell at their screen while they wait.

Playing EQ on Fippy without corpse recover, with gate pots, with Origin (AA everyone got free at lvl 1 to port you back to home city), with translocate day 1 with no reg cost, with sow pots and with boats disabled (so they had dock to dock teleports instead) was a pretty good system for me. It bogged down a little in velious but really was never anywhere near as bad as EQ was originally. I can say for sure I would never play a game with corpse recovery in it again, it is a truly awful mechanic for a pve game to have.

Theres some other interesting stuff some games have done. I like Darkfalls summon a friend stones that you can buy/find, I know EQ2 had a similar thing but I think only for RAFs? I also like their system of marking and using recall stones.

I do think any modern pve game needs a dungeon finder, you could handle it like WoW handled the original battlegrounds I guess, that might be problematic in some cases tho, especially if someone wants to RDF a zone that not many people do or if the game pop is low and queues are slow.

Travel is boring no matter what you do and no one likes doing it. The purpose for travel times is to create different local zones of activity like in EVE or to facilitate size and scope like in WOW (pre flying mounts). So the object is to make it the least pain in the ass as possible.

Making it "interesting" turns into putting mobs in place to make you have to do shit. Boring.
Making it "more interesting" turns into putting events like ogre reaids so you have to protect a caravan. This would get boring after about the 4th time, because at this point you just want to get there.

To your points:
1 - It's impossible to do that. It's going to be boring as shit, so like in real life you have to give the person something to do. Today we watch movies, listen to music, read a book, browse the internet.

If you're doing long travel in a fantasy game, then maybe your character enters a small isntance with other travelers (assuming there are some) where you're tossed into a chat room. Seems superficial and most of the time people won't do anything.

2 - It can't be done. You're traveling. Don't make it interesting because then people will just sigh with exasperation that they have to deal with some in-game gimmick just to get some place. If you have to make a system where you don't have autopilot long travel, then your only recourse is to make the game world itself interesting which is almost impossible to do for every square inch.

In the end you have to make the end point enticing and the only game I've seen this happen is in EVE. Single world shard/server, local markets, local areas of territory control, different areas for mining/fighting. I guess you can put "enticing" in quotes when it comes to EVE though.

Lithose_sl said:

I don't think anyone is really asking for what EQ was. I think people are asking someone to go back, look at all the systems that were abandoned during the last big market shift, and develop those systems--possibly marrying them into what WoW made. That's not being a "hipster", that's seeing an opportunity to expand the current space. Personally, as I said before, I think the market is absolutely ripe for a shake up--You're right, old EQ wouldn't work, but taking some EQ like systems, plugging them into a proven, accessible model and developing that? Yeah, I think you'd have a money maker on your hands. It's time for the market to evolve again, and part of that evolution is exploiting more niche markets that WoW's can't quite scratch while maintaining it's extremely broad appeal.

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The problem is that the Vocal Minority here about EQ's awesomeness -are- asking for almost exactly that. They look at basically every advance the genre has made since 2002 and say "Fuck that it is n00bsauce!" or equally retarded thoughts. Almost all the progressively minded people go "Ok then what?" to ideas of using old models in a space dominated by new models. Most of us just want to hear actual ideas that don't involve "EQ DID IT BETTER THUS IT IS ALWAYS BETTER" type arguments. Literally not a single person who is taking the path that games have progressed is asking to just take WoW and go +1 with it. We all want them to merge ideologies and create a hybrid that contains the best of both worlds. Shit to do and a reason to do it, where the game takes precedence but also understands that the world is not the same place as 1999 or 2000 or 2001 or 2002.

I get what you are tossing around, but there is an almost unbridgeable ideological gap between the EQ hipsters and the people those hipsters shit on in regards to what makes a real MMO. I mean really, it is hard to get the hipsters to actually dictate what they mean when they say "MMO" without refuting it wholesale by all modern games yet they still go on about how modern games aren't MMOs. There's a gap, and it isn't an intelligent one.

edit: holy shit apparently I haven't refreshed in awhile. This shit was days ago!

Gecko_sl said:

There are about 30 or so people in this thread. The same three are the ones who keep asking for a EQ/UO over and over. The vast majority of the rest of us just want something new, fresh, and somewhat different.

There are a lot of very good posts in this thread to chew on that give ideas about how to push the genre forward. I think the issue isn't so much design ideas, but where the tech is today.

Outside of Itz, I think the only universal theme that we all agree on is none of us want another WOW clone.

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Sorry, I didn't necessarily -only- mean this thread; I've been following some other forums, and in particular there have been a few very large petition type threads that are nutty. I also tend to have this convo once a month with the BF - it always devolves into what made EQ great, and when he actually gets down to it, for him what made EQ great is the sense of exploration (which I agree with), the scale (which I also agree with), but he loses me when he mentions stuff like, he'd rather sit in one place and do one camp so he can do it in the background. Blah.

@ Lithose - No, you're right, I did assign a certain level of "intelligence" to the sophistication hashtag, but I guess that really has more to do with how I perceive people when they mention stuff like that. In my defense, I think the posts had started comparing beethoven to bieber, and speaking as to how people had "bad taste" in MMOs so it felt like the natural progression. You're also right, that there are many systems that could be expanded upon and brought to light in a new game, but ugh. I should link some of the other forums with these posts.

I'm...cautiously optimistic with this game I suppose, and even I am not sure how far this extends. I want the feeling EQ gave, and I don't know if that's possible. Furthermore, some of the things that EQ did, that I was amazed at, would drive me fucking batty now. 2 hrs from butcherblock to Freeport? Go fuck yourself.

I will agree with Gecko and many others and say I don't want a wow clone, but wow worked for me in that it removed areas that for me, only worked to slow down the small bits of time I had to devote to the game anyways. And people want that back, but I think that those people who were in wonder at a boat ride in EQ have grown up a bit, and been around the block in MMOs, and I just don't think it's feasible.

After all, the first word in MMO ismassively, and at least once WoW got rolling, that came to also include the amount of people you wanted to reach and grab with the game. Even I'm not sure what I want EQN to be, except that I don't want it to waste my time online doing things like 2 hr boat rides.

I could kill me a lot of brownies and take terror filled runs through kithicor forest again though!

Draegan_sl said:

Don't argue with Lithose because he'll trap you in a sophisticated semantics argument.

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Yea, being handily beaten with a plethora of words in 3, 2, 1...

(Also you're still a hipster Lithose. )

I don't know if you need a dungeon finder or not. You can attract people to dungeons very easily by offering mobs inside the entrance that are difficult but solo-able, offer decent exp and an extremely rare chance to drop something like a runebranded girdle in Sebilis. Actually, Sebilis did it decently by offering solo-able mobs, decent space to kill them, sometimes you needed a buddy to split them with, and it was an area where groups formed quite often as a result. Granted, some classes couldn't solo there very well and I don't remember if those particular frogs could drop a runebranded girdle. It wasn't perfect by any means and it could have been a lot better but the point is if you give incentives for people to be in an area together, they will be there and they WILL group eventually.

You shouldn't need a max person group for everything imho.

Draegan_sl said:

The only game where I've seen travel times and shit work is in EVE. Now how do you take that style of travel (across planets, through gates, setting up private networks etc) and put it into a Fantasy style game where it's not retarded and you have to spend 10-20 minutes running in a straight line? Even EVE gave you autopilot.

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The reality is most players rarely traveled long distances in EVE. You stayed in your set of systems and maybe once in awhile made that trip into Jita or something to stock up, but it was never like WoW where you had to hit stormwind every day for various stuff and then if you wanted to go raid you had to fly to AQ or wherever. That's why it worked. Could you do that in a fantasy game? Dunno if we really haven't seen any good fantasy sandbox games come out. EVE had top notch systems in a ton of areas that kept people playing. Darkfall had that huge world where you had to run 20m-1hr in a straight line like you just said and I never really minded it, cause like EVE you didn't travel long distances often, now as the game started to die you had to travel more to find fights but that would have been true of EVE too had EVE died. Had DF remained high pop IMO the travel would have been fine.

Longest I ever spent 'traveling' in either game was looking for fights, and that isn't really traveling imo.. I spent hours running around WoW zones on my horse looking for fights too despite that world having fast travel.

I really don't think autopilot had much to do with EVE travel being tolerable, most players I know didnt use autopilot cause it was just begging to get ganked in null sec or in low sec. I haven't played since 08 but even back then when they added Warp to 0 they didnt have that option if you used autopilot.

The easy way to make travel interesting is to put goals at the end that are concrete and make the journey worth it. Mobs in the way is one thing, but if you have overleveled content (or in the case of low level content travel) you can select an option to skip the bullshit. Frank the asshole is level 1 and traveling from the Farm to the Hamlet is a lot more dangerous than Bob the Dragonslayer who slays dragons and shit. He can just select "Skip the bullshit" and bypass all the travel nonsense because it literally would not matter if he just put himself on autofollow or was actively working his way across the map.

Tie travel speed into progression and you solve/resolve many issues that the "hardcore" and the rest of the world have about travel in general. Like literally all cities have a caravan route attached to them that either say "you have to pay X in order to protect you" or "HOLY FUCK YOU KILLED JESUS PROTECT US" and you get to ride for free. The protection pay decreases with level/progression/skillrank/wtfever.

But in no way am I saying that an EQ game should not have Wizards/druids/whatever able to teleport to designated locations at specific levels instantly. That stuff is a staple and needs to be maintained.

Any company will pick ease of access to reach more potential customers over internal consistency. Looking back over the MMO market every company I can think of has done so, actually. Including EVE with jump clones and the "be anywhere within the hour" jump networks. The galaxy becoming too small was one of the larger concerns a couple of years ago, no idea if they dialed that back. Gotta give them credit for the mechanics still matching the world pretty well, while fantasy MMOs usually go with you being ported from and to the dungeons, making the outdoor world they spent years crafting mostly pointless.

Personally, I want a game where the world they crafted before release continues to matter. That could include slower travel if theres a point to it through gameplay. It could include fast travel just as well. The setup WoW pushed in the last years where you could level to max and raid endgame without ever leaving Ironforge irks me though. If you make an MMO world please stick to it, and dont morph into a lobby game like D2 or GW1 after a few years. And I'm not against lobby games, both mentioned examples are fine games in their own right. I just dont want my dog to turn into a hamster after 2 years either, I bought a dog damnit. Same with my MMORPGs.

Draegan_sl said:

Travel is boring no matter what you do and no one likes doing it. The purpose for travel times is to create different local zones of activity like in EVE or to facilitate size and scope like in WOW (pre flying mounts). So the object is to make it the least pain in the ass as possible.

Making it "interesting" turns into putting mobs in place to make you have to do shit. Boring.
Making it "more interesting" turns into putting events like ogre reaids so you have to protect a caravan. This would get boring after about the 4th time, because at this point you just want to get there.

To your points:
1 - It's impossible to do that. It's going to be boring as shit, so like in real life you have to give the person something to do. Today we watch movies, listen to music, read a book, browse the internet.

If you're doing long travel in a fantasy game, then maybe your character enters a small isntance with other travelers (assuming there are some) where you're tossed into a chat room. Seems superficial and most of the time people won't do anything.

2 - It can't be done. You're traveling. Don't make it interesting because then people will just sigh with exasperation that they have to deal with some in-game gimmick just to get some place. If you have to make a system where you don't have autopilot long travel, then your only recourse is to make the game world itself interesting which is almost impossible to do for every square inch.

In the end you have to make the end point enticing and the only game I've seen this happen is in EVE. Single world shard/server, local markets, local areas of territory control, different areas for mining/fighting. I guess you can put "enticing" in quotes when it comes to EVE though.

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I disagree and I think it can be done in an interesting way. Your examples sounded pretty horrible to me though. So maybe your idea of it is not the same as mine.
Putting mobs in the way is not the solution. Events like protecting a random caravan is not interesting.

Finding a rare spawn like Lodizal with very valuable loot along the way CAN make you want to visit an area and hopefully you hit the lottery? What if your crafting system didn't actually suck and was actually interesting? What if there are nodes worth exploring/discovering and fighting over? Wow...what a revelation.

You CAN make people want to travel these lands...you're just not trying hard enough.

Mr Creed_sl said:

Any company will pick ease of access to reach more potential customers over internal consistency. Looking back over the MMO market every company I can think of has done so, actually. Including EVE with jump clones and the "be anywhere within the hour" jump networks. The galaxy becoming too small was one of the larger concerns a couple of years ago, no idea if they dialed that back. Gotta give them credit for the mechanics still matching the world pretty well, while fantasy MMOs usually go with you being ported from and to the dungeons, making the outdoor world they spent years crafting mostly pointless.

Personally, I want a game where the world they crafted before release continues to matter. That could include slower travel if theres a point to it through gameplay. It could include fast travel just as well. The setup WoW pushed in the last years where you could level to max and raid endgame without ever leaving Ironforge irks me though. If you make an MMO world please stick to it, and dont morph into a lobby game like D2 or GW1 after a few years. And I'm not against lobby games, both mentioned examples are fine games in their own right. I just dont want my dog to turn into a hamster after 2 years either, I bought a dog damnit. Same with my MMORPGs.

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I've always favored a system that requires you to see the content a few times, but after awhile, when you've leveled, when you've done it a billion times and now can do it easily, you can skip it. IE, essentially what Rezz said above. Doing runs through scary forests or orc infested woods with the threat of death penalties and a lost corpse was the stuff of legends, but once you got used to the game, and got higher level, running through that crap was a yawn fest. There ceased to be any real risk, but they never quite updated it to reflect that the majority of people who had played were probably past the point of pure, unadulterated terror that those things brought.

For me, it always kind of felt like I started crawling, then running, then riding a bike, and when I got older and should have been cruising in an escalade they tell you to go fuck yourself, schwinn for life. That's part of what I hated, the arbitrary slow down just because you progressed and the game didn't.