EQ Never

TheYanger_sl said:

What a silly notion. The early EQ dungeons were designed so that you could crawl them, and you could if they weren't overcrowded at the time. Pulling just emerged as a form of CC (well, splitting rather). Saying that CC and splitting is 'the same' every single time is as bad as saying that all you do in wow is hit the same 5 button rotation over and over. You're oversimplifying things. It was a role that people enjoyed, that required you to pay attention and play well in a game that fought you every step of the way in terms of allowing you to do that easily (this applies to both CC and pulling), and although it was a 'thing' you do to most groups, it was less similar on a pull by pull basis than dpsing or healing were for the most part.

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Splitting emerged as an Uber CC that became basically the solution to every encounter that was more difficult than "roll over it with DPS." It was not planned for or controlled for in any way, and thus was different than a more balanced approach to CC. WoW, for example, planned and controlled for it much better thanks mostly for the hindsight of what happened in EQ. CC in WoW was more limited, distributed, and had a decent risk/reward mechanic depending on the particular type. Splitting pulls should be the exception, not the default. It may have been fun for the splitter, but it was boring for everyone else.

By linking encounters you bring ACTUAL CC into play.

That's the same as generalizing Mario games into 'well, you run and jump. That's not enough to give you variety!' when it's patently false.

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Straw man.

I'm not saying I think EQ Next should be designed with FD splitting type behavior 'in mind' (let's face it, it was a quirk in the coding that we exploited the shit out of), like programmed in as an intentional system, but the game DAMN SURE better not feature linked mobs and the complete absence of space for players to outsmart it.

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Except that, being able to split an encounter not specifically designed to be split trivializes it completely. Your CC toolbox is what you are supposed to use to "outsmart" an encounter, which is why they are linked.

Although I never would've considered it one at the time in the wake of UO, EQ was sandbox as fuck and this is what we made of it, denying that would be ridiculous especially since 'sandbox' is one of the few words we HAVE heard for EQ Next. You don't need to give me infinite activities to do (Killing mobs, doing quests, crafting shit. That's pretty solid to me tbh), you need to give the player the freedom to do those few activities however they damn well please if you want to call it a sandbox.

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EQ was not a sandbox in the commonly used sense of the word (like UO or SWG). It was an entirely new kind of game that players and developers were exploring together, it could be considered a sandbox in that way. The problem is you only get that once in a great while when a new genre is born, people experimenting in a relatively unknown game-space is something you cannot consciously repeat. THAT is what made EQ special and why no other game in the genre can be special the way EQ was, wishing for that back won't make it happen because it cannot happen until something totally new and different comes out of left field.

Creslin_sl said:

The only part of that pulling strategy that is gone is the splitting. I know we CCd a ton in early cata even doing heroics which was when I last played.

FD pulling mostly only slowed down raids, 95% of the raid never saw any of that action and if it failed you just had an even longer wait. It was use to compensate for that fact that SOE didn't plan the layout of a dungeon like blizz does.

Also you definitely could split pulls in WoW if you really wanted to, you just didn't usually have to unless the content was way out of your league. I thnk blizz asked the question of whether it was fun for the group to sit around and wait while a monk or SK split a pull, often every pull, and the answer was no it was boring to wait that long, so they made a game where splitting like that was very very rarely required.

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I specifically meant splitting, not general CC. I should have been more clear. I think, in general, WoW's CC implementation was quite good.

It was not an entirely new kind of game at all. Pulling, splitting (even FD pulling) wasn't new. You just never played MUDs before.

Elurin_sl said:

I wonder how much the fact that bag space was extremely limited, lots of items being unstackable, and coin having a weight had to do with no automated farmers in EQ? Take farming something like giants, for instance. Yeah, you could probably automate that pretty well, but after a while you're going to be crawling because you've got plat that weighs so damn much that you can't farm anymore.

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I guess everyone has forgotten about all of the tradeskill based farming that went on, with mats that were all available from merchants that produced a finished item that sold back to the merchant for more than the material cost. There was one during PoP that could be completely done in the Bazaar, so no weight issues.

Draegan_sl said:

It was not an entirely new kind of game at all. Pulling, splitting (even FD pulling) wasn't new. You just never played MUDs before.

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I meant the game-space as a whole, being a 3D graphical world added all sorts of new wrinkles to the mix. As for MUDs, it depends on what MUD you played, I didn't play the kinds of DikuMUDs that EQ is based off of before I played EQ.

Split pulling encouraged a different sort of gameplay than we have today. Part of the reason EQ was so social was because of the amount of downtime between the action. It encouraged people to actually talk to each other and if you enjoy socializing with other human beings then EQ was great. It really was just a chat box with graphics in many ways.

The people who sat around and chatted tended to play classes that supported that, clerics, shamans etc. While many of us who liked to keep active were pullers, etc. Which meant that the best groups usually had medium skill and a couple of jokers who kept us laughing.

WoW over designed everything and eliminated the social aspect. That's fine if you like that sort of thing, and it is big money maker. But claiming that it is "better design" is subjective. Even though I like the action part of WoW, I hate the social aspect of that game.

Of course, the change in game play wasn't all WoW's fault. Teamspeak, Ventrillo, etc advanced chat and allowed people to be more active while playing. And games changed to take advantage of that, even EQ. Typing out raid commands while trying to tank in a bad pull is a lost art, and a relic of a different age.

Blaming WoW for eliminating the social aspect is typical idiotic wow-hate blather. That shit happened well before WoW ever existed. My DAOC Friar was a fucking machine gun. EQs plodding pace was pretty much unique because it was a MUD ripoff with graphics and practically nothing added beyond that. (at least not on purpose)

Personally, I'd love to see a throwback to more limited button smashing. What skills I use should just be defined by what stance I'm in. "hurt target" should never require repeatedly tapping keys.

And fuck voice chat. Voice chat allows two, maybe three people max to have a conversation. After that you are just hoping to key in and start talking before someone else starts blabbing over you.

Split pulling was never intended by the designers. Nor was pulling period - they envisioned groups moving through the dungeon killing whatever shows up. Of course this is an idiotic way to play given that you have to plant your ass on the ground for nearly 15 minutes to regen mana, tanks had exactly zero tools to hold threat on multiple mobs, and the only CC in the game that was remotely reliable belonged exclusively to one class. Whoops. The original EQ trilogy was not tank/healer/dps. It was warrior/cleric/enchanter.

Split pulling was slow and shitty and people who over-relied on it bored groups to fucking death. Unless you fucked up and there's a dragon chasing after you, just bring the fucking mobs.

Kreugen_sl said:

Blaming WoW for eliminating the social aspect is typical idiotic wow-hate blather. That shit happened well before WoW ever existed. My DAOC Friar was a fucking machine gun. EQs plodding pace was pretty much unique because it was a MUD ripoff with graphics and practically nothing added beyond that..

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It's pretty terrible now in EQ now too for some classes. I have a 95 monk that basically chain smashes hotkeys and has like 6 hotbars. I told a dev on the EQ forum, "Yo, this shit's retarded, why can't you just add flying kick to autoattack, there's no time I'll never not use flying kick when it's up". He got all pissy about how clicking the flying kick button every 6 seconds was part of the unique challenges of playing a monk. Half the time stunning kick is the same way (every 9 seconds) because so many mobs are stun immune anyway. But they can't let us have an auto-toggle because of "challenge". Fucking morons. That definitely kills some of the social aspect since in combat I'm playing hotbar whack-a-mole or can't type since I'm chain mashing hotkeys. That shit needs to go away, big time.

I pretty much hate voice chat too because it's usually the same group of 3-4 people making stupid in-jokes and they harass everyone else to join and listen to them blather on endlessly when I'd rather just listen to music or something.

Yea, I had consolidated a lot of spam and cooldown stuff into macros. Once that is desirable, the design should be adjusted.

Kreugen_sl said:

Blaming WoW for eliminating the social aspect is typical idiotic wow-hate blather.

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Notice I also stated that the introduction of teamspeak, ventrillo and their effect on mmo design were important. But perhaps your are incapable of seeing that.

And I never mentioned anything about where split pulling came from, because everyone by now knows that it was unintended. But so what? It was a great mechanic for those of us who like that sort of game play.

You really need to pull that corn cobb out of your ass. Your random hate anyone who dislikes WoW rants are old, tired and pathetic. You lub the WoW, we get it.

Except that typing out raid commands while trying to tank has nothing to do with art and everything to do with tanking that takes little activity on the part of the tank.

Whatever. If you are going to get all upset because I used a figure of speech, then it is your problem that you can't see the bigger issues. My point was about the social nature of EQ back then. Your focus on some minor detail I happened to mention is sad.

I'm not asking for a return to typing while tanking. Get a clue. Nobody liked doing that and I sure as hell was never any good at it. Some people were though and I admired them for it at the time.

At what point, when all the details have been successfully attacked, is your point addressed?

EQ is still there. Pulling is still a big deal. And many of the people longing for EQ Next to be EQ 1.5 aren't playing EQ, so what's the real problem?

Grim1_sl said:

You really need to pull that corn cobb out of your ass. Your random hate anyone who dislikes WoW rants are old, tired and pathetic. You lub the WoW, we get it.

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I love WoW so much that I only played for about half of its life and I'm not playing it now. I love WoW so much that my post was full of things that I don't like about WoW.

I am not defending WoW. I am shitting on people that must blame WoW for EVERY FUCKING THING no matter how un-related. Like you manage to do in almost every post you make.

We get it, you hate WoW. However nearly everything you rant about applies to almost every fucking MMO ever made. Saying I have a corncob up my ass when yours is shoved in sideways, yeah, fuck you.

Grim is retarded, he pretty much thinks you're a WOW cocksucker if you hate or slightly criticize his precious social utopia that was EQ circa 20th century. The only two games that he thinks ever existed were WOW and EQ.

Grimbro should play some Sonic or MarioBros sometime to relax.

posting here is more entertaining than any MMO currently available. what does that say about the industry? when i played EQ, i actually played the game, i didn't spend all of my time on a website defending why i liked it.

Means you are probably never going to be happy.

I really do hate that voice chat has become industry standard. If the interface i'm using is the keyboard and a mouse, the game should not be so twitchy or outright arcane that the appropriate mode of communication is voicechat. Appropriate communication should be typing. That should be part of the skillset involved in playing your game.

The only time i'll voicechat anymore is in pvp matches in games. That's an exception. But we need to chat about how to beat a predetermined script and react to predetermined variables? Go fuck yourself and pay attention to the game you're playing, not the voices in your head.

I understand this view comes across heavy on the GET OFF MY LAWN... but god damn, all voice chat does is make players shitty in brave new ways. And it becomes even more noticable when you boycott voice chat.

I don't get the hate for VOIP. To me its merely convenience. No trying to type and fight or type and run. My hands are free to do anything in the game or computer while talking naturally. Giving directions on the fly is much simpler and faster through voip then trying to type it. It was very obvious it would be the next logical step in communications for gaming.

Saying because a game uses kb/m then communication should only be done through that medium is just asinine.

A game could easily slow combat pace or actions a player must do while in combat and still allow voip to socialize.

If the people you're playing with are any good, or the game is any good, they don't need directions on the fly. I don't begrudge people that would rather use voice chat. That's really no skin off my balls. Sometimes I'd rather sit around telling jokes than typing jokes myself.

I do resent the shitty players that can't play the game without it and the designs that cater to it / encourage it. Both of these things exist, and they lower my enjoyment of the game. Hence I hate them, and the hellish voice chat culture that spawns them. Some people can't seem to walk and chew gum at the same time. If a person would rather not, to each his own. If a person actually can't, that's the problem.

Unless it's pvp. If you're not skyping while you're pvping you're just doing it all sorts of wrong. How else are you gonna cackle when you own a noob, or yell "Am I lagging? Am i fucking lagging?" when you die without looking like an idiot.