EQ Never

Even if the game is the hit, making the game world too big isn't that great of an idea. Unless you plan on having something other than your typical server setup, mkopec is right. Players will just end up spread out too far and the world will feel empty. Almost everyone here is agreeing with the importance of social interaction, so why spread them thin? Unless the world is hugely compelling, and the game is a hit, all you're going to do with "a huge, vast world" is kill off your player base even quicker if the game has bland aspects.

Oh and don't forget what happens to the player base once you start adding zones with expansions.

Convo_sl said:

I really don't think what they say is so radical.

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It's not really what they say, it is the fact that, much like Dumar but with 100x the post count to say the same stuff, they want a very strict EQ clone. And they repeat it ad nauseum while at the same time trying to call EQ a sandbox and all sorts of other nonsense. And they literally have zero leeway on any ideas, especially if it wasn't in original EQ. Nor do they generally put forth any ideas, they simply say anything after EQ sucks and that anyone who likes anything after EQ is a retard/carebear/pussy/ADD/whatever to disguise the fact they just want EQ reskinned.

If you remember popsickledeath from the other forum, then you basically have the polar opposite with these kids. Except qwerty posts just as much and says just as little. And still doesn't know what he's talking about when it came to original EQ in most cases.

Also, as to compromise? You might be willing to admit that games that have released since EQ have done some aspects better. Those guys? Are not. They don't want a conversation; they want to be right with other EQNeckbeards (I liked mmo hipster myself, but hey, to each his own~) backing them up with the same silly nostalgia stories from 14 years ago that don't bear any context to modern day gaming at all.

So yeah! Unless you enjoy hearing a broken record that only plays the same song, they have don't really add much to make up for having to constantly scroll past their nonsense. All of this is of course an opinion.

EQ being a large world shouldn't be a problem. EQ was fairly large, EQ2 was pretty large. I imagine comparatively EQN will be large as well. I was mostly commenting on the fact that Eve's version of large and a large mmo based in a non-space setting are entirely different beasts. They will most likely have npcs that can port to general areas with players being able to port to specific areas. There will most likely be more than ones means of transportation everywhere, and any NPC based transportation will probably have mildly prohibitive costs so that in an emergency you make do. But actually talk to people and you can get it much cheaper/free etc.

I could easily list what would be a true compromise between modern gaming and EQ. That game was already released mostly though, and it was Vanilla WoW to a large degree. Remove the bear asses, remove BGs and the whole concept of PVP rating/ranks beyond the notoriety gained within the gaming community, remove gear tiers that don't make sense or have stats that leave little room for maneuvering(oh shit, sword with str/sta. guess my warrior picks that one!) and remove "ranks" of spells/abilities. Tune down the spaminess so that you aren't staring at hotbars or popups with cooldown notices to maximize damage but don't go back to "afk 5 min medding" type nonsense. Make a game, not a chatroom. EQ was much more of a chatroom than it was a game.

And that's barely even scratching the surface. Compromise is easy. And it is certainly more likely to be a game that might actually get made.

Grim1_sl said:

Where EvE can be copied is in it's philisophical take on safe vs dangerous zones and the harsh penalties for dying in low sec areas.

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I like the increased risk the further away from civilization you are. I would add some strategic gaming options to this that revolve around the Norrathian diety Drinal.


You pay a daily tithe to Drinal that varies anywhere from zero to 100% so that you can establish a "bank" of favor.

Option 1 INCREDIBLY EXPENSIVE
Full recovery of character with minimal downtime, even if loss occurs in high risk area.
Consequence: You can gain a great amount of positive faction with Drinal (EVE Clone system)

Option 2 VARIED COSTS
The cost of your character's recovery, along with their gear, and the amount of downtime you are willing to accept varies with:
a. The amount you are willing to pay from your tithe bank.
b. The actions other players are willing to perform on your behalf (tithe contributions, corpse locating, summoning, dragging, etc.)
c. The results of a minigame match that you play against Drinal or his minions. (Legends of Norrath card game?)
Consequence: Variable amount of Drinal faction gain.

Option 3 ITS GONE BABY
Loss occurs in a high risk area and you are not willing (or forgot) to pay the tithe. You decide not to engage other players to help you. You decide not to play in the strategic minigame match.
Consequence: No Drinal faction gain, but you are rolled all the way back to level 1 and you lose all of your gear that was on your character. If you were max level when this happens, then the game immortalizes your name on a huge memorial in your home city.

Rezz_sl said:

It's not really what they say, it is the fact that, much like Dumar but with 100x the post count to say the same stuff, they want a very strict EQ clone. And they repeat it ad nauseum while at the same time trying to call EQ a sandbox and all sorts of other nonsense. And they literally have zero leeway on any ideas, especially if it wasn't in original EQ. Nor do they generally put forth any ideas, they simply say anything after EQ sucks and that anyone who likes anything after EQ is a retard/carebear/pussy/ADD/whatever to disguise the fact they just want EQ reskinned.

If you remember popsickledeath from the other forum, then you basically have the polar opposite with these kids. Except qwerty posts just as much and says just as little. And still doesn't know what he's talking about when it came to original EQ in most cases.

Also, as to compromise? You might be willing to admit that games that have released since EQ have done some aspects better. Those guys? Are not. They don't want a conversation; they want to be right with other EQNeckbeards (I liked mmo hipster myself, but hey, to each his own~) backing them up with the same silly nostalgia stories from 14 years ago that don't bear any context to modern day gaming at all.

So yeah! Unless you enjoy hearing a broken record that only plays the same song, they have don't really add much to make up for having to constantly scroll past their nonsense. All of this is of course an opinion.

EQ being a large world shouldn't be a problem. EQ was fairly large, EQ2 was pretty large. I imagine comparatively EQN will be large as well. I was mostly commenting on the fact that Eve's version of large and a large mmo based in a non-space setting are entirely different beasts. They will most likely have npcs that can port to general areas with players being able to port to specific areas. There will most likely be more than ones means of transportation everywhere, and any NPC based transportation will probably have mildly prohibitive costs so that in an emergency you make do. But actually talk to people and you can get it much cheaper/free etc.

I could easily list what would be a true compromise between modern gaming and EQ. That game was already released mostly though, and it was Vanilla WoW to a large degree. Remove the bear asses, remove BGs and the whole concept of PVP rating/ranks beyond the notoriety gained within the gaming community, remove gear tiers that don't make sense or have stats that leave little room for maneuvering(oh shit, sword with str/sta. guess my warrior picks that one!) and remove "ranks" of spells/abilities. Tune down the spaminess so that you aren't staring at hotbars or popups with cooldown notices to maximize damage but don't go back to "afk 5 min medding" type nonsense. Make a game, not a chatroom. EQ was much more of a chatroom than it was a game.

And that's barely even scratching the surface. Compromise is easy. And it is certainly more likely to be a game that might actually get made.

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Aww chill man. It's a fucking forum for gaming. How are you going to complain someone is talking to much? haha. I agree with 90% of what qwerty says. Not sure why he's determined to get RRP'ed by constantly insulting Draegan, but hey, to each his own. I like his opinions.

Hi everyone. LONG time lurker, first post. I think that one of the biggest problems facing any emerging mmo, EQNext and beyond, is how to fight that "WoW" solo mentality. That is, most jackasses run around, doing their own thing and that's all they know. That's all the care to do. RIFT tried the dynamic events and insta-groups that happens when you were in the vicinity of an event and GW2 does something fairly similar. I think that one of the most appealing parts of EQ, and one of the facets that made it so difficult, is that you had to rely on other people to survive. How does a company building the next generation mmo, attract or convert a player base back into huddling in a corner, too excited or afraid to move because you could die at any second? Or do you think that's even viable anymore.

90Proof_sl said:

Option 3 ITS GONE BABY
Loss occurs in a high risk area and you are not willing (or forgot) to pay the tithe. You decide not to engage other players to help you. You decide not to play in the strategic minigame match.
Consequence: No Drinal faction gain, but you are rolled all the way back to level 1 and you lose all of your gear that was on your character. If you were max level when this happens, then the game immortalizes your name on a huge memorial in your home city.

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Heh, my first reaction is that this would be too harsh. But after thinking about it a bit, it could be cool. I always thought it was funny watching the nekid high level raiders run past me on their way to reviving their corpses, lost in the Plane of Fear or some such. Watching a nekid high level toon fight next to me in the noob zone, while getting pwned by rats would be hilarious. Some sort of icon above his head to show his previous level would be good.

A little laughter at the misery of others is always fun. As long as it isnt' abused so much to make people rage quit.

If leveling to max is slow then giving the newly deleveled acceclerated xp might be good. x2, x10, x100.. whatever. And as long as the possibility of deleveling all the way to one is rare, it could work with the right constraints, like the ones you listed.

Looking forward to this.

Cthon_sl said:

Hi everyone. LONG time lurker, first post. I think that one of the biggest problems facing any emerging mmo, EQNext and beyond, is how to fight that "WoW" solo mentality. That is, most jackasses run around, doing their own thing and that's all they know. That's all the care to do. RIFT tried the dynamic events and insta-groups that happens when you were in the vicinity of an event and GW2 does something fairly similar. I think that one of the most appealing parts of EQ, and one of the facets that made it so difficult, is that you had to rely on other people to survive. How does a company building the next generation mmo, attract or convert a player base back into huddling in a corner, too excited or afraid to move because you could die at any second? Or do you think that's even viable anymore.

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Some folks don't like them but a decent LFG tool is critical for modern mmo's. GW2 screwed up not having one from the get go. I'm not much of a fan of them but some things have changed too much to go back. Forcing people to group is good, but if you do that then getting a group has to be as easy as clicking a button or most modern mmo players just give up.

are modern mmo's still not including a simple /lfg + /who all lfg system just because they didn't invent it here?

Convo_sl said:

I don't think anyone minds a LFG tool.

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Some of the "community" folks get upset with them. I'm kind of in that camp also, but purely out of nostalgia. Put me in game needing to do some dungeon for a daily and I get pissed off if that tool isn't readily available.

qwerty_sl said:

I meant world and even artwork.

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You and the others are all true in theory, but it really depends on how it's done. Sorry for the length of this post and possible ramblingness, but it is something I know a bit about. Generally, as soon as you hand tweak the output, the output can no longer be replicated by whatever algorithm/procedure that was used to originally make it. Updating the algorithm/procedure is a possibility, but you will quickly come to a point where it is no longer valid, and you just need to save out each data point. There's just no real way around it.

This is just off the top of my head, but if you have a 1km^2 area, with 1 vertex per meter (on the lower end of mesh density), you'll have 1001 points since you need a start and end point, that squared is 1,002,001 points. Even if you eliminate x and z values, and only store the y (height), you're looking at 4 bytes for a float, you've got about 4 MB right there. 5000 areas, for the sake of argument, of those would be around 20,000 MB (20 GB). That's JUST terrain height, not counting all the other stuff that goes into terrain, like multiple UVs (usually x,y floats), low res versions of the terrain (to render at far distances), some kind of texturing indexing or texture blending map/data.

But let's say you have 100 areas, and you either have a masterful formula (let's say 10 kB), which either gives the desired output, or you suddenly increase that cost 40,000 times as you're having to save individual data points (from 1kB to ~400 MB). Still pretty reasonable, though it's still not including all the other data that has to go with it, and 100 isn't many areas, if you're going for raw size (ignoring gameplay/social impact).

True, it can be optimized, but it can't be discounted. You can either store it locally on the player for faster loading, or stream it (hope you've got good & cheap bandwidth), but it has to come from somewhere.

You won't be generating the terrain on the fly either, unless your AI is built to accommodate it. Most games use a nav mesh (simplified terrain mesh) to tell them how to navigate around the area, and you want your nav mesh to be tested and optimized.

As for art, you can usually expand your art options with the procedural generation, but you need the original (good) art to combine it. The more original art you have, the more combinations you can get out of it. But just doing a full set permutation usually sucks (you wouldn't put a dog's head on a person's body... unless it's suppose to be a dogman). That has to be stored on the local client too, or again streamed, but the combinations could be generated at runtime or stored on the server and sent to the players involved, so you don't have too much additional install cost there.

Without human intervention, it looks some kind of muddled messed. And with that intervention comes a storage cost.

As for content, the random dungeon/fight combinations are cool when well done, but they still have to be hand tweaked. They do something like "Ok, environment A can have Set 1, 2 or 5 of mobs, environment B can have Set 2, 3 or 5, etc..." same with loot sets. That's data that has to be stored somewhere as well. Usually server side, so it's true it won't affect the user install.

It is, by no means, a magic bullet if you want quality.

So very cool stuff, but it hasn't be done on a MMO to the scale suggested.

As a little aside, according to Steam'slatest hardware survey, 34% had 255-499 GB total space, and 25% of steam users with 100-249GB free disk space. So I suppose you could fit a massive game in there.