/rollsdice
*Avoids 10 page derail about LFG Tools vs. I-Want-To-Search-For-Players-Manually-While-Walking-Up-a-Hill-in-Snow
EQ Never
- Thread starter Convo
- Start date
*Avoids 10 page derail about LFG Tools vs. I-Want-To-Search-For-Players-Manually-While-Walking-Up-a-Hill-in-Snow
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You failed your derail saving throw, sorry!
Also, you forgot "both ways". I'm told that's vital when using the "uphill" argument.
Are you seriously arguing that games should not create better QoL features in their games?
Nah, mouthbreathers who think that spending 30 minutes trying to herd internet cats into a group for a shitty dungeon run usually run out of breath once their at the top of the hill and die of a heartattack.
Convo
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Cross server instant dungeon groups are pretty weak for an in depth mmo. Hah imgaine the ninja looting if EQ had them?! Lol. I think LFG tools like we already mentioned similar to VG are good enough.
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No need to imagine anything. You've never done a cross-server dungeon LFG with some tool that rolls Need on everything and says "Oh, sorry, I hit the wrong button! My bad!" like 5 or 6 times?
Vanguard really was an underrated game. When I introduced my wife to MMO's, I was so burned on EQ(former 14 hour a day raiding guild member) I didn't even want to look at it so I fired up VG for her. Showed her the ropes and it was nearly humorous. She was hooked from the word go. I was still standing behind her explaining the basics and she was already out killing mobs. So after a few hours I logged in my character and joined her and it really was the closest thing to EQ we have, or will probably ever see. The environment, the music, the feeling of being immersed in the game. It had a lot of what is right about MMO's.
Convo
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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No I would not play a game that has that shit. I prefer to have a little say over who I group with and keep it to my own server. But I'm not one of those people who will rage quit if I can't get a group one night...I think it's silly some of the expectations put on these games now.
if you're creating something other than a good fantasy world then i have no problems with "qol" features
Trust me. The 10 page derail is better conversation then the garbage EQN is going to deliver. Does anyone seriously have any faith in SOE creating a great game?
It has been shown now with two games with decent populations that a server only LFG tool does not work at all. You need some sort of critical mass for it to work. In any game that has levels, where you can hit max level in 30-60 hours, you will never have enough people on a single server to populate lower level dungeons after the initial launch of the game. This is why you need cross server LFG tool because those lower level dungeons would never get used.
Look, I love getting a good group of people together and smashing a dungeon over a single gaming session. I would love to create a dungeon with people I know and have a fun social party. I often do because I'm usually in a decent guild from some faction of players from this board.
However if I'm playing an alt, or a game without a guild, or coming back to a game after it's been up for over a year; I'd much rather smash a dungeon with some anonymous people at a press of a button rather than grind mobs or quests by myself. I'd much rather do 2-3 dungeon runs in an evening with my limited game time rather than 1 due to putting a group together.
Grim1
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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/shrug
Haven't had time to try it, bu I hear PS2 is pretty good. Was a huge fan of PS1 for 6 months or so. So they are capable enough.
And it may be for the best they weren't approved for the bazzillion dollar budget but instead have to go on the cheap. SWTOR was pretty much forced to be a bad WoW clone because of all the money involved. Less money means EQNext can afford to take some risks and not take the company down with them if they fail.
And the switch to "sandbox" according to Smed is a good thing. It's hard to tell what they mean by that though.
SoE has dropped the ball enough that it has become somewhat of a habit for them. But they are trying and have had some recent success, so I still hold out hope.
Rift, even when it had a very very healthy population, first implemented a server only-LFG tool. I was somewhat a failure because groups sometimes never formed. Once it went cross-server dungeons popped pretty often. SWTOR was another one that had the same problem.
Forget arguing whether or not you should have a LFG tool for a moment. Assume you are making one and you have to make the choice between cross server or not. It has to be cross server because just from a numbers point of view, there is a critical mass point where it becomes viable and you're not waiting forever to get a group. Especially if you're game has the whole LF Tank/Healer situation.
The only time you can have it server only is if your server architecture allows for much higher populations or if your population is not segregated between "End Game Content" and "Leveling Content".
If I had to guess, something like this happened:
The money people went to board meetings and said, "Here is a ton of money, we want to be successful like WOW, so make a WOW game." The studio managers went, "Ok!". The developers and designers, who probably weren't very imaginative, made a game that copied WOW down to copying Rogue/Warrior abilities almost to the tooltip word. I very much doubt the Execs who didn't know anything about MMORPGs said, "make a game that was divided in two factions, with hotbars, tab targeting, raids, and dungeons! Oh and make sure you use a shit engine!"
So, I don't think high budgets is really the issue. It's the top end designers and studio heads that don't know how to make a good MMORPG. The don't bother iterating the proper designs from the genre.
That and SWTOR was fucking retarded voice acting the whole damn thing.
You just spit out a bunch platitudes that mean absolutely nothing. What you wrote sounds warm and fuzzy but really doesn't have any bearing on design. If you have a typical game where you have your population split between Leveling and End-Game-Stuff then your Leveling content will be incredibly underpopulated where cross server grouping tools will be necessary 6 months after launch. If server sizes stay relatively the same, you'll never have enough new players and alts running through the game to form dungeon groups at any given time.
Now I don't know what kind of design elements you mean by "relevant dungeons and open world" and "aid in progressing your character". Do you mean that end game dungeons are used by low level players and max level players at the same time? Are lower level players and max level players grouping together? Will max level players have incentive to group with lower level players if they are sharing the same space or will they eventually just ignore low level players because it's more efficient if you can just find max level players thus shutting out low level players?
I mean you can see this dynamic in most games where players advertise a certain gear level or power level for a group, then as the game ages that minimum power level creeps up as gear saturation spreads throughout the population thus creating a greater barrier of entry for lower level, or fresh max level players. This happens in every game where players have a pool of people to pick from when they are doing the picking. In an automated system those lower power players get to play regardless of their gear as long it matches the "requirements" of the LFG system.