EQ Never

By your logic, everyone on this forum is terrible at video games.

Don't DBM just tell you what to do anyways?

Convo_sl said:

I'm betting you and your awesome group of raiders downed it the first time...

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Wasn't downed the first time even on raid finder, so you are correct.

I havent played WoW since TBC, and I clicked on that link and checked out the loot just for shits. First piece: +1302 STA.

Lol. For some reason item inflation like that cracks me up.

Jais_sl said:

Don't DBM just tell you what to do anyways?

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It tells you what the boss is doing, still up to you to react properly.

I imagine the instructions to dancers in the opening number of the Oscars or some shit, and those raid directions for that WoW boss probably sound amazingly similar.

supertouch_sl said:

YEAH MAN BECAUSE MODERN MMOS ARE SO CHALLENGING.

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If SoE had implemented encounters back in the golden age of EQ that were as hard as the heroic stuff in WoW is today they would have been considered broken and Furor would have given them 14 days to fix that shit.

Don't get me wrong, I hate the current encounter design where most fights have multiple phases and the bosses shoot lasers from every orifice. I think that when adding all that artificial complexity to make the fights difficult the fun was lost. I'm all for going back to the basics when it comes to encounter design.

Lemmiwinks_sl said:

Lol. For some reason item inflation like that cracks me up.

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Terrible choice to use linear stats instead of log. In pnp RPGs it was hard because you had to do the math manually and still one game managed to have it (TORG) no idea why MMOs don't use that.

I think the old model of "Boss fight is easy, lead up to it is hard" is the way to go. Would anyone disagree that Temple of Veeshan is one of the best dungeons of all time? Vulak was simple as fuck, getting to him.. not so much. That should be the standard template for raids... Otherwise its Disco Fever with swords.

The complexity can come from dungeon design and AI variables of the dungeon inhabitants. Make them react differently and kinda unpredictably (but still logically). Every time you raid a zone it could be a vastly different experience.

Mughal_sl said:

Terrible choice to use linear stats instead of log. In pnp RPGs it was hard because you had to do the math manually and still one game managed to have it (TORG) no idea why MMOs don't use that.

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Couldn't agree more. I can only assume most modern MMO game designers are bad at math ;-) (look at the Blizzard Arcanite Reaper debacle).

Lemmiwinks_sl said:

I havent played WoW since TBC, and I clicked on that link and checked out the loot just for shits. First piece: +1302 STA.

Lol. For some reason item inflation like that cracks me up.

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Aside from the log/lin thing, the other reason this happened, I think, was the clash between loot only advancement and the accessibility theme in design. You had two big philosophies the WoW developers seemed to be upholding--thatalltime in your game is valuable, so if someone does a dungeon, they should accomplish something tangible on their character (Which I think is good). AND that max level=end game, and once you're there, the only way to advance is loot (I think this is bad).

When those two design choices meet...You get to a point where loot HAS to be given for everything in game. Eventually, the rewards become fungible--like badges, because of the need to reward every investment of time, so even little actions, give you "part of a piece" of loot. And eventually this means, no matter what, within a tier, people will fill every slot...Because again, they have so many avenues to do so.

If, however, advancement wasn't loot centric--but instead you could have soft caps, AA's, or other "rewards" for "time". Then you could keep loot a lot rarer. A new boss wouldn't have to have +better loot, just him being another stream of consistent loot would be great, because the veryaccessto loot would be desired. (So, example, if T1 chests are SUPER rare, and only one boss drops them--adding another boss with T1 chests, makes that boss valuable, even though there is no inflation in items.)

EQ had a lot of this, especially in the original era. Most people never even got to max level--you did dungeons to level, not for loot. So if you did a dungeon, you were rewarded with experience (Pay check)...but if you got loot, you were fucking lucky (Jack pot!). Loot was a trophy, it was like catching a huge fish. Now, I'm not advocating that gambling=good...I just wish the link between reward and time wasn't SO loot centric. Because I think it leads to a lot of problems. I wish developers would move loot, just a little, back to it's place as a rarer reward, and the consistent reward being more internalized character growth (Like AA's or whatever.)

I mean, technically it's the same thing...But it keeps loot in that Skinner box, it makes loot a jack pot, and AA's a pay check. And I think that's important when you set up your world for exploration--you want that "jackpot" feel out in the world. And I think you get that with rare loot. (But I completely understand WoW philosophy of consistent rewards too--I just think it's a mistake to make it all about loot--if someone logs in and wants to put 30 minutes of work in, reward him with exp--save the trophy for when he gets lucky or does something potentially huge, like the end of a LONG quest, or a raid boss, or getting lucky on a group boss.)

To be fair, math tools have gotten much better now.

Blizzard is batting around an item squish now which will be essentially converting to logarithmic I think.

All you people saying WoW is harder than EQ, how far did you even get in EQ? Did you raid? It looks to me like you are comparing WoW raid mobs with general levelling in EQ. Yeah its true, levelling up in EQ did not require that you move out of the red shit on the ground.

booksy_sl said:

All you people saying WoW is harder than EQ, how far did you even get in EQ? Did you raid? It looks to me like you are comparing WoW raid mobs with general levelling in EQ. Yeah its true, levelling up in EQ did not require that you move out of the red shit on the ground.

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Your argument is the exact opposite of a few pages back. It's already been established that no, in fact eq raids were not hard. What was hard was choosing to lose out on sleep before work to jump on and down something. It's not even up for debate on which game has harder content. Wow by miles and miles. Eq would be difficult from the standpoint that its everyone's first raid game. Beyond that its not even open to debate.

Have a question for the storybricks guys? PM me.

Big W Powah!_sl said:

Have a question for the storybricks guys? PM me.

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Please explain why your Combat AI is not going to be ping-pong.

Carl_sl said:

Your argument is the exact opposite of a few pages back. It's already been established that no, in fact eq raids were not hard. What was hard was choosing to lose out on sleep before work to jump on and down something. It's not even up for debate on which game has harder content. Wow by miles and miles. Eq would be difficult from the standpoint that its everyone's first raid game. Beyond that its not even open to debate.

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EQ was only like that in the early days of Fear and stuff and when you did it with a pick up raid. Once guilds got organized you could do stuff like that pretty pain free. And then it changed a lot from Kunark and beyond.

Big W Powah!_sl said:

Have a question for the storybricks guys? PM me.

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I second tad's question and have sent you an additional PM question.