Abefroman
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
- 12,597
- 11,941
EQ Never
- Thread starter Convo
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Potato del Grande
- 1,798
- 2,812
tad10
Elisha Dushku
- 5,534
- 601
No I quit before Lich King even came out. TBC heroics were only heroic for all you WoW pussies who were born in 1998.
Caeden
Golden Baronet of the Realm
- 7,762
- 13,044
I'm calling bullshit. I don't get it. If you're relying on fucking autoattack and wanting to chat and hit a button every 25s, this mythical game you're playing can't be that fucking challenging then. Or maybe I'm misrepresenting what a slow dumb motherfucker you are? I mean, surely to fucking god I can figure out the most optimum button to hit next if I've got time to write an agatha christie novel between abilities? That sounds fucking mind-numbingly easy to me now. The only thing you and Tad are harping on that is remotely fucking challenging is seeking out others to hit a few buttons for you (and having a life conducive to spending 12-14 hours a day in a game to accomplish anything, but I digress). That's not skill! That's fucking typing, dumbass.
Here's a newsflash...you know what assholes like me that understand math are going to do? We're going to take your mythical fucking game that has no combat log, and I'm gonna write numbers down and put them in excel...then i'm going to do math and I'm going to fucking break your game and tell you how to gear and all your precious community will be railing on you again.
Pandora's box bitch. Its open and not closing. Unless you are really thinking of getting rid of all ACT too, in that case there's fucking free realms. Go roleplay your fucking fairy there.
P.S. I'm pissed off about something else too...not games. I just wanted to say fuck a lot.
Because when you die you actually have to go get your corpse where it lies to get your gear while suffering a loss of exp, that's why it was challenging because death wasnt just walking up to a ghost and spending some cash to get instant gratification. Speaking of which I just died on my toon on a corpse run, sucks losing exp after losing exp.
Cinge
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 7,370
- 2,436
No you don't get it, and I have to wonder if you never played EQ or something? Either way, you are going off in the wrong direction.
First off, I couldn't care less about whether a game has auto attack or not. I don't even care what the pace you bash the buttons is either. I would prefer it to be slower, but if I have to quickly tap 1,2,3,3,3 just to kick off each fight, then so be it.
What matters to me is that in EQ, your focus was more on what is happening out your characters eyes, what type of mobs are you dealing with, what were they doing, and how many etc. You weren't focused on tapping keys and looking at things on the UI, you were looking at the actual world. The challenge came from seeing things happen and reacting fast enough and with the right choice. That needed both skill to be able to manually change the target and click the correct spell or whatever (there was no cycle targets key), but it also needed real experience of playing the game to know what to do, and there was no substitute for that. There were no ez-mode ways out of any of this. If 10 mobs attack and some dumb fuck mage starts area damaging them all, they will all aggro him and he will die 1 second flat. If the chanter tries to mez some too, the mages magic will wake up the mezzed mobs and they will be pissed off at the chanter. So that's a dead mage AND a dead chanter. Then there was major heal aggro, and tanks didn't have ez-mode 1 button clicky taunts, they relied on building up aggro and sometimes it wouldn't even be possible. So if a cleric starts unloading heals to try to save everyone, after the mage and chanter die, next the cleric goes down. Before you know it, it might have only taken 5 or 6 seconds, but some bad choices wiped out half the group. And there is no combat rez.
That's one example but I could probably give you a list of 20 others, (I think I already type that here once before). And it's all stuff you just don't get in games any more. Another thing I miss is that mobs often used to bail when they got low on health. And unlike modern games where all mobs die in 2 seconds, you sometimes can't just quickly tap your 1,2,3,3,4 and kill it. It really needed someone to snare it, and if you failed that, the mob could run out the room and down the hallway and down to the next level, and literally send 50 mobs back to attack your group. Everything mattered so much, it took skill, brains, and experience of playing the game. And although the spells and things took longer to cast and on the surface, it looks like a slower paced game, in reality it was as fast paced as any game out today, if not faster. There were reflex things you could do where reacting in 1 second, could save the day, but taking 2 second could wipe the group. And that's not even an exaggeration, it was just like that, because there was zero coddling going on, so so many things could easily go wrong.
And fwiw, you could still obsess over math if you wanted to, it's just that doing high dps was not even required most of the time, and could even be bad. Yes it was nice on a boring tank n spank raid mob that is glued to an uber raid tank, so you can just spam out your best damage. But most of the time, staying alive and being smart was the far more pressing matter.
Also, I like the combat log. EQ had a combat log, and sometimes we actually had to look at it. But all it told you was damage in and damage out. It didn't spell out things for you like "hate", whether a spell got resisted, where to run, and all that shit. You had to actually play with your brain and use your instincts and intuition on that stuff. And you could do the math all you want, you aren't breaking anything. Also, everyone already knew the best gear for their class, the issue was getting it - because unlike modern games, that was a long term challenge. People would take a week or more to get one new item. You couldn't just do a 5 minute quest and get an upgrade.
Rezz
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Pretty sure we've had the challenging vs. tedious debate before and also how the early levels of EQ are one extreme end of the "challenge" spectrum compared to mid level and beyond. In summation: doing something that is merely time consuming (unless you are intentionally being reckless and running into mobs while naked and shit) vs. something where player skill actually matters is the difference between what you are calling challenge and what most people refer to challenge. Early EQ was challenging (for corpse runs) in that in general players did not have adequate skills to get to their bodies in a timely and mostly safe fashion. As players level (and the population exists beyond the first month of the game's release) the means of retrieving corpses becomes significantly easier and safer and the risk of death becomes more of an annoyance than any real challenge. Unless you are specifically referring to raiding, in which case you had a guild and thus a method to get your shit back freely and safely most of the time anyway.
Just saying, this stuff has been rehashed dozens of times on the various iterations of the FoH boards, and it is largely in the view of people who spent considerable time at the high end that the perceived risks associated with the game are grossly inflated by myopic nostalgia. Once clerics/druids/wizards started hitting the late 20s/30s, corpse runs weren't nearly as painful except in the case of a total wipe. Which is where rogues/sks/necros/monks came in at the same level range to reduce the corpse run problems to a waiting game (tedious vs. challenging) and when Clerics got the ability to XP rez, it removed the most painful part of the penalty during the leveling process. If you are soloing and the server is brand spanking new and nobody is of the right levels and you don't socialize? Yeah, they can be pretty challenging. Otherwise, it was vastly more tedious than challenging in 99% of instances.
Again, just saying.
edit: about parsing.
Parsing was done on a much more ad hoc basis during early EQ, minus Torrid's example. Basically, you had your cc/tank/healer (or as they were called, Enchanter/Warrior/Cleric. Yay early EQ!) and then three DPS. If you grouped with people and shit you normally kill faster died slower, you tried to figure out who was slow. If you knew from grouping with 2/3 of the DPS that they were normally good, it was generally assumed that the 3rd wasn't good dps. So if you were really trying to grind fast as opposed to holding a static camp in a crowded dungeon, odds are you wouldn't invite the 3rd person if better options existed. Just like you could tell when a healer sucked or a tank sucked based upon how many times people died or how many times shit was just jogging around freely hitting party members. All the ability to parse logs did was allow people to determine who sucks at specific things (especially the most bloated profession of all: dps) much faster than having to determine who sucks through the process of elimination. The whole DBM thing from WoW, which myself and most other normal raiders think was stupid and stole the fun out of the raid game, is a much further step beyond parsing and in the realm of quasi-automation. That sort of stuff sucks and I am happy if it doesn't get repeated. So there's a pretty huge difference in that whole box of fun.
Just saying, this stuff has been rehashed dozens of times on the various iterations of the FoH boards, and it is largely in the view of people who spent considerable time at the high end that the perceived risks associated with the game are grossly inflated by myopic nostalgia. Once clerics/druids/wizards started hitting the late 20s/30s, corpse runs weren't nearly as painful except in the case of a total wipe. Which is where rogues/sks/necros/monks came in at the same level range to reduce the corpse run problems to a waiting game (tedious vs. challenging) and when Clerics got the ability to XP rez, it removed the most painful part of the penalty during the leveling process. If you are soloing and the server is brand spanking new and nobody is of the right levels and you don't socialize? Yeah, they can be pretty challenging. Otherwise, it was vastly more tedious than challenging in 99% of instances.
Again, just saying.
edit: about parsing.
Parsing was done on a much more ad hoc basis during early EQ, minus Torrid's example. Basically, you had your cc/tank/healer (or as they were called, Enchanter/Warrior/Cleric. Yay early EQ!) and then three DPS. If you grouped with people and shit you normally kill faster died slower, you tried to figure out who was slow. If you knew from grouping with 2/3 of the DPS that they were normally good, it was generally assumed that the 3rd wasn't good dps. So if you were really trying to grind fast as opposed to holding a static camp in a crowded dungeon, odds are you wouldn't invite the 3rd person if better options existed. Just like you could tell when a healer sucked or a tank sucked based upon how many times people died or how many times shit was just jogging around freely hitting party members. All the ability to parse logs did was allow people to determine who sucks at specific things (especially the most bloated profession of all: dps) much faster than having to determine who sucks through the process of elimination. The whole DBM thing from WoW, which myself and most other normal raiders think was stupid and stole the fun out of the raid game, is a much further step beyond parsing and in the realm of quasi-automation. That sort of stuff sucks and I am happy if it doesn't get repeated. So there's a pretty huge difference in that whole box of fun.
Rod-138
Trakanon Raider
- 1,226
- 982
I can't listen to Genesis naked and zone out into my game while trying to communicate with some guy on too much Adderall for a Tuesday morning. I'd much rather speak with actions and coolness. /nod /smile all you really needHow am I supposed to pretend to be a female wood elf if you can hear my voice!
I'll never get any loots!
tad10
Elisha Dushku
- 5,534
- 601
I care. I care very deeply. DCUO was the last MMO I'll ever play without auto-attack. If EQNext doesn't have auto-attack I'll just start playing Bridge.
-Lack of auto-attack increases wrist pain because of massive clicking increase. I have no desire to develop carpal tunnel syndrome.
-Lack of auto-attack makes what should be an easy - go grab a coke/take a piss encounter - a pain in the ass because you have to click on abilities to kill some bastard who is 10 levels below you instead of just tabbing him and auto-attacking.
-Lack of auto-attack limits text chat when you're camping some easy mobs with a group because you have to hit abilities all the time.
I hate developers who try to be cool and hip and take out auto-attack.
Rod-138
Trakanon Raider
- 1,226
- 982
I think the beauty of auto attack was the relevancy (spelling) to the dice rolling stuff. You spend your time gearing up and hoping to one day beat that ass, and the entertainment is when you watch that rain of damage in the window, the rolls of success. Being good meant you spent hours camping/finding the right gear to reach that point, not spent hours hitting 2/3/5/1/1/2/3/5. It was the commitment to an idea - Do I go for the Ishva? Or do I just keep this rat ass FBR on and spend my time upgrading the rest of my shit? Those choices coming together made the auto attack or the charm or the 'simple' stuff worthwhile, because you did it better than the guy who didn't get that stuff. If that makes any sense? wine
corpse runs were definitely a very important and enjoyable part of EQ
I'm really enjoying it playing on the Mac server because things have significant risk to them now, and you can't just fucken #yolo #zerg random shit, but actually think about what you are doing and how you'll recover if it goes bad. Having to pacify and run past mobs while you're naked all the way to disco2 in Sebilis is quite a challenging experience.
As well as having to level a rogue to level 63, get the "Shroud of Stealth" AA so you can do encounters like 6-boxing Overking in Chardok because you can't do a CR without a stealth rogue or a necromancer. Then wiping a few times trying to learn how to deal with the the mob + adds etc, wiping due to learning and mistakes, doing CRs, and then feeling good when you finally defeat the encounter.
I'm really enjoying it playing on the Mac server because things have significant risk to them now, and you can't just fucken #yolo #zerg random shit, but actually think about what you are doing and how you'll recover if it goes bad. Having to pacify and run past mobs while you're naked all the way to disco2 in Sebilis is quite a challenging experience.
As well as having to level a rogue to level 63, get the "Shroud of Stealth" AA so you can do encounters like 6-boxing Overking in Chardok because you can't do a CR without a stealth rogue or a necromancer. Then wiping a few times trying to learn how to deal with the the mob + adds etc, wiping due to learning and mistakes, doing CRs, and then feeling good when you finally defeat the encounter.
Muligan
Trakanon Raider
- 3,253
- 916
I never bought that logic.... it's not a tedious time sink. It's the penalty, process, or even mechanic I guess... Remember those games when you were a kid that if you messed up you had to start all over again? To win, you had to be flawless, no room for mistake because if you messed up, you lost time. Sure you could remove that rule and if you messed up you simply picked up where you left off but then, you didn't care. You just flailed about carelessly, maybe even advantageously, without worry of penalty to win. Thus, those "tedious time sinks" were actually in place for good reason. It rewards those who fine tune their skills, play with precision and care, and separates the good from the bad.
I know there are plenty that disagree but, I don't see how the punishment isn't part of the challenge due to the fact you try to better and you group with better to avoid it.
No it's got nothing to do with that at all. I think what some of you don't get, is that there were plenty of dumbasses in EQ who just bugged people to join their group, and then they sat in the background doing nothing special. But there were a LOT of players who were very talented, and there was huge amounts of challenge in the gameplay and the combat itself.
Take even just Cazic Thule at level 20 ish. You are barely out of your newbie levels at that point, and yet you see a door and open it. There's a little corridor and then another door at the end. You open that door, and suddenly you are attacked by about 10 mobs, perhaps all of them are many levels higher than you. The difference between a brilliant player and a mediocre player, is that the mediocre player just dies and probably kills a bunch of passing strangers too, but the brilliant player gets away cleanly. The brilliant player then come back, and come up with a plan to get the whole group set up in that room, and kill the mobs in manageable chunks. It requires invisibility to get in to the room, see invis so people can see each other, then someone has to lull or harmony the mobs or feign death split them. And it has to be all done out the way of roamers (who roamed all over the place) otherwise they aggro and pull everything nearby. It was hard to do, and not only that, but that was just the courtyard trash. If you wanted some loot, you had to work your way inside, kill the big boss, and somehow do it all before the respawns started happening. Again, this is one example, and there are lots of others. I don't know whether people who didn't play this can appreciate it. But you also have to remember that most people at that point were wearing absolute junk, bits of leather mixed with cloth and chainmail and whatever crap they found along the way. Nobody had good gear at this point.
Even that's not entirely true. It might have been in 2001 and beyond or something, or if you were a pampered lead healer in a big guild or whatever. But for most people, that's not how it worked in early EQ.
For a start, even getting to level 30 ish took probably 6 months for most people. If you were in Lower Guk and died, most people could not get their corpse back alone, it was just impossible. Even if you were one of the classes that had invisibility, that would only get you past the first 20 mobs. Then it was undead mobs which needed a different type of invisibility, and only priests had that. And you couldn't just get both of them cast on you either, because they didn't stack. So you had to either fight or invis past the first bunch, then use the undead invis to get past the second bunch. And you couldn't just ask someone for the buff and go off to success either. The invis could break at random times, it could even break after 10 seconds. So you zone in and see a necro and think thank god! You bug him for an invis undead and you set off. 10 seconds later it breaks, and you have nowhere to go. Chances are, you'll just die again. Even getting back to your body was a serious issue for most people. And even if they did get back to it, it only got their clothes back on. It didn't recover any of the experience they had lost.
I hope the gaming world doesn't forget just how hard the original EQ is. Not because I want to tell my grandkids how tough a virtual gaming world was in my day, but because modern games are many many times easier. It's not just an easier UI, and a bit easier combat and a more forgiving death penalty. It's literally 100 or more differences which all put together, make them almost like completely different genres.
Quaid
Trump's Staff
- 11,859
- 8,265
The problem is, these things that some of us would like to see tried again, there are actually like 50 of them and they were all quite significant. I'm going to make a list as a jpg and put it somewhere. I'm half done but I'll finish it tomorrow.
Abefroman
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
- 12,597
- 11,941
You just said earlier some people don't like wearing headsets and having conversations at the monitor. Talk softer then with your headset on? Hey more power to you for liking to type. I myself love fucking Ts3.