EQ Never
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tad10
Elisha Dushku
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Event based instead of quest based, you go to a place where something is happening(scripted event) and complete whatever objective is needed in that area to get a reward, vs talking to some guy who then sends you to the place and requires you come back and talk to him at the end. It's basically the quest based leveling but without quest givers/turn ins. It's still static stuff though, but sometimes there were some of the more "random" events that happened in the area which would overlap with the quest based events so say your quest event was "kill 10 centaurs" but at the same time a random centaur invasion event would be taking place so you'd have another objective for that too and complete the kill 10 centaur while doing the random event.
Random events were also often multi stage, like neutral state then centaurs attack, if they get pushed back another event pops further in the centaur area, then another where you kill the centaur warchief, while if the centaurs aren't pushed back originally, they then invade a nearby town and finally set camp in that(then you have to work on kicking their ass back to their warchief again).
It was less annoying than quests, but more or less the same thing in the end.
Cinge
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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It's funny. First we had "kill x mobs" because they were there to get loot/exp. Next we had "kill x mobs" because this NPC told me too. to get exp/loot. Now its "kill x mobs" because the UI tells me too. to get exp/loot. All the exact same thing with a different wrapper.
Wonder what will be next.
Wonder what will be next.
GW2 version of it was piss poorly implemented. I do think it will be the next thing copied to all hell as opposed to grabbing 6 ! and going out to kill 5 of these, 4 of those, 8 of that and pick up 6 of this while your out there. Rinse repeat.
If done correctly you could have a living breathing world where each zone or area has a story or event arc that is always in some form of progression. That was GW2 biggest issue. Many zones were simply empty with nothing going on and everyone ran to the area that had 3 or 4 constant events and did just those for 5-10 levels moving on to the next area like that. This left a huge portion of the world empty and useless.
If the world actually felt alive, doesn't really have to be, the scripting just needs to be done so:
1. Events fire off even if there is no one there the NPC's should be fighting each other. NPC's need to be smart enough to bring more or be tougher the more people you have. They should also scale in a smart way so they don't get stuck. Solo guy isn't going to clear a camp full of elites when the group that was there bugged out so those need to either de-level or despawn after x time or Y deaths without progress.
2. Events need to be plentiful and varied to hide the "you're just doing the same thing over and over again". That means there should be enough events where it isn't the same old shit every single time. If you need 8 events to keep the zone hopping then there should be 12 -14 of them that get alternated through the system at varying times.
3. Events when completed need to have a progression so that the victors feel that they have won, yet when the world resets its not just a "yeah we won" and its all gone back to shit in 10 minutes when it resets. The event needs to progress in a realistic way.
Think Bandit cave (always here and respawn here first, think open world dungeon big), no one kills, they move out of the cave, no one kills, they take a village, fortify the village, take surrounding area, start impeding roads and traffic. Maybe merchants leave. Push right up to the main town areas until killed. People focus on this area, then another area will become the hot spot. Zones should be big enough where it should be impossible, even on launch days, to completely have the zone shut down.
Now these have to be done by 100 people and 1 person. That is where the problem lies and how that scaling adapts (how often it checks) how many people are involved. There also need to be a ton of those events in a large zone so that there is variety. Wolves, bandits, euridite 1necromancers, giants, trolls, dark elf assassins, Gnolls, orcs etc all with their little story in the area and reason for existing. These factions should also fight each other and behave in ways that are believable.
IMO that would be 100x better than the ! ? shit we have now. Where a developer pretty much just rams a finger in each nostril and drags you on THEIR pre planned trail through the game. Yeah its all the same we are just killing shit. I'd say its much improved over the hub to hub community destroying crap we have now. Throw in some mentoring, reasons for people to interact / communicate and just take my money.
If done correctly you could have a living breathing world where each zone or area has a story or event arc that is always in some form of progression. That was GW2 biggest issue. Many zones were simply empty with nothing going on and everyone ran to the area that had 3 or 4 constant events and did just those for 5-10 levels moving on to the next area like that. This left a huge portion of the world empty and useless.
If the world actually felt alive, doesn't really have to be, the scripting just needs to be done so:
1. Events fire off even if there is no one there the NPC's should be fighting each other. NPC's need to be smart enough to bring more or be tougher the more people you have. They should also scale in a smart way so they don't get stuck. Solo guy isn't going to clear a camp full of elites when the group that was there bugged out so those need to either de-level or despawn after x time or Y deaths without progress.
2. Events need to be plentiful and varied to hide the "you're just doing the same thing over and over again". That means there should be enough events where it isn't the same old shit every single time. If you need 8 events to keep the zone hopping then there should be 12 -14 of them that get alternated through the system at varying times.
3. Events when completed need to have a progression so that the victors feel that they have won, yet when the world resets its not just a "yeah we won" and its all gone back to shit in 10 minutes when it resets. The event needs to progress in a realistic way.
Think Bandit cave (always here and respawn here first, think open world dungeon big), no one kills, they move out of the cave, no one kills, they take a village, fortify the village, take surrounding area, start impeding roads and traffic. Maybe merchants leave. Push right up to the main town areas until killed. People focus on this area, then another area will become the hot spot. Zones should be big enough where it should be impossible, even on launch days, to completely have the zone shut down.
Now these have to be done by 100 people and 1 person. That is where the problem lies and how that scaling adapts (how often it checks) how many people are involved. There also need to be a ton of those events in a large zone so that there is variety. Wolves, bandits, euridite 1necromancers, giants, trolls, dark elf assassins, Gnolls, orcs etc all with their little story in the area and reason for existing. These factions should also fight each other and behave in ways that are believable.
IMO that would be 100x better than the ! ? shit we have now. Where a developer pretty much just rams a finger in each nostril and drags you on THEIR pre planned trail through the game. Yeah its all the same we are just killing shit. I'd say its much improved over the hub to hub community destroying crap we have now. Throw in some mentoring, reasons for people to interact / communicate and just take my money.
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Well it's all the same, the quests/event type lets you direct people into certain places, tell them "you're level X you should go here it's the right place for you" instead of having to figure it out/explore or whatever. Which I don't think is a terrible way to go about it, directing players to content that is appropriate for them.
Could make a point that is it TOO directing and that following exactly what the game says is the best way to level up by a lot isn't the right way, it could be more subtle clues and less reliant on doing specific actions to get a specific reward. Roll xp into the mob kills, add xp for exploring, opening chests, solving puzzles whatever, but not necessarily in a super obvious way like "New event has started! Kill goblins! Goblins 0/10". This goes well with random events, as long as the events are in decent amount and have multiple paths so they're not too repetitive, don't want to do a multi stage event, kill the last mob, then by the time you've ran back to town the same event just started again, it feels too weird.
Basically, some dick hole thought that WoW's questing could be simplified even more, by just having the quests appear as you go, rather than having to collect the quest then kill stuff and then return to the quest person. So you wander in to a forest and see a bunch of spiders in there, and suddenly you automatically have a quest to kill those spiders, so you kill them and it completes automatically and you wander off someone else, drooling from your mouth like a fucking halfwit.
In addition to the auto-quest thing, there are also these 'events' that happen. Again, some genius decided they would like to re-define the meaning of the word "event". The problem with the word "event" is that it sounds.... "eventful". But previously, quests sounded like an epic adventure and MMO's turned them in to shitty little disposable chores. So how can we ruin the good name of the word "event", the genius moron pondered while sniffing the glue on his post-its. His solution was to have a yak appear with a bunch of utterly uninteresting NPC's surrounding it, and the yak has to go from meaningless location 1, down a road, to meaningless location 2. And any players nearby will hear about this event, and will have to protect it from spawns that appear to attack the precious yak. If you kill them all before the yak dies and spills his imaginary goods, then you... you did good. If the yak dies then, whatever.
Basically if you log in and then smack yourself in the face with your keyboard, pretty soon you'll be level 50.
Mr Creed
Too old for this shit
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GW2's system can use improvements, but what system doesnt? The major flaw imo is the speed at which things repeat. Like conquering that endgame island Orr should be a thing that takes the whole server working together at least a few days. But instead it cycles back and forth within hours. A solution would be having many more events that are interconnected at various steps so each individual event doesnt repeat as often and especially not like clockwork. I assume events themselves are easy to make since they gotta have a specific tools for that.
Despite the above flaws it certainly is a break away from WoW-variants and I found leveling in GW2 very entertaining for an explorer type because they had a TON of interesting little things that werent part of the described event system. From small out of the way caves with just a veteran guarding a chest to full-blown underground ruins with pressure plate puzzles or stuff like that to get past doors. Also traps and at least one spot has an illusionary wall (stuff I took for granted in EQ or actually since EotB hasnt really shown up in many games since). Mobs that havent been killed a while also gave much more xp so the game really encourage you to go out there and explore (not sit in the same spot and camp it all day though). EQ nostalgicians (yes thats a word) still wouldnt like it because of easy travel I guess.
ALso, they failed to include enough things to do after the leveling despite having AA points (skill points) because there really isnt much to do with them and the itemization is kept flat to keep PVP balance (really starting to dislike PVP in MMOs). I'm sitting on hundreds of skill points even after buying mystic forge components often.
So to keep the discussion away from VC do you think endgame content should purely be based on items, with everything else just supporting item acquistion (keys, factions like they were done in WoW), or can a game have something like AA points or long quest chains for abilities or specializing your characters existing abilities? I would say yes. I liked AA in EQ because I was always making some progress in a way, even if I was farming something that didnt drop at the end of the day, or doing faction, etc. Only downside I see is having many important/required AA raises the barrier of entry.
tad10
Elisha Dushku
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Abefroman
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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A next gen Fear break gives me wood. I'll make sure I tell you about it over TS3 TAD!
Cinge
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Some games don't even let you... And some of the ones that do, they don't feel right because they need the right FOV, and ideally they need first person rendering. (Being able to see your hands etc.)
Not really that easy. If the game is designed to give players and advantage to play in third, they will do it. Dungeons with low ceiling and small tunnels facilitates people playing in first person. I too miss the first person feel. It seems to make you more connected to the zone/terrain. I hear elder scrolls online might be first person, thats pretty cool.
I don't think people expecting "it'll be like MMO XYZ only with this" are on the right track. Who knows if it will be better or worse, but being a replica of 12 other games flies in the face of everything they've been preaching and it's more of a recipe for disaster than success these days.
For me the issue at this point is not whether it will be yet another WoW clone or not, but whether it will be dumbed down for the masses or not. It could be totally sandbox, full of interesting new ways of being played, a totally fresh experience, and yet everything drops dead with a few clicks of the mouse and the players can hardly ever die etc. In other words, it could still be sandboxy and new, yet totally dumbed down with no challenge, ideal for reeling in a few million WoW kiddies who want to try something new and different, but can't handle anything that requires some skill/effort/determination.