I paid the $15 a month sub fee but I am about as far from a fanboy as you can possible get. I'll be quote unquote "spitting da truth" at my misguided gamers and devs alike. I'd wager its a 50/50 chance they will refund my money before too long and say "thanks for the feedback but we got it from here".
As far as grouping, sure a few classes could solo but 95% of all scenario's grouping was faster and safer exp not to mention alot of areas worth while required you being able to handle multiple mobs etc in most of EQ. The requirement for forced grouping is not good for mass market appeal but it sure is fuck is good for forming a community, accountability, and a sense of belonging in a game. There are all sorts of negativies but I still will take the things that I just listed any day of the week. One thing that could be done that I thought FFXIV did semi well (just got back into the game so still learning it) is the party finder. Being able to specific what you are looking for, if you want to plan on doing it in the future, static groups etc. I think that would help the group finding alot. But to be successful they need to A) not have fucking cross server shit outside of maybe pvp clusters (if pvp is in the discussion) and B) have enough worthwhile camps/content that can support multiple active groups at various areas.
I think AA's should be built in from the ground up, inherent 1% exp or something goes to AA's when leveling at a min and you can crank up to 25% or something, then you feel like you have various methods of power gains; combine that with rare dropped loot again from camps etc and you create a reason to actual grind again that is rewarding. I hate to say it but I'm at the point outside of VG style epic quest lines I don't want to see another quest line again. Celestial Ward quest line was just awesome and a bitch prior to nerfs to faction and before people knew all the details. Hell the arena with coin farming and tickets etc was a awesome way to be engaged in the game leveling but also trying to get uber rewards that had staying power (I had the first epic castor item on the server from CW and it was basically BiS until raid gear due to the proc and stats).
We can point out all the issues with the idea of returning to this type of formula but can you honestly look in the mirror and tell yourself you enjoy the shit that is out now? I mean I work 60-70 hours a week with a dynamic schedule running a 24 hour department where I am the linch pin for everything and I'd still make enough time to enjoy and be competitive in a game like EQ again. I'd like to see abit more balance obviously but i'm all for contested content, rare loot etc. Just make sure to design it from the ground up with some mechanics to minimize the negatives (contested spawns, maybe 3 times a week (if we have a large guild game again with 40-56 people) where you get locked out if you kill it for the week. Or a debuff that after 5 wipes you could not engage for an hour or something to allow there to be a race but also not complete lock down etc.
All sorts of ways to mitigate things, just get away from the fucking artifical, completely balanced , and fair approach that makes game so bland. Fuck ilvls, fuck all classes being equal, and fuck everyone thinking they should have a right to see all content the first 2 weeks it was released. This is why AA's were great, early EQ content could be completed with proper strat and orgnaization with less gear and AA's to some extent but as the best completed it and moved foward others slowly increased gear level and AA's and were able to overcome. Make raids tuned for 40 people but allow 50, there now you can have some of the casual guilds bring more people but suffer from item limitation. Also..make gear LARGE INCREASES AND UNIQUE; holy fuck if I play another +1 stat game i swear i'm going to quit gaming. I get the PVP sense you don't want power creep to high or else it kills the new comers but for pve I think a fucker in full raid gear should be able to just literally destory a non raider and be able to grind AA's much more effective or handle old content in small groups. How many of us got hard epeens by going back and doing raid content with a group of 12 or something. And guess what? That gear usually was still good or we could give to an alt etc.
Meh, guys just got me all pissed off at how bad games are now even though they add so many good ideas and user friendliness. Its like having that beautiful natural blond that doesn't even know she is a radiant but then someone puts her in a shit ton of makeup and coaches her on everything to do and say that she becomes so "perfect" that she is fake and souless. Enter Rift and any other MMO as of late.....
You may very well get a refund because if the kickstarter is any indication there will be much circle jerking required.
Grouping for content should always be the goal, I mean that's to me part of what separates it from an RPG, again the vast majority want to bring back some of those missing elements from the current MMO's on the market. One aspect of EQ was that the mobs were very powerful compared to your character, so much so that you were almost required assistance to kill anything, but this did not stop people from soloing, the action in EQ was slow paced but because of that slow pace many people 2 or 3 boxed characters forming their own group, or often you have those who would quad kite, so soloing always has and always will exist to some degree. One thing I think people overlook when talking about grouping in EQ was the fact that it wasn't always a full group. One of the nice things about EQ is to a degree you could bring as many or as few people as you wanted to things, there were so many zones and potential farms available you could always find something that could be a worth wild use of your time, and just being out in the world and traveling made you want to group because it usually meant you would be more efficient use of your time, you don't really need to make soloing nonexistent it just needs to not be very efficient at achieving things. Contrast to WoW in it's current state and 95% of the time it's more efficient to solo.
AA's are a double edge sword, as much as I enjoyed having small extra power increases as I grinded out XP in EQ, I also know it made options like alts, or even switching classes much less appealing options (this can be debated if good or bad) also they can act as a deterrent to newer players, EQ currently is a great example of this as thousands of AA's don't sound appealing to grind just to be viable today. What I had always wished for in an MMO were small power increases from completing content, somewhat like the idea WoW was going to do before they shit out archaeology. Where let's say killing Rag for the first time granted your character a small increase in fire resistance, it would make old content always be relevant at least for the first run through.
The time factor, yes most of us now days have jobs, kids, family, to take care of which means sitting down for 20 hour stretches are not going to happen. However, this to me is always a weird argument, I know we are all kind of selfish as people but there are shitloads of games that cater to that lifestyle. There are literally thousands of games that can be played for small time periods and even newer MMO's follow this pattern, but why make all MMO's the same and force them to change to your schedule. There are just as many new college students with 20 hours a day who need this addiction to fuck up their social lives just like many of you did.
Shitty gear and retarded +1 gooder is awful and one of the worst parts of again games like WoW, one of the biggest mistakes I think they made was making every expansion a soft reset of the game, the mudflation has gotten way out of hand and they are even needing to band-aid fix it at this point. One thing Brad mentioned for Pantheon and I believe is a smart idea is only have 20 or so levels to start with, there is no reason to grind to 50-60 right away in an MMO if successful you know you will be adding expansions and increasing levels over time. Another thing EQ did that current MMO's do not is that every level of game play was relevant, up until Luclin or PoP. The need to hit max level and raid never seemed to be as prevalent as today. Just slowing things down would go along way to being able to make gear more meaningful.
The last part for me, I agree that having PvP fucking up PvE and forcing fun, cool, or in some cases overpowered items from existing is shitty. There are enough PvP based MMO's out there, I would much rather they make a PvE game and have it be fun with an alternate PvP ruleset server that doesn't have to be balanced around. Also I am tired of MMO's feeling the need to have two different opposing factions, always seemed like a bad idea to separate your player base in an MMO.
