Well, now what?

Dumar_sl said:

winning at wow is like winning the special olympics.

their style is objectively wrong though in terms of the mmo space. i've said this on foh, but that style of gameplay works in a multiplayer game. there's no reason for the massively part. there's no reason for the massively in wow whatsoever. make your competitive esport shortbus game a multiplayer game, and there's no difference in gameplay.

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WoW required more individual skill than any other mmo I have spent a lot of time playing. But that is not what I want from an mmo. If I want to test my skill then I will play an RTS game. What I want from anmmo is roleplaying in a persistent world. (Roleplaying does not have to be in character).

this industry would be so much better off today had wow never been developed.

If by that you mean "everyone gave up making news MMOs half a dozen years ago" then you'd be right. You used the correct word - 'industry' - and what happens to investment in industry when profits are not at acceptable levels?

But that has to be because the cost of production has skyrocketed. Many games used to survive with 100k subscribers but they were not spending tens of millions of dollars making those games. I am no businessman, but the obvious solution would be to raise subscription prices to compensate. The cost of buying a boxed game has increased anyway. With mmos, they have a month to hook you before you have to subscribe, so that helps mitigate the loss of customers due to higher subscription price.

why does itzena (simond) have a female name on a messageboard?

We need more Isometric MMO's >_>

Ultima remake!!

He had this name since the eqvault vallon zek message board.

Flank_sl said:

WoW required more individual skill than any other mmo I have spent a lot of time playing. But that is not what I want from an mmo. If I want to test my skill then I will play an RTS game. What I want from anmmo is roleplaying in a persistent world. (Roleplaying does not have to be in character).

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WOW raiding, you mean. WOW itself has never required very much skill as it was built for casuals and streamlined to be for the masses as much as EQ was built to cater to the top 1% on each server.

What I want from an MMO is something new and innovative. WOW re-engineered and brought as much to the EQ/Diku model as I think can be done. The biggest problem with WOW is all these new MMOs seem to want to measure success by millions of subscribers, instead of trying to build a killer MMO.

supertouch_sl said:

why does itzena (simond) have a female name on a messageboard?

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Look back at the character screenshots.

As to why a female character? I like playing rare race/class(/gender) combos and, well, how many female erudite SKs were there onyourserver?

Flank_sl said:

But that has to be because the cost of production has skyrocketed. Many games used to survive with 100k subscribers but they were not spending tens of millions of dollars making those games. I am no businessman, but the obvious solution would be to raise subscription prices to compensate. The cost of buying a boxed game has increased anyway. With mmos, they have a month to hook you before you have to subscribe, so that helps mitigate the loss of customers due to higher subscription price.

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This would be a good idea, except for the fact that there would have to be averygood reason to pay anything above the normal subs rate or, given the profusion of F2P MMOs, anything at all. I mean, SOE tried this for a while with the Legends server and you can be bloody certain that if that was giving a good return on investment that SOE would still be running it.

Gecko_sl said:

WOW raiding, you mean. WOW itself has never required very much skill as it was built for casuals and streamlined to be for the masses as much as EQ was built to cater to the top 1% on each server.

What I want from an MMO is something new and innovative. WOW re-engineered and brought as much to the EQ/Diku model as I think can be done. The biggest problem with WOW is all these new MMOs seem to want to measure success by millions of subscribers, instead of trying to build a killer MMO.

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I think the enjoyment of a new "killer mmo" has an element of a players expectation of what a good game is.

Players these day's expect mind blowing graphics which cost a quite a bit to deliver. If you can enjoy a game that doesn't have modern graphics, I'm sure some of the indie development projects on the horizon might be what you are looking for. A big game company will look for return on investment as it's major focus when making a game, not in being innovative or making a game more enjoyable.

How much better can graphics really get? Shit already looks pretty awesome. I bet the cost of making graphics won't be a driving force behind the games in the future as the price of developing / processing / editing these games will become cheaper. Unless they find a way to make 3D / Virtual Reality games soon, I can't see graphics improving in an exponential way. Even if they did, I've read a few articles that a good portion of people can't handle 3D games because of vertigo etc.

Tuco_sl said:

First, there was scripting in EQ.

Second, the reason I disagree with this sentiment is because MMOs generally don't stress players from a gameplay perspective until they reach the high end of the game. The difficulty in leveling is to figure out the best way or any way to make progress. I remember being a n00b in EQ looking for better places to level and it wasn't trivial when you had gryphons and guards and lockjaw popping out of no where to give you another chance to spend a half hour looking for your damn corpse.

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Scripting in EQ didn't show up until PoP, and "Stampede"/friends or whatever it was, was to scripting what the wright brothers were to a 747.

And you're confusing social difficulty with platforming difficulty. Learning to watch your back while leveling, or not sit on the docks where sand giants get pulled, or not be near Slate's patrol are all wider patterns. None of them are high APM difficulties. There is a MASSIVE difference between asking someone to learn broader patterns, and asking someone to complete pattern tests in a timely manner. WoW is simply a more difficult game in terms of APM needs, especially during raids. Did EQ require a higher degree of social dexterity and abstract thinking? Absolutely.

But if you'll notice in my posts, I've always said WoW made a huge mistake switching from a more socially difficult model (Like TBC) where a core group could "carry" worse players, because most fights allowed you to work or select a smaller group of players for the hard tasks AND because the difficulties were often broader, organizational problems (Like clearing trash efficiently vs dodging balls of fire while jumping across platforms.).

There is a way to make WoW easier, without seeming like it's easier--change the difficulties from a purely pattern response one, to a social/abstract one, like EQ had.

I'm going to refer to WoW for most of these posts because I've played it far more than EQ.. but I just gotta say

I remember back when thottbot was a thing and everything on there was pretty much user submitted, there were still quests to find and items people haven't heard of.. I do miss that too. I love the fact that throughout the world there were hidden quests and even some you had no clue about unless you stumbled across them such as: dying in blackrock mountain and turning into a ghost, running through that big center piece and there was a ghost that gave out a quest. That shit blew my mind like 50 times the first time I ever stumbled across it. ..I don't know if it's even possible now, because everyone knows how to datamine games and the second a patch is released everyone knows every single thing in the game already.

I just love hidden easter egg quests or rare random items throughout the world. I know once a hidden quest would be found it will go on some forums or a database, and that's fine, but if devs would add more every few months or something. Some random shit waaay off the beaten path that you really gotta look for or really try to complete.

That's just me though, not everyone enjoys exploring the world and trying to find random things I suppose.

Lithose_sl said:

There is a way to make WoW easier, without seeming like it's easier--change the difficulties from a purely pattern response one, to a social/abstract one, like EQ had.

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But that would actually make WoW much more difficult for the average player. To a casual player, social and organizational challenges are far harder to overcome than simple button mashing. You can make the most intricate, and detailed encounter ever, with 41 flavors of death and enough actions per minute to make a three legged Chinese acrobat playing DDR blush. However, as long as you give people instant access and unlimited continues, it will be completed 100 times more frequently than a simple encounter that requires a large social network to access, let alone attempt.

Pancreas_sl said:

But that would actually make WoW much more difficult for the average player. To a casual player, social and organizational challenges are far harder to overcome than simple button mashing. You can make the most intricate, and detailed encounter ever, with 41 flavors of death and enough actions per minute to make a three legged Chinese acrobat playing DDR blush. However, as long as you give people instant access and unlimited continues, it will be completed 100 times more frequently than a simple encounter that requires a large social network to access, let alone attempt.

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Are you suggesting that more content exploration / adventuring / hidden quests is a bad design concept?

i agree with many of your posts, lithose, but pancreas is right here.

high APM doesn't directly translate to difficult. it depends on the context of where the APM are taking place. in wow, you're playing against scripted encounters that do not change, so the APM measurement is almost sequential APM in its nature. it's like playing a piano piece. once your muscle memory reaches a point, it's no longer conscious, voluntary actions. on many of the more difficult encounters, such as original kael'thas, as a healer i recall actively thinking the first 10 or so attempts, and after which there's no active thought involved in anything because it's more or less sequential actions that are required. you don't need to think to achieve a high, successful APM.

whereas in FPSs, starcraft, etc, it's more variable because you're playing against an opponent and not a script. those two APMs are not the same.

the social difficulty is much harder simply because at its base, it's dynamic and changing. you could sit at the docks for a day and never see a spectre, then the next day see dozens trained there. a high APM in that type of setting means more in terms of skill than a high APM in a purely scripted environment.

now, if wow had any sort of death penalty or spawn racing whatsoever, that would change the nature of this discussion because you then would not have unlimited attempts to muscle memory through the piano piece.

Pancreas_sl said:

But that would actually make WoW much more difficult for the average player. To a casual player, social and organizational challenges are far harder to overcome than simple button mashing. You can make the most intricate, and detailed encounter ever, with 41 flavors of death and enough actions per minute to make a three legged Chinese acrobat playing DDR blush. However, as long as you give people instant access and unlimited continues, it will be completed 100 times more frequently than a simple encounter that requires a large social network to access, let alone attempt.

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And yet this was the system that saw the highest number of WoW players, and strongest growth. Read Durkheim about rituals in society--the lure of building networks in order to complete tasks is actually more c arthritic for most people than the completion of those tasks. Measuring actual content completion as a measure of content success isn't necessarily a good metric at all. I'd say the NFL is a very successful organization, yes? How many people who participate and spend money there will complete a game on their own? Rituals don't require everyone to be center stage, they only require inclusiveness. You get that if you balance this approach properly.

And that's the key word--balance. I'm in no way advocating going back to nightmare scenarios of organizing 72 raid members. But there is a whole swath of social difficulty Blizzard burned up on it's way to making the game "more accessible". I think somewhere in the middle there, was a sweet spot that was missed.

For example, I think they'd go a long way in improving the game by taking a lot of random selection out of abilities and making so an adept raid leader can select who gets hit with what. Very simple change that emphasizes the difficulty for the Raid Leader and a core group, but doesn't ACTUALLY detract from theperceiveddifficulty of the raid--because all the steps stillneedto be completed. This is why more simplistic scripting often times lead to heavier social difficulty or an emphasis on a smaller group within a larger group, without anyone actually designing it that way--because less scripting opened more flaws with which the core group could exploit the encounter to make it easier on the less skilled within the guild, without actually changing a lot of factors in the encounter.

Like I said, subtle--and there is a balance. We don't need massive social networks. But we do need to put more difficulty on that end of the spectrum and take some off the other end (And not simply make a "mouth breathing raid mode"--which makes the world feel very, very sterile and the "ritual" feel like a pointless exercise meant to deliver our daily carrot.)

Dumar_sl said:

it's like playing a piano piece.

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How many people learn to play the piano well? Repetition does become easier overtime, sure. But depending on the speed required, it can be extremely difficult for most average players to handle. That's why Lich King was beaten on the hardest difficulty by like 1% of the player base, before the buffs. I guarantee had the Avatar of War or any very difficulty Pre-PoP EQ encounter been instanced, even the most mediocre guild would have beaten it. BUT the Avatar of War was still balls hard, wasn't it? Why?

The difference was where thesocialslider was. You even say it later, about the docks. So why do I say EQ was easier even though, from these examples, you can see EQ was at least as hard? Because the more abstract difficulty or "social" difficulty in a game like EQ, can bespread around, THAT is the difference. I can organize better, to allow for a worse player to play with me, I can pick up his social difficulty and tack it onto my own. I can't do that with an APM based encounter. I'm sure EQ was much harder for a player like Furor than it was for a player like Tyen--someone like Tyen COULD play because he had stronger players picking up his slack. WoW doesn't allow this as well as EQ did.

That'swhat I'm saying. Abstract difficulty like not sitting on the dock, can be fixed by networking--a friend can warn you about the dock. No friend is going to make sure that you're fast enough to move from void zones while dodging exploding spirits and making sure you're in the right position if you're the bomb, though--all of that has to be learned by constant, mind numbing, repetition (Or not at all, as we can see from derp mode in WoW). That's why more abstract difficulty is such an important "kind" of difficulty to use, because it encourages networking, it encourages stronger players to help weaker ones. And it does all this WITHOUT making the game seem easier! That's the beauty of it, it's more inclusive, while also still keeping a feel of being hard, so there is still a triumph there when you "win". Again, unlike derp mode, which feels hollow--because you had to do NOTHING in order to achieve the change in difficulty, while in EQ a bad player could still do amazing raids, but he had to build social networks, which was it's own form of abstract difficulty.

However, on the other end, platforming difficulty simply encourages stronger players to find other strong players. It cuts social networking at it's knees because it's *very* difficult to help someone simply get better at their reflexes or learn to repeat patterns faster. And that's why WoW is harder, without actually being harder--because even though EQ was hard, a couple of friends could make it *A LOT* easier, in WoW, that scale is completely fubar, you can be drowning with APM difficulty, even in the midst of some great players.

So the NFL used to be way more awesome to watch (70s 80s) , because it was brutal,niche, unbalanced, and full of legends, but now it's been streamlined into an entertainment business and its kinda meh.

I remember FoH on Veeshan acting all emo when we begged them to help get our corpses out of fear (unnatural selection, legends in our own mind). They were such dicks, saying things like they were only able to get half of the corpses to make our little hopeful hearts drop, but they got all of them, bless their greasy souls.

Those were brutal days of the 80s 49rs playing the 80s Saints, but those were awesome days. Everyone wanted to look cool and take down Gods, but we didn't know wtf it took to get there, to be a winning franchise, but we wanted it, even though those guys were dicks.

I want that disparity, where even if 2 great players with equal time play, one may be great at one thing and terrible at another. Where the server has a handful of dudes that are just stellar at their job. I wasn't one of those players, but it gave me motivation to try, I miss that

To give an analogy to what I'm saying...Imagine if "winning" in an MMO was like lifting a huge rock (Bear with me.)...

In WoW you're only asked to life a 2 ton rock, it's a massive boulder, but it only looks to be about 2 tons. However, you're given no tools to lift the rock--it's just there and you have to all go use your own physical strength to get that big fucking rock up in the air. The problem is you have a bunch of fat, unhealthy people who can barely lift their own arms over the head, and they die when trying to lift the rock because they lose their grip and everyone lets the rock fall on them....It sucks, but this 2 ton rock is simply too heavy, and everyone decides to make it a 1 ton rock so they can lift it easier.

In EQ the rock is FOUR tons, the rock is twice as big as WoW's! And just like in WoW, all the weak people go and try to lift it. Amazingly though, they lift it with ease! All four tons goes right up into the air, and everyone is happy. However, behind the scenes, what actually happened was that the guild made a lever--and then the strongest people went and used the lever to do a bulk of the world, while the weaker people simply stabilized the rock so it wouldn't slip. In the end, they achieved twice the success, but most of the work was done by people who wouldn't die from it.

That's the difference. Things being more socially difficult, broader patterns, more abstract thinking rather than physical reaction--allows for difficulty to shared far more easily. It also allows for difficulty to be focused more on those who can handle it. Rather than making the rock smaller, EQ and WoW vanilla handled difficulty by giving "core groups" a lever, and asking them to do most of the work. Did this sometimes suck for those people? Sure, a lot of those people (Raid Leaders ect) even said they couldn't wait to cut the dead weight from their guild. But eventually they realized that all that dead weight, was actually theirfriends. And I think most, maybe not all, but most would give anything to be able to carry the load again, so they could play with people theyenjoyed, rather than the people who were going to learn the proper pattern sequence before they guild imploded.