squid said:FatedEmperor said:1. Being able to solo 90% of the time in an MMO is not good.
You must be old like me :)
The truth is, in 2021, and frankly for at least the last 10 years, my experience is that a huge pool, if not a majority, of players want to join a multiplayer game and totally play it solo. It's weird, but it goes all the way back to EQ (maybe Ultima Online too, but i didn't play that for very long). I can remember having this dicussion in EQ when people would whinge that rogues/enchanters/warriors were hard to solo compared to magicians/necromancers/rangers, and rather than go play a mage/necro/forestgimp they'd rather roll a rogue and complain to devs/forums/chats.
It's weird and I've never understood it, but it caused me to stop using "MMO", and often use the term "Massively Solo ORPG" because that's how so many people want to play, and they get really loud when they can't.
I know what you mean though. I'd like to see a mix of content. There *absolutely should* be some challenging solo content at all stages of the game. I would also agree that you shouldn't be able to be king of the game by soloing only.
Going along with this, there needs to be a mechanism so one guild can't take over a game/server, a la the Goon squad on EVE. All players need to have a reasonable opportunity at the content without having to pay homage to a guild of misanthropic unemployed people who live in the game instead of real life.
FatedEmperor said:9. Water environments generally suck in terms of character positioning, mob positioning, and utilizing AOE abilities. Hopefully, the VR team can improve on this area where many have failed.
Water environments are cool though, and *could* be done well, but I bet programming it is a challenge. That players find it difficult to figure out the strategies due to positioning etc. doesn't bother me. This is one of those challenges I was mentioning... maybe some solo underwater stuff. Make swimming and waterbreathing useful skills?
FatedEmperor said:16. Probably most importantly gamers are not dumb. We know what feels fun and what doesn't. We don't appreciate companies trying to justify their horrible game design by blaming the experience we have on us as players or telling us to give it a bit more time with no intention to change it.
I'm going to respectfully disagree here. Maybe gamers are not dumb, but plenty of them are massively selfish and can't see beyond exactly what they're doing right now, or how what they're doing fits into the game as a whole. They want their character, their stuff, their experience to be awesome, and everyone else can bite. This relates to why you have to hear the community, but you listen with a lot of salt.
I mean if you count 28 as old. The reality is that I got started in gaming at an extremely young age, and I was lucky enough to dabble in EQ during its first 4-5 years and that left a lasting impression on me. I also tend to main healers so even in today's current age of solo mentality I still find more value in grouping opportunities vs going solo. I recently (like in the last couple of days) started playing EQ on a progression server to refamiliarize myself before they launch their new progression server at the end of this month. I'm enjoying the experience but I have been extremely shocked and a bit unsettled to see comments asking why someone is looking for a group when their class is capable of soloing. If I'm being honest I'm a bit saddened that this mentality is impacting a game where grouping use to be the gold standard.
I agree that water environments are cool but rarely does gameplay ever feel fluid in these environments. I wouldn't mind seeing environments like these in Pantheon but I hope the Dev team designs its combat system in a manner which it can flow seamlessly into these environments and not feel like a pain to engage with.
As for that last comment. My initial comment was aimed more towards a company like Blizzard or Naughty Dog who try to justify horrible game design or storytelling by basically blaming their players for not having the experience that the dev team expected them to have.
My comment of "gamers are not stupid" was more aimed at communities and how they respond as a whole. Chances are if the majority of the community feels a particular way about something be it positive or negative then that is relevant feedback that needs to be acted on in some way. If its positive feedback then the quality and state of whatever is in question needs to be maintained, if it's negative feedback then something needs to change.
I'll be honest to say that every gamer out there is intelligent is pure stupidity. There are also a good number of gamers out there who are selfish and unreasonably ask for things that are unhealthy for the game or criticize things because something doesn't allow them to do something they want. There is a trick of knowing which feedback to listen to and which to write off. However, it is never good for a company to place itself in a guarded fortress and completely ignore the community, and if the majority of your community is complaining about something specific chances are something isn't going well and it needs to be changed.
Think outside of the box - - How do you keep a game balanced when you allow for non-raiders to compete with raiders in every aspect of the game (economy, gear, group balance, pve balance, etc)? Maybe raids should be transformed into something totally different but still be multi-group events? /shrug
I doubt I can add anything that you don't know yet.
Find yourself a few/several pillar by wich you want to display the character of the game. And stick to them over the years.
As a player I can connect better with the characters and the game itself, if it has its distinct character. Grow, evolve but stick to the foundation pillars and don't add pillars of the same gravity.
Initial designed game culture: When expansions are added on, the games seem to move away further and further from their initial 'culture-intend'. Which causes me to neglect or feel less motivated to consume earlier content.
The effect of numbers : Like several said earlier, high numbers doesn't always feel like a bigger challenge, rather more of the same. So challenge could be implemented differently but within the same level range for example.
What seems like quality of life feature can actually have very deep consequences on how fast paced things become or how less challenging things become. Less is more, would be my motto. Nowadays I dismiss several quality of life features in games, just to make it more interesting for me as a gamer. (examples: no maps, no act, no mercs, no fast travels (except ones with a timer or places within the actual world), no double buffs etc.
They talked in the April round table about how seeing levels on the nameplates shrinks the world for players. I think they are wrong. I think the levels in general shrinks the world for players. Seeing the level won't change anything. Here is your level, this is where you belong in game. You shouldn't be in the low level spot any more. You shouldn't be in the high level spot until you are ready. This is your level range.
You are a god to the low level creatures. High level creatures are a god to you. This is why the expansion problem exists. Players get further and further away from the original game culture as Barin999 said. Gods don't rent. When you could kill every NPC in the city and laugh at the guards you have broken the setting. This is where we end up in so many expansions, leveling invalidates old content, you have crossed the threshold, you no longer belong in those zones.
Perhaps Pantheon will eventually go full meta and we ourselves will become the new gods for new worlds.
As Gamers, don't be drawn in by shiny visuals.
Kilsin said:Community Debate - As gamers, what are some lessons we should have learned by now from past games, that we haven't? #MMORPG #CommunityMatters
I make these points with the interpretation of your question being asked from the view of VR as being both developers and gamers.
- Selling out to Tencent or a similar company is the development equivalent of selling your and your players’ souls.
- In regard to PvP, if you make a single player’s dps higher than what a single healer can heal, there are no logical reasons to ever have a healer on your team over another dps. The pvp scene then becomes “World of dps”.
- In PvP, if you do not have solid mechanisms in place to prevent griefing, camping, and complete server domination, then all three are an eventuality.
- People play a game to have fun and shed the stress of reality. Bringing political or social issues into the mix unnecessarily causes division and alienation within your player base.
- Overly strict or unnecessary moderation on the forums or other social mediums is seen as oppressive, and only stokes the flames of hatred and rebellion in the hearts of those who might otherwise be content.
Kilsin said:Community Debate - As gamers, what are some lessons we should have learned by now from past games, that we haven't? #MMORPG #CommunityMatters
That this game is the same or should be the same as XXXX game that we played Y years ago. Oftentimes the comparison is made between the first MMORPG that we played. I fall victim to this as well and have to keep myself from comparing this to very nostalgic EQ memories. No matter what this game has, it can't compare to that time in the genre or time in my life. That's just not a fair expectation. I fully expect it to be amazing though :)
Prim said:
Think outside of the box - - How do you keep a game balanced when you allow for non-raiders to compete with raiders in every aspect of the game (economy, gear, group balance, pve balance, etc)? Maybe raids should be transformed into something totally different but still be multi-group events? /shrug
dorotea said: Over the years I have consistently urged that raids, like solo play, be peripheral to the core of Pantheon which has been billed as group play.
I too have supported this position over the years. If we assume that, at release, raid content would represent 10% of all content available then keeping that ratio throughout the life of the game would be perfectly fine with me. I do not want to see it become like EQ1 where the content of an entire expansion was mostly raid content.