Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Is it content or gameplay that really matters in the end?

    • 413 posts
    September 10, 2019 5:49 PM PDT

    Mornroc said:

    Gameplay.  Period.  At one time I too bought into the whole 'content is king' motto, but no longer.  But I think the answer is a bit more nuanced than this.  The two intertwine and overlap to some degree.

    If right now any one of you had been granted alpha access and the gameplay was awesome would it really matter that only one zone was complete?  Even if you got bored and stopped playing for a bit would you come back?  Probably.  More likely you would find excuses to stay.  I know in original EQ when I was max level and waiting on the next expansion I passed the time doing long quests, faction grinding for things I wanted, and grinding AA's.  Sometimes when I didn't have enough time to realistically find a group and make my way to wherever, I would just logon and chat with friends and not really do much... Putz around on the bazaar.  I found stuff to keep me occupied because the game was more than a game.  The gameplay made it feel like a real world I could escape into.  So in a way you could call gameplay 'content'.  There were just a lot of things to do, but I wouldn't call crafting content per sey as an example.

    Now think of literally any other game that has loads of content (and by content here I mean, zones with quests, instances, etc.)...  why aren't you there right now instead of here?

    Content is not king, gameplay is.  That said, content is a balancing act.  I personally believe this was the downfall of SWTOR.  You have to control the pace at which players are 'able' to consume content in a way that doesn't feel like a slog but also isn't so fast that they run out of things to do before you can realistically develop new content.  SWTOR was IMHO a really really fun game that had alot of content but the leveling pace was too fast, and since you could solo everything outside of instances similiar to WoW, everyone was max level in a week.  With six months to go until an expansion that got boring super quick.  I also think that they spent a huge amount of time on class cut scenes and instance cut scenes and not enough on raid cut scenes.  They could have really done some epic stuff there but I think they ran out of time and the raids were not as polished as they could have been.  SWTOR tried to address this through daily and weekly missions and faction stuff, but it was a total slog.  Doing the same quest over and over every day or week was not only dumb but immersion breaking.  Give me something like AA's instead so I can choose what content I want to spend my time on.  It wasn't that SWTOR didn't have content, it was just the way in which the gameplay delivered or focused you onto specific content that sucked.

    I actually think that some of my most fun experiences in EQ were as a low level newb in Blackburrow grinding with friends.  That one zone in and of itself isn't a huge amount of content, but I spent long long stretches of time under multiple toons and had tons of fun doing it.  It never felt like a slog because I was enjoying myself, but would you call that one zone alot of content?  On one hand I wouldn't really say so, but it is if it kept me occupied for that long.  So I think it's all relative and gameplay/content are really difficult to separate from each other.

     

    Blackburrow was awesome.  I loved Crushbone.  I remember trying to figure out how to get my corpse out from under "The Trainer"  Also, "Orc Hill" in front of Crushbone was fun.  It was like your first Noob grouping spot.  Then you would level UP and go into Crushbone to early and.. well, get crushed.   The hard push-back from PvE was fun. 
     
    I think in-game books and maps should be important content.  But only if "the content" in the book can be considered tangible in the game world.  Example; A passage in the book that  hints to a "Perception Ping" in the Pantheon World..  It is so much more fun to read a book that offers consequence. 
    SWTOR never felt like a free world, it did feel guided.  And no swimming?...what the...
     
    • 3852 posts
    September 14, 2019 8:21 AM PDT

    SWTOR had many strengths but to me its major weakness was precisely that - you were always on rails doing the same things in the same order. At least if you were in the same faction.

    Every Imperial went to the same planets in the same order doing more or less the same things (though there were two starter planets depending on class). Race was irrelevant. Ditto for the Republic.

    Granted this is true in many MMOs but SWTOR took the lack of choice to an extreme. Games like LOTRO or Rift or EQ2 had limited progression paths but not *this* limited by far.

    Yet to me the Elder Scrolls approach is worse. Allowing you to go almost anywhere because enemy levels were tied to your level and dungeons were created to match your level and perhaps class. Referring to the single player games but a MMO could do the same with enough instancing. To me - and I know others disagree - it totally leached any meaning or purpose from the world other than gaining levels or gear.

    A vibrant interactive world with meaning and events not centered on the character but that the character can affect in some ways is perfect. Something between the typical "you are the great hero or villain and all centers on you" that we are used to now, and the "nothing matters other than gaining gear and levels" approach.


    This post was edited by dorotea at September 14, 2019 8:22 AM PDT
    • 14 posts
    September 18, 2019 5:11 PM PDT

    Your content means very little if your game play stinks.  To me it is both, great game play then requires you to have a ton of conent because people will just eat it up.

    • 77 posts
    September 25, 2019 12:12 AM PDT

    Both.  Equally.  

    It’s not a binary choice I think.