I played EQ for 4 years...and I played a LOT. I was finishing up high school and had plenty of time because I didn't do homework and had no job other than school. So...I played 4-5 hours on weeknights and 10 hours Saturday and Sunday. I was never the max level on my server. By the time I finally got to max level an expansion came out and then I was no longer max level. By the time I quit playing I was 3 levels away from the new max. I guess my point is that there is a lot to do in a game, you don't have to just level constantly. I have nothing against the power levelers (people who will get to level 50 in a month or two), that's up to them. They will be missing out on a lot of the game if they choose to play that way.
Things that slowed me down include: just hanging out with new friends, exploring new areas even if I was not high enough level for them, dying in strange places, crafting (even if in hindsight the crafting system was quite tedius), trying to solo mobs that were too tough for me, waiting for groups in dungeons (but while waiting I got to hang out and chat with a lot of cool people!), and I spent quite a bit of time in the open market buying and selling items from players.
I agree that it's important to look at systems and make sure they actually make sense. But it's a very slippery slope when you start taking out "inconveniences." You take away corpse runs because it takes time, then why not add free teleporting for the exact same reason? Actually, why not double the amount of exp players earn so they can level up faster? Or better yet just let players choose when they want to level up and they just click the level up button. I know I've gone very extreme with my examples but hopefully you see how much of a slippery slope this can be.
There are so many aspects to a good game. It shouldn't be just about leveling up fast or saving time, it should be about spending time in the world that they created.
dorotea said:(You forgot the most important reason for not grinding levels in EQ.
Fishing))
Though fishing didn't truly become important to game success until they introduced the ability to mail things COD.
I think you're going to have to work harder than that if you want to bait us into a reel pun contest, Dorotea :)
Ranarius said:I played EQ for 4 years...and I played a LOT. I was finishing up high school and had plenty of time because I didn't do homework and had no job other than school. So...I played 4-5 hours on weeknights and 10 hours Saturday and Sunday. I was never the max level on my server. By the time I finally got to max level an expansion came out and then I was no longer max level. By the time I quit playing I was 3 levels away from the new max. I guess my point is that there is a lot to do in a game, you don't have to just level constantly. I have nothing against the power levelers (people who will get to level 50 in a month or two), that's up to them. They will be missing out on a lot of the game if they choose to play that way.
Things that slowed me down include: just hanging out with new friends, exploring new areas even if I was not high enough level for them, dying in strange places, crafting (even if in hindsight the crafting system was quite tedius), trying to solo mobs that were too tough for me, waiting for groups in dungeons (but while waiting I got to hang out and chat with a lot of cool people!), and I spent quite a bit of time in the open market buying and selling items from players.
I agree that it's important to look at systems and make sure they actually make sense. But it's a very slippery slope when you start taking out "inconveniences." You take away corpse runs because it takes time, then why not add free teleporting for the exact same reason? Actually, why not double the amount of exp players earn so they can level up faster? Or better yet just let players choose when they want to level up and they just click the level up button. I know I've gone very extreme with my examples but hopefully you see how much of a slippery slope this can be.
There are so many aspects to a good game. It shouldn't be just about leveling up fast or saving time, it should be about spending time in the world that they created.
Very well said. These "inconveniences" are needed. it's not Just because EQ had them, they are what made EQ great. No matter the inconveniences kept, there will always be at least three groups.
VR's challange is going to be having to sort this out, there is but a small sample of the player base both here on this web site now, or will be after release. Only but a small sample of players that even do web sites at all. You can bet the group #3 above will be VERY vocal on the web site Ranting about what the other two contented groups are just blisfully ignorant of. Until it's gradually piece by piece pulled out from under them and they are left with another game they don't want to play on the stack of what the gnere has become.
Some tedious NEED to be here.
Some inconveniences NEED to be her.
Some flat out dispointment NEEDS to be here.
VR. knows this, the question is do they have it defined "how much" and will they be able to stand there ground against a very Vocal minority. At what point do they rethink there defined amount and start slipping down that slope. Tough Job ahead of them!
Matrulak said:I actually liked the solution in Vanguard, where you could choose to summon the corpse to some stone without being able to rez. If something hits the fan i could always get the corpse back without getting not enough sleep, but there was a price to pay.
I think this is a good direction to contemplate. For death to remain meaningful though the exp penalty for a summoned corpse would need to be a lot steeper than a recovered corpse without a rez which in turn is steeper than with a rez. We are talking hours and hours worth of grinding lost for a summoned corpse. So maybe 4 hours lost for summon, 2 hours lost for a non rez and 1 hour for a rez.
I am a staunch advocate for "old school" but not for the reasons you may think.
My #1 desire is to have a virtual world to live in, not a video game to play. Brad said almost those exact words when he described his vision.
As long as you achieve that, then everything else is secondary.
These little things we call "conveniences" like in-game maps, auto-looting, instant travel, etcetera are like "death by a thousand paper cuts". Any one of those considered alone will not break the game. But after enough of those get implemented, you slowly bleed the virtual world away and are left with a video game corpse.
Trasak said:Matrulak said:I actually liked the solution in Vanguard, where you could choose to summon the corpse to some stone without being able to rez. If something hits the fan i could always get the corpse back without getting not enough sleep, but there was a price to pay.
I think this is a good direction to contemplate. For death to remain meaningful though the exp penalty for a summoned corpse would need to be a lot steeper than a recovered corpse without a rez which in turn is steeper than with a rez. We are talking hours and hours worth of grinding lost for a summoned corpse. So maybe 4 hours lost for summon, 2 hours lost for a non rez and 1 hour for a rez.
Without the possability of level loss (the way I understand they are going) experiance loss alone, be it 2 hours, 4 hours, or 20 hours is meaningless to me. I'm in no hurry to get to max level, and I have NEVER found a game where I ran out of content at any level I was at. I always outlevel the content first. In EQ I hadn't seen all of Crushbone before I was high enough to move on to another zone.
In EQ for example let's go with Level 20 from Allakhazam's Zone Level Chart Avalable zones for a Level 20
Mountians of Rathe, Qeynos Catacombs,The Feerrott, Commonlands, EverFrost Peaks,Upper Guk, West Karana, West Commonlands, North Karana, Oasis of Mar, Estate of Unrest, Dagnor's Cauldren, and more I just got tired of typing them...
World Of Warcraft From wow.gamepedia skipping those that stop at level 20
Westfall, Bloodmyst Isle, Darkshore, Ghostlands, Loch Modan, Northern Barrens, Silverpine Forrest, Redridge Mountians, Ashenvale, Hillsbrad foothills, Duskwood, Stonetalon Mountians. Wetlands, Arathi Highlands, and more...
Now show me a game, where I'm going to run out of new exciting places to see before I level up, and THEN yes I'll care if I lose some experiance, I'll get bored, and stuck at level 20 with nothing new to explore. Otherwise, I'm great just staying at Lvl20 and going to experiance ALL those zones.
Honnestly, I'm playing EQ now, I have a Warrior at lvl 50 and have 100% of my experiance going to AA's not becouse I really care for the AA's but becouse I'm farming some great coin down in the Hole and don't want to out level it... Wife and I have been down there for weeks like this creating a bank roll!
Zorkon said:Without the possability of level loss (the way I understand they are going) experiance loss alone, be it 2 hours, 4 hours, or 20 hours is meaningless to me. I'm in no hurry to get to max level, and I have NEVER found a game where I ran out of content at any level I was at. I always outlevel the content first. In EQ I hadn't seen all of Crushbone before I was high enough to move on to another zone.
In EQ for example let's go with Level 20 from Allakhazam's Zone Level Chart Avalable zones for a Level 20
Mountians of Rathe, Qeynos Catacombs,The Feerrott, Commonlands, EverFrost Peaks,Upper Guk, West Karana, West Commonlands, North Karana, Oasis of Mar, Estate of Unrest, Dagnor's Cauldren, and more I just got tired of typing them...
World Of Warcraft From wow.gamepedia skipping those that stop at level 20
Westfall, Bloodmyst Isle, Darkshore, Ghostlands, Loch Modan, Northern Barrens, Silverpine Forrest, Redridge Mountians, Ashenvale, Hillsbrad foothills, Duskwood, Stonetalon Mountians. Wetlands, Arathi Highlands, and more...
Now show me a game, where I'm going to run out of new exciting places to see before I level up, and THEN yes I'll care if I lose some experiance, I'll get bored, and stuck at level 20 with nothing new to explore. Otherwise, I'm great just staying at Lvl20 and going to experiance ALL those zones.
Honnestly, I'm playing EQ now, I have a Warrior at lvl 50 and have 100% of my experiance going to AA's not becouse I really care for the AA's but becouse I'm farming some great coin down in the Hole and don't want to out level it... Wife and I have been down there for weeks like this creating a bank roll!
I'd not say the XP debt is plain useless due to alternate experience beeing used to improve our abilities, if that debt has to be repaid before we can gain points again then it is decent, but not really scary however.
I do like the possibility of getting your corpse at a graveyard but it should be city/bind points close only, and not tied to the dungeon entrance (seems logical, but also means the corpse has to travel throught zone, IDK how the data will be handled there), to avoid punishing low timeframe players not only by the xp debt, but also by locking them out of play until they can get back their stuff.
MauvaisOeil said:Zorkon said:Without the possability of level loss (the way I understand they are going) experiance loss alone, be it 2 hours, 4 hours, or 20 hours is meaningless to me. I'm in no hurry to get to max level, and I have NEVER found a game where I ran out of content at any level I was at. I always outlevel the content first. In EQ I hadn't seen all of Crushbone before I was high enough to move on to another zone.
In EQ for example let's go with Level 20 from Allakhazam's Zone Level Chart Avalable zones for a Level 20
Mountians of Rathe, Qeynos Catacombs,The Feerrott, Commonlands, EverFrost Peaks,Upper Guk, West Karana, West Commonlands, North Karana, Oasis of Mar, Estate of Unrest, Dagnor's Cauldren, and more I just got tired of typing them...
World Of Warcraft From wow.gamepedia skipping those that stop at level 20
Westfall, Bloodmyst Isle, Darkshore, Ghostlands, Loch Modan, Northern Barrens, Silverpine Forrest, Redridge Mountians, Ashenvale, Hillsbrad foothills, Duskwood, Stonetalon Mountians. Wetlands, Arathi Highlands, and more...
Now show me a game, where I'm going to run out of new exciting places to see before I level up, and THEN yes I'll care if I lose some experiance, I'll get bored, and stuck at level 20 with nothing new to explore. Otherwise, I'm great just staying at Lvl20 and going to experiance ALL those zones.
Honnestly, I'm playing EQ now, I have a Warrior at lvl 50 and have 100% of my experiance going to AA's not becouse I really care for the AA's but becouse I'm farming some great coin down in the Hole and don't want to out level it... Wife and I have been down there for weeks like this creating a bank roll!
I'd not say the XP debt is plain useless due to alternate experience beeing used to improve our abilities, if that debt has to be repaid before we can gain points again then it is decent, but not really scary however.
I do like the possibility of getting your corpse at a graveyard but it should be city/bind points close only, and not tied to the dungeon entrance (seems logical, but also means the corpse has to travel throught zone, IDK how the data will be handled there), to avoid punishing low timeframe players not only by the xp debt, but also by locking them out of play until they can get back their stuff.
Now Locked out of my corpse for a time, THAT would be a deterant. Somebody mentioned further up this thread 18 hours..... nea whatever! Right idea, but not long enough for me to really care IMO. In EQ the Corps Rot time was like a Week, I think somewhere between that 18 hours and 1 week would be good. I think it NEEDS to be If you wipe, your done for the day, week with that charictor. Time to let the next Guild, Group take the position (and with any luck they have a Rezer that will rez you all and send you on your way... corpse run averted while meeting new friends ... THATS what were looking for!)
If the penalty is not exterrm, we will ignore it.... I will
Nephele said:MauvaisOeil said:
It actually took me a year to reach lvl 20 (and a surname) with a character. But the reasons were easy to understand :
(list of reasons)
You forgot the most important reason for not grinding levels in EQ.
Fishing
:)
The boss fight everyone had a hard time defeating!!! XD
But anyhoot I see this game as a don't isolate yourself or with just a small group of players, share the time and experances with everyone in-game.Yes leveling is not going to be easy, but shareing that time with others should be important, you never know what good things could happen, and be able to tell the story to others on this forum and others of what happened that day to make an enjoyable experance . On of my most enjayable moments when the guild I was in was going to step into a new area(i forgot the name of the area as It was a while ago, but I digress) that us as a guild were not able to get to because we were low level players at the time,but we took our time and were able to get to that area, well the party that the entire guild chose to go in first pushed out a few hours earlier then expected. I had to play catch up to them so I had to ask if people were going to that zone, there were a sizable group of players doing the same thing (10-15 is players) and we broke it down onto 3 teams of 5 and slowly ground our way through the zone to the edge to the zone where my party was going to log into the next day and start our push there. It took us a few hours of fighting,corpse runs and such to get to that new area and in the end all 10-15 players became friends and our guilds worked together from that point on to help each other out. In the end my group and the 2-3 other groups became friends and we all worked together to figure out the new zone (mobs,quests and such) and the 2 other guild that were there with us became allies when we were clearing content, some of those players I still talk to this day.
What I am saying is that this game would be a good change of pace from being able to solo everything and/or isolating with a small group of players you already know to clear any content or using a website or 3rd party program to figure out who is good or not like alot of modern MMOrpg's do today. Working with others you never met before and form new bonds with reguarless of what guild they are in, and socializing with people outside your comfort zone. I would love to see when this game comes out, someone posts in general chat "Hey folks headding to area X, anyone going that way as well want to party up?" and see a group of players head off to get to to said area not knowing each other working together for a common cause.
I believe what separates “new school” and “old school” MMO’s are player conveniences. Roleplaying and character development are about all of the little pieces that make up the whole of your character. More modern games make a lot of assumptions and removes that aspect, giving you a generic character and focuses more on giving you things to do.
If you want an old school MMO, spend less time on trying to entertain the player and move back to more ways to play the character.
This post was never about CR's. I only used CR's as an example to what I was saying about "old school" and not every thing from the good old days was good.
Before we lost Brad. I know he said that VR was going with CR's but they are going to control them. To the best of my knowledge no details have been given to how VR will control CR's.
I'm not against death penalties or CR's to a point. I like the way WoW now does CR's. You die and respawn as a spirit unable to attack or be attack while having to make the run of shame back from the respawn point to the location of your corpse. With Pantheon going to be open world. That is a lot. Because that mob / boss your group wiped on is more than likely going to be gone by the time you make the run of shame back and loot your corpse and get set up again.I personally do not and will not go back to the way CR's got done in EQ.
I'm not going to fight through five levels of a dungeon naked while wiping many more times in the process to get my original corpse with all my gear. That does NOT mean I want VR to water down the death penalty. I just don't want the death penalty to be insane.
I take no issue with the lost of XP as long as the lost is within reason. If you take a lost of say eight hours worth of playing that is to much.
Now we know CR's are going to be in the game. We do not know how they will handle CR's. Plus we are going to take a lost of XP when we die. I also think our gear is going to take a hit and we will have to repair. That is more than enough for having a meaningful death penalty.
We do not need it to be the way it was in EQ & have to fight back to our corpse naked on top of all the other penalties from death.
I should have used crafting as my example in the original post. Please do not add crafting than ignore it and make it useless.
I like all the feedback. Stay safe. ( This was my view and feel free to agree or disagree with me. Let your voice be heard)
Vander said:...I'm not going to fight through five levels of a dungeon naked while wiping many more times in the process to get my original corpse with all my gear....
I'm not sure this is a good argument. In the 4 years I played I never once had to fight though a dungeon to recover my corpse. It's a social game, we get creative on ways to recover a corpse. I'm not saying I didn't get in some real seriously sticky situations with CR's, because I did, but there is more than one way to skin a cat...or retrieve a corpse. I liked being forced to be creative in times when I wasn't able to do something alone. With that said, I'll just say again that I don't want a carbon copy of EQ but I do want something equally challenging, time consuming, comitment requiring, problem solving, and all that good stuff.
The point to this thread wasn't to argue corpse runs specifically. The point was to remind us of a self-evident truth. Not everything old is good. Not everything in EQ or Vanguard was good. Not everything new is bad. Not every feature of WoW or SWG or SWTOR is bad.
We have strong consensus that leveling needs to be slower and more challenging than is typical today. We have strong consensus that the game needs inconveniences and road-blocks that in and of themselves people will not enjoy but that will make ultimate success after some failures and detours that much more satisfying.
We do not have consensus that corpse runs are a critical element of this, and that there are no better ways to interject time sinks and inconveniences. Manifestly some like the idea and some say that they are ridiculous and serve no valid purpose other than nostalgia.
VR should use their own judgment as to what things from the "old days" are actually good and what things from the old days were pretty crappy but people at the time didn't have the tech and experience to do any better. With two important constraints.
1. There should be enough game mechanics from EQ or Vanguard to maintain an appeal to hard core fans of those games because that is most of us.
2. If they decide that a system in place as of right now in pre-alpha could be improved - suck it up and leave the system alone unless a change is quick and easy. No more "back to the drawing board" moments.
i dont want to have towait and hope a mob spawns for a raid at 2 am and id much prefer maps that you have to discover or buy so i disagree on the no instances ever thing , i do agree keep them very limited however, no instances means every quest like oh the coldain ringwar that effects the zone will **** over others useing the zone
lutorin said:About the most discussed issue on this thread and the fact that it never was a big drama nor much lost time in EQ just 2 words :
Summon Corpse :)
While summon corpse did make it so that you just had to drop 200 platinum to get your corpse (and had to find a necromancer, which added to the social and cross-reliance in the game), it wasn't introduced until the Splitpaw revamp, which was a few months into the original game.
I personally played EQ for 20 yrs. My final step was going to TLP for a bit to try the classic out again. Like so many others they enjoyed it too.
I will be very honest, the good old problems are what brought us together. Most of what was in EQ from Alpha to beta and onwards made the game fun, bugs and all because we started to socialize with people and or guild members.
Whatever you think might have been bad, really was a deep drive to bring people together, weither you know it or not. So no i dont agree the old was bad.
It was also more simple times back then, we didnt have so many 12 year old screaming in your ear or spamming the chat with stupid childish behaviours. Not until the next gen decided to give mmos a chance.
Well story be told, most things are dummed down. This is the future we didnt want as a Niche enviroment.
I met a lot of friends, but also knew of many people hooking up and getting married from the game too.
Bugs and all, problems and all we still had a load of fun even over the bad things.
The OP's point is genuine. I noticed old style Corpse runs created two kinds of basic behaviors in players: The one I choose to remember is how it made me a better player because of the negative reinforcement the corpse run taught you, comparable to the "up hill, both ways, in the snow" kind of nostalgia associated with character development.
The second is wrought out of fear, where the players are scared and overly cautious to go anywhere, this stifles adventure and going to new places and creates a characteristic where they dare not venture out unles they are fully buffed, often waiting, or wasting time until they have the optimum set of buffs.
Also, MoB pathing was horrible in some places, coupled with high aggro radius made for some- depending on how you looked at it as a feature or a bug- good hunts or crippling trains. lie always needing a chanter to break into karnors and not even thinking of trying without one.
Additionally, things weren't so bad when areas were consistently populated, there was always someone there. That made corpse runs a bit more palatable because you could run to various other people that were accidental safe havens just by their being there. But this only occured when the population was dynamic. You would not have that same experience maybe 2 or 3 years later when the dungeon is empty, or maybe one other group inside. This had me interested in Amberfaet when they showed those "safe" spots or camps where players couild camp out in dungeons, that one with the goblin.
The zeitgeist at the time WoW came out, was that it fixed everything thatw as wrong with EQ, thats what people said. Thats why people left. Some never came back.
This captures the same spirit I expressed in fear that those non this forum are the "vocal minority" or the "droods" from the past
what made it fun was logging in and being able to see a variety of things going on to choose from with people or create your own. What made it bad was logging on and expecting things to come to you- and then complaining about it and becoming the vocal minority because you are paying money to be entertained, and no one is playing with you.
It's like backflagging which is another issue I think. The hell that is backflagging or "gated" content. The idea is to motivate people to get together to conquer the content, instead they stand with other complainers and complain instead of thinking to join and overcome. who is to say who is wrong?
Manouk said:... instead they stand with other complainers and complain instead of thinking to join and overcome. who is to say who is wrong?
I am to say who is wrong. Anyone who stands around and complains about anything in life and is unwilling to try to do anything to fix it is wrong. :)
(of course...maybe they think that complaining IS doing something?)