JDNight said:Fair enough. But I read that as meaning just activities you could do daily. Not 'Dailys' as in what WoW uses. To me, going out and taking out a few mobs, or collecting some tradeskill materials would qualify as an activity I might do daily. These things should not have to be 'put' into the game. I am kinda hoping they will already be there.
We are in 100% agreement and I had suggested the same in my original reply. Cheers
Raidan said:JDNight said:Fair enough. But I read that as meaning just activities you could do daily. Not 'Dailys' as in what WoW uses. To me, going out and taking out a few mobs, or collecting some tradeskill materials would qualify as an activity I might do daily. These things should not have to be 'put' into the game. I am kinda hoping they will already be there.
We are in 100% agreement and I had suggested the same in my original reply. Cheers
And I agree as well. My stance was never that these things should not exist. It was as you elude to that instead these things will exist naturally so long as you build a living breathing gameworld. You dont have to craft content to be consumed by a solo player. You just have to avoid the use of artificial, gimmicky crap that prevents a solo player from finding ways to play.
Just came back from a couple of months of EQ P99. EQ does soloing pretty well. It's harder and more risky and gives less XP, but you can do it. Trade-skilling isn't much fun, but you could do it. Trading isn't much fun but you could do it. *mostly*
Sometimes I would log in, not be able to get a group because the dungeon was too busy, not be able to solo the zone mobs because my character wasn't well balanced, spend quite a while getting to another level-appropriate zone because I'm not a teleporting class then not be able to get a group because noone much was there, not be able to go and sell stuff because I'm not a teleporting class and I'm a long way from the East Commons, etc etc.
You don't need to 'pander' to 'the masses' to enable casuals to have fun, you just need some decent basic mechanics: balancing, zone character population, zone monster population, limited fast travel, consignment auction, etc.
I think I agree that you don't have to pander to the masses. If you think about it, something that's well-designed has its own appeal.
Same goes with grouping issues, if you don't have the time to group, then don't play the game. The devs will obviously try to balance everything as perfectly as possible in regards to time allocation and time spent/wasted having to have to find a group but in the end shorter grouping times will probably lead to "dungeon finders" (which are undesirable). Longer grouping times will lead to people rage-quitting, it's all in how they want to balance it.
On a side-note, the same goes for the following. I really don't know why World of Warcraft devs didn't think of this but they shouldn't have included things like real-dollar level boosts because it just ruins the whole concept of hard-leveling. An mmorpg should just focus on massive world-design and not on who can complete the endgame first. If you think about it, people who start off a bit later in the game will naturally not be able to reach the endgame as fast as people who have played the game for awhile, this is just how it is and there's no point in arguing it. WoW devs should just have accepted the fact that people who start later on will have to spend more time playing to catch up to people already in the end-game. They should've just focused on enhancing content, as a result WoW probably wouldn't have been in the disastrous state it's in now. World of Warcraft is sort of a game that's more combat-oriented though than Everquest was, which was more of a traditional world-building MMo with unique elements (not sure why I added this in here).
Same went for EQ, I think that I heard something that in the last 5 years of its time, EQ went downhill because it started catering to PvE and also PvP players at the same time or something like that from a comment elsewhere on the net. This is a problem that has been plaguing mmo devs for some time now, but it's quite an easy fix, (don't cater and do the best job you can with design). The rest is up to imagination and creativity.
When unsuccessfully LFG, I would work on buying and selling stuff.
zewtastic said:Why should it be resolved? Trying to make a game everything to everyone is usually what screws things up.
I like this.
This game is for a niche market. You know, the minority of people who got bored with 1 player MMOs.
Please VR, stick to your guns and be different. Be the exception. I drank the koolaid and subscribed. I believe in VR.
Fortune cookie: If you try to chase 2 rabbits, you will not catch any.
One of the reasons people play these games is to fully develop their characters to the point of extreme and for bragging rights.
EQ Live did a great job at the end of putting in flags and point systems for ranking your toon on collections, kills counts of specific mobs, wardrobe wearing quests, and a horde of various achievements.
This is what I did when I was bored and waiting for people to come on for raids, groups etc.
I think if the devs provided a rich set of status activities they would be well received and if you could see your ranking ie, flawnt it it would be well received I think..
My thoughts.
Cheers
Godzilla
LFG is rough... and it is valid to want something to do that advances your character when waiting for a party to form up.
Tradeskills are not for everyone, but there could be quests that involve exploration and discovery - solving puzzles (thinking of escape rooms here) that could be easily dropped and resumed later by a solo player. Rewards could be as simple as a tick mark on a list... some players live for this - or currency accumulated (very slowly, you do not want to impact grouping)
Other thoughts.. you could play a basic card game with an NPC. Have a zone that a player can rearrange and set a traps for the next player to solve. Or.. get really out of the box. I always thought that there could be some real learning in an MMO...maybe have an in-game university where a player can go and study some chemistry to use to create a spell for in game... or even create learning content for other players.
If you can harness the creativity of the player base.... maybe have an art gallery where people can contribute art and others can go and view it.... write tales of an adventure for an in game newspaper.. .this type of activity could also keep people from being bored.
This may have been covered elsewhere, but I really really hope Pantheon does not implement mercs... they made grouping in EQ really difficult for certain classes. I mean.. a merc never went afk... never asked for a share of the loot, and was always on time when you wanted to do something
I'm not sure I'm understanding the problem here. VRi is trying to create another virtual world for us to live in again. It's not just about creating a group-centric MMO where all activities revolve around grouping. It's about creating a sticky game that people love to log into over and over for years and years (I believe Brad said somewhere he'd love Pantheon to run at least 10 years easy), a place/MMO people can call home.
To do this, there is going to have to be many activities for us to do. But that doesn't mean they have to be anything like what WoW does, or what a WoW clone does, or what a theme park does. If we look at some of the things that both VG and EQ did to fill up time we can get a good idea of how Pantheon can and will handle it. Mass buffing players would be cool to see make a comeback. Players teleporting others. Trading goods/items. Crafting. Harvesting. Diplomacy...pushing diplo city buffs and also running to all the different cities to grab said buffs. And solo combat (but imo not all classes should be designed to solo well, but that's a different story for a different conversation).
If Pantheon is to create this grand virtual world for us to get lost in there is going to have to be many things that make the world feel alive. Meaning there is going to have to be many things for us to do, besides fighting monsters and saving princesses, that allow us to 'live' in Terminus. And for the concern over the devs not having the man-power, time, or resources to devote to this extra content there should be no worry. People want things to do while they are having troubles finding a group. When the game first releases there really shouldn't be much trouble finding a group since the game will be new and fresh and have its initial wave of players all enjoying the core game and its combat. Thus, allowing the devs to not have to worry about all these extra activities and systems until later...in later expansions. Once the initial game is launched and the game is polished and running smooth and players are enjoying the initial core game then the devs can focus on creating all of the sticky inner game that occupies the player's time when they just want to come home and kick off their boots.
ps. (edit) here's hoping to a card game, whether it is similar to diplomacy or not, that can be played by 2 players against each other. Diplomacy would have been even better if players could have battled each other for cards. :D
I largely agree that there's something to be said for this idea of having shorter timescale things people can do to aid towards proressing their characters in some way. FF14's popularity, IMO, isn't necessarily that it's casual friendly (it IS, but that's not it), but rather because there are lots of ways players can progress and lots of things they can do during downtime. If you can log on and there's always something to do, then it keeps people always logging in. If you have half an hour and you can hop on and go fishing for 20 minutes - that's something to do.
It doesn't have to be complex or advanced, it just needs to be that there are lots of things to do, PERIOD, and that at least a handful can be done in short time bursts - either because you just have a bit of time to play or because you're waiting on the raid to form up.
There's this misconception people seem to have that "short time requirement things to do" = easy. That "casual gamer" = "badz".
I've fought against this notion in every online game I've come across, because it's always wrong. There are always a lot of gamers that don't have a lot of time to invest, or only have a half hour before going to dinner or something but want to get some game time in. And a lot of these gamers aren't unskilled, lazy, or want handouts or welfare epics.
All they want is something to do.
And a good game, even a good non-themepark game, recognizes this. For example, Minecraft and Eve Online - the sandboxiest of sandbox games out there - have things you can do for just a few minutes at a time. In Eve, you can go out and mine basic ore. In Minecraft, you can plant some trees or throw some sand in the smelter to start making a stack of glass, ect.
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So in short, I don't think that it's bad for people to have short term things that they can make progress on here and there. Tradskills are great for this. Grinding out mobs is also a good thing people can do to farm for drops or maybe get some light XP by killing lower level things and hoping for something good to drop, etc.
There's nothing wrong with a game that lets you go and do things. I would think this should rather be the point. Not that there's anything wrong with hanging out in a capital city and buffing random newbies as they go out the gates (I love playing healers/buffers for this reason. ^_^)
EDIT: Reading the post above mine - this guy nailed it. IMO, the devs should have one or two things people can do from the start of the game during downtime (I tend not to like fishing in games, but I DO have some fond memories in WoW of fishing while waiting for groups to form). It doesn't have to be more than a couple things like that at first, though, I agree. Much can be added later. Just so long as there are a few basic level things for people to do, that's what counts. :)
Variety is good.
Trading, harvesting, crafting, collecting, roleplaying, exploring. All things that keep things interesting when not grouping and, as long as you're not levelling from doing them, no harm to any game system or mechanic.
There are games that tried to make these things doable as a primary activity, giving XP for harvesting and crafting etc. That's not a good idea imho, but the activites themselves are often great fun and could give small rewards (or even great monetary ones in the case of crafting).