The thing I hate the most about expansions in MMOs is the stat inflation of random trash mobs.
For example, in EQ2, they had DRAGONS that were level 50+. Then an expansion came out, now we had level 60 BEETLES and SNAKES. Then more expansions come out. Now we had level 80 SHEEP.
Seriously, should ANY sheep be able to kill a dragon?
If you are going to add random fluff trash mobs to an area, don't make them expansion appropriate levels. If a player is level 70, they should NEVER have a problem killing a sheep.
Does this bother anyone else? Do you have any pet peeves from expansions?
Beefcake said:The thing I hate the most about expansions in MMOs is the stat inflation of random trash mobs.
For example, in EQ2, they had DRAGONS that were level 50+. Then an expansion came out, now we had level 60 BEETLES and SNAKES. Then more expansions come out. Now we had level 80 SHEEP.
Seriously, should ANY sheep be able to kill a dragon?
If you are going to add random fluff trash mobs to an area, don't make them expansion appropriate levels. If a player is level 70, they should NEVER have a problem killing a sheep.
Does this bother anyone else? Do you have any pet peeves from expansions?
I agree 100% Beefcake, but what would you put in as the leveling "fodder"? Cant just have a bunch of level 80 dragons running around the new xpac area. But yeah, this one just always bothered me too.
Sevens said:Beefcake said:The thing I hate the most about expansions in MMOs is the stat inflation of random trash mobs.
For example, in EQ2, they had DRAGONS that were level 50+. Then an expansion came out, now we had level 60 BEETLES and SNAKES. Then more expansions come out. Now we had level 80 SHEEP.
Seriously, should ANY sheep be able to kill a dragon?
If you are going to add random fluff trash mobs to an area, don't make them expansion appropriate levels. If a player is level 70, they should NEVER have a problem killing a sheep.
Does this bother anyone else? Do you have any pet peeves from expansions?
I agree 100% Beefcake, but what would you put in as the leveling "fodder"? Cant just have a bunch of level 80 dragons running around the new xpac area. But yeah, this one just always bothered me too.
That's the problem with filler mobs. They need to find something with a reason to be there and worth being there. I don't claim to have the answer.
imagine if real sheep were "level 80" and aggro... China, Australia, India, Sudan, Iran and Nigeria would probably still be survivable even with their greater numbers of sheep just because the human population there far exceeds the sheep population. So humans could probably zerg the sheep and make a go of it. But in New Zealand, I believe it is about 7 1/2 sheep per person if the census numbers I grabbed are correct. Completely unsurvivable if the sheep went aggro.
In the spirit of answering the opening statements....
Yes, I find it silly to have really tough bugs and sheep in an expansion to make up the trash mobs, but I'm not sure how else to handle it other than explain it with funky lore or make them giant prehistoric sheep.
I suppose if the expansion packs are geographically or chronologically isolated it would be possible for even the basic critters of one area to evolve into meaner critters than in another geographical or chronological region.
You're describing a common problem in games which introduce new content Beef. This phenomenon is called Power Creep and wiki has a nice write up about it:
"The gradual unbalancing of a game due to successive releases of new content. The phenomenon may be caused by a number of different factors and, in extreme cases, can be damaging to the longevity of the game in which it takes place. As new expansions or updates are released, new game mechanics, units, equipment and/or effects are introduced, usually stronger than previously existing content. Game developers use this primarily to push the new content, as it gives an incentive to buy it for competitions against other players or as new challenges for the single player experience. As new content with more power is introduced, the average powerlevel within the game rises, making it increasingly difficult for older content to remain in balance without changes. This means older content becomes regressively outdated or relatively underpowered, effectively rendering it useless from a competitive or challenge-seeking viewpoint. In extreme cases, whole parts of the game will be avoided by the players, as they are overshadowed by newer content."
Its an interesting game design problem that I'm not sure has a clean solution quite yet. I wonder what a non-power creep expansion would look like... One solution I can think of is to not increase the difficulty or power of the content to introduce a more difficult challenge, but rather limit the players themselves with some novel constraints. I can imaging a new area introduced with a "Time Warping" atmosphere that puts players into a previous state (i.e. deleveling) when entering, or a highly magnetic atmosphere where metal armors and items are unsuable. These kinds of constraints could be really fun to work around without overpowering new content.
The easiest solution though it wont completely and always fix the problem is if the content is designed across the board with more of a horizontal approach. So if you had mostly horizontal leveling and gearing with a very shallow vertical upward curve that could make a big difference. But youd have 2 problems. Eventually it wooud catch up just not as fast as in most other games. The 2nd problem is that even though it might not be as healthy for the life of the game, people still like seeing those numbers get bigger and might feel the progression doesnt feel that great.
Amsai said:The easiest solution though it wont completely and always fix the problem is if the content is designed across the board with more of a horizontal approach. So if you had mostly horizontal leveling and gearing with a very shallow vertical upward curve that could make a big difference. But youd have 2 problems. Eventually it wooud catch up just not as fast as in most other games. The 2nd problem is that even though it might not be as healthy for the life of the game, people still like seeing those numbers get bigger and might feel the progression doesnt feel that great.
So..damned if you do, and damned if you don't lol. There has to be a better way. :)
Can the level 80 sheep explode like in WoW? If so, there's the level 80 justification. Level 1 sheep with level 79 explosives in 'em after they mistakenly but thirstily drank from the naturally occuring trinitrotolulene pools they stumbled upon while searching for water?
I think that with the game engines we have today, the model of yearly expansions might become a thing of the past soon and developers might start updating bits here and there more often, some or most of it on the fly without server rolling restarts. I think part of the other problem is that as mentioned above, the old content usually mostly stays in and gets more and more stale over time. To quote a comic book movie might seem silly but Vision says something near the end of Ultron that hit me more than most of the dialogue in that movie. Vision: "Yes... but a thing isn't beautiful because it lasts" and there is a lot to be taken from that statement imo
Xpacs and new content are always going to be a two edged sword I think. Too much new content, the game can get convoluted and often confusing. Not enough and the playerbase may begin to look towards other new and interesting things. It is human nature that once exposed to something, and it becomes familiar to us, that soon after we will tend to look towards other new things to interest us and hold our attention if we cannot find them where we are currently looking. The previously experienced things will stay near and dear to our hearts and we will nostalgia over them yes, but we as humans will always tend towards seeking out the "new" once we become familiar with the thing(s) that currently hold our attention.
Now, this might not be a great way to present what I am about to say, but it does illustrate a mindset with regards to change and the acceptence of it versus the rejection of it; many people enjoy static, unchanging games like chess, checkers, monopoly, and sports games and like baseball, soccer etc, even games like Counter Strike that remain mostly the same since the day they released. The thing these games share in common is that they are rarely ever altered or changed drastically. They remain mostly static except for fine tuning.
MMO's however in my opinion tend to attract the type of personality and mindset that will crave, enjoy and thrive on new content being provided in their MMO's of choice. People in MMO's enjoy change, be it new power increments, or sideways development. Hell, one of the reasons we are all here and backing VRI is that we have probably all utterly and completely lost faith in pretty much every other dev team and company out there to satisfy our wants and needs as MMO players.
My point? I agree with Canadina in that you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. Developers can however control and minimize the negative aspects to a degree and we have to have faith in that in our VRI team. (text in blue color to subliminally promote trust in our devs lol)
My question for the devs (and players of course) is this: Do we need yearly released expacs? Could new content be released in different ways other than the traditional ones and in far smaller time increments?
Does everyone think yearly expacs with incremental small content releases are the way to go?
Would you all prefer to see no expacs ever and the world constantly change and evolve slowly, and not experience the startling WHAM of a major update with major nerfs, major game play and content changes etc, like in WoW?
Or do you think it would be best to follow some of all the methods available, have yearly expacs, with some incrememental medium sized updates and all year long, do tiny things to alter the world and environment on the fly while servers are running? I feel like waiting a year is too long and hurts MMO's these days, but not everyone will share that opinion I am sure
Also, would you all like to see a rare update once in a while with literally NO devlog update, so that no one knows what the update was, where the content is, and we have to seek out and locate the new content? In the past, we were pretty spoon fed in a way - told where the content is, what it was about, who the bad guy is etc
This is a new day and age and the need to do rolling server restarts is not as it was back in 1999 era, so I personally would love to see smaller content changes but more often in the updates, rather than wait for a year for some all new, game changing experience and content (though I am not opposed to also having a yearly update with the lots of smaller content updates).
From what I understand about todays MMO and game engines, you can literally hot plug a hard drive in with an update and roll it out to the servers nice and clean on the fly but clients would still have to download content before logging in I guess, so altering content and providing updates is definitely not as limiting for developers as it was in the past
edit - spelling as usual
Around here where I live we have no venomous spiders. Other places have spiders that are lethal - still just spiders.
Just because something is higher level doesn't mean it can take out something lower level. A level 80 player may not be able to beat a level 50 dragon solo, but can probably beat a level 80 sheep solo. By the same token a level 50 dragon can probably beat a level 80 sheep - it has more tricks and abilities to do so with. I guess the concept has never really bothered me.
Power creep happens and it's almost impossible to avoid. TESO's one Tamriel tries to address it and succeeds for the most part, but it also somewhat robs higher level of the achievement of progression, I feel.
I would have to vote for (if possible), several small updates while waiting on a major Xpac every 1 to 1.5 years. And when I say small updates I mean things like a new quest line, or holiday events, or new crafting recipes, or the introduction of a new class. Possibly in some cases instead of a small update these could be dev run events instead. Just little things to make the wait for major content better. Major Xpacs would be new lands, cities, races, dungeons, or anything that is a major game changer for the world.
Power creep is a necessary aspect of a game and is a major factor in the long term health of the game. Nobody wants to play a game for very long where their character does not get more powerful. Where many games companies have gone wrong is not planning out the power creep properly. They introduce it too early and at too great an initial leap...and that then becomes the expected norm from then on.
EQ1 was released April 1999 with a level cap of 50 and in just 11 months with the release of Kunark the cap went to 60, a 20% increase. But that 20% increase in levels meant so much more, why? Because at every level your skills went up by 10, stat caps were raised, and items had stats that shamed much of what came before. The next expansion happened even faster with Velious out in Dec 2000. No level cap increase but gear stats skyrocketed.
Basically, SOE did not plan for the long term and once they let that genie out of the bottle they were lost.
We can hope that VR looks at Pantheon with an eye for at least a full decade of activity, planning out the growth so that it is a more organic growth, a slower and more methodical approach avoiding the huge leaps and massive increases from one expansion to the next.
But make no mistake, power creep will happen. It must.
FFXI did great for years with horizontal progression. Even then gear slowly became obsolete because there needs to be incentive to do new content, although a lot of the previous gear was still useful some situations. That being said, it does make sense that dragons would become obsolete in a fantasy world as this. Unless for some odd reason we peak in strength and can't increase anymore. Think that would somewhat devalue the becoming more powerful immersion though.
Actually makes me curious on if gear swapping type type situations will exist in combat.
EQ 1 was released
1999..I remember because my box was a couple days late. :P Was also in the last phase beta before release..very! impatient to start playing, kind of like how I feel about Pantheon. :)
I imagine the level 80 Sheep would yield a very powerful Woolen Robe of Bleating! or for a Bard... Ram's Horn of Sheepishness
Now thats out of the way... I dont have any ideas at all besides make the mobs look scarier than other mobs lol... or create areas that have been over run by all sorts of nasty undead things that are supersonic compared to their living counterpart back in the "older" parts of Terminus
Hm this is an interesting point. I have noticed in games like EQ how a lvl 70 snake looks exactly the same as a lvl 1 snake, but I never really thought about it that much. And now that I think of it, it's pretty strange.
I'm not saying this is a good solution, but the first thing that comes to mind is, as a developer, to plan ahead of time (over several expansions) how power creep is going to work. This may mean not having any mobs at launch that look and feel crazy powerful. Make it something that you gradually have to work up to over the course of several years. Of course without any end in sight, it would be very difficult to find that fine line. But I hope they take the time to be creative in ways to make creatures seem more powerful rather than just taking the same exact model and making them bigger and bigger.
It also brings up an interesting point: I like how some NPCs are naturally in conflicts of their own. Regardless of whether or not there are players around, the world keeps moving and interacting with itself. It feels more alive and less like a stage. For example, wolves hunting deer in the forest. With each zone having such a wide level range, I hope we don't eventually end up with situations where a high level deer kills a low lvl wolf. Unless there's a very good reason.
Let me preface this comment by saying I can't even imagine how difficult it would be to plan something like this out for the next 5-10+ years, but here goes: Try to fit higher level, more dangerous (insert name of not-so-scary creature here) into the lore/backstory of the area you're in. Instead of just random snakes that hit for 4,000 because lv 70 toons needs mobs that give xp, what if that lv 70 zone was inherently more dangerous than a starter zone due to atmosphere, predators, or other factors. The snake had to evolve to survive and therefore is much stronger than its brethren in a fluffy foo foo zone with green grass, clear sunny skies and plentiful mice to eat.
Since VR has already stated they intend to have zones/areas with different atmosphere's etc, it seems perfectly logical and in keeping with the tenets of the game.
I don't really post much but this topic really bugs me because all games pull this ****.
I have a pretty good idea that someone already touched on Horizantal gear based leveling with resistances and I will give a pretty good example with some dumbed down numbers.
Lets say the original game the best sword is 100str well well the new expansions requires fire so and upgraded sword will have 100str +1 fire so on and so forth but the key is to gain strength in the original content too without breaking it. Well the final sword in the new expansions may be 105str 100 fire. Then the next expansion your starter sword is 105 str 100 fire 1 ice. so on and so forth leading you to a 110 str 105 fire 100 ice at the end of it. Now add a main game expansion that requires a 110 str sword to begin with etc etc.
Of course you cant just give out the best gear so this is best case scenario someone who farmed best swords in the games and expansions.
