Originally posted by Terranah Precu SWG. I still have a book around here somewhere with all my game notes for crafting, harvesting, etc.
In my mmorpg experience one of the best crafting system ever constructed (pre-nge) for me.
It took harvesting the right materials on different planets and also having the right type of machinery to construct the item as well as adding buffs to your character to get crits on your weapon or armor making. Indeed good stuff!
Today's average gamer would go, what?! That's to complicating and I don't have time to do it. Why can't I grind a dungeon for it?
A tale in the desert (ATITD) was pretty intricate, so much to do and so many crafting systems and games in the game to learn and master... each activity was (is) basically it's own thing but interconnected with many other things. You start the game gathering slate on the shore and grass on the ground, and you end up with crawling compounds of machinery, like forges and stuff... plus all the beekeeping, winemaking, hookah smoking, cicada searching, mining, gathering, farming, puzzlemaking/solving, scarab breeding... yea it's pretty deep and I haven't even played that long so I know that there is much more to it than I ever saw.
Character/Advancement wise you have tons of races, classes and further in AA choices that allow you to fine tune what you want. Even the skills themselves are pretty deep. The ability to level scale is huge considering how much content is there.
Activity wise there are numerous amount of things to do outside adventuring and crafting (which itself is fairly deep for the norm). You can gather all materials for crafting, housing is deep, design dungeons, write books and some of the questing is atypical. Crafters have whole lines of thier own quests as well as experimentation options.
I recently fell out of Star Trek Online and what a great experience I had coming back after 3 years, however after 6 months of game play it got repetitive once you got to 50 then the hamster wheel kicked in when grinding "Romulan marks, Omega marks and now they got a new faction one to add to them other 2 for weapons and gear".
You already have fun going from 1-50 and it entertains you for 6 months. Why complain? TO me, you "finish" the game.
I am still in the middle of it .. and i don't see why i should not play it on and off .. and enjoy the leveling story missions.
I think the closest thing to "deep" or "intricate" for an MMO is Eve. Every other game only requires you to be able to read and breath to play, unless we are taking about certain aspects of PVP. *Drops Mic*
It was my first MMORPG in 2007 and I had no idea how anything worked. It was my first game with raiding as well which luckily as a hunter is not overly complicated.
SWG Pre-CU hands down. The crafting and dynamic resources were amazing. Having dedicated non-combatant professions was also wonderful since it helped promote amazing communities. It truly was a "living, breathing world".
The only mmorpg's to date that have made me use my brain at all is firstly and mostly EvE. Next is Anarchy onlines skill system when I was being tort how to twink and realised how deep it actually was. Also an honarble mention to Age Of Wushu as I had to google a few things I couldn't make sense of or understand. For deep experiances I would say TSW sucked me right in when I first played it. I literally lived in WoW for about four years, never have I been lost inside a game like that.
I would give swg intricate because of it's crafting system but imo it had all the depth of a puddle. I don't think giving the players a blank piece of paper and having them write one of the greatest stories ever told qualifies the game itself as a great writer.
Most of the great things that went on in game were because of the people playing, not because they were doing something the game provided for you. Then again I don't think sandboxes in general are very deep because it would detract from the players ability to build their own world.
One of the best games ever made though.
I guess deep is going to be different for everyone. To me deep comes from the story they try and tell and how well they implement it into the game and make you a part of it.
For stories I'd like to say city of heroes had some of the best. It took some effort to get involved and follow the stories but the wholes arcs ran throughout the entire game....of course it's combat and mission could be quite shallow but it was still one of those games I became very into.
1. Star Wars Galaxies - the crafting and economy were the best that ever appeared in any MMO. Before the Combat Upgrade, you could be a non-combat tradeskill character and set up stores on most of the planets and sell the items you created. You put harvesters on the same planets to collect the highest quality materials to make the stuff. It was an awesome system and I still miss it. After the "combat upgrade", if you didn't have some sort of combat skills, going to your stores/workshops in bad areas on some planets was suicide (and that "patch" pretty much made a lot of the best crafted items obsolete).
2. The Secret World - currently playing. The mix of straight forward quests (kill, gather, turn in) with investigation missions (some REALLY complex puzzles) and the sabotage missions (covert > combat, sneak around, steal stuff, set traps, avoid guards) gives any play style something to enjoy.
3. Eve Online -- I only played the game for about 6 weeks but it will give "casual" gamers a migraine (1.5 years ago, it may have softened some of it's hard edges by now). The training of your character took weeks and months to complete, you'd start a training level and log off. After the listed amount of time, you'd be certified in that ability. Tier 3-5 training took forever and it was consecutive, not concurrent, so you could queue up a given amount of training time and when the time limit was filled, you couldn't queue any more abilities and then... go on vacation. Each skill would have to complete in it's entirety before the next queued training session would begin. By the end of the time I played, I had stopped flying missions or mining and just logged in every day or so to check my training queue and then I'd log off and watch TV.
Most people will say it's not an MMO, but for me it was Guild Wars: Prophecies- Eye of the North. Loved how level cap was only 20 and most of the game happened after you hit 20. Also loved them adding the PvP only characters so you could jump right into PvP if you wanted to and ignore the PvE stuff. The different builds that you could come up with in both PvP and PvE were always evolving also.
I recently fell out of Star Trek Online and what a great experience I had coming back after 3 years, however after 6 months of game play it got repetitive once you got to 50 then the hamster wheel kicked in when grinding "Romulan marks, Omega marks and now they got a new faction one to add to them other 2 for weapons and gear".
You already have fun going from 1-50 and it entertains you for 6 months. Why complain? TO me, you "finish" the game.
I am still in the middle of it .. and i don't see why i should not play it on and off .. and enjoy the leveling story missions.
Getting to 1 to 50 can be done considerable fast, especially if you do the episodes. However running the same episodes 3 times can get kind of old, but at least you see the episodes sometimes differently with the optional story arc if you were a science, tactical or engineer of either fed, kdf or romulan.
Once you hit 50 the game opens up to "Mark runs on each character you have created". Don't get me wrong, I love the many configurations that STO can dish out for each one of their spacecrafts, however decking out multiple ships with either plasma, antiproton, phasers etc etc can get old and very expensive if your into zen ships.
Yeah you can just say I am going to concentrate more so on my ground game and grind marks to make your ground crew elite, but you can also do so many configurations of the same thing. What it comes down to is just grinding reputation marks to build either a space or ground set.
Where is the exploration in STO? TO discover new worlds and new civilizations. To boldy go where no one has gone before just isn't there. I don't want to sound like a hypocrite, but I love the game enough to play it for 6 months, but it does get old after awhile and some like myself need to break away from it.
Star Trek Online is complicated at 1st if your starting out, but after about 1 to 2 weeks concentrating on the game, it gets quite simple, especially doing the game with in the game by either doff missions continuously or doing foundry missions created by other players.
5 out of the 10 you just named, I recognized and were quite complex, the other 5 must have been very independent mmo's or kept below the radar when they were released.
Comments
Has Scarlet Blade already been mentioned?
UO comes to mind
perhaps Vanguard
In my mmorpg experience one of the best crafting system ever constructed (pre-nge) for me.
It took harvesting the right materials on different planets and also having the right type of machinery to construct the item as well as adding buffs to your character to get crits on your weapon or armor making. Indeed good stuff!
Today's average gamer would go, what?! That's to complicating and I don't have time to do it. Why can't I grind a dungeon for it?
A tale in the desert (ATITD) was pretty intricate, so much to do and so many crafting systems and games in the game to learn and master... each activity was (is) basically it's own thing but interconnected with many other things. You start the game gathering slate on the shore and grass on the ground, and you end up with crawling compounds of machinery, like forges and stuff... plus all the beekeeping, winemaking, hookah smoking, cicada searching, mining, gathering, farming, puzzlemaking/solving, scarab breeding... yea it's pretty deep and I haven't even played that long so I know that there is much more to it than I ever saw.
Noli sinere te ab improbis opprimi
Character/Advancement wise you have tons of races, classes and further in AA choices that allow you to fine tune what you want. Even the skills themselves are pretty deep. The ability to level scale is huge considering how much content is there.
Activity wise there are numerous amount of things to do outside adventuring and crafting (which itself is fairly deep for the norm). You can gather all materials for crafting, housing is deep, design dungeons, write books and some of the questing is atypical. Crafters have whole lines of thier own quests as well as experimentation options.
You already have fun going from 1-50 and it entertains you for 6 months. Why complain? TO me, you "finish" the game.
I am still in the middle of it .. and i don't see why i should not play it on and off .. and enjoy the leveling story missions.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
Lord of the Rings Online.
It was my first MMORPG in 2007 and I had no idea how anything worked. It was my first game with raiding as well which luckily as a hunter is not overly complicated.
SWG Pre-CU hands down. The crafting and dynamic resources were amazing. Having dedicated non-combatant professions was also wonderful since it helped promote amazing communities. It truly was a "living, breathing world".
Honorable Mentions:
Asheron's Call
EQ2
I would give swg intricate because of it's crafting system but imo it had all the depth of a puddle. I don't think giving the players a blank piece of paper and having them write one of the greatest stories ever told qualifies the game itself as a great writer.
Most of the great things that went on in game were because of the people playing, not because they were doing something the game provided for you. Then again I don't think sandboxes in general are very deep because it would detract from the players ability to build their own world.
One of the best games ever made though.
I guess deep is going to be different for everyone. To me deep comes from the story they try and tell and how well they implement it into the game and make you a part of it.
For stories I'd like to say city of heroes had some of the best. It took some effort to get involved and follow the stories but the wholes arcs ran throughout the entire game....of course it's combat and mission could be quite shallow but it was still one of those games I became very into.
1. Star Wars Galaxies - the crafting and economy were the best that ever appeared in any MMO. Before the Combat Upgrade, you could be a non-combat tradeskill character and set up stores on most of the planets and sell the items you created. You put harvesters on the same planets to collect the highest quality materials to make the stuff. It was an awesome system and I still miss it. After the "combat upgrade", if you didn't have some sort of combat skills, going to your stores/workshops in bad areas on some planets was suicide (and that "patch" pretty much made a lot of the best crafted items obsolete).
2. The Secret World - currently playing. The mix of straight forward quests (kill, gather, turn in) with investigation missions (some REALLY complex puzzles) and the sabotage missions (covert > combat, sneak around, steal stuff, set traps, avoid guards) gives any play style something to enjoy.
3. Eve Online -- I only played the game for about 6 weeks but it will give "casual" gamers a migraine (1.5 years ago, it may have softened some of it's hard edges by now). The training of your character took weeks and months to complete, you'd start a training level and log off. After the listed amount of time, you'd be certified in that ability. Tier 3-5 training took forever and it was consecutive, not concurrent, so you could queue up a given amount of training time and when the time limit was filled, you couldn't queue any more abilities and then... go on vacation. Each skill would have to complete in it's entirety before the next queued training session would begin. By the end of the time I played, I had stopped flying missions or mining and just logged in every day or so to check my training queue and then I'd log off and watch TV.
"Negaholics are people who become addicted to negativity and self-doubt, they find fault in most things and never seem to be satisfied."
^MMORPG.com
1. Star Wars Galaxies (Pre NGE of course) - also needs to be prior to Jedi being released, once they made it a quest the game slowly died.
2. EQ1 - Can you say Epic quest that was actually Epic?
3. I like TSW if only for the open class system and the fact its not another effin fantasy game.
UO, AC, SWG
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
Getting to 1 to 50 can be done considerable fast, especially if you do the episodes. However running the same episodes 3 times can get kind of old, but at least you see the episodes sometimes differently with the optional story arc if you were a science, tactical or engineer of either fed, kdf or romulan.
Once you hit 50 the game opens up to "Mark runs on each character you have created". Don't get me wrong, I love the many configurations that STO can dish out for each one of their spacecrafts, however decking out multiple ships with either plasma, antiproton, phasers etc etc can get old and very expensive if your into zen ships.
Yeah you can just say I am going to concentrate more so on my ground game and grind marks to make your ground crew elite, but you can also do so many configurations of the same thing. What it comes down to is just grinding reputation marks to build either a space or ground set.
Where is the exploration in STO? TO discover new worlds and new civilizations. To boldy go where no one has gone before just isn't there. I don't want to sound like a hypocrite, but I love the game enough to play it for 6 months, but it does get old after awhile and some like myself need to break away from it.
Star Trek Online is complicated at 1st if your starting out, but after about 1 to 2 weeks concentrating on the game, it gets quite simple, especially doing the game with in the game by either doff missions continuously or doing foundry missions created by other players.
5 out of the 10 you just named, I recognized and were quite complex, the other 5 must have been very independent mmo's or kept below the radar when they were released.
Final Fantasy 11
Ultima Online
Soon to be FFXIV ARR
EQ2
Vanguard