I'm in the boat for sure. However, the genre has become so formulaic and reduced to specific designs and conventions. Nothing is new or mysterious anymore.
The MMO playerbase is also to blame. I keep seeing this in each MMO and it is just getting worse. Nasty, entitled, and bullying players that can quickly make a community toxic.
So again I agree with you, but your claiming we as the consumer are the ones being unfair to developers and thats wrong. The ones being unfair are the ones with the money who needlessly market and inflate the hype.
It is a free market. It is their money .... I don't see what is so unfair if devs want to spend their money doing commercial. You don't have to look at it. It is a free world, you know.
And it goes both ways. Consumers are not "unfair" to devs. Devs don't have to produce anything if they don't want to. They can go for some other businesses.
Yeah because the free market works amazing and is never corrupted or controlled.
yeah .. it is pretty amazing for video games. If not for the free market, mmorpgs will still be bad (for me) games like UO & EQ.
So in the case of gaming, works very well for me, i would say.
Make mobs harder. and more challenging. Which will encourage grouping. Make a large majority of the world like this. Sure have a few solo oriented areas, make them give jack crap for xp and loot though.
Give a little downtime in between fights. Not to the level that EQ was at. But give people a chance to breath and actually talk to one another. Don't want to make it chat.. then modernize it with voice client.
Get rid of Instancing, UNLESS its to tell stories (ALA GW2 or Age of Conan Style) make the world Open world, and yes that means dungeons to.
Have it where mobs will chace you for long distances.. Some more than others. Trains anyone?
Cut down on the chores. Have some quests. but make them actually mean something. and make their rewards less about XP and more about the story an the final item.
Have dynamic lighting and shadows, ohh ya and dynamic darkness as well.
Make it Open world. Not this guide me by the rails experience we get now. Let the players go out and make their own adventures. Once again less quests does not mean no quests, but don't make them guide you around the game world.
THrow different level encounters throughout the world. Stop being so organized. have the players looking over their shoulders in case a level 40 sand giant shows up in a mainly level 13 area that will step on the players.
Death Penalty as severe as EQ1 at launch? no tone it down some.. not a lot, just some.
There.. That's whats needed, and all the people saying it wouldn't work. Well they are wrong. However the gameplay has to be smooth. It cant be bug ridden.
Vanguard had a lot of these. and its looked upon fondly by many of the old EQ1 crowd. If it hadn't been so damn buggy at launch it might have had a chance to be one of the greats.
Originally posted by Gravarg Yeah, I've been wishing for an exact copy of DAoC, just with new graphics/sounds. EQ would be nice too. I used to play them both...good times, good times. That's what I was hoping for with EQ2, then EQN, and also add in a little better ui. I remember in DAoC you had people asking all the time "How do I leave the game?" lol
Oh man, I remember ASKING that question after my first login! I was like "This is cool and all, but there's other stuff I gotta use my PC for between sessions!"
DAoC with a modern-level intuitive UI and a graphics refresher would have me paying box + sub, preorder, day one.
Originally posted by Gravarg Yeah, I've been wishing for an exact copy of DAoC, just with new graphics/sounds. EQ would be nice too. I used to play them both...good times, good times. That's what I was hoping for with EQ2, then EQN, and also add in a little better ui. I remember in DAoC you had people asking all the time "How do I leave the game?" lol
Oh man, I remember ASKING that question after my first login! I was like "This is cool and all, but there's other stuff I gotta use my PC for between sessions!"
DAoC with a modern-level intuitive UI and a graphics refresher would have me paying box + sub, preorder, day one.
Isn't there a new DAoC already? The Elder Scrolls Online is made by the same people and more resembles DAoC then it does the Elder Scrolls Games.
An EQ like (D&D 2nd Edition) game doesn't seem to exist. There are a lot of games that are built similar to the 3rd and 4th editions rules.
Games that require 12 hours a day of monotonous grinding to get anywhere are not going to make a comeback.
I am always puzzled by people who seem to think games with tons of time wasting grind and harsh death penalties are somehow hard.
I would prefer to see MMOs go towards the Dark Souls formula where the game is difficult due to the actual game mechanics and not the time it takes to farm 1000000 mobs.
Games that require 12 hours a day of monotonous grinding to get anywhere are not going to make a comeback.
I am always puzzled by people who seem to think games with tons of time wasting grind and harsh death penalties are somehow hard.
I would prefer to see MMOs go towards the Dark Souls formula where the game is difficult due to the actual game mechanics and not the time it takes to farm 1000000 mobs.
I am always puzzled by people who play these solo MMO's where they grind countless fetch quests and kill these easy pointless mobs 9000 times. Then raid where they acquire the gear they want only so they can grind for teir 2 gear in a few months.
Games that require 12 hours a day of monotonous grinding to get anywhere are not going to make a comeback.
I am always puzzled by people who seem to think games with tons of time wasting grind and harsh death penalties are somehow hard.
I would prefer to see MMOs go towards the Dark Souls formula where the game is difficult due to the actual game mechanics and not the time it takes to farm 1000000 mobs.
Dark Souls is not difficult. All of the difficulty in that game comes from repetition, not skill or actual difficulty. I would not use that as a metric to design any game, let alone an MMO, even though most games these days are guilty of this very crime. After playing DS quite a bit, I can safely say they were just trying to figure out ways to inconvenience the player and label it as difficult rather than have actual difficult encounters.
EQ1 pre PoP was pretty much the pinnacle of the theme park MMO imo. I still play EQ1 to this day, even though I readily admit it's a casual shadow of what was once a great and challenging game. I never once felt like the game was a "grind" until much later on after large amounts of flagging and farming were necessary to compete.
Back on topic: Yes, the original EQ with modern graphics would be a godsend to those of us who got to experience the pinnacle of theme parks in it's heyday.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV Have played: You name it If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
Games that require 12 hours a day of monotonous grinding to get anywhere are not going to make a comeback.
I am always puzzled by people who seem to think games with tons of time wasting grind and harsh death penalties are somehow hard.
I would prefer to see MMOs go towards the Dark Souls formula where the game is difficult due to the actual game mechanics and not the time it takes to farm 1000000 mobs.
Then why not a 12 hours of breathtaking tactical experience to get you 1 step ahead in an adventure that could last a lifetime.
Entertainment is all about wasting time, unless you think you are making the world a better place by playing dark soul ?
Games that require 12 hours a day of monotonous grinding to get anywhere are not going to make a comeback.
I am always puzzled by people who seem to think games with tons of time wasting grind and harsh death penalties are somehow hard.
I would prefer to see MMOs go towards the Dark Souls formula where the game is difficult due to the actual game mechanics and not the time it takes to farm 1000000 mobs.
I am always puzzled by people who play these solo MMO's where they grind countless fetch quests and kill these easy pointless mobs 9000 times. Then raid where they acquire the gear they want only so they can grind for teir 2 gear in a few months.
You did the exact same thing in EQ, it just took way longer than more modern games.
The only reason why EQ could get away with all the pointless grinding is because it had no competition. As soon as games began to come out that allowed players to progress in a quicker and more varied way EQ lost a lot of its relevance.
Games that require 12 hours a day of monotonous grinding to get anywhere are not going to make a comeback.
I am always puzzled by people who seem to think games with tons of time wasting grind and harsh death penalties are somehow hard.
I would prefer to see MMOs go towards the Dark Souls formula where the game is difficult due to the actual game mechanics and not the time it takes to farm 1000000 mobs.
Dark Souls is not difficult. All of the difficulty in that game comes from repetition, not skill or actual difficulty. I would not use that as a metric to design any game, let alone an MMO, even though most games these days are guilty of this very crime. After playing DS quite a bit, I can safely say they were just trying to figure out ways to inconvenience the player and label it as difficult rather than have actual difficult encounters.
EQ1 pre PoP was pretty much the pinnacle of the theme park MMO imo. I still play EQ1 to this day, even though I readily admit it's a casual shadow of what was once a great and challenging game. I never once felt like the game was a "grind" until much later on after large amounts of flagging and farming were necessary to compete.
Back on topic: Yes, the original EQ with modern graphics would be a godsend to those of us who got to experience the pinnacle of theme parks in it's heyday.
Anything that is hard requires repetition to learn.
Games that require 12 hours a day of monotonous grinding to get anywhere are not going to make a comeback.
I am always puzzled by people who seem to think games with tons of time wasting grind and harsh death penalties are somehow hard.
I would prefer to see MMOs go towards the Dark Souls formula where the game is difficult due to the actual game mechanics and not the time it takes to farm 1000000 mobs.
Dark Souls is not difficult. All of the difficulty in that game comes from repetition, not skill or actual difficulty. I would not use that as a metric to design any game, let alone an MMO, even though most games these days are guilty of this very crime. After playing DS quite a bit, I can safely say they were just trying to figure out ways to inconvenience the player and label it as difficult rather than have actual difficult encounters.
EQ1 pre PoP was pretty much the pinnacle of the theme park MMO imo. I still play EQ1 to this day, even though I readily admit it's a casual shadow of what was once a great and challenging game. I never once felt like the game was a "grind" until much later on after large amounts of flagging and farming were necessary to compete.
Back on topic: Yes, the original EQ with modern graphics would be a godsend to those of us who got to experience the pinnacle of theme parks in it's heyday.
Anything that is hard requires repetition to learn.
I'm not going to dig it up but a month or so ago there was a huge topic about this here on MMORPG.com. To some people repetition is difficulty, to others it isn't. I think difficulty is pretty subjective, and I don't enjoy having to die 30 times to figure something out or endorse that as a form of "fun" when the games can be made challenging without inconveniencing their players.
They are just games after all, they should be fun, and challenging if that's what the player wants. But each player is different, and repetition is not difficulty to me, it's a design flaw.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV Have played: You name it If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
I'd even still take the 2.5D isometric if the "modern" graphics had the same pop/appeal as say D3 or PoE.
This would actually be cool. It would be possible to have many more active objects in the game versus a third person view game too I think. Less overhead with the graphics means more "stuff" that can be used.
There was a game that tried this (Mythic?), but the game itself was really, really lame. It did have the isometric graphics though.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Games that require 12 hours a day of monotonous grinding to get anywhere are not going to make a comeback.
I am always puzzled by people who seem to think games with tons of time wasting grind and harsh death penalties are somehow hard.
I would prefer to see MMOs go towards the Dark Souls formula where the game is difficult due to the actual game mechanics and not the time it takes to farm 1000000 mobs.
I am always puzzled by people who play these solo MMO's where they grind countless fetch quests and kill these easy pointless mobs 9000 times. Then raid where they acquire the gear they want only so they can grind for teir 2 gear in a few months.
You did the exact same thing in EQ, it just took way longer than more modern games.
The only reason why EQ could get away with all the pointless grinding is because it had no competition. As soon as games began to come out that allowed players to progress in a quicker and more varied way EQ lost a lot of its relevance.
EQ was a fair amount different then today's MMOs. There were no instances. There were a lot more factions and many of them were in the same cities. You could change your faction during the course of the game. The dungeons were a lot more interesting with hidden doors, false floor, keys, and traps. All mobs had different loot. You could trade loot with anyone. Buffs and teleports were class specific and in demand. There was a death penalty. Exploring felt worthwhile to do. There was no GPS or maps. Trading was done via talking with other players. It was a lot different experience.
I'm not sure that I really want the grind back in the game. There were some things that aren't good to have. I do believe it was a more challenging game though. A good example would be Dragon Quest 1 & 2. I tried playing the original NES version and I died a lot. It didn't matter how much I leveled up, that it was turn based combat, or that I had spent the time to get the best loot. The game was set up in such a way that you were bound to die. I played the SNES remakes (Japan Only) with english translation and they were so much easier. I preferred the lack of grind, but I didn't like that I was pretty much setup to win fights the majority of the game. That is really boring to me. The system of combat had become so automated on the players side and the player side you barely had to make decisions during combat anymore. The only challenge was the boss fights. This is similar to how EQ was in combat vs modern day MMOs. I don't believe it was just having to grind. It was about the decisions and choices you had to make during combat and how the monsters were very close or in many cases more powerful then you were.
Games that require 12 hours a day of monotonous grinding to get anywhere are not going to make a comeback.
I am always puzzled by people who seem to think games with tons of time wasting grind and harsh death penalties are somehow hard.
I would prefer to see MMOs go towards the Dark Souls formula where the game is difficult due to the actual game mechanics and not the time it takes to farm 1000000 mobs.
Dark Souls is not difficult. All of the difficulty in that game comes from repetition, not skill or actual difficulty. I would not use that as a metric to design any game, let alone an MMO, even though most games these days are guilty of this very crime. After playing DS quite a bit, I can safely say they were just trying to figure out ways to inconvenience the player and label it as difficult rather than have actual difficult encounters.
EQ1 pre PoP was pretty much the pinnacle of the theme park MMO imo. I still play EQ1 to this day, even though I readily admit it's a casual shadow of what was once a great and challenging game. I never once felt like the game was a "grind" until much later on after large amounts of flagging and farming were necessary to compete.
Back on topic: Yes, the original EQ with modern graphics would be a godsend to those of us who got to experience the pinnacle of theme parks in it's heyday.
Anything that is hard requires repetition to learn.
I'm not going to dig it up but a month or so ago there was a huge topic about this here on MMORPG.com. To some people repetition is difficulty, to others it isn't. I think difficulty is pretty subjective, and I don't enjoy having to die 30 times to figure something out or endorse that as a form of "fun" when the games can be made challenging without inconveniencing their players.
They are just games after all, they should be fun, and challenging if that's what the player wants. But each player is different, and repetition is not difficulty to me, it's a design flaw.
So you like easy games k.. Just don't say you like hard games that are a "different type of hard" Because if you beat it quickly, it was not very hard.
not easily or readily done; requiring much labor, skill, or planning to be performed successfully
Games that require 12 hours a day of monotonous grinding to get anywhere are not going to make a comeback.
I am always puzzled by people who seem to think games with tons of time wasting grind and harsh death penalties are somehow hard.
I would prefer to see MMOs go towards the Dark Souls formula where the game is difficult due to the actual game mechanics and not the time it takes to farm 1000000 mobs.
Dark Souls is not difficult. All of the difficulty in that game comes from repetition, not skill or actual difficulty. I would not use that as a metric to design any game, let alone an MMO, even though most games these days are guilty of this very crime. After playing DS quite a bit, I can safely say they were just trying to figure out ways to inconvenience the player and label it as difficult rather than have actual difficult encounters.
EQ1 pre PoP was pretty much the pinnacle of the theme park MMO imo. I still play EQ1 to this day, even though I readily admit it's a casual shadow of what was once a great and challenging game. I never once felt like the game was a "grind" until much later on after large amounts of flagging and farming were necessary to compete.
Back on topic: Yes, the original EQ with modern graphics would be a godsend to those of us who got to experience the pinnacle of theme parks in it's heyday.
I believe Dark Souls is probably the hardest game that has come out in recent times. Grinding helps a lot, but generally it doesn't take long. Even if you are grinding/leveling a lot it won't matter much if you don't find the right game mechanics for each encounter. In one encounter you might have to wear almost no equipment to maximize your ability to dodge/avoid attacks. In another you might require some heavy armor and a shield to block attacks. In yet another you may need a ranged attack of some sort to win. Even knowing a good strategy won't get you the victory most of the time. You have to execute it well in most cases. This is not taking into account finding all items in game that will give you an edge in some encounters/places or solving puzzles that are scattered throughout the game. Most games today you can play through without thinking at all. You just press a few buttons and win.
Games that require 12 hours a day of monotonous grinding to get anywhere are not going to make a comeback.
I am always puzzled by people who seem to think games with tons of time wasting grind and harsh death penalties are somehow hard.
I would prefer to see MMOs go towards the Dark Souls formula where the game is difficult due to the actual game mechanics and not the time it takes to farm 1000000 mobs.
Dark Souls is not difficult. All of the difficulty in that game comes from repetition, not skill or actual difficulty. I would not use that as a metric to design any game, let alone an MMO, even though most games these days are guilty of this very crime. After playing DS quite a bit, I can safely say they were just trying to figure out ways to inconvenience the player and label it as difficult rather than have actual difficult encounters.
EQ1 pre PoP was pretty much the pinnacle of the theme park MMO imo. I still play EQ1 to this day, even though I readily admit it's a casual shadow of what was once a great and challenging game. I never once felt like the game was a "grind" until much later on after large amounts of flagging and farming were necessary to compete.
Back on topic: Yes, the original EQ with modern graphics would be a godsend to those of us who got to experience the pinnacle of theme parks in it's heyday.
I believe Dark Souls is probably the hardest game that has come out in recent times. Grinding helps a lot, but generally it doesn't take long. Even if you are grinding/leveling a lot it won't matter much if you don't find the right game mechanics for each encounter. In one encounter you might have to wear almost no equipment to maximize your ability to dodge/avoid attacks. In another you might require some heavy armor and a shield to block attacks. In yet another you may need a ranged attack of some sort to win. Even knowing a good strategy won't get you the victory most of the time. You have to execute it well in most cases. This is not taking into account finding all items in game that will give you an edge in some encounters/places or solving puzzles that are scattered throughout the game. Most games today you can play through without thinking at all. You just press a few buttons and win.
I see what you are getting at here, and you make some valid points. As an open minded person, I'll take these thoughts into consideration, maybe not all repetitive tasks are bad. Thanks for the thoughts Flyte.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV Have played: You name it If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
EQ1 was an awesome game. I would like to try a reskinned EQ1 for sure.
Something that made it so great that I have not seen mentioned here is the variety of starting positions / towns. I can think of atleast 10 from memory. 10 different places to start out and explore, wasn't that great? If you wanted to gnome who played with you friends in qeynos, you could but you had an epic journey ahead of you. That journey for a level 1-5 character was probably an evenings play, it was an adventure and at times your heart rate would be beating fast as you dodged between mobs or were being chaised.
i think we have got to where we are in the genre by a long road littered with compramises and choices (choices that I have sometimes whole heartedly agreed with at the time). Now at the end of it all I don't like where we are, somewhere along the line we are scarificed healthy, friendly communities and the sense of achievement.
What the solution is I just dont know, Maybe its a reskinned EQ1, Maybe its something else.
Games that require 12 hours a day of monotonous grinding to get anywhere are not going to make a comeback.
I am always puzzled by people who seem to think games with tons of time wasting grind and harsh death penalties are somehow hard.
I would prefer to see MMOs go towards the Dark Souls formula where the game is difficult due to the actual game mechanics and not the time it takes to farm 1000000 mobs.
Dark Souls is not difficult. All of the difficulty in that game comes from repetition, not skill or actual difficulty. I would not use that as a metric to design any game, let alone an MMO, even though most games these days are guilty of this very crime. After playing DS quite a bit, I can safely say they were just trying to figure out ways to inconvenience the player and label it as difficult rather than have actual difficult encounters.
EQ1 pre PoP was pretty much the pinnacle of the theme park MMO imo. I still play EQ1 to this day, even though I readily admit it's a casual shadow of what was once a great and challenging game. I never once felt like the game was a "grind" until much later on after large amounts of flagging and farming were necessary to compete.
Back on topic: Yes, the original EQ with modern graphics would be a godsend to those of us who got to experience the pinnacle of theme parks in it's heyday.
I believe Dark Souls is probably the hardest game that has come out in recent times. Grinding helps a lot, but generally it doesn't take long. Even if you are grinding/leveling a lot it won't matter much if you don't find the right game mechanics for each encounter. In one encounter you might have to wear almost no equipment to maximize your ability to dodge/avoid attacks. In another you might require some heavy armor and a shield to block attacks. In yet another you may need a ranged attack of some sort to win. Even knowing a good strategy won't get you the victory most of the time. You have to execute it well in most cases. This is not taking into account finding all items in game that will give you an edge in some encounters/places or solving puzzles that are scattered throughout the game. Most games today you can play through without thinking at all. You just press a few buttons and win.
I see what you are getting at here, and you make some valid points. As an open minded person, I'll take these thoughts into consideration, maybe not all repetitive tasks are bad. Thanks for the thoughts Flyte.
In Dark Souls 2 the mobs actually stop spawning after a while as well so that you can't milk them for souls indefinitely like in the first game. It's actually not a bad grind compared to many of the game I've played in the past. Even the original Dark Souls wasn't so much of a grind. To me people have to accept that they can lose in a game. Once they have done that it doesn't feel so bad to die or lose anymore. I believe a lot of people get frustrated when they die and even more so if there is a death penalty, but they really don't need to be. It's just a game after all and dying in a game is fairly meaningless regardless of the rules. To me it's all in your mindset going into the game. I would try getting farther in Dark Souls or Dark Souls 2. When you actually get places in the game it feels fairly rewarding. In comparison to a game like Diablo 3 where you are constantly grinding with limited mechanics for better loot or paragon levels it's both more challenging, more fun, and there is a lot more variety IMO.
Comments
I'm in the boat for sure. However, the genre has become so formulaic and reduced to specific designs and conventions. Nothing is new or mysterious anymore.
The MMO playerbase is also to blame. I keep seeing this in each MMO and it is just getting worse. Nasty, entitled, and bullying players that can quickly make a community toxic.
yeah .. it is pretty amazing for video games. If not for the free market, mmorpgs will still be bad (for me) games like UO & EQ.
So in the case of gaming, works very well for me, i would say.
Want a New EQ?
Make mobs harder. and more challenging. Which will encourage grouping. Make a large majority of the world like this. Sure have a few solo oriented areas, make them give jack crap for xp and loot though.
Give a little downtime in between fights. Not to the level that EQ was at. But give people a chance to breath and actually talk to one another. Don't want to make it chat.. then modernize it with voice client.
Get rid of Instancing, UNLESS its to tell stories (ALA GW2 or Age of Conan Style) make the world Open world, and yes that means dungeons to.
Have it where mobs will chace you for long distances.. Some more than others. Trains anyone?
Cut down on the chores. Have some quests. but make them actually mean something. and make their rewards less about XP and more about the story an the final item.
Have dynamic lighting and shadows, ohh ya and dynamic darkness as well.
Make it Open world. Not this guide me by the rails experience we get now. Let the players go out and make their own adventures. Once again less quests does not mean no quests, but don't make them guide you around the game world.
THrow different level encounters throughout the world. Stop being so organized. have the players looking over their shoulders in case a level 40 sand giant shows up in a mainly level 13 area that will step on the players.
Death Penalty as severe as EQ1 at launch? no tone it down some.. not a lot, just some.
There.. That's whats needed, and all the people saying it wouldn't work. Well they are wrong. However the gameplay has to be smooth. It cant be bug ridden.
Vanguard had a lot of these. and its looked upon fondly by many of the old EQ1 crowd. If it hadn't been so damn buggy at launch it might have had a chance to be one of the greats.
Oh man, I remember ASKING that question after my first login! I was like "This is cool and all, but there's other stuff I gotta use my PC for between sessions!"
DAoC with a modern-level intuitive UI and a graphics refresher would have me paying box + sub, preorder, day one.
From what you described, no.
I would much rather take a ARPG with a non-fantasy theme.
I highly doubt any devs will put significant down-time into games anymore. And if that do .. well ... i am glad that i have other choices.
Isn't there a new DAoC already? The Elder Scrolls Online is made by the same people and more resembles DAoC then it does the Elder Scrolls Games.
An EQ like (D&D 2nd Edition) game doesn't seem to exist. There are a lot of games that are built similar to the 3rd and 4th editions rules.
Then please by all means go find you an ARPG fansite, this is a site for MMORPGs.
I am sure you want games that also that cater to solo player. There are plenty of solo player games out there as well.
Games that require 12 hours a day of monotonous grinding to get anywhere are not going to make a comeback.
I am always puzzled by people who seem to think games with tons of time wasting grind and harsh death penalties are somehow hard.
I would prefer to see MMOs go towards the Dark Souls formula where the game is difficult due to the actual game mechanics and not the time it takes to farm 1000000 mobs.
I am always puzzled by people who play these solo MMO's where they grind countless fetch quests and kill these easy pointless mobs 9000 times. Then raid where they acquire the gear they want only so they can grind for teir 2 gear in a few months.
UO was better.
I'd even still take the 2.5D isometric if the "modern" graphics had the same pop/appeal as say D3 or PoE.
Dark Souls is not difficult. All of the difficulty in that game comes from repetition, not skill or actual difficulty. I would not use that as a metric to design any game, let alone an MMO, even though most games these days are guilty of this very crime. After playing DS quite a bit, I can safely say they were just trying to figure out ways to inconvenience the player and label it as difficult rather than have actual difficult encounters.
EQ1 pre PoP was pretty much the pinnacle of the theme park MMO imo. I still play EQ1 to this day, even though I readily admit it's a casual shadow of what was once a great and challenging game. I never once felt like the game was a "grind" until much later on after large amounts of flagging and farming were necessary to compete.
Back on topic: Yes, the original EQ with modern graphics would be a godsend to those of us who got to experience the pinnacle of theme parks in it's heyday.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
Then why not a 12 hours of breathtaking tactical experience to get you 1 step ahead in an adventure that could last a lifetime.
Entertainment is all about wasting time, unless you think you are making the world a better place by playing dark soul ?
You did the exact same thing in EQ, it just took way longer than more modern games.
The only reason why EQ could get away with all the pointless grinding is because it had no competition. As soon as games began to come out that allowed players to progress in a quicker and more varied way EQ lost a lot of its relevance.
Anything that is hard requires repetition to learn.
I'm not going to dig it up but a month or so ago there was a huge topic about this here on MMORPG.com. To some people repetition is difficulty, to others it isn't. I think difficulty is pretty subjective, and I don't enjoy having to die 30 times to figure something out or endorse that as a form of "fun" when the games can be made challenging without inconveniencing their players.
They are just games after all, they should be fun, and challenging if that's what the player wants. But each player is different, and repetition is not difficulty to me, it's a design flaw.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
This would actually be cool. It would be possible to have many more active objects in the game versus a third person view game too I think. Less overhead with the graphics means more "stuff" that can be used.
There was a game that tried this (Mythic?), but the game itself was really, really lame. It did have the isometric graphics though.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
EQ was a fair amount different then today's MMOs. There were no instances. There were a lot more factions and many of them were in the same cities. You could change your faction during the course of the game. The dungeons were a lot more interesting with hidden doors, false floor, keys, and traps. All mobs had different loot. You could trade loot with anyone. Buffs and teleports were class specific and in demand. There was a death penalty. Exploring felt worthwhile to do. There was no GPS or maps. Trading was done via talking with other players. It was a lot different experience.
I'm not sure that I really want the grind back in the game. There were some things that aren't good to have. I do believe it was a more challenging game though. A good example would be Dragon Quest 1 & 2. I tried playing the original NES version and I died a lot. It didn't matter how much I leveled up, that it was turn based combat, or that I had spent the time to get the best loot. The game was set up in such a way that you were bound to die. I played the SNES remakes (Japan Only) with english translation and they were so much easier. I preferred the lack of grind, but I didn't like that I was pretty much setup to win fights the majority of the game. That is really boring to me. The system of combat had become so automated on the players side and the player side you barely had to make decisions during combat anymore. The only challenge was the boss fights. This is similar to how EQ was in combat vs modern day MMOs. I don't believe it was just having to grind. It was about the decisions and choices you had to make during combat and how the monsters were very close or in many cases more powerful then you were.
So you like easy games k.. Just don't say you like hard games that are a "different type of hard" Because if you beat it quickly, it was not very hard.
not easily or readily done; requiring much labor, skill, or planning to be performed successfully
I believe Dark Souls is probably the hardest game that has come out in recent times. Grinding helps a lot, but generally it doesn't take long. Even if you are grinding/leveling a lot it won't matter much if you don't find the right game mechanics for each encounter. In one encounter you might have to wear almost no equipment to maximize your ability to dodge/avoid attacks. In another you might require some heavy armor and a shield to block attacks. In yet another you may need a ranged attack of some sort to win. Even knowing a good strategy won't get you the victory most of the time. You have to execute it well in most cases. This is not taking into account finding all items in game that will give you an edge in some encounters/places or solving puzzles that are scattered throughout the game. Most games today you can play through without thinking at all. You just press a few buttons and win.
I see what you are getting at here, and you make some valid points. As an open minded person, I'll take these thoughts into consideration, maybe not all repetitive tasks are bad. Thanks for the thoughts Flyte.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
EQ1 was an awesome game. I would like to try a reskinned EQ1 for sure.
Something that made it so great that I have not seen mentioned here is the variety of starting positions / towns. I can think of atleast 10 from memory. 10 different places to start out and explore, wasn't that great? If you wanted to gnome who played with you friends in qeynos, you could but you had an epic journey ahead of you. That journey for a level 1-5 character was probably an evenings play, it was an adventure and at times your heart rate would be beating fast as you dodged between mobs or were being chaised.
i think we have got to where we are in the genre by a long road littered with compramises and choices (choices that I have sometimes whole heartedly agreed with at the time). Now at the end of it all I don't like where we are, somewhere along the line we are scarificed healthy, friendly communities and the sense of achievement.
What the solution is I just dont know, Maybe its a reskinned EQ1, Maybe its something else.
In Dark Souls 2 the mobs actually stop spawning after a while as well so that you can't milk them for souls indefinitely like in the first game. It's actually not a bad grind compared to many of the game I've played in the past. Even the original Dark Souls wasn't so much of a grind. To me people have to accept that they can lose in a game. Once they have done that it doesn't feel so bad to die or lose anymore. I believe a lot of people get frustrated when they die and even more so if there is a death penalty, but they really don't need to be. It's just a game after all and dying in a game is fairly meaningless regardless of the rules. To me it's all in your mindset going into the game. I would try getting farther in Dark Souls or Dark Souls 2. When you actually get places in the game it feels fairly rewarding. In comparison to a game like Diablo 3 where you are constantly grinding with limited mechanics for better loot or paragon levels it's both more challenging, more fun, and there is a lot more variety IMO.