KickStarter Pantheon - (Brad "EQ" McQuaid's new MMO)

[Xenich]

Well, if your system is a long term progressive system where a player can adjust their focus with new content, there is nothing wrong holding them to it. Remember, in games like EQ, AAs were vast, and the amount of points per content was huge. So, unless one was prone to being an idiot over an extreme long term, any "opps I didn't mean to put my points in that" type of mistake could be corrected to an extent. Now if you were min/maxing, well... you had better have planned out your development from day 1. Those who complained about having to do that while they were attempting to min/max? well.. sorry... but seriously, fuck off! I mean, if you were wanting to min/max so fucking bad, then why didn't you plan it out?

That's the thing with MMOs, though: The rules aren't fixed. In fact, whatever you do will inevitably end up being wrong, because anything worth taking is nerfed until it isn't.

I prefer a system that is not respeccable, BUT ultimately would allow you to obtain all skills with the catch being that the means to achieve such (per content update) becomes exponentially more difficult the closer you get to the max of those skills. This way, you can pick as you like early on, but eventually getting those points will become harder and harder to obtain everything (massive grind near the max with only the "professional gamer extraordinaire" being bale to achieve it before new content spread out again) . This way, you have to pay attention to your builds if you want to be "perfect" in your progression, BUT... you can repair them with effort over time if you mess up. Sure, you will be behind that of the min/maxer, but this is acceptable as you can still repair with the existing content (with effort) and improve in different directions as new content is released.

I agree with this idea. However, the more commonly seen MMO system is that you have a fixed pool of points to allocate, you will never get more by any means, and if you can never change it, your character will inevitably become a brick. Even if you pick your skills correctly the first time (and this isn't a realistic expectation with a new player, so the right move may simply be not to pick anything at all), the nature of an MMO is that NERF HAPPENS.

Obviously, there's a large gap between "respecs are practically without penalty" (even if you have a limited number of them/pay2win for them) and "no respecs or retrains at all, your character is relegated to mule status every other patch or so", which is, frankly, unrealistic, since nobody in real life ever runs into a case of "I learned the wrong skills, I'm screwed forever now". Can you imagine that in real life, where, if you read the wrong books, you're fucked forever, never able to learn another skill? That is just stupid.

The concept I've thought of for a respec/retrain system would have worked like this: You allocate your character XP as usual. Should you desire to respec your skills, you reallocate your template to your new desired configuration: From that point on, when you gain XP, it causes your allocated skills to shift towards your new template until you reach it. So if you're making a minor tweak, it will happen pretty quickly and easily, but if you're attempting to radically rethink your life, it will take a much longer time to reach your new template. At no point would you ever be locked into something forever, though: That's just unrealistic.

Yes. nerfs I think are a big problem when it comes to penalizing a player for reversing a choice. I think nerfs are unnecessary in all but rare obvious cases, if you are making a PvE only game and using the design philosophy that classes don't need to be balanced between each other, only that they bring value to the group. In such a case most of the time an adjustment to the lacking class is needed. Now, in PvP, that is a different story, but then if you are making a PvP game, holding people heavily to a character development decision may not be the best approach. A way to deal with nerfs is to give people a free chance to adjust their character if such a major revision is made. Like how EQ2 or WoW would refund specialization points if there was a major revision. Something along those lines helps to avoid the whole (we screwed you over with this major class change, deal with it!).

That said, I think your suggestion fits nicely . It isn't allowing people to retrain that is the major issue here, it is the consequence of such. Such a task should NEVER be easily done. Time is the consistent factor here I think. It should take time and effort to adjust ones choices, even with the threat of nerfs. As you said, if someone makes a mistake, make the time to correct it dependent on the depth of the change needed. I would also even suggest that the chance to do such not be constantly available either. That is, on top of it taking time to adjust a change, there also be series of tasks required in game to achieve such. In EQ2, they allowed people to change factions, even from good to evil (which allowed a complete class change), but to do so in the early days was by no small means a masterful effort to accomplish. It took the average player a few weeks of transition through various elements of faction grinds. Basically, changing was not taken lightly and people didn't do it on a whim.

If respecing is along those lines, I have no real issue with it, but as I said, it has to take lots of time and should be something that people dread doing. This way people can't swap back and forth trying to cookie cutter the flavor of the week.

 

[Ranselknulf]

What's to stop somebody from leveling up on the easiest character there is then redistributing all the points to a more specialized build that nobody levels up with. I think such an option would dramatically change the dynamics of a game. Everybody would be expected to play the best grinding characters while leveling up and then switch to whatever specialization they wanted later.

It'd make the games leveling up way too homogenous and unvaried.

 

[Xenich]

What's to stop somebody from leveling up on the easiest character there is then redistributing all the points to a more specialized build that nobody levels up with. I think such an option would dramatically change the dynamics of a game. Everybody would be expected to play the best grinding characters while leveling up and then switch to whatever specialization they wanted later.

It'd make the games leveling up way too homogenous and unvaried.

Depends. I mean, we are talking about someone spending points all the way up to the max level of the game, then switching to a different focus. That isn't an "oops, I put something in the wrong area...", it is an entire development of the character choice and so the time and difficulty it should take to change it would be significant. In fact, I would make that time and effort be somewhat less than if you created a new character from scratch. So, someone could try to "work the system" doing such, but it would be kind of pointless to any real advantage. Also, make it so their transition is slow as well. That is, they unwind their points, not a reset. This means that their character will be rather weak through the process until they are well within the new direction of changes. Also, consider such a change taking near the same amount of time to level to max in the first place AND if the game is like EQ in leveling speed, it will take months for people to hit max level.

Now add all that up. Person levels to max on an "easy leveling spec", taking them a few months or more. Then, once they hit max they begin the transition to move all their points to a new spec, taking a few months or more to correct them. Also, if they picked a spec because it was strong for soloing (over a more ideal one that is group useful), now they run into a problem as they begin to transition the points. Eventually, their soloing ability begins to diminish, yet their group benefits aren't as good as someone with the the full spec they are transitioning to. So, they are in a dilemma and this creates problems with them easily transitioning. With all that, the fact is that it would have been better to level with the grouping spec because not only do you not have to do nearly twice the work, but you have learned to play your class in a group well and have likely built up a nice list of people to group with. This as opposed to they "soloer" who went out and tried to solo to max, only knows how to play a solo game and has zero reputation in grouping.

Like I said, the suggestion for allowing people to respec should not be a choice people want to consider. It should be dreaded, it should be only beneficial for those who truly need it due to some poor decisions, not for gimmicks. It should always be a lose/lose for someone trying to use it as an advantage.

Also, one last thing. Not every class will be ideal for leveling solo and won't have such options of focus. Besides, if they make an AA system like EQ, people won't want to get rid of their points, they will just work on the areas they missed. While it has its own problems, I think this is where EQ really shines. The AA system is very flexible in that you can max your AAs.

 

[Norfleet]

What's to stop somebody from leveling up on the easiest character there is then redistributing all the points to a more specialized build that nobody levels up with.

Well, if you're talking about my proposed system, doing such a thing would cost you about as much as levelling said character from scratch, since to undo all of your decisions and switch to a build that is practically diametrically opposite would essentially involve earning as much XP as it took to get there in the first place.

Also, you clearly don't understand how powerleveling actually works. Nobody powerslevels in the manner you propose, even in a game where respecs are cheap and a matter of throwing a bit of currency at. Real powerlevelers simply leech. When I want to powerlevel a new character from 0 to cap, I don't give him a fast leveling spec, I just plain attach him to my group and leech the XP, using one completed, well-optimized character to carry several that I level simultaneously, leaving them as blank slates entirely.

This, of course, is only really an issue in the typical "max level or bust" scenario, which is, frankly, a paradigm of game design I have railed against repeatedly, probably in this thread.

Like I said, the suggestion for allowing people to respec should not be a choice people want to consider. It should be dreaded, it should be only beneficial for those who truly need it due to some poor decisions, not for gimmicks. It should always be a lose/lose for someone trying to use it as an advantage.

Disagree, actually. The system I proposed is actually designed to facilitate frequent respeccing at low cost...provided you are fine-tuning your build, rather than trying to completely rewrite your character into something it wasn't. Just as real experts in a field perpetually refine their technique to try to get even better, so too should your character. Under my proposed system, if you're just trying to shift a point from skill A to skill B to attempt to gain a slight edge, it's cheap to do. Maybe your mage wants a little bit more firepower in his technique, so he lowers his defensive focus a bit. Maybe your fighter wishes to hone his swordsmanship at the expense of his shield use. Small adjustments aimed at experimentation and refinement are encouraged in my system. Turning your sword-swinging warrior into a mage? Yeah, you're pretty much wiping everything and starting over, as you have no skills in common and so the shift will have you, at its midpoint, being a warrior who has forgotten most of his edge while still sucking as a wizard. But who knows, maybe you'll find some unique combination in there that works for you.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

I want to mention something I hate. Hack/slash might be one way of terming it, but hack/slash could be interpreted as meaning lots of combat or physical combat. Grindy is technically a good description, but it's often used incorrectly. For example, if something has a lot of combat, or even just a little running or pulling or kiting, they'll call it grindy, regardless of how tactical it's. I don't know the psychology behind it, but I've seen it b4. Otherwise, grindy explains it well. But I think a better term is tank/spank or popamole.

It's what happens when a fight boils down to HP/DPS. If you HP/DPS stuff is higher than your opponent dies. There're zero or very nearly zero other routes. Now, I hesitant to include debuffs or buffs, because those can be more tactical in nature. However, if they're directly dps/hp related than they're guilty. I'm talking here pure hp/dps with nothing else thrown in. It's literally /autoattack and sit back, drink a coke. Tank/spank. It's utter s*** for brains.

I think some of the better combat I've had in games was in Master of Orion 2. That game got grindy if the map was too big or the fleets were too large, but it could have some fine tactical moments. Fun combat can't be just hp/dps. Sitting back and letting the game play itself is not combat. You have to actively watch the locations of your enemy(s) and correctly position your unit(s). You have to use your weapons correctly, based on their range and direction and type, as well as using them in concert with your other weapons and/or abilities. In Master of Orion 2, I'd have some ships which used AOE's. I had some which which would explode in a massive ball of destruction, taking out other enemy ships in the process. Some had strong front attacks. Some were reliant on marines to overtake an enemy. Some used missiles or fighters. Some used long range weapons. Some used their speed. I could maneuver all of my units in such a way to distract or isolate portions fo the enemy(s) fleet, in case I had smaller numbers and wanted to maximize the length of time I'd survive. I also wanted to protect certain ships because they had leaders on them. There were other concerns too, like not allowing an enemy ship to explode, so you could capture it and reverse engineer it.

I think good fights have it all. Close combat, magic, debuffing, aoe, environmental exploits, kiting and whatever else. I think this is why I enjoy hybrid classes. (enchanter/necromancer in EQ were good) For a game to really do it well, it needs to have lots of interacting things. Too few things which interact just leads to the overly basic boring stuff I'd often seeen.

What do you think makes good combat? What makes combat so it's not popamole?

Where does pantheon stand on this issue?

 

[Norfleet]

I want to mention something I hate. Hack/slash might be one way of terming it, but hack/slash could be interpreted as meaning lots of combat or physical combat.

Hack/slash means the game has little or nothing BUT combat, as is typical of a hack-and-slash DnD campaign: The characters do nothing except fight all the time. This does not necessarily make it grindy or not grindy...

Grindy is technically a good description, but it's often used incorrectly. For example, if something has a lot of combat, or even just a little running or pulling or kiting, they'll call it grindy, regardless of how tactical it's. I don't know the psychology behind it, but I've seen it b4. Otherwise, grindy explains it well. But I think a better term is tank/spank or popamole.

No, grindy is when there is a LOT of something, generally with very low yields in terms of either monetary reward of some kind, or progression. When you have to fight over 9000 battles to achieve your objective, that is grindy, no matter how tactical it is, or how much else there is in the game. You're fighting long past the point where you've achieved competence or even mastery of the system, and are simply GRINDING. When something is both hack and slash AND grindy at the same time, it means you're fighting over 9000 battles to get that one +1 sword AND there is NOTHING ELSE IN THE GAME.

I think some of the better combat I've had in games was in Master of Orion 2. That game got grindy if the map was too big or the fleets were too large, but it could have some fine tactical moments.

MOO2's combat never really gets grindy, because on a large map with big fleets at the endgame, you can pretty much just press Z and your fleet will lawnmower its way through the unwashed AI hordes on its own, and the more of them there are, the more spectacular the chain explosions that follows after you destroy a few of them. Particularly if you simply gave them the quantum detonator, preferrably in exchange for some minor concession, but for free if they wouldn't take it any other way.

You can't sit back and drink a coke and let the game play itself. You have to actively watch the locations of your enemy(s) and correctly position your unit(s). You have to use your weapons correctly, based on their range and direction and type, as well as using them in concert with your other weapons and/or abilities.

This is MOO2, right? Press Z, pewpewpew, enemies go boom?

I had some which which would explode in a massive ball of destruction, taking out other enemy ships in the process.

Uh, this sounds nothing like the MOO2 I remember. Your ships don't explode, enemy ships explode, generally taking out enemy ships in the process. Particularly if you taught them the secret of exploding. You're not supposed to install that thing on your OWN ship, silly. Give them the technolergy so they can install it on THEIR ships! They will throw great fireworks in your honor if you do!

Some had strong front attacks.

Some? You actually pay the space penalties to install extended arcs?

Some were reliant on marines to overtake an enemy.

I am pretty sure these designs are highly specialized and not used in regular fighting. Most enemies aren't Antarans and there's no need to jack their ships, except possibly for amusement, as a jacking ship can rarely take on more than one or two enemies before it runs out of troops (and most enemies aren't even worth jacking).

Some used missiles or fighters.

Missiles are among my favorite early game weapons, too. You can spam an awful lot of shoot-and-scoot scouts with single-shot missile racks, useful when you don't want to dedicate 15 turns of production towards a ship that will be obsolete before you can finish building it.

I also wanted to protect certain ships because they had leaders on them.

Eh, ships worthy of putting a leader on were pretty much indestructible anyway. When you have a ship that can hulltank 20 stellar converter shots in one turn without flinching and has so many disruptor cannons on it that you had to heavy-mount some of them for the range because otherwise you would run out of enemies within range before you ran out of cannons to fire, you don't worry about protecting it, it protects itself.

There were other concerns too, like not allowing an enemy ship to explode, so you could capture it and reverse engineer it.

Ah, Antaran-jacking, the Sport Of Kings. You always have to board on the same turn that you tractor. Should you fail to take the ship because not enough boarders could zerg themselves onto the thing in that turn, release the tractor beam or else he will self-destruct.

I think good fights have it all. Close combat, magic, debuffing, aoe, environmental exploits, kiting and whatever else. I think this is why I enjoy hybrid classes. (enchanter/necromancer in EQ were good) For a game to really do it well, it needs to have lots of interacting things. Too few things which interact just leads to the overly basic boring stuff I'd often seeen.

What do you think makes good combat? What makes combat so it's not popamole?

Lots of shiny and relevant combat options are a must. MOO2 certainly had lots of buttons, and was pretty good for its time, but I don't think it was nearly as rich as you make out, and MOO2 very much tends to boil down into a Damage-Per-Space optimization. This is why you can cripple the enemy's designs by giving him Lostech like the Death Ray: Since Lostech never miniaturizes, the Death Ray will very quickly have some of the worst damage-per-space of any weapon in the game, a fact which will render your starbases utterly worthless the moment you acquire that tech.

Where does pantheon stand on this issue?

It doesn't, at present, because the game doesn't actually exist.

 

[Xenich]

Disagree, actually. The system I proposed is actually designed to facilitate frequent respeccing at low cost...provided you are fine-tuning your build, rather than trying to completely rewrite your character into something it wasn't. Just as real experts in a field perpetually refine their technique to try to get even better, so too should your character. Under my proposed system, if you're just trying to shift a point from skill A to skill B to attempt to gain a slight edge, it's cheap to do. Maybe your mage wants a little bit more firepower in his technique, so he lowers his defensive focus a bit. Maybe your fighter wishes to hone his swordsmanship at the expense of his shield use. Small adjustments aimed at experimentation and refinement are encouraged in my system. Turning your sword-swinging warrior into a mage? Yeah, you're pretty much wiping everything and starting over, as you have no skills in common and so the shift will have you, at its midpoint, being a warrior who has forgotten most of his edge while still sucking as a wizard. But who knows, maybe you'll find some unique combination in there that works for you.

My response was more in context to the example Flunklesnarkin gave about making entirely different builds. The system having the ability to re-tune over small adjustments without extreme difficulty is a reasonable one. The time it takes though should still be equivalent to the time it took to earn the point in the first place though. So, naturally adjusting a few points here and there wouldn't be a major feat and the length of time to respec would be directly proportional to the amount of respec being done.

 

[Xenich]

I want to mention something I hate. Hack/slash might be one way of terming it, but hack/slash could be interpreted as meaning lots of combat or physical combat. Grindy is technically a good description, but it's often used incorrectly. For example, if something has a lot of combat, or even just a little running or pulling or kiting, they'll call it grindy, regardless of how tactical it's. I don't know the psychology behind it, but I've seen it b4. Otherwise, grindy explains it well. But I think a better term is tank/spank or popamole.

See, I think the idea that grind needs to be eliminated is simply an aversion to the concept without respect to its benefit. It would be like demanding eggs can't be used because you dislike the taste of egg, but then wondering why your cookies aren't as good as they used to be. Grind isn't bad, grind for the sake for grind without purpose or proper reward is the problem. Older games like EQ had grind, but the rewards were often worth the time. Compare to many MMOs today that use grind not as a component to give long term achievement value, but to keep you occupied without having to put much effort into the content they design and what you get are enormous grinds with little reward.

It's what happens when a fight boils down to HP/DPS. If you HP/DPS stuff is higher than your opponent dies. There're zero or very nearly zero other routes. Now, I hesitant to include debuffs or buffs, because those can be more tactical in nature. However, if they're directly dps/hp related than they're guilty. I'm talking here pure hp/dps with nothing else thrown in. It's literally /autoattack and sit back, drink a coke. Tank/spank. It's utter s*** for brains.

See, I don't see this as big a problem as some do (you can go overboard). It is like the egg example, its existence is not the problem, it is the context of its use. In EQ, many fights took a long time. The average trash mob took time to kill. The skill and strategy in EQ was not the simplistic system of combat, but the endurance and elements of timing and management. See, the biggest killer in EQ was dealing with adds, and running out of resources before you ended up killing the mob. Endurance based fights requires consistent skill, and is a true test of ones ability. Anyone can get something right in a short amount of time, but having to continue that trend for any length of time? Well, that is where skill comes in.

For instance, in EQ, most spawns were around 30 mins. You would think that is plenty of time, but keep in mind that the average mob for a full group could take 5 mins, more or less for a good group. Now, EQ was famous for having rooms filled with mobs and having many pathing mobs that roamed the areas. You could rush the room and apply many strategies depending on your makeup. For instance, if you were melee heavy, you might have a couple off tank while the group worked on a single target. You might have a heavier caster group with the ability to root, so they lock down the adds. You might have an enchanter who can handle a group by themselves and locks down the mobs while the rest take them down. Now as time goes on, there is the risk of mobs who path in on the group. This could be a problem if you are careful (mob takes out your enchanter or CC people before you realize it). Then, there is the risk of respawns poping on the group because you are dealing with mulitple mobs and weren't able to clear the room before the 30 min timer hit.

In all that time, every class is having to balance their HP/Mana, and be consistent in the execution of their abilities. Any unskilled enchanter can lock down a room at the start of a fight, but it takes an extremely skilled one to be able to deal with an adding pather and 1/2 the mobs breaking due to the random timer on mez. Not only do they have to be quick and use the right spells (aoe mez works great, but has a short timer, you will have to single mez every mob if you want to lock them down), but they have to watch their mana and consider their positioning. Also, this is where group support comes in. The druid support healer has to have roots ready to be able to assist the enchanter if they get in trouble as well as throw some support heals on any the cleric or main healer is having issues with.

All of these situations occur because of endurance play. If your mobs are dying in seconds, then elements of endurance play are not tested. The example I gave requires time to achieve. This means mobs will take longer to kill, combat will be slower, etc... Like I said, any fool can spam some spells and keep it up in a short amount of time, but it is doing such consistently over a battle of attrition that tests ones ability.

There were so many times where my group had something go wrong and we spent the next 30-45 mins in constant full on battle before we were able to lock down a room. If you ever broke Plane of Fear, then you know what I am talking about. What you describe of hitting auto-attack and then sitting back and doing nothing really depends on the class, and the environment. Sure, some EQ fights were simple plain tank/spank, but even in those fights, key classes had to be on the ball. For instance, healers and necros had to be on the ball (healing chain, mana restoration, spot healing). Other classes who had abilities of debuffing had to consistently apply such and if the wizard didn't get the tash on time, this usually mean slow didn't land, the healers couldn't keep up and the warrior went down. While there were some classes during a boss fight that were pretty much auto-attack, they had major responsibilities before (monks/bards/rogues in your pulling team) and during the setup.

I remember being raid leader for the AoW fight (been a while so the details may not be perfect). It was a rough fight and it was not simply a tank and spank. We had the normal cleric healing line, necros feeding them mana. Then we had 5 tanks for a rotation of using AoE taunt and some defensive abilities on timers. All the warriors auto-attacked slowly starting in a sequential order of timing building up agro slowly using normal weapons while one main one used his strong agro generating weapon. As his defensive ability started to fade, the entire raid had to turn off DPS, while the warriors continued attacking while turning off their auto-attack in order until it was just the main tank and secondary fighting. The main stops attacking, then the secondary begins building with their high agro weapon. Now after a bit of time, they secondary hits his AoE taunt causing the mob to turn to him. He builds some agro and then the raid resumes setting up for the next rotation. I remember the fight taking a couple of hours. It was a slow fight of attrition and it took precision healing, tanking, and timing of the raid. If you were an auto-attack AFK type, you wiped the raid (we had one who did wipe the raid because they were afk and drew agro during the tank swap).

Now, this is again why having battles last a while is exciting. You can't win these battles with pure DPS, the mobs have too many HPs and last too long for someone to "burn him down". WoW had this problem, many fights you could opt out of any tactical approach and use DPS burn tactics hoping to beat the encounter without having to deal with actually managing it.

So there is some meaning for HP based content, but you are right, fights need to be more about the support responsibilities than simply a typical tank/spank.

As for Pantheon, the plan is to recreate that old school style of slower combat, endurance based, attrition style play where all the abilities and components of the group gets pushed to the limit in order to succeed.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

(...)
Lots of shiny and relevant combat options are a must. MOO2 certainly had lots of buttons, and was pretty good for its time, but I don't think it was nearly as rich as you make out, and MOO2 very much tends to boil down into a Damage-Per-Space optimization. This is why you can cripple the enemy's designs by giving him Lostech like the Death Ray: Since Lostech never miniaturizes, the Death Ray will very quickly have some of the worst damage-per-space of any weapon in the game, a fact which will render your starbases utterly worthless the moment you acquire that tech.

Reading through your post I can see we're somehow different opinion about it. I don't want to go through all of it. All I can say is I had some fine tactical moments, where it wasn't just hp/dps or "damage-per-space", as you put it.

This reminds me of JA2. One of the posters here said vanilla JA2 was something equivalent to "damage-per-space". When someone disagrees with me, I can't speak for them. All I can speak for is my own expeirence.

I'll add I didn't know about the Z key for a long time... and I always played with tactical enabled. I also always played on the largest maps. I hated games lasting too long because micromanagement. If I couold replay MOO2 I'd try to use the AI more. I know in MOO3 they tried to make the colony leaders smarter, but don't know how that worked. But in MOO2 letting the AI build the colonies is almost required when you have a lot of colonies, even though the leaders are dumb. Anyway, the game got too easy when I used hte creative attribute. I found playing without it made the game much more itneresting.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

(...)
There were so many times where my group had something go wrong and we spent the next 30-45 mins in constant full on battle before we were able to lock down a room. If you ever broke Plane of Fear, then you know what I am talking about. What you describe of hitting auto-attack and then sitting back and doing nothing really depends on the class, and the environment. Sure, some EQ fights were simple plain tank/spank, but even in those fights, key classes had to be on the ball. For instance, healers and necros had to be on the ball (healing chain, mana restoration, spot healing). Other classes who had abilities of debuffing had to consistently apply such and if the wizard didn't get the tash on time, this usually mean slow didn't land, the healers couldn't keep up and the warrior went down. While there were some classes during a boss fight that were pretty much auto-attack, they had major responsibilities before (monks/bards/rogues in your pulling team) and during the setup.

I remember being raid leader for the AoW fight (been a while so the details may not be perfect). It was a rough fight and it was not simply a tank and spank. We had the normal cleric healing line, necros feeding them mana. Then we had 5 tanks for a rotation of using AoE taunt and some defensive abilities on timers. All the warriors auto-attacked slowly starting in a sequential order of timing building up agro slowly using normal weapons while one main one used his strong agro generating weapon. As his defensive ability started to fade, the entire raid had to turn off DPS, while the warriors continued attacking while turning off their auto-attack in order until it was just the main tank and secondary fighting. The main stops attacking, then the secondary begins building with their high agro weapon. Now after a bit of time, they secondary hits his AoE taunt causing the mob to turn to him. He builds some agro and then the raid resumes setting up for the next rotation. I remember the fight taking a couple of hours. It was a slow fight of attrition and it took precision healing, tanking, and timing of the raid. If you were an auto-attack AFK type, you wiped the raid (we had one who did wipe the raid because they were afk and drew agro during the tank swap).

Now, this is again why having battles last a while is exciting. You can't win these battles with pure DPS, the mobs have too many HPs and last too long for someone to "burn him down". WoW had this problem, many fights you could opt out of any tactical approach and use DPS burn tactics hoping to beat the encounter without having to deal with actually managing it.

So there is some meaning for HP based content, but you are right, fights need to be more about the support responsibilities than simply a typical tank/spank.

As for Pantheon, the plan is to recreate that old school style of slower combat, endurance based, attrition style play where all the abilities and components of the group gets pushed to the limit in order to succeed.

(limites size of your quote.... don't hold it against me)

All I got to say about EQ is I TRIED to play pure classes, like the warrior, but the tank/taunt/bash/etc routine got boring. And not being able to solo hurt. More than anything, only really being able to tank/taunt/bash made fights boring. Now, I could mix things up by starting a fight with a bow, but it doesn't last long. Bandaging at the end of the fight helped during soloing, but fights are still too "popamole". This is the only two classes which I levelled past 60 were hybrids. The mix of kiting and tank/taunt/bash and spell casting and being able to solo made the game more interesting. And this is why I enjoyed to play enchanters and necromancers in the OMMs. OMG, I had so much fun! The one thing I didn't like about the encromancer was the lore - I don't like evil classes or being undead. I also liked having weapons and tanking here/there - can't do that with enchanter or necromancer.

A lot of what you say does make sense. I bolded the part which stood out to me. I agree with that one especially. When a fight is just "burning" then it loses the essence of a god fight which is variety. That's why I said in my initial post everytthing has to be there: close combat, ranged, spell casting, kiting, environment, positioning, etc. I think crowd control is another aspect to it. A good fight has ome of that too. This is why I grew to not like camping in EQ: it sought to oversimplify and make fighting a science. Once a camp was fully bunkered and studied, that's what it became. Nothing exciting happens after that.

What EQ did wrong, IMHO, or one of the thigns it did wrong, was rewarding camping too much. It should have rewarded exploring and finding new fights. A real adventure! And in a real adventure it's not science, it's more like research. S*** is flying around you and you have ot hink on your feet. It's the polar-opposite of the camping-methodology which cuts away all the fun.

I got so jaded over the years I start to beleive most players WANT "burning" or to be told what to do rather than to think. And along with this whole tank/spank thing is button-mashing. That's just as bad. EQ was a international crimelord in regards button mashing. Taunt/kick/etc were all longtime offenders. Button mashing might be more acceptable if it's involving tactical decisions, but more often than not it's just +5 damage which does notrhing to address the probelm.

Button mashing. That neds a thread.

EDIT: I want to add... when the warrior wnet down... that's when a lot of fights started getting interesting again. For a hybrid, a lot of enjoyment came when that happened, IF you didn't rangergate. But basically s*** hapening is what was fun.

 

[Norfleet]

I remember being raid leader for the AoW fight (been a while so the details may not be perfect). It was a rough fight and it was not simply a tank and spank. We had the normal cleric healing line, necros feeding them mana. Then we had 5 tanks for a rotation of using AoE taunt and some defensive abilities on timers. All the warriors auto-attacked slowly starting in a sequential order of timing building up agro slowly using normal weapons while one main one used his strong agro generating weapon. As his defensive ability started to fade, the entire raid had to turn off DPS, while the warriors continued attacking while turning off their auto-attack in order until it was just the main tank and secondary fighting. The main stops attacking, then the secondary begins building with their high agro weapon. Now after a bit of time, they secondary hits his AoE taunt causing the mob to turn to him. He builds some agro and then the raid resumes setting up for the next rotation. I remember the fight taking a couple of hours. It was a slow fight of attrition and it took precision healing, tanking, and timing of the raid. If you were an auto-attack AFK type, you wiped the raid (we had one who did wipe the raid because they were afk and drew agro during the tank swap).

Yes, now, you see, to me, this is everything that's WRONG about encounter design. "Aggro", "Tanking, "Taunting"...these are not things that belong in any sane description of a fight. You're manipulating the intentionally badly written AI of a mob too stupid to target your support units because all it can see is the guy "pulling" it and "taunting" it. We had no words for this kind of thing until someone coined the term "Retard Magnet". Your fight is basically cycling a set of abilities on a timer until the thing dies, with your real opponent being the stupidity of the other players who can't follow orders.

Now, this is again why having battles last a while is exciting.

The thing is, what you describe isn't exciting, it's tedious. The battle isn't long because you're playing a complex game of move and counter-move. The battle is long because you're whomping on a hitpoint sink using a repeating cyclic pattern that, at best, changes when the boss decides to "change form" or whatever it is they do, and the only thing that makes this "challenging" is the prospect that some other player will deviate from a script. If your battle is such that replacing all of the other players with robots will improve your team's efficiency, it's not exciting.

As for Pantheon, the plan is to recreate that old school style of slower combat, endurance based, attrition style play where all the abilities and components of the group gets pushed to the limit in order to succeed.

Slower combat is good. Turning it into a contest of endurance and attrition is turning the game over to robots. Battles should be dynamic and tactical, not an exercise in a pattern repeated ad-infinitum by robots. Some of the best battles I partook in were those in the age of text: Mighty starships maneuvering to strike the weakened facings of the enemy while trying not to expose their own, while systems failed from battle damage all around. Spearmen fixing the enemy formation in place while cavalry maneuver for the the crushing charge against the exposed enemy flank. Ships of the line maneuvering to cross the enemy's T and rake him. The GOOD stuff, against enemies that fought to live and WIN, not a dumb hitpoint sink that repeats a pattern over and over and attacks the shiniest glowy, where victory and defeat meant something more than simply an argument over who got the item which may or may not drop, or wiping and having to do the raid over again.

This reminds me of JA2. One of the posters here said vanilla JA2 was something equivalent to "damage-per-space". When someone disagrees with me, I can't speak for them. All I can speak for is my own expeirence.

Vanilla JA2 is an exercise in picking the best gun you have, and all of the guns are basically tiered with each one outclassing the previous, offering no real tradeoffs, and then shooting your enemies, generally from afar, until they die.

I'll add I didn't know about the Z key for a long time... and I always played with tactical enabled. I also always played on the largest maps.

Ayup, the only way to play. The Galaxy should be vast. otherwise you're NOT IN SPACE.

I hated games lasting too long because micromanagement. If I couold replay MOO2 I'd try to use the AI more. I know in MOO3 they tried to make the colony leaders smarter, but don't know how that worked. But in MOO2 letting the AI build the colonies is almost required when you have a lot of colonies, even though the leaders are dumb.

It is? I never, ever, actually used the AI, because the AI was stupid and did not understand the concept of "YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS". Also, certain things were important never to build in the late game. Never, ever, install planetary defenses in the late game, they will get your planet slagged by the AI's careless shooting, even, and especially when, you win, turning every battle into a Pyrrhic victory. Plus, by then, they simply don't do jack. And, of course, the AI governors didn't really grasp the "BUY ALL THE THINGS" strategy. Left up to the AI, he would never actually build your colony, even when you have a hojillion spacebucks.

I want to say that MOO2 followed the same kind of general ship strategy that pretty much every other space 4X does, but then I recall MOO2 pretty much started it: The early game of SPAM MOAR MISSILES followed by an eventual (and generally abrupt) transition to PEW PEW PEW LAZOR DEATH BLOSSOM, probably around the time you got Plasma Cannons.

A lot of what you say does make sense. I bolded the part which stood out to me. I agree with that one especially. When a fight is just "burning" then it loses the essence of a god fight which is variety.

Variety, and an enemy that that adapts to the changing circumstances of the fight. Or loses his shit and flees broken and blubbering, that's good, too. Mob fights and no-stakes fights lack the most glorious part of the action, the part where your enemy is crushed and driven before you. That is what's best in life: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.

That's why I said in my initial post everytthing has to be there: close combat, ranged, spell casting, kiting, environment, positioning, etc. I think crowd control is another aspect to it. A good fight has ome of that too.

But don't forget also, the part where the battle has STAKES. The WHY WE FIGHT. There has to be more to it than simple bloodlust, or all you have is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Why do we fight? Do we fight to defend our clay, or to take their clay?

This is why I grew to not like camping in EQ: it sought to oversimplify and make fighting a science. Once a camp was fully bunkered and studied, that's what it became. Nothing exciting happens after that.

Well, of course. Your fights aren't so much fights as they are hunts. You aren't FIGHTING, you are hunting, except that your prey is a mindless robot and lacks the unpredictability that a wounded or cornered animal can offer. I swear there would be more entertainment value in a Mastodon Hunting MMO, where your quarry isn't "The Fallen King of Evil Darkness", who just sits on his throne forever until you bash his skull in, but a herd of soon-to-be-pissed off mastodons, and the stakes are that your tribe feasts tonight or it starves tomorrow.

What EQ did wrong, IMHO, or one of the thigns it did wrong, was rewarding camping too much. It should have rewarded exploring and finding new fights. A real adventure! And in a real adventure it's not science, it's more like research.

And maybe with more angry mastodons. A mastodon doesn't just sit there stupidly whailing on whatever has the most blinky aggro until it dies. The mastodon doesn't even particularly care about killing you, it just wants to stay alive and uneaten so it can go about its elephanty business, and will just as soon make a break for it and stampede off into the forest leaving your tribe to starve to death in the snow as it is to gore and trample anyone.

I got so jaded over the years I start to beleive most players WANT "burning" or to be told what to do rather than to think.

They DO. It's for the best, really. Not everyone can or should be a Chief, you need Indians.

Button mashing. That neds a thread.

Button-mashing is a sign of shit UI design. A good UI is one which allows the user to enact his will with the minimum of action, the ideal UI being telebrain control, the computer does as you will, no buttons needed at all. You can go one better, telebrain prediction, the computer figures out what you want and does it without you even having to think about it, but at that point, the game is Russian: You don't play it, it plays you.

I want to add... when the warrior wnet down... that's when a lot of fights started getting interesting again. For a hybrid, a lot of enjoyment came when that happened, IF you didn't rangergate. But basically s*** hapening is what was fun.

That's what battles SHOULD be. That's how REAL battles are: Shit happening. No plan survives contact with the enemy.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Isn't McQuaid the 'losing is fun' guy? It's too old to find any records of it, but I distinctly remember one of the bigwigs on the EQ team shitting out that line after setting up a halloween event that involved insanely powerful monsters spawn camping the newbie grounds.

 

[Norfleet]

I dunno, I normally associate that line with Dwarf Fortress. It is, however, true...and I HATE FUN.

 

[Xenich]

Yes, now, you see, to me, this is everything that's WRONG about encounter design. "Aggro", "Tanking, "Taunting"...these are not things that belong in any sane description of a fight. You're manipulating the intentionally badly written AI of a mob too stupid to target your support units because all it can see is the guy "pulling" it and "taunting" it. We had no words for this kind of thing until someone coined the term "Retard Magnet". Your fight is basically cycling a set of abilities on a timer until the thing dies, with your real opponent being the stupidity of the other players who can't follow orders.

You don't like that style of gaming. To each their own. I enjoyed it because of the amount of discipline it took to hold to a given set of work between the team to accomplish it. You don't like it, but again... you are making a PURELY subjective argument. As I said in the past, you are a hammer and everything is a nail. Pantheon isn't for you. No really, the more I talk about "old eq" style, the more you claim how stupid and retarded it is. Pantheon is designed specifically after EQ/Vanguard, so... it isn't the game of you. /shrug

The thing is, what you describe isn't exciting, it's tedious. The battle isn't long because you're playing a complex game of move and counter-move. The battle is long because you're whomping on a hitpoint sink using a repeating cyclic pattern that, at best, changes when the boss decides to "change form" or whatever it is they do, and the only thing that makes this "challenging" is the prospect that some other player will deviate from a script. If your battle is such that replacing all of the other players with robots will improve your team's efficiency, it's not exciting.

Like I said, you are arguing a subjective argument as to why one type of game is better than another. You think AI should replicate humans, I think AI is a means to facilitate game systems which may or may not mean trying to emulate human thinking and action in a particular NPC (ie the NPC could simply be a means to execute a system or obstacle in a given fashion).

Slower combat is good. Turning it into a contest of endurance and attrition is turning the game over to robots. Battles should be dynamic and tactical, not an exercise in a pattern repeated ad-infinitum by robots. Some of the best battles I partook in were those in the age of text: Mighty starships maneuvering to strike the weakened facings of the enemy while trying not to expose their own, while systems failed from battle damage all around. Spearmen fixing the enemy formation in place while cavalry maneuver for the the crushing charge against the exposed enemy flank. Ships of the line maneuvering to cross the enemy's T and rake him. The GOOD stuff, against enemies that fought to live and WIN, not a dumb hitpoint sink that repeats a pattern over and over and attacks the shiniest glowy, where victory and defeat meant something more than simply an argument over who got the item which may or may not drop, or wiping and having to do the raid over again.

Yep, a style of game that I and many of my friends of old enjoyed playing that differs from your expectations. That is not to say I don't enjoy the active skill based games like Star Citizen will be. That however is a style of play. Sometimes I want to play different types of games for different reasons. I explained my enjoyment as to why EQ was fun. Like I said, not everything has to be a nail. /shrug

 

[Xenich]

Without failure, there is no success. While a game can be entertaining, not all games are entertainment (ie a game is not about making sure the ADD's are kept entertained). This is the distinct point of contention between the point Brad was making. Losing IS fun, not because it is great to lose, but because the losing gives meaning to winning. If there is no real loss, then the win is pointless. Today's gaming generation doesn't understand this because the games are all designed to be multiple levels of "win", where nobody loses, you just don't win as much as you could. There is no consequence in play, no penalty, no real point. It is "participation trophy" game design and it defeats the point of meaningful reward in play.

Game development today is like parents that try to buy off their kids affection because they are afraid that if they discipline them, the kids won't love them anymore. They are deathly afraid that if they actually make a game where the player loses, where they might fail and have to deal with the consequences of their decision, they won't like the game, they won't play it. Now there is nothing wrong with some who want failures to be nothing more than levels of winning, but this is not really a game as much as it is just passing entertainment and people need to accept this rather than fooling themselves into the belief that a game is "just" entertainment.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

(...)

The thing is, what you describe isn't exciting, it's tedious. The battle isn't long because you're playing a complex game of move and counter-move. The battle is long because you're whomping on a hitpoint sink using a repeating cyclic pattern that, at best, changes when the boss decides to "change form" or whatever it is they do, and the only thing that makes this "challenging" is the prospect that some other player will deviate from a script. If your battle is such that replacing all of the other players with robots will improve your team's efficiency, it's not exciting.

Like I said, you are arguing a subjective argument as to why one type of game is better than another. You think AI should replicate humans, I think AI is a means to facilitate game systems which may or may not mean trying to emulate human thinking and action in a particular NPC (ie the NPC could simply be a means to execute a system or obstacle in a given fashion).
(...)

You know I think you two are talking about the same thing, just not realizing it because of the big wall you put between yourselves. You repeating yourselves. I already replied to this (particular) topic.

Xenich said something like "Too many fights are burning fights and nothing happens in those except button mashing +5 damage abilities. Healers don't heal. Nobody adjusts. Nobody has to pull. Nobody has to kite. Only happenin' is the burn. If those fights last longer then all the roles will be used and the game will be more interesting." The way I read it was Xenich just wants fights which're not constrained to burning. A REAL fight has healing, crowd control, debuffing, bufing, switching targets, close and ranged combat, rezzing and so on. None of that's going to happen if all fights are just burns. BUT a fight doesn't necssarily have to last a long time to not be a burn. That's where Xenich might be wrong and where the big wall comes up.

A lot of little things made EQ funner than it would otherwise be. They're worthy of noting. There're too many examples to put htem al here. For example the bash ability wasn't just +5 damage. It could interrupt a healer. It was mostly interesting against healers. It didn't happen often. What made it hard was, unless you had an audio trigger, you might miss the chance to see when the monster was trying to heal. Yet that was one of the few things I liked about bash. Another thing which made bash more tactical was when a monster was fleeing and you bashed it to stun it. See, just these two thigns have already made bash slightly more interesting. Despite these two positve things, bash was still guilty of being an accomplice to the aiding and abetting of button mashing drool gameplay. You still ended up mashing it in a fight for the+5 damage (and stun which reduced mob dps).

We should seek out games whic have more circumstantil abilities like that (above). Even just having to flank an enemy is a start. There're some games which don't even have that. I don't know why peole play popamole stuff. Sometimes I think it's just hard to make truly comprehensive, diverse fights. Maybe that's the real reason there's lots of popamole. See, it's not just players wantig popamole, although I'm sure some do, it's developrs straining to make fihts which're not popamole. If big companies hiring dozens of content makers struggle, imagine the small developers randomly generating the combat (and probably falling far shot).

 

[Norfleet]

A REAL fight has healing, crowd control, debuffing, bufing, switching targets, close and ranged combat, rezzing and so on.

Heh, maybe if you're Jesus. I've never heard of this happening in an actual fight, though. Even Jesus took a good several days to come back as a zombie, and nobody actually helped him do that. But yes, fights really need more than "some 'tank' characters rotating 'taunts' to get a dumb AI to mindlessly attack them regardless of its better tactical options". Speaking of this, what is it with people and the belief that "tanks" shouldn't do meaningful damage, merely stand there and take a beating? REAL tanks have big freaking CANNONS on them, and they do not "tank". An actual tank that simply sat there and absorbed punishment would quickly be destroyed. This particular term and the evolution of the role annoys me to no end. It used to be that warrior-type classes were tanks because they were both tough AND hard-hitting, and this has mutated to the point where they're now intended as impotent bricks that should nonetheless somehow be targeted despite their general lack of tactical threat value.

And frankly, I don't really think that "healing" should be a something that is a thing in every combat system. That sort of thing should rightly be confined to fantasy, there's pretty much no such thing in real life.

 

[Xenich]

BUT a fight doesn't necssarily have to last a long time to not be a burn. That's where Xenich might be wrong and where the big wall comes up.

True a fight of attrition and interrupted circumstance can happen at a faster pace, though I would offer a warning that to speed up such an experience would be more than the average player could stand. You cant take the EQ experience I describe and apply it to the fast paced process of games like WoW and what you get? Arcade play. Nothing wrong with that, but some can't handle the brutality of instant reflex and constant requirement.

A lot of little things made EQ funner than it would otherwise be. They're worthy of noting. There're too many examples to put htem al here. For example the bash ability wasn't just +5 damage. It could interrupt a healer. It was mostly interesting against healers. It didn't happen often. What made it hard was, unless you had an audio trigger, you might miss the chance to see when the monster was trying to heal. Yet that was one of the few things I liked about bash. Another thing which made bash more tactical was when a monster was fleeing and you bashed it to stun it. See, just these two thigns have already made bash slightly more interesting. Despite these two positve things, bash was still guilty of being an accomplice to the aiding and abetting of button mashing drool gameplay. You still ended up mashing it in a fight for the+5 damage (and stun which reduced mob dps).

It wasn't just heals you needed to interrupt. There were CC abilities being cast by mobs (and they always loved to CC the healer/mezer), there were massive AoE damage or Insane direct damage spells being cast (ever had the IIS mob in Selebis cast on you? LOL Ice comment.. buh bye!), casting and abilities were MASSIVE dangers. The person who was spamming Bash was an idiot because they wouldn't have it available when it was needed and like I said, when it was needed, it was NEEDED.

We should seek out games whic have more circumstantil abilities like that (above). Even just having to flank an enemy is a start. There're some games which don't even have that. I don't know why peole play popamole stuff. Sometimes I think it's just hard to make truly comprehensive, diverse fights. Maybe that's the real reason there's lots of popamole. See, it's not just players wantig popamole, although I'm sure some do, it's developrs straining to make fihts which're not popamole. If big companies hiring dozens of content makers struggle, imagine the small developers randomly generating the combat (and probably falling far shot).

Agreed, there should be games that provide such. Here is the thing though. I don't think every game should mimic such. I mean, not every game should appeal to the same crowd. I am not pretentious enough to think that my ideal game is the best, that everyone should agree with me and play the games I like. I think there are many types of genres, many types of play focuses, styles and expectations. I think all are valid to those who they appeal to, I don't think anything can be rubber stamped and made to encompass all players. That is the failure of game designers. They think like manipulating marketers who they worship. They think they can appeal to all types of gamers. They can't and attempting to do so only serves that lowest common denominator.

Game companies need to accept they won't be mainstream, that they won't be the Hollywood star, the big pay day, etc... If they accept that and hold to their dream focus of development, they will achieve success with their audience. They "may" even become "superstars" (ie the 11 developers from ID Software who made a little thing called "DOOM"), but as long as they shoot for modesty, they will be successful if their vision is good. Brad's vision is that and there is enough to follow it and make them successful. They so far, understand this and continue on at that pace.

 

[Xenich]

A REAL fight has healing, crowd control, debuffing, bufing, switching targets, close and ranged combat, rezzing and so on.

Heh, maybe if you're Jesus. I've never heard of this happening in an actual fight, though. Even Jesus took a good several days to come back as a zombie, and nobody actually helped him do that. But yes, fights really need more than "some 'tank' characters rotating 'taunts' to get a dumb AI to mindlessly attack them regardless of its better tactical options". Speaking of this, what is it with people and the belief that "tanks" shouldn't do meaningful damage, merely stand there and take a beating? REAL tanks have big freaking CANNONS on them, and they do not "tank". An actual tank that simply sat there and absorbed punishment would quickly be destroyed. This particular term and the evolution of the role annoys me to no end. It used to be that warrior-type classes were tanks because they were both tough AND hard-hitting, and this has mutated to the point where they're now intended as impotent bricks that should nonetheless somehow be targeted despite their general lack of tactical threat value.

And frankly, I don't really think that "healing" should be a something that is a thing in every combat system. That sort of thing should rightly be confined to fantasy, there's pretty much no such thing in real life.

You fight much in RL Norfleet?

Most fights in RL are... well... over in seconds. Never been in a fight that didn't end with me hitting the person and ending it in that span. This is how RL combat is. It isn't a fancy set of counter and reaction moves, it isn't even like boxing on TV. It is usually me hitting you and you hitting the ground. That is how fights are, with me at least. Now granted I am trained in fighting as such, but even in fights with trained fighters, it is quick in most cases. Those UFC matches you see? Yeah, umm... that is TV. As I said, it is me hitting you, you hitting the ground.

So, I don't care about the instant gratification of a fight. I like the strategy of attrition that a game fight provides. It is like a chess game, a constant means of watching your statistics and evaluating the resolutions as events change. Each class provides many different solutions to a given issue. This is the enjoyment.


If REAL fighting is your case, by all means, go out and do some real fighting. I honestly encourage it (My San Soo instructor used to encourage going to bars and looking for a fight to experience hateful aggression), but that isn't gaming. Gaming is different. If I want to test my abilities as you seem to go on about, well.. I wouldn't bother with a stupid fucking video game, why... I would go out in the real world and put my money where my mouth is.

So, here is a suggestion from a guy who has been there, done that. Go fight some real physical fights, then... once you have done that, you might understand the aspects of play I mention.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Norfleet, don't read the words too closely. YOu guys I think are arguing because you staring at pixels. Endless repeating thesamne things. We're all of us, mostly, in these forums, reading the words too closely. All I was trying to say was JUST burning offers me nothing, as far as fights go. Nothing happenin. And when I sad REAL I wasn't referring to realism.

I think i'm referring to variety... thinking on my feet... s*** happening.

Call it what you will: repetitious, grindy, button mashing, burning, popamole, blah blah. It ain't fun.

zzzzzzzzzzz......

I want to bring up somethign else. I used to play DDO. It was an ok game, but definitely not EQ. One of the things which bothered me was how grouping "happened". I always ended up not liking it. So we met and entered the dungoen. God so far. Then everybody shoots off like cannons and the mission is over before it started. If I've not done the misson before, I don't know what hapenned. I didn't even get their names. A heard a few grunts. I ended up concluding it was too fast paced for me and nobody talked about anything much. So I went back to soloing. Soloing was/is nice because I can go at my own pace and actualy get what's going on. I can read the quest text. I can take my time. But overall DDO felt socially stale and only playable by soloing.

I remember grouping in EQ being distinctly different. Much slower. More social. But more repetitious because of camping. I do fondly recall the chatting. EQ was as much about chatting as it was gaming. Mostly because of downtime. Yet soloing missions in DDO there was more story/character/drama/voiceover than any soloing in EQ. EQ rewarded grinding. In EQ you find an area and kill until it's a science. Teh game rewards you. DDO pushes you to move on and do new missions by cutting returns if you grind.

I had some moments in DDO which were special. Mostly related to environment. I liked to see what the NPCs said. Some would say fun things when htey pathed. It wasn't tied to a quest. Just background stuf. I also sometimes would do those outside quest areas and just take in a beautiful view of the landd. Solving the puzzles/quests myself kept me busy.

I don't play DDo anymore and probably never will. Too much cash shop. Almost everything was instanced too.

Does pacing matter? I think it does. How do you get people to come together to met social needs and yet still meet the pacing requirements of indivdiuals? Individuals will have differnet pacing requirements, ya?

 

[Xenich]

I want to bring up somethign else. I used to play DDO. It was an ok game, but definitely not EQ. One of the things which bothered me was how grouping "happened". I always ended up not liking it. So we met and entered the dungoen. God so far. Then everybody shoots off like cannons and the mission is over before it started. If I've not done the misson before, I don't know what hapenned. I didn't even get their names. A heard a few grunts. I ended up concluding it was too fast paced for me and nobody talked about anything much. So I went back to soloing. Soloing was/is nice because I can go at my own pace and actualy get what's going on. I can read the quest text. I can take my time. But overall DDO felt socially stale and only playable by soloing.

That was late DDO, after it was turned into a mainstream MMO grind. There was a time when you had to work with your group, pay attention, support, etc... The result of your explantion is what WoW design did to all the other games which is why I and many others despise the Wow generation. They destroyed our games because they were the money bags to which the companies focused on.

I remember grouping in EQ being distinctly different. Much slower. More social. But more repetitious because of camping. I do fondly recall the chatting. EQ was as much about chatting as it was gaming. Mostly because of downtime. Yet soloing missions in DDO there was more story/character/drama/voiceover than any soloing in EQ. EQ rewarded grinding. In EQ you find an area and kill until it's a science. Teh game rewards you. DDO pushes you to move on and do new missions. It caps the reward and gives declining returns if you grind.

That is because EQ was already solidified as a certain experience and in those early days, gated most players. Most "WoW" like players didn't even last long enough in EQ to even get to a group, much less setup social standards within the community. This is what kept most people from setting up an specific evaluation of EQ. Most simply said "too hard... boring system... fucking hard.... I died... fuck getting my body... fuck this game!!!!" and that is what most who hate the game know about it. That is, they didn't play it long enough to have any real opinion of it. Thing is, most of them were the console casual types and they developed their understanding of EQ and its systems based on a very ignorant and surface understanding. DDO had the same problems as when the game was difficult when its player base were the small and dedicated, it was too hard and too unforgiving for the common player. The later DDO became a joke, which is why you saw group play turn into WoWfest speed runs.

I had some moments in DDO which were special. Mostly related to environment. I liked to see what the NPCs said. Some would say fun things when htey pathed. It wasn't tied to a quest. Just background stuf. I also sometimes would do those outside quest areas and just take in a beautiful view of the landd. Solving the puzzles/quests myself kept me busy.

Does pacing matter? I think it does. How do you get people to come together to met social needs and yet still meet the pacing requirements of indivdiuals? Individuals will have differnet pacing requirements, ya?

For me, DDO was the mechanics. I mean, a Rogue shined in that game. I loved the extreme puzzle dungeons, even though I wasn't a rogue (that is, I never made one in my reincarnation rounds). Rogues had an advantage, but it was amazing to see how no single class was able to do everything. With the trap zones, A rogue, then barb, or monk, or cleric with the right spells, could do ok getting through trapped areas. Other classes had a harder time, had to spec for such ability to avoid that damage. It really was a strategic game (and frankly, I am confounded why these fucking idiot "Oh, I am an RPG player" on Codex didn't have common thread on the game).

Here is the problem. People are not what they claim and a lot of this site is just popamole crap. This is the fact of the matter.

 

[Norfleet]

Does pacing matter? I think it does. How do you get people to come together to met social needs and yet still meet the pacing requirements of indivdiuals? Individuals will have differnet pacing requirements, ya?

Man, getting people together is a pain in the neck, too. Imagine that you're trying to assemble a team of 20 men. All of your men are caffeine-addicted no-lifers who are on 95% of the time (23 hours a day). You have a 36% chance that everyone is available. The remaining 64% of the time, the server is down. The odds just get worse when you start talking about normal people.

 

[Norfleet]

You fight much in RL Norfleet?

Been in a fair number. Survived.

Most fights in RL are... well... over in seconds. Never been in a fight that didn't end with me hitting the person and ending it in that span. This is how RL combat is. It isn't a fancy set of counter and reaction moves, it isn't even like boxing on TV. It is usually me hitting you and you hitting the ground. That is how fights are, with me at least. Now granted I am trained in fighting as such, but even in fights with trained fighters, it is quick in most cases. Those UFC matches you see? Yeah, umm... that is TV. As I said, it is me hitting you, you hitting the ground.

Yeah, that matches my experiences. Lots of circling for an opening, then someone strikes and someone falls. That's combat between two humans who know how to fight fought for realsies. That part isn't really captured in the game either.

However, I did mention that there are OTHER THINGS that can be fighting. While fights between humans are typically quite short, fights between, say, warships, can take a good duration, and if someone explodes in mere minutes, something has gone very wrong. Heck, combat between armored knights isn't super-fast either. All that armor really slows things down, and it's a process of trying to knock your opponent down so you can run him through. You can see this kind of thing in period manuals, they use their swords more to push and shove, rather than to slash and stab, because you need proper leverage to skewer him through all that metal.

 

[Xenich]

Yeah, that matches my experiences. Lots of circling for an opening, then someone strikes and someone falls. That's combat between two humans who know how to fight fought for realsies. That part isn't really captured in the game either.

That is why I was asking... I have had a few I have known who had the disassociation between physical real world conflict and that of the virtual. Needless to say, their interests change when they experienced reality. That is not to say that all have such aversions, but... overall the "rush" of the "fight" is lessened once you have actually physically been present for such. I like the rush and respect the "in the heat of the moment" play that PvP has to offer, but... as I have aged, well... the "reflexive" combat has dwindling interest for me. Though to be honest, I thought "Age of Wushu" to be interesting in that respect (Honestly, I didn't play it long enough to give it an honest opinion) and I thought this would be a game that you would likely be after due to its skill based system?

However, I did mention that there are OTHER THINGS that can be fighting. While fights between humans are typically quite short, fights between, say, warships, can take a good duration, and if someone explodes in mere minutes, something has gone very wrong. Heck, combat between armored knights isn't super-fast either. All that armor really slows things down, and it's a process of trying to knock your opponent down so you can run him through. You can see this kind of thing in period manuals, they use their swords more to push and shove, rather than to slash and stab, because you need proper leverage to skewer him through all that metal.

Do you play chess much? I mean, from gauging your responses, I would assume you are a chess enthusiasts? You seem to like to obsess over systems, to master them and you seem to enjoy the aspect of such competition. Are you a chess master? If not? Why? It seems perfect for your focus and style of play.

 

[Ranselknulf]

Been too busy to read every post in this thread but I get the feeling you both are arguing for your perfect vision of what an online game should be.

I think most of us probably agree on 90% of what an online game should be, it's just that last 10% of the recipe that we can't agree on. The problem with most "hardcore" gamers is they think everybody who doesn't agree with them 100% is there enemy and must be battered into submission. Most of the last 10% issues can be addressed in multiple ways. No game is ever 100% to your liking. Deal with is bros.