What are mmos with non shit character development?

[anvi]

SWG, UO, AC, various others were good too. Basically the older the better :/ Also the elephant in the room is EVE Online which is just enormous in scope.

 

[dag0net]

I think.. people play mmo's in order to convince themselves that even if they were born an orc, they'd still have to listen to dorks filling up the airwaves, they'd still complete this task that their elders said was EVER SO IMPORTANT SAVE THE WORLDY TYPE THING ONLY U CAN DO IT!!! only to find seven million other people did that task today with exactly the same char already and it doesn't matter a shit. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe char development matters.

Meanwhile, my latest foray into mmorpg's showed: NPC's put more thought into their conversations than PC's do.

 

[Jacob]

WoW used to be an adult game with complexity

 

[Beastro]

It is sad what this entire genre has become. WoW was a dumbed down kiddie version of EverQuest devoid of strategy and consequence, right from the start. Yet today early WoW is looked up to as some sort of golden age, back before all the changes. So if we are now dumbing down games that were already dumbed down to begin with, maybe it is time for the human race to just call it a day. There is only so far a species can devolve until we are a bunch of monkeys pressing keys on a device created by our ancient ancestors.

It's looked on as a golden age because of the mistakes EQ made that made it go into decline right as WoW came out. EQ was never planned with gear and DPS archs planned out, gear and many abilities had massive increases in power and the devs had to struggle to fix all that shit while laying the game out more with the future in mind.

On top of that EQ had the GoD/OoW era which most people hated, though for mostly terrible reasons, as MMOs really struggled to find their place after the rush EQ had started (and as others like UO faded into complete obscurity). Right then the EQ clone that was original WoW came out and was a breath of fresh air, like food to a man starving for days, but that initial masked the fact that starving man was given fast food and that's pretty much all he'd be given to eat for the rest of his life.

As for the end musing? No, just need the old thing that Mankind has always had to knock sense into us. Sadly that thing is collapse and disaster. Things unfortunately seem to need to get worse before they will get better.

I think.. people play mmo's in order to convince themselves that even if they were born an orc, they'd still have to listen to dorks filling up the airwaves, they'd still complete this task that their elders said was EVER SO IMPORTANT SAVE THE WORLDY TYPE THING ONLY U CAN DO IT!!! only to find seven million other people did that task today with exactly the same char already and it doesn't matter a shit. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe char development matters.

Meanwhile, my latest foray into mmorpg's showed: NPC's put more thought into their conversations than PC's do.

I remember the old days of EQ when raiding and raiders were an odd playstyle only a minority played the game as. Most everyone chose their class, their race, their character based on a real sense of roleplaying, even if a light, laid back form of it. Playing an Iksar and having most newbies around me abusing any other races found wandering through the zone in chat while many made race or alignment specific guilds with the intent of only PKing those their race hatted or their alignment opposed without the need fo server rules to dictate it for them that that is what they should do. Watching that fade was sad and has long made me wonder how much fun it would have been to have played UO when that zeitgeist was really in it's full swing.

and PVP was taken out.

PvP never lasts. If you find a good game with PvP, enjoy it while you can explicitly knowing you are living moments that will become fond memories because of that.

Expecting PvP to remain good for a prolonged period of time, much less PvP servers lasting for much time, is like being some war loving oddball like de Wiart and assuming the fun war will last forever. It won't, because most everyone else hates it and there's only so long the sheep (or lesser wolves) on PvP servers will stick before those that dominate PvP drive most everyone off, or make it simply so unfun the good old days are gone.

 

[anvi]

It's looked on as a golden age because of the mistakes EQ made that made it go into decline right as WoW came out. EQ was never planned with gear and DPS archs planned out, gear and many abilities had massive increases in power and the devs had to struggle to fix all that shit while laying the game out more with the future in mind.

I think gear was well planned after a while, from Kunark onwards there were full sets of good gear for each class and even quests for gear sets. I don't think WoW fixed EQ's mistakes as much as it made a more noob friendly casual version of EQ. Instead of dying being a harsh punishment, they made it so it didn't matter at all, you respawn as an invisible and invincible ghost and just go straight back to your corpse and carry on with barely any downtime at all. Instead of depth in the gameplay like sloppy players waking up mezzed mobs and causing a wipe, they dumbed it down so mezzed mobs become a sheep that nobody can interact with. Instead of people accidentally clicking attack when talking to a NPC, they made it so all NPCs couldn't be attacked. Instead of real dungeons with other people, you get instanced dungeons with no roamers, no worry of repops or splitting pulls or anything of consequence at all, and instead you just have a McDungeon where everything is finely tuned to be doable without any trouble. The only thing they did that wasn't dumbing down was changing the mob grind into a quest grind, which was a fair idea, but ultimately I found it more boring to have to run around grinding quests instead of sitting in one spot and grinding mobs of my choice.

The only thing WoW did that I liked was having some variety in what you do thanks to PVP Arenas and Battlegrounds. Other than that I think it is clearly a dumbed down, on rails, kids theme park version of a real MMO.

 

[dag0net]

it's not like a single game can't cope with more than one system. it's dumb to split the shards(pvp/non) off from each other entirely tho.

maybe not dumb, but pve w/o jeopardy (pretty much every mmo) is just entirely fucking lame.

i dont think most ppl care about actual choice, it's the definite progression they care about. Which is why so many games have levels, they don't make any sense except as comfort blankets.

 

[Beastro]

The only thing WoW did that I liked was having some variety in what you do thanks to PVP Arenas and Battlegrounds.

Pretty much agree with everything you said except the above quoted.

Battlegrounds completely fucked open world PvP, vacuumed it all up and made most people see no reason to even bother with it.

Beta stress test my guild, Flowers of Happiness, organized a huge raid on Astranaar on the last day, then repeatedly made raids on Alliance towns to take them over until they'd gather enough and drive us out before a see saw would ensue that was damn fun for a game with respawn mechanics like that. First "fix" against that was the BS with the Windrider NPC (Been so long I've forgotten the proper term for them) shit out mobs to keep people from killing them and then ganking people as they flew in unable to escape, then made guards have no respawn time to eventually drive people out.

All of that was organic, player created PvP content, but couldn't have that. I quit once Battlegrounds came in when they turned PvP into not only a grind for gear, but effectively reduced the last unique, human qualities in player opponents forcing both sides into a meatgrinder that was no different than slaughtering mobs.

What topped it off was what I mentioned before, players no longer bothered with open world PvP, since it gave almost no points compared to bttlegrounds, people started running by one another not giving a fuck, and when I'd do the good old fashioned thing of attacking any Alliance I ran by, which was a constant thing before battlegrounds, they'd keep running or even stand there waiting for me to finish them off so they could resume the run to wherever they were going as quickly as possible, usually to the battleground they were heading for.

Instead of creating a lore supported reason for two factions to go one another, they had to even engineer the PvP to be completely developer controlled.

Some in FoH kept the spirit alive. Blart (aka Fansy the Famous) went into newbie PKing in Redridge after twinking out a rogue, even going so far as to buy a second account so he could make an Alliance toon that enablde him to smacktalk with the other side like a proper fucking game with PvP would allow.

it's not like a single game can't cope with more than one system. it's dumb to split the shards(pvp/non) off from each other entirely tho.

maybe not dumb, but pve w/o jeopardy (pretty much every mmo) is just entirely fucking lame.

Both have to be built with it in mind. EQ never had PvP in mind when it came to development and the gear power arch rendered it fucked beyond repair two expansions in while later ones only made things worse by adding in abilities no longer with regard to their balancing in PvP. On top of that the Red servers were always a source of the worst CS problems with constant petitions that were pure whining on top of the legitimate hacking problems, and was the reason why Blizzard prevented cross faction communication in WoW even though it defeats much of the damn purpose for PvP. If you can't gloat and trade shots with your foes smacktalking, then players take the first massive step towards becoming merely highly intelligent mobs.

 

[anvi]

I would have liked open world PVP more if it wasn't for level 50s ganking me at level 15 and then corpse camping. I played on a PVP server and had a lot of fun with it, but those situations were pretty dumb. BGs I thought were great though. Not the greatest execution, but great idea, I loved doing CTF with fantasy characters instead of just guns.

 

[Sykar]

The only thing WoW did that I liked was having some variety in what you do thanks to PVP Arenas and Battlegrounds.

Pretty much agree with everything you said except the above quoted.

Battlegrounds completely fucked open world PvP, vacuumed it all up and made most people see no reason to even bother with it.

Beta stress test my guild, Flowers of Happiness, organized a huge raid on Astranaar on the last day, then repeatedly made raids on Alliance towns to take them over until they'd gather enough and drive us out before a see saw would ensue that was damn fun for a game with respawn mechanics like that. First "fix" against that was the BS with the Windrider NPC (Been so long I've forgotten the proper term for them) shit out mobs to keep people from killing them and then ganking people as they flew in unable to escape, then made guards have no respawn time to eventually drive people out.

All of that was organic, player created PvP content, but couldn't have that. I quit once Battlegrounds came in when they turned PvP into not only a grind for gear, but effectively reduced the last unique, human qualities in player opponents forcing both sides into a meatgrinder that was no different than slaughtering mobs.

What topped it off was what I mentioned before, players no longer bothered with open world PvP, since it gave almost no points compared to bttlegrounds, people started running by one another not giving a fuck, and when I'd do the good old fashioned thing of attacking any Alliance I ran by, which was a constant thing before battlegrounds, they'd keep running or even stand there waiting for me to finish them off so they could resume the run to wherever they were going as quickly as possible, usually to the battleground they were heading for.

Instead of creating a lore supported reason for two factions to go one another, they had to even engineer the PvP to be completely developer controlled.

Some in FoH kept the spirit alive. Blart (aka Fansy the Famous) went into newbie PKing in Redridge after twinking out a rogue, even going so far as to buy a second account so he could make an Alliance toon that enablde him to smacktalk with the other side like a proper fucking game with PvP would allow.

it's not like a single game can't cope with more than one system. it's dumb to split the shards(pvp/non) off from each other entirely tho.

maybe not dumb, but pve w/o jeopardy (pretty much every mmo) is just entirely fucking lame.

Both have to be built with it in mind. EQ never had PvP in mind when it came to development and the gear power arch rendered it fucked beyond repair two expansions in while later ones only made things worse by adding in abilities no longer with regard to their balancing in PvP. On top of that the Red servers were always a source of the worst CS problems with constant petitions that were pure whining on top of the legitimate hacking problems, and was the reason why Blizzard prevented cross faction communication in WoW even though it defeats much of the damn purpose for PvP. If you can't gloat and trade shots with your foes smacktalking, then players take the first massive step towards becoming merely highly intelligent mobs.

You mean first come first served ganking and corpse camping the shit out of the lowbies. Been there, done that, glad we got rid if it, was only fun to a tiny minority of pseudo elitists who were so laughably bad at PvP that most of them had to hide behind the mob so they could pretend they were worth a damn for playing 24/7.
That and the massive population dipsarities between servers where the vast majority of servers had like a 2:1 or higher Alliance population advantage over the Horde faction like we had on Deathwing but please do tell me more about "organic" PvP.

 

[jungl]

Most impactful one I played was dark age of camelot. Stuff like a slow race and fast race makes gameplay actually different in stuff like pvp. All the others bascially meh. Games like Eve and darkfall while there is plenty of stuff to skill up everyone is the same shit at high levels. DDO there really isn't character customization. I always thought DnD games had shit character customization that gave an illusion of depth using classes. Everyone is pigeonholed in certain builds. DDO you always want usually whatever is your class main stat followed by con. Most the skills are useless besides UMD. I actually found more character customization depth in some jrpg games and other crpgs then DnD.

 

[Beastro]

That and the massive population dipsarities between servers where the vast majority of servers had like a 2:1 or higher Alliance population advantage over the Horde faction like we had on Deathwing but please do tell me more about "organic" PvP.

Having conflicts and divisions develop naturally with a minimum of developer interference, as opposed to measures that wound up making things worse, like hard coded factions on WoW, or the home of sociopaths and the generally maladjusted on EQ, Sullon Zek where populations disparities reigned from day one with no way for the population to do anything about it besides reroll.

Even then a balance cannot last forever. Someone will get an advantage and people will either quit or jump ship to the winning side.

You mean first come first served ganking and corpse camping the shit out of the lowbies.

Former more than the latter any day. Corpse camping simply isn't fun, and it drives people away. It was often hard enough finding prey to kill much less actively trying to depopulate my server, something too many PvPers don't get, especially on emulated servers.

My rule was to gank people and then leave them alone for awhile until I'd run out of unfamiliar names to go after, if I ran into a genuine newbie starting out on his first toon he'd get whatever cloth or leather I'd taken off of others as well as whatever helpful advice I could offer. Even then I didn't want to grief them unless they started being a dick or tried to stir up more trouble. Oddly enough the twinks were often the worst dicks, made ganking a piece of their gear all the sweeter.

My favourite moments were when Nektulos got sick of me and the newbies united to try to run me and down corpse camp me, then my regen, strafe running and bow would chase them around the zone as I slowly picked them off. If they got me they had a good moment celebrating the death of the evil newbie pk while I was too happy to have gotten another one of those moments to care.

Was damn good fun that many found themselves enjoying too having someone they loved to hate and would crack up seeing me still going at it as they ran through the zone at higher levels. I hated when they took item loot off of Rallos. I'd run around with a rusty two handed sword and bow, the rest naked. After that, super twinked newbie PKs erupted all over with Fungi Tunics and more than enough HP and MR gear to make even the largest newbie army unable to kill them.

Most impactful one I played was dark age of camelot. Stuff like a slow race and fast race makes gameplay actually different in stuff like pvp.

That is one MMO I regret never playing at launch. I loved the PvP stories, like Rangers sneaking up on groups and sniping most of them down before they knew where the threat was coming from. Never heard of a game that had terrain and cover allow for those sorts of tactics before or since.

 

[Helton]

Most impactful one I played was dark age of camelot. Stuff like a slow race and fast race makes gameplay actually different in stuff like pvp. All the others bascially meh. Games like Eve and darkfall while there is plenty of stuff to skill up everyone is the same shit at high levels. DDO there really isn't character customization. I always thought DnD games had shit character customization that gave an illusion of depth using classes. Everyone is pigeonholed in certain builds. DDO you always want usually whatever is your class main stat followed by con. Most the skills are useless besides UMD. I actually found more character customization depth in some jrpg games and other crpgs then DnD.

Did you play DDO? It isn't just DnD's system. And there is a crapton of customization.

 

[Terpsichore]

Ragnarok Online.

 

[thesheeep]

Ragnarok Online.

Even had geometrical skill representation!