World of Whorecraft: Battle for Asseroth

[Angthoron]

Yeah, LotRO vanilla dungeons were pretty good, very much on level with WoW's best. Fornost was actually a ruined castle, and not a theme park, and it was goddamned huge, and often complex. And the Rift raid was actually amazing.

And yeah, it had a couple of mechanics to bring - Attacks of Opportunity (either from lucky crits, or initiated by Burglar or Captain), which stunned the boss for a few seconds, and the party had a chance to line up and select a colour for a 6-colour combo. Some did nothing but just do what you selected, like do some direct damage or heal or restore mana, or place a dot, but some were pretty complex crap that either was pre-agreed upon, or someone would call out. Some boss fights were near-impossible without proper execution of these, and all it'd take is like 5 seconds to line it up. Take a brief look here to get the idea: http://www.lotrolife.com/fellowship_combos/

Another - far lamer - mechanic was Dread/Hope, which basically debuffed your stats if you were under Dread and you could either soldier on (often to disastrous effects) or use some Hope-boosting consumables (craftable back then) to counter it or even outbuff yourself. Nothing special, and to be fair I always felt it was artificial as hell - kinda like resist gear for certain raids. Of course, it also meant you were willing to commit, I guess.

So yeah, vanilla LotRO was solid. Spent a very enjoyable year with my ex in it, both enjoyed it, then Moria kinda ended up killing that fun at some point.

 

[subotaiy]

My favourite area was the north of Angmar, both the Carn Dum and Rift parts.
Moria was a pretty well designed and memorable mega-dungeon also (except Foundations of Stone, that was terrible both design and lore wise); it was only annoying because you had to fight goblins like every 3 meters, but some liked this way of making it more difficult.
I still remember when i discovered that you can drop that well in the upper sections and fall directly down to waterworks (my favorite part).
Mirkwood is where the game lost interest to me.
I wonder if i still have my 65 loremaster available. I often have the temptation to reinstall it, because this was the only MMO i really enjoyed playing, but all the members of my small kinship moved to other pastures.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Sounds amusing that someone would defend the company thats selling for nothing stuff that theyve worked long hours to achieve, sounds funny that people are paying not to play. Or to skip the worst part of the game, and if it is the worst part of the game why is it even there.
etc, etc, etc.

The whole concept of 'working' at playing a computer game (unpaid work at that) sounds amusing.

No it doesnt, the whole concept of not earning your victories in a game sounds amusing and like its missing the whole point, especially in an RPG.

I can't think of any crpgs where I've 'earnt' my victories in the sense of 'working', and I"ve been playing crpgs since the first Wizardry game came out in the early 80s. I work for money - fortunately crpgs (with the exception of mmorpgs) and strategy games provide a fun recreational activity after I've put the kids to bed.

If you think that playing a crpg is 'working', I can only assume that you've never worked a real job.

 

[Xenich]

My favourite area was the north of Angmar, both the Carn Dum and Rift parts.
Moria was a pretty well designed and memorable mega-dungeon also (except Foundations of Stone, that was terrible both design and lore wise); it was only annoying because you had to fight goblins like every 3 meters, but some liked this way of making it more difficult.
I still remember when i discovered that you can drop that well in the upper sections and fall directly down to waterworks (my favorite part).
Mirkwood is where the game lost interest to me.
I wonder if i still have my 65 loremaster available. I often have the temptation to reinstall it, because this was the only MMO i really enjoyed playing, but all the members of my small kinship moved to other pastures.

Moria layout was interesting and looked cool in many areas. Though that is the expansion they started killing the game. While some of the fight mechanics were good in the Moria dungeons, the fast run design (rush to get them done under so many minutes) was an obvious attempt at appealing to the WoW casual crowd. The changes to loot (token based) destroyed it even more turning the dungeons into a clone of Wrath of the Lich King. Add in changes to weapons with the lotto legendary system which was obviously designed to setup FTP store gimmicks, well... Moria was for the most part the death rattle of a niche focused quality game.

 

[Xenich]

Sounds amusing that someone would defend the company thats selling for nothing stuff that theyve worked long hours to achieve, sounds funny that people are paying not to play. Or to skip the worst part of the game, and if it is the worst part of the game why is it even there.
etc, etc, etc.

The whole concept of 'working' at playing a computer game (unpaid work at that) sounds amusing.

No it doesnt, the whole concept of not earning your victories in a game sounds amusing and like its missing the whole point, especially in an RPG.

I can't think of any crpgs where I've 'earnt' my victories in the sense of 'working', and I"ve been playing crpgs since the first Wizardry game came out in the early 80s. I work for money - fortunately crpgs (with the exception of mmorpgs) and strategy games provide a fun recreational activity after I've put the kids to bed.

If you think that playing a crpg is 'working', I can only assume that you've never worked a real job.

A gamer finds enjoyment in being challenged by the development of their character in a game. A non-gamer wants to just be entertained and sees every task of development as a chore, a job.

That is in its simplest form, the problem with the industry. Games are not designed for people who want to play games, but those who just want to be entertained.

 

[DraQ]

Sounds amusing that someone would defend the company thats selling for nothing stuff that theyve worked long hours to achieve, sounds funny that people are paying not to play. Or to skip the worst part of the game, and if it is the worst part of the game why is it even there.
etc, etc, etc.

The whole concept of 'working' at playing a computer game (unpaid work at that) sounds amusing.

No it doesnt, the whole concept of not earning your victories in a game sounds amusing and like its missing the whole point, especially in an RPG.

That depends on what kind of 'work' it is.
The problem with WoW and majority of MMOs, as well as other grindan-heavy games is that their sort of 'work' translates to the kind of work you could expect from most people's day job.

 

[Xenich]

And the Rift raid was actually amazing.

Yes. In fact, in my opinion it is probably one of the best designed dungeons in all of MMO gaming. They made a 12 man raid feel like 40 man raids of WoW or even some of the 60-70 man raids of EQ. The mechanics were amazing for just two groups and the players had to really have their game honed in order to succeed. Heck, I even went back with 4 friends after we were at the level cap of RoR and it was still one hell of a rough dungeon.

 

[Xenich]

Sounds amusing that someone would defend the company thats selling for nothing stuff that theyve worked long hours to achieve, sounds funny that people are paying not to play. Or to skip the worst part of the game, and if it is the worst part of the game why is it even there.
etc, etc, etc.

The whole concept of 'working' at playing a computer game (unpaid work at that) sounds amusing.

No it doesnt, the whole concept of not earning your victories in a game sounds amusing and like its missing the whole point, especially in an RPG.

That depends on what kind of 'work' it is.
The problem with WoW and majority of MMOs, as well as other grindan-heavy games is that their sort of 'work' translates to the kind of work you could expect from most people's day job.

Grinds have to exist. Point is not the grind, but its implementation. EQ was filled with grinds, but there was always a reason/benefit worth that effort be it the next level/AA, the item that would improve you so you could do more difficult content, or the end game gear that was useful into the next expansion. The grinds all produced rewards of worth. WoW backloads all of its grinds to end game for pointless rewards that have no use in the content and is invalidated by each release of new content.

 

[DraQ]

Grinds have to exist.

Why?

 

[Ranselknulf]

Grinds have to exist.

Why?

They don't have to exist, but with the way most mmo's are developed they provide a somewhat limited incentive to play through older content.

Very few, if any, mmo's believe in developing new content that doesn't supercede older content, so if there was no grind at all, players would never see the older content because it would all be obsolete. Although, I do think raising the level cap on a game with every expansion is a lazy way to "balance" a game, because their solution is to make the older gear / content outperformed by newer stuff. They don't have to spend as much time fiddling with new content to make it fit in with older stuff.

 

[Metro]

Grinds exist because they make more money.

 

[Angthoron]

Grinds have to exist.

Why?

Generally people elect to grind voluntarily to get ahead in some way or another. Grind isn't required in western model MMOs per se, but if you actually want to A) Be fancier than 95%, B) Be more effective than 95% or C) Be able to buy the New Shit faster than 95%, you'll likely end up grinding. Also, if you're smart, you can skip most of that grind anyway, one way or the other.

And the Rift raid was actually amazing.

Yes. In fact, in my opinion it is probably one of the best designed dungeons in all of MMO gaming. They made a 12 man raid feel like 40 man raids of WoW or even some of the 60-70 man raids of EQ. The mechanics were amazing for just two groups and the players had to really have their game honed in order to succeed. Heck, I even went back with 4 friends after we were at the level cap of RoR and it was still one hell of a rough dungeon.

Haven't played since late-ish MoM, but yeah, I agree. It pretty much nailed it.

 

[Lhynn]

A gamer finds enjoyment in being challenged by the development of their character in a game. A non-gamer wants to just be entertained and sees every task of development as a chore, a job.

That is in its simplest form, the problem with the industry. Games are not designed for people who want to play games, but those who just want to be entertained.

Nope, thats about the stupidest thing ive read from you since your argument with hiver.
Challenges and task can overlap and often do, i dont get why you make a distinction there. A flawed argument from someone that doesnt understand what makes mmos special.
Grind does not need to exist, yet another dumb statement. Mmos should discourage grinding.

Azrael the cat Work: sustained physical or mental effort to overcome obstacles and achieve an objective or result.

There are 2 ways to keep people playing mmos that are cost effective and improve the experience, the social aspect and giving the player new and fresh goals to strive for.

The social aspect i dont even need to explain, its all about interacting with other players, you need to make it a necesity, you need to force players to interact with the rest of the player base, single player content is about the stupidest idea i have seen in an mmo and is only sensible in a tutorial.

Goals, you know what i mean, you give players challenges to overcome, from crafting to new an interesting ways to increase power, flexibility, wealth, social status, etc. Reward without work is meaningless shit.
Studying the tactics of an enemy boss, the skill of different classes, the gameplay style of other players, etc. They are rewarded with success and they are in fact, work.
Fuck grind, you limit how much they can do and give them a fuck ton of things to do, you let them decide how they spend their time but you dont let them burn out, because that is fucking retarded. Not only do you achieve that, you give an added value to whatever they happen to be doing, because its limited.

 

[Angthoron]

I'm really not sure what your disagreement here is since you're kinda stating the same thing as Xenich but in different words. I suppose that is amusing in its own way, though.

 

[Lhynn]

Perhaps i misunderstood when he said grind is needed in mmos and that tasks are bad.

 

[Angthoron]

The way they're implemented now is bad - basically all tasks are becoming tedious pointless and unchallenging grind. For the casual crowd, there's now LFR, which means they'll try some of the supposedly challenging content, rush through it in one evening, and be bored, while people that are doing "proper" raids will likely burn out on the same mundane tasks because that's what's required to not drop off the performance curve outside the raids. Sadly, it looks like next expansion will just further split the casual and the hardcore, possibly to a point where the two might even stop intersecting. Amusingly, stuff like quests etc that may even be entertaining are so badly on rails and lacking alternative, that doing them more than once already feels like a grind, too.

This actually shows on communities - several servers have started dying out since appearance of LFG and LFR, because you don't really need to form social ties as a casual player anymore, and a lot of raid groups (including the one I'm in) have suffered membership attrition pretty badly, since before, if you wanted to see, say, Arthas dead, you'd need to commit and join, gradually build up your power and skill and knowledge, but now, you can just screw all that noise and go for it in LFR.

So yeah, basically what designers do now is substitute conscious grind with subconscious grind. It still fills your time and is tedious, but it's now in a different package.

 

[Lhynn]

You really should try AoW mang, for all its flaws (and it has a fuckton) if you put up with them youll find a gem, a lot of good ideas perfectly executed in a sea of bad ideas poorly executed. Sounds like a game the codex could learn to love.

by try i mean about a week or 2 playing and learning tho, its not something you can just pick up and play.

 

[Angthoron]

Once I have more time, I might. Checked a couple of vids, looks like it might have potential.

Though I guess newbs being kidnapped to someone's sex dungeons must be a thing.

 

[Ranselknulf]

Any game that has a challenge or skill requirement will involve a grind of some sort, and by skill i mean an actual physical skill you need to practice to get good at. Hand eye coordination etc.


In a perfect game, I think of grind as being synonymous with "practice". although most games view grind as a means to keep players occupied with inane tasks, that doesn't mean grinds can't be part of a larger skill / progression system in a game. It's just the people who design these games aren't interested in making challenging games, but rather keeping people occupied.

Most mmo's are really just an adult day care system. Keep dangling your keys in front of the man-childs face to keep them entertained.

 

[Lhynn]

Once I have more time, I might. Checked a couple of vids, looks like it might have potential.

Though I guess newbs being kidnapped to someone's sex dungeons must be a thing.

For bots maybe, most people just sell to the closest buyer for fear of getting pounded into the dirt. it is also the only way to get real money.

Where the game shines is in the depth of character development. every character can learn every skill in the game, and there are over 500 of them, the vast majority separated into skillsets, each unique in its mechanics.

at the core its a game of rock paper scissors, you can attack, block or feint. attack is pretty self explanatory, you have 2 kinds of attacks tho, those that lock the enemy into an animation and those that affect an area. blocks mean parry, you simply take the blow and greatly reduce the damage, nulify any special effect it may have, and feints, which are weaker attacks that can be nulified by any attack, but that break blocks.

You have internal skills, also called inners, which are passive and most of them have triggers. you can only have one active at the time and it determines your basic stats, like hp, mp, block energy, attributes and usually has an special effect.

Leveling skills is time based, p. much like EvE. with varying times.

The game has around 30.000 daily quests that p. much no one does. But they are not useless, its just that their usefulness is unknown. This is because of the Random Encounter mechanic. there are around 10.000 named npcs, each and every one with their background, motivation and aligment, and the opinion they have on you is relevant to get picked by this lotery. You are able to friend them with a very rustic relationship mechanic (they can also hate you and as ive understood this can be a good thing as well). Random encounters consist basically on npcs coming to meet you with a plea or give you something both things reward you (usually with rare and very valuable things).

This is just the surface of the game, havent even mentioned most of the core mechanics.

I can tell you there is a mechanic to become an eunuch, and also to impart that fate on others. there are weddings, and you can crash them. The balance is fucked up but its there, as in, not every set can successfuly beat every other set provided a decent player is using it, but there are no invincible sets. only exception to this are 2 sets and 2 inners that are heads and shoulders above p. much anything else, but they are forbidden in most serious competitions.

 

[Xenich]

Grinds have to exist.

Why?

Take any game and then remove the systems you call grinds. Then, think about how that affects character development. Part of the problem here I think is if we are on the same page of what "grind" means.

 

[Xenich]

A gamer finds enjoyment in being challenged by the development of their character in a game. A non-gamer wants to just be entertained and sees every task of development as a chore, a job.

That is in its simplest form, the problem with the industry. Games are not designed for people who want to play games, but those who just want to be entertained.

Nope, thats about the stupidest thing ive read from you since your argument with hiver.
Challenges and task can overlap and often do, i dont get why you make a distinction there. A flawed argument from someone that doesnt understand what makes mmos special.
Grind does not need to exist, yet another dumb statement. Mmos should discourage grinding.

So your response is to insult me, claim I am wrong, then... run along.

You are a shining example of our educational system. No... I mean it, you are fucking brilliant. Why, I couldn't think at your level even if I beat myself in the head with a bat for hours. You are my hero!

 

[Xenich]

Any game that has a challenge or skill requirement will involve a grind of some sort, and by skill i mean an actual physical skill you need to practice to get good at. Hand eye coordination etc.


In a perfect game, I think of grind as being synonymous with "practice". although most games view grind as a means to keep players occupied with inane tasks, that doesn't mean grinds can't be part of a larger skill / progression system in a game. It's just the people who design these games aren't interested in making challenging games, but rather keeping people occupied.

Most mmo's are really just an adult day care system. Keep dangling your keys in front of the man-childs face to keep them entertained.

Yes, grinds are just progression mechanisms. I look at a game systems today as pointless grinds, mainly because they are easy tasks (to make them accessible to everyone) that are back loaded (ie stacked all at the end of the game) to keep people busy until the new content comes out. Grinds exist in every game and are for the most part required. Level systems are a grind, but apparently these days... having to take a long time to go through the levels so you can experience the content at the level is taboo, nope... everyone wants to rush to the end game and then grind pointless tasks for Orc#12 over and over each day until they collect enough shiny tokens to buy a purple gear item they can use to go kill the same content over and over faster...

Grinds need to be cleverly placed, segregated throughout the systems. RPG systems are about chasing carrots (ie levels, skills, gear, etc...) and in an MMO, that "journey" should take time and require "real" effort (skill, thought, planning) to obtain. The grinds in games today are unintelligent, without skill, pointless, and mundane.

 

[Lhynn]

You are a shining example of our educational system. No... I mean it, you are fucking brilliant. Why, I couldn't think at your level even if I beat myself in the head with a bat for hours. You are my hero!

Sorry, i actually missinterpreted what you said in that quote and under the asumption i didnt need to really answer it because it was obvious.Now that i re-read it, yes you are right, not gonna make excuses, went full retard.


I did adress someting that i did not agree with that you posted below, "grind has to exist". i guess i have to clarify that i understand grind as the continuous repetition of a task. It is not grind if you do it once a day, or once or twice a week, for a couple hours.
I do think that replaying old content is fine in an mmo, at least while you implement ways for players to generate their own content, As long as the system doesnt encourage constant repetition of the same task in any way.

 

[Xenich]

You are a shining example of our educational system. No... I mean it, you are fucking brilliant. Why, I couldn't think at your level even if I beat myself in the head with a bat for hours. You are my hero!

Sorry, i actually missinterpreted what you said in that quote and under the asumption i didnt need to really answer it because it was obvious.Now that i re-read it, yes you are right, not gonna make excuses, went full retard.

No worries.

I did adress someting that i did not agree with that you posted below, "grind has to exist". i guess i have to clarify that i understand grind as the continuous repetition of a task. It is not grind if you do it once a day, or once or twice a week, for a couple hours.
I do think that replaying old content is fine in an mmo, at least while you implement ways for players to generate their own content, As long as the system doesnt encourage constant repetition of the same task in any way.

Sure it is. WoW is nothing but a grind and it hides them behind "dailies" which are nothing more than repetitious grinds where you are forced to wait in order to complete them enough times for a reward, time is irrelevant... if you have to repeat it, its a grind regardless of the time delay in between. A grind exists in all games from a generic definition. The task of obtaining exp is nothing more than grind enough to gain the next level, to which you repeat it for the next and next. Some call having to kill trash mobs on their way to a boss, a grind. Repeating content has to happen, period... UNTIL the game releases enough content that repeating content isn't not required. A good example of that is EQ2. There is so much content that you can't do it all the first run through. It is however impractical to expect a new game to release with that much content. Even if you do that and provide enough quests that it is never required to repeat one, well... it can still be a grind and people will notice it especially if those quests are generic in purpose and task. You can offer someone a 100 different quests of "kill x" or "gather x" and it will be considered a grind. It can't be escaped.

What you can do though... is to cleverly place the grind throughout the progression with various implementation tricks and features (ie don't front or back load it, even it out across all levels, content and features). Why have the requirements to get to the end of the game be ridiculously fast and easy only to have players run mundane repetitious tasks over and over for rewards that will only be used on the content that people are already completing? Why not make it take a long time to get to max level, and then put more attention into each area that people progress in creating a reason for them to stay and work on the content? EQ did it by making leveling very hard, combat very difficult, and group play dang near required in every aspect (also quests were major objectives taking a lot of effort, thought, exploration, thinking, searching, etc... to complete). They made dungeons that could not be completed by a single level range. For instance, Befallen was a dungeon where at the early character levels you stayed on the first floor and tried to obtain the key for the next floor as well as working on some quests that were on the first floor. Then... as you gained levels, you could move into the lower levels of the dungeons with different mobs, different encounters, and quest progressions. That is how dungeons were designed. It took a long time to level, but then it also took a long time to get rewards (spawns and placeholders with rare item drops). Also consider that this gave clear means for players to test themselves, push the limits of how far they can go and handle.


Did you repeat content? Yes... quite often in fact, but the repetition was not the goal, it was simply what you went through on your way to the goal. If you were trying to get a certain item from a named on floor 3 of befallen, you still had to go through the other two levels... well... unless you were a strong group and could survive dropping down the well into a room filled with the hardest mobs in the dungeon or had tricks to do such (right classes with the right spells/abilities, etc..).

Some would argue that such things create rifts with players who can't always keep up with each other to which they fall behind. I used to hear this complaint constantly in EQ and you know what? It is a valid complaint, BUT... the solution is not to dumb the entire game down for everyone, rather.... you implement features like EQ2 did with mentoring (allows a higher level player to scale down to a lower level player to quest, do dungeons, etc...). That is the type of solution you provide.

Anyway, I digress. Point is, grinds will always exist and the only way to completely remove them is to release 10 years of expansions on release or make everything extremely easy and quick so people can do all the content and quit playing till new content comes. The former isn't practical for the most part and the latter is pretty much what MMOs have become. Basically, they made them all into easy single player games with end game gimmicks that only entrap the bored and obsessive.