What your waiting for is called "Virtual Reality" now my friend. Wait for it. Its coming :P that will surely change gaming. However, not everyone will be able to handle it...thats why it will be a new era of gaming. It will split between gaming on a screen and gaming within a virtual world :P good days are coming...patients is key.

Originally posted by rastapastor

I've played games back then, i play games now and i don't find old games any harder than now...

 

I really don't understand this "ooo im an old school player and im mega pro, You, nowdays gamers, all suck!", it's bullshit. Games weren't harder 10-20 years ago, it's just nostalgia, u miss those old days, cuz u were young or u met some ppl (ye, gamers community sucks nowdays. U meet "old school" idiots who thinks they ate all brains and who have delusions that they are the most skilled players of all, or You meet nowdays trolls, who destroys enjoyment by their behaviour and i can agree here) or for whatever reason. 

 

I've been playing games for over 20 years.

The only thing I can agree with here is the community of gamers has changed for the worse because:

#1 mmorpgs and the internet are much more widely used now, and any idiot is playing them now.

#2 They have dumbed down games so idiots and trolls don't have any problem playing them.

As far as the games not getting any easier, this is sorely mistaken. I will explain what lineage 2 used to be like vs what it is now:

#1 teleporting used to cost too much gold, so people ran the distances between towns instead of teleporting (alot can and did happen during this time).

#2 No raidbosses were instanced. Most raid bosses took 2 full 9man parties to kill (and most of the time people still died). The end game raidbosses spawned once a week (random time with 16 hour window from the time it was killed), and because of the pvp, it would require not just a clan, but a coordination of an alliance (usually around 100+ players) to kill it. If there was no opposition, I would say the raid boss would take about 45 players to kill. This means it gave clans you (or someone in your group) at war with could ambush you. Also when they did the raidboss spawn events outside of town people were dropping their gear (which took a good 4-6 months to get a full set).

Now instead, all the end-game raid bosses are instanced and some take as much as a single party to kill.

#3 Leveling used to be grinding off of monsters and not quest-exp given. There were repeatable quests you could take to get extra exp and gold off the spot you were grinding, but the majority of your exp/gold came from grinding the same level mobs for months (sometimes years even). Not only that, but it required you to party up with people because you couldn't do it by yourself.

Now they have instanced daily quests that get you to 99 easy and can be solo'd.

#4 If you died to a monster you had a chance of dropping 1/5 items/gear. This made everyone in your party pay attention to what they were doing. If 1 person didn't do their job, the whole party would suffer for it (and usually kos the idiot that made them loose gear if they couldn't get back in time to retrieve it). People also lost a good chunk of exp that without a bishop willing to spend 30+mins to get to where you are and give you a high level rez, or buying a brez which was only obtained through special currency that took about 2 days to farm for, you would find yourself spending a good 4+ hours farming the exp back you lost.

Now you no longer loose items/gear dieing to monsters. Now clans have a passive buff called clan luck that gives 50% exp back upon death, mixed with clanhall rez (also wasn't offered before) will give another 50% (40% if stacked with 50% buff) exp back upon death loosing up to a maximum of 0.02% per death (takes about 5 minutes to get back).

I'll stop right here unless you want me to give more examples.

I remember quitting WoW during vanilla for thinking that was too easy (even with 40man raids). I've only heard they dropped raids to like 10 people. Theres a non-L2 example for ya.

I will admit there is a bit of nostalgia to myself missing the "good ol days". But mostly I miss leveling, pvping, reputation, status, and relationships you held in game used to mean something. Now with this "everybody wins a trophy" gameplay it has made the level of competition and gameplay meaningless to me.

P.S. I did something that I haven't done in a long time. FFIV remake just came out for nintendo ds. I decided to give it a shot and I must say I still enjoyed it all the way to the end. Most the games that came out after ps2 I haven't been able to finish as they have just been so damn dull to me. What did I like so much about FFIV? The story line, and character buildup was amazing. They even did a good job for the voice acting. It just seemed to be a game more for adults than this pokemon crap.

  I have been playing over 20 years myself... I can say... I have no real nostalgia besides discovering glitches, easter eggs, breaking game barriers and the like (one of my favorite in-game activities). Yeah that covers a lot of things. But not the real intended gameplay of games.

  I will also say games were harder. as one example of games being harder....when is the last time you saw a game over screen and sat their in disbelief as a few hours of your saturday morning up to after noon was just flushed down the toilet in one fell swoop because you made a single mistake?

  It's definately not in many MMO's I have played. There are few running that still have the institution of perma-death and loss of at least most of what you are carrying in items or monetary wealth or experience and sometimes combos of any of the 4 (two browser based examples that -though not full on about it- come to mind are Runescape and Dead Fontier). But too many MMO's are too forgiving of playing them poorly.

   I also think it sucks that a player who is incompitent can chuck money at a lot of these games and buy their way to success on the backs of others. True the compitent people have the option to pay as well... but being better at games I have found tends to lend them towards not buying it if they can earn it or don't really need it.

  A hard game offers true substantial loss as a consequence of failure. And, is unforgiving as to weather that failure was exactly your fault or not. People who need it easy rage quit these games, and all you can do is salute their departure as it proves a good garden weeds itself.

Not even sure how to answer the op's level of hubris.  Not sure if serious, honestly.  Seems too over the top to be other than a pretty standard troll.

so what? people should apologize for not being physically abused, ostracized, having enough "nerd cred," being old enough, [insert random criteria that the op thinks makes a gamer]? y'know what? nerds these days are just as bad as the bullies from the op's "good old days." sorry that the world has advanced to be more inclusive. actualy, wait. no i'm not.

go enjoy your little world.

1 game to end all games...

DARKFALL: UNHOLY WARS 

The only way that we will ever see the possibility of a return to more hardcore gaming like what your discribing (al EQ, AC, UO, etc) is if a few things happen.

• The game is produced by a small privately owned studio
• That studio chooses to cater to the MUCH less populated hardcore niche gamer
• The direction the studio chooses to take the game isn't dictated by outside influence. (shareholders, backers, publisher)
• That studio never ever sells out once they start to turn a profit to a larger corperation that offers them a buyout (EA, sony, etc)

Originally posted by eXizzLe

1 game to end all games...

 

DARKFALL: UNHOLY WARS 

If you bother to read many of the more indepth discussions about UW, you will notice that they are removing many of the Skill type actions required for the game.  Arrow drop being a good example.  Even Darkfall is simplifying their game to cater to the more casual crowd.

@atticusbc

That's a good point about what a nerd is having changed. For instance I am an antiques dealer (okay yeah pretty nerdy), who gets together with a jujitsu and kenpo instructor (one in the same person), An old ass guy who pretty much thinks the world should be shot (and probably is never far from doing it himself), Surly gas station manager who is a hardcore soldier of fortune survivalist, and some pretty big local dp's....we play MTG, D&D, Werewolf the apocolypse, Pirates of crimson waters, or exalted once a week (we switch off with campaigns).

Anicdotaly (and actually true on top of that), county sheriffs did come knocking on the door one night, they saw us make several munchies trips and one after closing (which ended up in vending machine munchies instead) and thought we were casing the convienience store.

Worst of all they could not see paydawns anima filling the room with light after a truly epic attack on a mob...damned mundane.

Point being one would probably not expect most of us to be into what we are into, nerding out the way we do each week. but any one can be a nerd these days. and it really is no longer a derogatory term. Unless your amongst people with boring lives.

Originally posted by ragz45

Originally posted by eXizzLe

1 game to end all games...

 

DARKFALL: UNHOLY WARS 

If you bother to read many of the more indepth discussions about UW, you will notice that they are removing many of the Skill type actions required for the game.  Arrow drop being a good example.  Even Darkfall is simplifying their game to cater to the more casual crowd.

been playing since 09

they released a single video of 2 arrow abilites, arrow arc is still in there (normal shots). with those abilities taking 20% of your stam/mana you're not going to spamming that. and i still doubt that's the finished animation/physics

anyways i always loved the unique challenging aspect of DF's combat system, fact is only like 2% of the gaming population did, so i can't hate them for giving me more sheep to kill, hopefully dumbing down their game will bring in a larger population.

OP, developers are not stupid on average. They are making games for a main stream audience because that’s who plays and where the money is. It’s no longer a niche hobby for “nerds" and games like Halo are more popular and profitable than Hollywood films. That “jock” that used to bully you? Well, his modern day equivalent likely goes home and plays video games on the X-Box or an MMO too. The world changed and picking up games for PC is no longer a way to distinguish yourself from anyone else as somehow smarter and trying to screw some one else’s mom in high school or take a poke at their GF just to humiliate them is morally questionable in a snake like way to begin with. Somehow? I am glad you are bitter...

"Somehow? I'm glad you are bitter..."

The reason is probably being given proof that good gardens weed themselves.

...Unfortunately some weeds are mandrakes and scream allot before they die.

Originally posted by Vardahoth

Originally posted by rastapastor

I've played games back then, i play games now and i don't find old games any harder than now...

 

I really don't understand this "ooo im an old school player and im mega pro, You, nowdays gamers, all suck!", it's bullshit. Games weren't harder 10-20 years ago, it's just nostalgia, u miss those old days, cuz u were young or u met some ppl (ye, gamers community sucks nowdays. U meet "old school" idiots who thinks they ate all brains and who have delusions that they are the most skilled players of all, or You meet nowdays trolls, who destroys enjoyment by their behaviour and i can agree here) or for whatever reason. 

 

I've been playing games for over 20 years.

The only thing I can agree with here is the community of gamers has changed for the worse because:

#1 mmorpgs and the internet are much more widely used now, and any idiot is playing them now.

#2 They have dumbed down games so idiots and trolls don't have any problem playing them.

 

As far as the games not getting any easier, this is sorely mistaken. I will explain what lineage 2 used to be like vs what it is now:

#1 teleporting used to cost too much gold, so people ran the distances between towns instead of teleporting (alot can and did happen during this time).

#2 No raidbosses were instanced. Most raid bosses took 2 full 9man parties to kill (and most of the time people still died). The end game raidbosses spawned once a week (random time with 16 hour window from the time it was killed), and because of the pvp, it would require not just a clan, but a coordination of an alliance (usually around 100+ players) to kill it. If there was no opposition, I would say the raid boss would take about 45 players to kill. This means it gave clans you (or someone in your group) at war with could ambush you. Also when they did the raidboss spawn events outside of town people were dropping their gear (which took a good 4-6 months to get a full set).

Now instead, all the end-game raid bosses are instanced and some take as much as a single party to kill.

#3 Leveling used to be grinding off of monsters and not quest-exp given. There were repeatable quests you could take to get extra exp and gold off the spot you were grinding, but the majority of your exp/gold came from grinding the same level mobs for months (sometimes years even). Not only that, but it required you to party up with people because you couldn't do it by yourself.

Now they have instanced daily quests that get you to 99 easy and can be solo'd.

#4 If you died to a monster you had a chance of dropping 1/5 items/gear. This made everyone in your party pay attention to what they were doing. If 1 person didn't do their job, the whole party would suffer for it (and usually kos the idiot that made them loose gear if they couldn't get back in time to retrieve it). People also lost a good chunk of exp that without a bishop willing to spend 30+mins to get to where you are and give you a high level rez, or buying a brez which was only obtained through special currency that took about 2 days to farm for, you would find yourself spending a good 4+ hours farming the exp back you lost.

Now you no longer loose items/gear dieing to monsters. Now clans have a passive buff called clan luck that gives 50% exp back upon death, mixed with clanhall rez (also wasn't offered before) will give another 50% (40% if stacked with 50% buff) exp back upon death loosing up to a maximum of 0.02% per death (takes about 5 minutes to get back).

I'll stop right here unless you want me to give more examples.

I remember quitting WoW during vanilla for thinking that was too easy (even with 40man raids). I've only heard they dropped raids to like 10 people. Theres a non-L2 example for ya.

 

I will admit there is a bit of nostalgia to myself missing the "good ol days". But mostly I miss leveling, pvping, reputation, status, and relationships you held in game used to mean something. Now with this "everybody wins a trophy" gameplay it has made the level of competition and gameplay meaningless to me.

 

P.S. I did something that I haven't done in a long time. FFIV remake just came out for nintendo ds. I decided to give it a shot and I must say I still enjoyed it all the way to the end. Most the games that came out after ps2 I haven't been able to finish as they have just been so damn dull to me. What did I like so much about FFIV? The story line, and character buildup was amazing. They even did a good job for the voice acting. It just seemed to be a game more for adults than this pokemon crap.

1. It's not hard to travel between cities...it's just time sinking. It's tricky only when u have ffa pvp ;)

2. Bosses weren't hard, they just had bazilion milions hp to burn down.

3. It's not hard, it's just boring, time sinking not challenging grindfest.

4. Here i can agree, chance to loose item after death was pretty cool, u had to focus 120% on what u do, so here i agree with You.

Hard content isn't boring grind to me. For PvE content, its just how bosses are designed, how deep and hard the mechanics are etc...For over 20 years i haven't seen any challenging or hard boss mechanic. Most so called "hard" bosses are just a gear check (u can't kill boss if i haven't enough gear to do required dps, healing or tanking), but when u get the gear, bosses are easy as...fuck? :)

I've played EQ, WoW, DAoC, SWG and some new MMOs, AoC, RIFT, SW: TOR, GW2. I personaly don't want to come back to old grind days, cuz gaming took a loot of time from my life, now i can casually jump in, have fun with events, dungs for 2 hours and jump off to my family, work etc ;). In GW2 for instance i'm not far behind ppl that put 32432432423423423453234234 hours into game, it's just about my skill and how FAST I LEARN the mechanics, proffesions etc. It's not how LONG I GRIND for particular item that gives me +20 to e-peen stat and allows me to encounter particular mob. 

Also think, back then ppl were generaly pretty bad at gaming MMOs were new etc, ppl have learned a lot over time and are learning now all the time, they know how to play now and for developers it's hard to make very very very hard mechanics, cuz ppl saw mostly all. Ofc they can do gear check boss, but it's rather lame ;)

[b] I respect[/b] Your opionion, but for me personaly, gaming wasn't hard at all, it was just time sinking back then ;)

The hardest boss mechanics i have run into are in runescape....Was just wandering around wildy one time and saw this weird gluttunous mass of tenticles (forgot what it's called I learned more about it after the encounter). "So i was like... yeah ima attack that...looks about a level I can handle"

big mistake... it used some weird whip ability with it's tenticles to teleport me seemingly randomly closer and nearer too it, it unequiped my weapons unless I changed them frequently, drained my prayer, and degraded my food (food in runescape isn't normaly degradable). I fought it for about 5 minutes before I relized it wasn't going any where good and fled...and a pk'er caught me on quater health.

I kind of get where the old people's mentality of "it used to be good back in the day, not hese new fangled things kids have now" comes from.

It's happening right before my eyes.

P.S.: gaming since the '80s and no, it wasn't better back then. It was just new.

EQ was fun for 3 weeks. I played it every night but I finally was tired of looking for groups and waiting for groups to have room.

Daoc really started to grow on me as I played it much longer.

When wow came the new stuff was, world pvp and more skills and instances. Other than that I had already seen it all before.

And every new mmo is just more of the same. It's the genre. Sometimes it helps to try something new that is not an mmo.

Originally posted by rastapastor

Originally posted by Vardahoth

Originally posted by rastapastor

I've played games back then, i play games now and i don't find old games any harder than now...

 

I really don't understand this "ooo im an old school player and im mega pro, You, nowdays gamers, all suck!", it's bullshit. Games weren't harder 10-20 years ago, it's just nostalgia, u miss those old days, cuz u were young or u met some ppl (ye, gamers community sucks nowdays. U meet "old school" idiots who thinks they ate all brains and who have delusions that they are the most skilled players of all, or You meet nowdays trolls, who destroys enjoyment by their behaviour and i can agree here) or for whatever reason. 

 

I've been playing games for over 20 years.

The only thing I can agree with here is the community of gamers has changed for the worse because:

#1 mmorpgs and the internet are much more widely used now, and any idiot is playing them now.

#2 They have dumbed down games so idiots and trolls don't have any problem playing them.

 

As far as the games not getting any easier, this is sorely mistaken. I will explain what lineage 2 used to be like vs what it is now:

#1 teleporting used to cost too much gold, so people ran the distances between towns instead of teleporting (alot can and did happen during this time).

#2 No raidbosses were instanced. Most raid bosses took 2 full 9man parties to kill (and most of the time people still died). The end game raidbosses spawned once a week (random time with 16 hour window from the time it was killed), and because of the pvp, it would require not just a clan, but a coordination of an alliance (usually around 100+ players) to kill it. If there was no opposition, I would say the raid boss would take about 45 players to kill. This means it gave clans you (or someone in your group) at war with could ambush you. Also when they did the raidboss spawn events outside of town people were dropping their gear (which took a good 4-6 months to get a full set).

Now instead, all the end-game raid bosses are instanced and some take as much as a single party to kill.

#3 Leveling used to be grinding off of monsters and not quest-exp given. There were repeatable quests you could take to get extra exp and gold off the spot you were grinding, but the majority of your exp/gold came from grinding the same level mobs for months (sometimes years even). Not only that, but it required you to party up with people because you couldn't do it by yourself.

Now they have instanced daily quests that get you to 99 easy and can be solo'd.

#4 If you died to a monster you had a chance of dropping 1/5 items/gear. This made everyone in your party pay attention to what they were doing. If 1 person didn't do their job, the whole party would suffer for it (and usually kos the idiot that made them loose gear if they couldn't get back in time to retrieve it). People also lost a good chunk of exp that without a bishop willing to spend 30+mins to get to where you are and give you a high level rez, or buying a brez which was only obtained through special currency that took about 2 days to farm for, you would find yourself spending a good 4+ hours farming the exp back you lost.

Now you no longer loose items/gear dieing to monsters. Now clans have a passive buff called clan luck that gives 50% exp back upon death, mixed with clanhall rez (also wasn't offered before) will give another 50% (40% if stacked with 50% buff) exp back upon death loosing up to a maximum of 0.02% per death (takes about 5 minutes to get back).

I'll stop right here unless you want me to give more examples.

I remember quitting WoW during vanilla for thinking that was too easy (even with 40man raids). I've only heard they dropped raids to like 10 people. Theres a non-L2 example for ya.

 

I will admit there is a bit of nostalgia to myself missing the "good ol days". But mostly I miss leveling, pvping, reputation, status, and relationships you held in game used to mean something. Now with this "everybody wins a trophy" gameplay it has made the level of competition and gameplay meaningless to me.

 

P.S. I did something that I haven't done in a long time. FFIV remake just came out for nintendo ds. I decided to give it a shot and I must say I still enjoyed it all the way to the end. Most the games that came out after ps2 I haven't been able to finish as they have just been so damn dull to me. What did I like so much about FFIV? The story line, and character buildup was amazing. They even did a good job for the voice acting. It just seemed to be a game more for adults than this pokemon crap.

 

1. It's not hard to travel between cities...it's just time sinking. It's tricky only when u have ffa pvp ;)

2. Bosses weren't hard, they just had bazilion milions hp to burn down.

3. It's not hard, it's just boring, time sinking not challenging grindfest.

4. Here i can agree, chance to loose item after death was pretty cool, u had to focus 120% on what u do, so here i agree with You.

 

Hard content isn't boring grind to me. For PvE content, its just how bosses are designed, how deep and hard the mechanics are etc...For over 20 years i haven't seen any challenging or hard boss mechanic. Most so called "hard" bosses are just a gear check (u can't kill boss if i haven't enough gear to do required dps, healing or tanking), but when u get the gear, bosses are easy as...fuck? :)

I've played EQ, WoW, DAoC, SWG and some new MMOs, AoC, RIFT, SW: TOR, GW2. I personaly don't want to come back to old grind days, cuz gaming took a loot of time from my life, now i can casually jump in, have fun with events, dungs for 2 hours and jump off to my family, work etc ;). In GW2 for instance i'm not far behind ppl that put 32432432423423423453234234 hours into game, it's just about my skill and how FAST I LEARN the mechanics, proffesions etc. It's not how LONG I GRIND for particular item that gives me +20 to e-peen stat and allows me to encounter particular mob. 

 

Also think, back then ppl were generaly pretty bad at gaming MMOs were new etc, ppl have learned a lot over time and are learning now all the time, they know how to play now and for developers it's hard to make very very very hard mechanics, cuz ppl saw mostly all. Ofc they can do gear check boss, but it's rather lame ;)

 

[b] I respect[/b] Your opionion, but for me personaly, gaming wasn't hard at all, it was just time sinking back then ;)

1. You pretty much answered the statement yourself. Trust me when I say 90% of the time you couldn't get from 1 town to the other without being forced into pvp.

2. When tanks lost agro on bosses, they would 1shot robe users and 2-3shot archers/daggers/leather wearers. If you didn't have a healer clearing cc or healing by the second, it would be a party wipe. If you didn't have a tank spamming hate agro after loosing agro, a lot of people died. What made it most challanging is since it was out in the open, your enemies could come and pk you and finish the raid boss to take the loot for themselves. This required you to put up spies in port-in spots, as well as have a party ready to pvp.

3. For me the challange of the grind was trying to put in 14-20 hours a day to get that 1-2% and having to do it with 8 other players. Then you run into pvp a lot (especially if you are at one of the best exp spots in the game), which can set you back days. As I said before now leveling to cap can be done in 1 week and by yourself (in Tera I did it in 6 days after release without a single party, and I saw some 3man parties do it in 2 days).

The coordination it took to win sieges in L2 was good also. I remember being in a clan where we went to a seige with 1 to 6 odds and still came out on top. Gear was equal leveled and the only reason we won was because we had a party kite/hit a few of them from the side, while we horse shoe'd the  gate entrance and the tank would aoe-hate everyone who came through while I was the dd targeter for the party to take down the target. Targets dropped so fast because of our focus fire, and I was good enough to switch targets in under a second before my current target dropped. This was before the movie 300 came out, so you can't say we copied cated that technique, but the fact you can use gorilla warfare tactics to win a battle (and even wars) was amazing.

By end game L2, there wasn't anyone who was generally bad at gaming on it. Why? because in order to hit end game you were forced to put 6 months - 2 years of playtime into that 1 character alone (assuming you didn't bot or ebay the account). Even idiots who spend that much time on a character never failed to do the simplist of tasks.

If L2 was still in the c3 stage, I would still be playing it to this day. I just don't like the direction they took the game and most of the mmo mainstream for that matter. For a more detailed description, look here:

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/368197/LF-Game-With-the-Following-Characteristics.html

Thinking back, I agree with you that it would suck to have to start all over. This is why I'm always saying, "man I really wish they didn't dumb down the game so much so I wouldn't have to find a new game to start over in." This is why I am very sceptical of trying out a new game to invest my time into.