All Posts by nethervoid

Agree.  Maybe just make more quests group related after the first 10 or so levels.  Also for equipment to be tradeable after you use it, it would have to have durability and eventually break.

Originally posted by declaredemer

 stuff

Note to you: Vanguard is not a solo quest grinder.  There are plenty of other games out there if that's what you're looking for.  WoW would probably suit your interests perfectly.

Girls with glasses [i]can[/i] be hot.  Some are.  Some are definitely not.  lol  Although I do like myself a hot librarian. 

I got a Wii for my son, so getting the Wii fit shouldn't be a wallet buster.  The yoga one sounds interesting.  Working out while playing a video game has been my life long dream.

Wii weight lifter would be so f***ing kick ass!

Originally posted by Arclan

It is true that most people in EQ made their living by killing mobs somewhere in the world. However, you could also do a lot of other things; including all of the things you list in UO. The only iffy one is "running a shop." Before the EQ bazaar, plenty of folks ran a shop in the East Commons Tunnel.

You did play EQ, right? It's just probably been a long time. It's about as sandbox as any other game, EXCEPT you could not build structures like you could in UO. I started out in UO, but found it unplayable; but that is a long story.

No you couldn't run a shop.  Running a shop is where you actually have a shop, and you put things into the shop that people can come by and buy from you.  You have a location on the map, and you gain or lose clients based on location, reputation, and salesmanship.  Standing around spamming trade (or ooc for EQ) is not running a shop.  In UO even how you presented your wares set you apart from the competition.  It was more like running a ... smithy, lets say than any other game since, even SWG.

You couldn't treasure hunt.  Treasure hunting required a treasure map to drop from a monster, which real treasure hunters just bought from adventurers.  Treasure hunters required a completely different set of skills from that of an adventurer, two of which were lockpicking and cartography, which would be pointless on an adventuring character.  A treasure hunter was specialized.  All they did was run treasure maps.

There's no factional warfare in EQ where you could take over towns and collect tax from sales in that town, etc.  Nothing near that in EQ.

You can't place a castle or tower in EQ as a guild, and then have to defend it from a rival guild bent on PKing you until you quit.

You couldn't even mine or gather anything for crafting in EQ.  Everything was driven off of monster loot.

You can't sail a ship in EQ and upon finding another ship, make them pay tribute or you would kill them and board their ship, taking it for yourself.  Piracy.  hehe

EQ was completely linear.  It's actually a lot like WoW, except WoW actually has a LOT more things to do than EQ does (better crafting, arena, battlegrounds, so many more quests its funny EQ has quest in its name).  The only thing EQ did was adventuring.  Monster killing.  It did have some quests, but they were very few and far between, and most of them weren't worth doing because the good loot were almost exclusively mob dropped.  That's not to say the monster bashing wasn't the best I've ever played, but that's all it had.

I played EQ for a year and a half from gold till just before Kunark.  I created and ran a guild at that time.  Then I came back during PoP/GoD where I created and ran a progression guild (we worked through level-specific content like Tower of Frozen Shadow).  I left for awhile then returned a third time during DoDN/PoS where I reformed my old guild into a casual raid guild hitting mainly Luclin/PoP stuff.

EQ is probably the least sandbox MMO I've ever played, besides maybe Planetside. ... I'm trying to think of a more linear MMO I've played, and I can't think of one.

Originally posted by Arclan

 

 

My friend, I beg to differ. Everquest, when I was playing it, was not linear at all. The quests were difficult and rewards were scant so very few people did them. I traveled all over EQ and hunted in various regions. In fact, I could argue that EVE is far more linear than EQ. Most players in Eve do the missions for faction and rewards; I daresay the bulk of rewards in Eve are obtained from those instanced missions. EQ was far more sandbox than EVE. :)

Everquest isn't a sandbox because there's nothing to do but fight mobs.  PvE adventuring is all there is to do in that game, hence it can't be a sandbox game.  A sandbox is a game where there are lots of different things to do, where you can do those things and never touch the other things the whole game.  I guess VG is kinda sandbox.  I just don't really like the crafting in that game.  Too grindy.

Sandbox examples:

UO: Adventuring, Crafting, Running a shop, Treasure Hunting, Fishing, Factions...

EVE: Mining, Manufacturing, Stock market trading, Empire building, Mission grinding...

SWG: Mining, Manufacturing, Running a shop, PvP, PvE, Space ship stuff...

EQ: Adventuring...that's it

Eve could really be better.  Flesh out the mining and crafting systems would be a start.  Mining is worse than watching paint dry, and manufacturing is all automated.  They really should flesh out that game past the pvp/empire building.  While I like that part of the game, it just doesn't keep me interested enough to keep playing.  Kind of like Shadowbane in that aspect.  I loved the pvp/sieging, but I have a lot of other PvE stuff I like to do, and the PvE stuff just blew, like Eve's PvE.

Originally posted by pencilrick

"DANGER".  The most natural reason to group is that it might be too dangerous (not impossible, though) to solo.

If I choose to group because I'm safer, then grouping is desirable and fun. 

But for there to be true "danger", something bad has to happen to my character if he dies.  I should incur an experience point loss.  Sucks the 1% of the time I die, but is thrilling the other 99% of the time I actively try to keep from dying.

They need to bring back the stinging death penalty in games.  Spare the noobs their first ten levels maybe, but after that, dying should cost.  And then, winning will feel like winning and not some freebie.

 

I might as well expound a bit.  When I played early EQ, with it's nasty death penaly and corpse run, I was a little nervous anytime I was outside a town and actually would feel relieved when I'd run into another player or even an NPC guard.  And feeling relief to see someone else and finding comfort in numbers is a good way to start building trust and cameraderie in your fellow players.

 

This is a great post.  These are the real things that made EQ a success.  One more thing that people really didn't pick up on is most socialization in groups came from the down time, which is pretty non-existent in newer games.

I liked the old EQ style games, mainly because it actually kept out the kind of people I don't want to play with: no-attention span kids, anti-social people, and people who will never be great at any game because they just lack what it takes to be good.  In EQ pretty much everyone past 20 was good.  It was pretty rare to find jerks and/or people who just plain sucked at their role.

Man I miss the EQ playerbase.

Originally posted by Arclan

Someone please defined "Sandbox" and tell me which games you thing are as such. My understanding was that old EQ (sans the current instancing) and current Vanguard were sandbox games.

Sandbox games are games that have multiple avenues of play, which do not interrelate to each other, and are not linear.  EQ and VG are not sandbox games, because they have linear questing and leveling, pretty much, although VG does have crafting and diplo, but to me those are really mini-games, because they really lack deep content.

UO and EVE are sandbox games.  Neither have set leveling paths or set leveling quests.  You can mix and match skills, be a little of this and a little of that.  You can't do that in non-sandbox games like ... well any level based game really.  SWG is a sandbox game.

I wish they would have kept the travel and death penalties as they were in closed beta.  There's a reason for lengthy travel and harsh death.  It creates a lot of fun, if you think about the game as a world and death as something awful.

Man, now I'm getting all nostalgic about what VG could have been.  =/

A better question is if someone does come back, what's the chance of getting updates with the population as low as it is?  I would hate to play an MMO I knew there wouldn't be any content updates for. 

Originally posted by Sylar3

I'm sure there will be the usual fare of dungeons that a group has to do. And if i am not mistaken the game is heavily story based so we could see a system like LOTROs books. I have no idea though. Why is the NDA STILL up like a week away from release.

Because they want people to buy it because they THINK it will be good, instead of waiting to see if it really is.  Lots of people CAN'T wait even a day after release to buy an MMO for some weird fear of falling behind...is a week really behind?

Yeah this site sure has grown a lot since I first came around.  Great stuff!  I like how they've added the news and dev interviews, etc.

I laughed harder at this thread than any other here in a long time.  lol  I'm still grinning from ear to ear!    I don't know this guy or his game, but this is the funniest and most exact looking copy of them yet!  HAHAHA!

Yeah it could be a good game now.  Sad part is there's hardly anyone playing it.  They really missed their window.

And the crafting system is actually pretty sucky IMO, mainly because the only way to level up is to make a crapton of useless items over and over and over and over... You don't even get crafting xp from making something useful.  That's just backwards.  They should have just made it take a LOT longer to make something useful, but a crafter should get all their xp from crafting something useable in the game.

Oh lastly the small dev team is just one more reason it probably doesn't have a future.  =(

Originally posted by damian7

the whole thing about raiding is two-fold -- raiders are a teeny tiny portion of the population of any given game AND as such, there are many many more players, who do not raid, but put in many many more hours than your raiders.

raiders don't have a stronger "work ethic" in a game.  raiders don't contribute more money to games.  raiders don't do anything for a game that would warrant massive amounts of content (or even new content every few months) for them specifically.

as opposed to pvpers, which do make up a much larger section of the playerbase in any game than raiders, yet pvpers don't get new content every update.

why are lots of people dis-satisfied with mmos?  because a very teeny tiny, less than a percent portion of the population is catered to, while the other 99+% of the paying public is given scraps.

economically, for a gaming company, that makes no damn sense.

Do you really believe this?  How many PvPers play EQ1? ... Right, just about 0.

Secondly (I'm going to assume you were talking about WoW since it's pretty much the only game that has both a good amount of raiders and PvPers in the same game), Bliz has added quite a bit of PvP content to the game since BC:  Arenas and Season x pvp gear.  I would say there's at least an even amount of raid and PvP content in that game...because like it or not you don't need 'new' zones for PvP.  You just hack other players to bits over and over.  No changes or additions needed dude.  But raiding does need new content to beat, because it's not about beating a player (which for PvP never changes, it's just beating the same classes over and over ad-nausea) it's about beating a new boss in a new environment.  Each boss is different and has different abilities and surroundings.

Thirdly, add up all the raid zones in the game, and PvP zones, and finally all the regular questing and 5 man zones.  You will find that the number of raid zones takes up a tiny percentage of the total.  So it sure seems you are not thinking about how much of the actual content is raid content, but thinking about how long that content is useful.  Yes you burn through the quest zones in about a month, and then spend years in the raid zones.  You're letting the amount of time spent in these zones affect how much of the actual game you think it makes up.  In reality raid zones and PvP zones are the smallest part of the game.  If you really want to get angry at the amount of space and energy taken up by a section of the player base, you should direct your anger at the 'casual' quest and 5 man stuff because it has a huge percentage of the total zone and content population.

Lastly, what 'new content' could a PvPer possibly want?  No matter what map or game they give you, it's still just 1v1 or 2v1 small battles of players or maybe 5v5 on a bigger game.  You really don't PvP any different on a different map.  The only way they could really add content to WoW's PvP at least would be to add in guild keeps and sieging and crap.  That would be a HUGE investment and really a change in the focus of the entire game, because whether or not you want to accept it there are PvM games and there are PvP games.  WoW is a PvM game.  Always will be.  So don't complain that your PvM game has a lack of PvP updates.

I think it depends on the type of game.  PvM games need to have a harsh death penalty.  PvP games shouldn't.  In a PvM game if you're dying a LOT you just suck and really need to get better at the game.  You can have the same harsh death penalties in a PvP game, but what happens is people will start to use numbers to their advantage to the point where nobody wants an even fight due to the death penalty.  EvE is a great example with all the gate gankers.

I actually like grouping up better than solo questing, but yeah it's hard to have them both.

Maybe they could have a choice in the quest.  You can pick the group quest and get more xp and a better item let's say, or choose the solo version of the quest for less reward.  Then you could do either, but the group piece would give a better reward (because if it didn't we all know people would still pick the path of least resistance).

That might work...

Yeah newer games mainly can't do what older games could do because the newer systems are far more complicated; therefore, costing a lot more in dev time, which equals money.

Yes it is an improvement because playing a warrior in WoW is a lot more complicated than playing a 'melee' in Runescape.  So it means I don't master it as quickly, hence I can play longer without getting bored of the class/skill I'm using.

Now pre-emptively I'm going to say that tanking as a warrior is a lot more difficult than tanking as a 'melee' in Runescape, because there are a lot more things to manage in WoW than in Runescape.

I want to believe what I hear about LOTRO being this game that succeeded, but I know a lot of MMO gamers personally (50+) and not one of them play that game or ever did.  Just about every one of them has played WoW in some way shape or time.  Many have played EQ.  A few have played EvE.  A couple have even played Guild Wars...lol.

Not a single one of them has played LOTRO.

'One game to fool them all' is probably a better motto.

I can't believe nobody has mentioned EVE.  Probably the biggest world to date, although I would say the content is sparce.  They also handled the population thing by only having one 'server'.  Everyone plays in the same space.

I too hate fast travel, actually.  Slow travel creates smaller pocket communities and livelier cities and stuff.  The worst case I've ever seen of travel nerfing was the PoK system.  Once that went in, the regular towns just died.  There used to be quite a subculture in Kelethin, Freeport, and to a lesser extent Qeynos.