<quote>Originally posted by Atol

I would love to see a Light color armour on EQ2. Black and hide alot and a image in Open area that show the Mountains and trees. Please Note I have not played EQ2.

</quote>

how the girls look like you can see here:

http://www.norrath-news.de/missnorrath/missnorrath.html

While this page is a few years old, i guess new armor looks even better

new screenshots you can probably find on the official EQ2 page.
 

Originally posted by ethion

Ok check these screen shots from eq2.  These are new shots from the eq2 shader 3.0 graphics update coming in the next update.

Eq2 might not be as nice for world graphics as LoTR but I think the character equipment and looks are nicer.

 

 

 

 

 

100% agreed, it was disappointing to create a character in LOTRO after EQ2. The lack of choices for individual looks and the poor animation was a real downfall, running always felt silly in LOTRO.

The Landscape is nicer in LOTRO tho, more colorful and more atmospheric.

LOTRO World Graphics (With ryzom seasson and weather features) + EQ2 Characters + Sandbox (Ryzom like) gameplay = my dream of an MMO. Thank God it doesnt exist :) Gives me time for other things hehe.

This is a funny thread hehe.

LOTRO's leveling was too fast in the beginning and if it became faster that only means it is worse now.

Someone mentioned with the new added content it got even faster, which is typical but also a weird contradiction: If you level faster you miss out on content designed for a certain level range or you have to do it without exp reward and no risk. (doing grey quests anyone?) So adding content means missing content lol.

Thats the typical brainless design concept of modern MMO's.

Anyway: to the OP:

Compared to which game do you think LOTRO leveling is too fast?

What would be the right time for you to level to the top? And how many houers / week do you play?

just intrested.

Snorf

Originally posted by Analyser

 

Now LOTRO on the other hand does not only provide 100% identical classes, 100% identical items, 100% identical stats but also - and thats the killer: almost 100% identical carreers. There is no such thing as a choice for your own carreer. That history was already pre-written by turbine designers and is set in stone. In Eve you can choos to be a miner, bounty hunter, research and what not in the big pool of identical stats and skills you can create a unique carreer. In LOTRO you can't, you follow the identical quest lines - its like mass tourist attractions, you are herded through the theme park on iron rails with near to  0 alternatives. The canalised design is exagerated to a degree that even different classes share most of the carreer.

Very well put.

Many who did not like lotro could not put their finger on, why exactly. Because at first glance it is a solid game - good graphics, no obvious bugs and nice setting. What you say about LOTRO carreers is right, they are identically following the storylines and sharing most of the rewards. One big reason why i found it unintresting and boring.

there are several reasons playing together:

time being a big one. After a while even the most stupiud person will understand that their MMO toon could have better stats / gear / skills if they only had more time to play the darn game.

Now having more time is not possible for everyone, the day only has 24 houers and unfortunatly there are other activities but playing an MMO for some people.

At the same time (time again!) you will notice other players in game progress faster. In fact they usually do not progress faster per /played time but with more /played time per time they outrun you in progress. This can set you under the impression that you are too slow, because someone else who was the same level as you yesterday is 5 levels ahead today... (because he played all night and sits almost unconcious at his desk - but that you cannot see)

So as a smart human being you start to think how you could bypass time sinks, to speed up and catch up with the others who have more /played time to /play. That is when you try to optimise your gaming to the maximum effective way (most progress in numbers per /played time)

You read a spoiler and it saves you 30 minutes of searching. You feel like a winner, you want to save more time. You code your ultra 2000 ubor keyboard to macro repetitive moves and let it play while you shower - you save 20 minutes again you are a winner.

It takes very long and some never get to the point where they realise with all the optimisation and all the bypassing shortcutting and yes - cheating - they only do one thing: spoil their own fun and in worst case, the fun of those around them too.

Comparing yourself with the progress speed of others is the killer. Take your time and enjoy the game. If you do not progress for a day - then whats the problem?

I would love a game that seperates players by their /played time per month and moves them to different servers. Casual, core and hard core. With different difficulty levels of boss mobs for the given servers.

Originally posted by carlyvalente

Some advices: 

1- Stay at your optimal distance for you guns.

kk will try, currently my gun has 3500m but can only pick circling 2.5 or 5km - need to look if i can set a free distance

2- Kill scramblers rats first , just in case you need to warp out in emergency (lost several ships this way)

Ok will try to remember that.

3- Don't drop drones untill alll of them have you tergeted, if not they will target your drones.

Not used drones yet, what are thy good for?

4- Align to a planet/station just in case you need to warp out.

Ah i think i done that by accident yesterday - is that when the station name stands to right on the screen, near the targets?

5- Don't go low sec alone

low sec means pvp risk high if i remember it right from last year... i avoid those for now.

6- Keep your clone updated! (thou rats won't kill your pod it is not funny loosing learned skills if a player pod you in low sec)

hmm havent looked into the clone thing yet - didnt know that thanks, will have a look.

7- Your Capacitor is your life, No cap = no reparation/recharge = dead. Make sure your ship is cap stable before battle.

yes i remember i had bigger ship and capacitor last year

8- Don't stay fighting untill last breath. Warp out earlier because Murphy (and asteroids ) law is out there and you can stomp in any structure/roid making you unable to warp in time.

hehe but when its really close with open end, i sometimes cant resist to try my luck ;)

9- Tactical are reserved for pvp. There is not such tactical manouvres fighting ,npc except the above advices

makes me curious what those manouvres will be like :)

10- fly an inexpensive ship at first . Don't go after a uber ship untill you feel comfortable with your frigate.

I fly what i got as a mission reward i think its not a frigate yet lol. I put a basic insurance on it - not sure what its worth lol

Thanks all for the infos.

To give you a brief update about my 2nd try to get into eve yesterday i had 2 houers to play and yes i saw 2 or 3 other player ships this time.

So if i get the infos from this thread correct you do not directly PvE group in EvE all PvE is solo here. No Group PvE content. No random grouping happening.

Joining a coorp i plan for next week to see what that changes.

This weekend im gona learn the game again (only did a few missions now and learning skills to get the ship upgraded some)

I have another noob question tho,

does combat change later in game? Does it get more "tactical" at this (extremely early) stage it is just like: My weapon is stronger than your shields, you loose.

Can a "weaker by the numbers" (weapon power and shields and all) player beat a stronger NPC or Player (just numbers, not playerskill) by using smart maneuvers tactics and surprise moves?

Vanguard and EQ / EQ2 come to mind. LOTRO too while i found the original classes really boring but they added one or two more in their first expansion pack.

This is a good topic.

When discussing it do not forget that "Easy Mode" gameplay and "accessibility" are 2 different things.

I am all for easy to handle UI's but at the same time i am against automisations like "fast travel" or "auction halls".

With those two you take away an awful lot of "free" content. How many adventures on the route from the shire to rivendell have not happened because "fast travel" was used? How many people have not become friends over buying and selling armor from each other -  since that is done anonymous in an automatically functional auction hall.

For me that is two examples for "Easy mode" gaming. NPC's standing around automatically porting you or selling your stuff for you. In UO or EQ you had to interact with others who had the class with the power to port you (Druids and WIzzards) or move to a certain location where a player run market with lots of chat auctions was going on. Massive content. Fun and joy. Now you stand shoulder on shoulder towards an NPC and almost no one talks, everyone is browsing the stuff.

Downtime and death penalty are others - a dangerous corpse run was a rewarding game experience for many players. Needing help with it was interacting with others -> meeting new people -> fun.

Now you beam yourself to the next theme park attraction, check who else needs quest XY, win it or fail the difference (penalty) is little - and move on.

The ironic part is that so many find certain things i listed only frustrating but taking them all out made the gaming experience frustratingly boring for even more players.

I think you should give the game an honest chance - there are always some players around when i play - but after 10 minutes you really do not need a res, maybe after level 30 - 40 but not after 10 minutes, just kill 2 yubos in 3 seconds and you have it back.

Originally posted by DonnieBrasco

Originally posted by Snorf

the only advantage LOTRO has compared to WoW is the lore and for some people the different graphic style.

My personal experience was, that i found WoW boring after 3-4 months and LOTRO after 6-7 weeks.

How much time do you have to kill before the game you really want to play releases?

 

 

So you're saying you can determine when he will get bored if he plays LOTRO, and also if he plays WOW.

Wow man, I wanna learn that skill :D

BTW, you screwed your own logic. If you played Lotro first and wow second, do you seriously think the 3-4 months and 6-7 weeks would not be the other way round...  be honest, to yourself too :)

My 2 cents.
 

DB

No that is not what i said, it is why i put the words "my personal experience" in front - i thought that would make it clear that it is a biased single persons subjective personal view. Perhaps you do not need skill in seeing the future but in reading forum posts and common sense?
 

Also i did not screw my own logic, what you say might be true or not, it is irrelevant for the fact that the games are both good enough to kill time. The OP is not intrested in them as a long term hobby anyway so what i was trying to say was: for what you want (a time killer until aion comes out) you can not do anything wrong.

So take your 2 cents and buy some ice cream.

i downloaded it last night and will have a look at it again - this morning on first  log in it looked the same as i remembered it, lots of text flying by in the chat box but nowhere is another ship or player.

if you see me around Name is Snorfeus. I should be on around 8pm gmt

the only advantage LOTRO has compared to WoW is the lore and for some people the different graphic style.

My personal experience was, that i found WoW boring after 3-4 months and LOTRO after 6-7 weeks.

How much time do you have to kill before the game you really want to play releases?

Originally posted by cosy

Originally posted by Snorf  

  From 3rd day on i tried to find out if there are any group missions or if groups are ever formed. To be honest, i never found out.

 

lol is so easy just R-click on other player face

what do you mean player face? I have not seen any other player. All that made me believe i wasnt alone in the universe was the chat text.

Perhaps it is because i am european? is it only crowded during US times?

Also thanks for the advice with the player corp (guess thats guilds?) but ususally i group with people first and then i decide if i want in their guild, is it the other way around in eve?

Hi

a year ago or so i tried the free trial of eve and found it intresting. From 3rd day on i tried to find out if there are any group missions or if groups are ever formed. To be honest, i never found out.

In 14 days of more or less intense playing i havent seen one single other player... i saw some writing in various chat channels but when i asked if anyone wanted to group i got no replies. Since i am more a team player rather than a soloist (altho i enjoy solo gaming too sometimes) this was the reason why i never subscribed.

Did i do something wrong? Is it worth a second try? Maybe i was in the wrong chat channels or on the wrong server? Hmm but i think there  only was one?

Originally posted by bobfish

It is not instant gratification that bugs you, its people who believe a game should be fun from day one, rather than needing to level for 200 hundreds before the real fun begins.

They won't be any happier without levels, its not the levels or the time it takes to level that is the problem. It is the simple fact that levelling in the vast majority of MMOs is the most boring experience you can find in ANY game, not just in MMOs.

People won't play a boring game and they sure as hell won't pay for a boring game, but as they have no choice if they must play an MMO, they will keep demanding that levelling takes less time.

I disagree.

To me leveling is not boring.

to me grinding exp solo is boring. Farming the very same quest or mobs for houers and days to come from 43 to 44 is boring. to me doing the 500th "kill 10 of this" quest is boring.

a lot of people seem to believe they have to level to get into high level groups because that is where they think the fun is. Only for a very few that is true. In Most MMO's the fun is right there from level 1 on, form a duo / trio with another newbie or two and have a blast exploring and interacting at the same time. Do it OOC or RP but that is where the fun is. Find where the limits of your solo/duo/trio are try to solo a mob  5 levels higher than you, duo one 8 levels higher trio one 10 levels higher than yourself.

In open world MMO's the fun is what you make out of it, in theme park and instant gratification MMO's the fun is what the dev designed for you, like it or leave it.

I was going to say try LOTRO but warn you that you may find it boring - oh well.

The only other game i can think of would be EQ2 - or maybe Spellbourne, not sure though because i havent tried it myself.

Originally posted by terrant

Originally posted by Snorf  Commentary by Terrant
 

 

Some risks developers should think about that come to my mind are: Some nice ideas here, but most of them won't fly, or will end up being a failure even if released. and here's why:

Thanks, and thanks for your time to share your thoughts on them :)

• reward for interacting with others. Similar to "facebook" where more contacts feel rewarding to some. Why not count people that put you on their friendslist? (people from other guilds count more) - in New Worlds Online you gain experience when you introduce yourself to another player. I would like a game where not a title and a name hover above peoples heads but question marks and only once this player has introduced to you - you see their name. Before that its more like: "A dwarf tells you "text"" or "A gnome greets you". 
  
  I have a theory about this. It's called the Ankh-Morpork Fire Brigade theory. It goes: "reward someone a few times for doing something, he'll just find whatever sneaky underhanded way he can to do it more often and thus, earn a bigger profit" See, if I were an enterprising player, I'd have me and a friend keep making throwaway alts, using the /introduce to get the bonuses, delete them, or start over. Some even sneakier (and richer) people might dual box a couple accounts, botted, to do just this, and farm xp 24/7 jsut through introductions.

This you could say about normal experience and every other reward in games too. The trick is to cap the right things and take deleted / inactive accounts out of the formula. There are online ladder games 1v1 where you can not gain points anymore if you play vs the same person again and again.

• bring back teamplay to MMO's we have enough solo grinders now. Look how Ryzom allows harvesting in a team. The idea is not that new - would love to see similar for crafting. Let a guild craft their own ships and siege weapons.
  
  This exists in some games now, sorta. The problem with making it a team effort though, is that it's a team effort. God help your fleet if non of the sailmakers are on, or your dockmaster gets mad and deletes his character. Depending on others tends to cause a lot of risk. Look at some of the corporate sabotage in EVE now.
  

To be honest i dont see the problem you describe. Take EQ for example, there where raids people said you need 6 clerics minimum to have a chance. So some nights we sat there with 40 people but only 4 clerics on. So what we did was?? go and cry? No, we formed an alliance with another guild and we learned to change our strategy so that 4 clerics + 4 druids could do the raid too. We as a team solved the problem - the wooting was loud when we did it with 3 clerics.

 

• work with the /played time a certain account has - use that number for both, penalties and rewards. Casual gamers and hardcore gamers do not connect well in the same environment but have to play on same servers. So use that number to balance things. (especially in PvP but also some in PvE)
  
  See the fire brigade theory above. Rewarding players for a certain amount of /played=botting. Penalizing players for it and they'll figure an optimal way to log out for a few minutes every so often to dodge the penalty.
  

As i said - you could use your own theory for every reward in an MMO. Giving experience for killing a wolf? Someone might write a makro. But experience for wolfs i common and using the /played data in a smart way could help to ballance out 24/7 vs casual.

• encourage roleplaying - look the nice music system of LOTRO, why is it not used for quests? Play the correct melody practised with an NPC (random keystrokes) during a battle or event to progress. Anyone remember the EQ raid where you had to finish song lines in the middle of a fight to calm down skelleton adds?
  
  Now, personally I love this idea. Problem is, 99% of the MMO community probably are opposed to roleplay, or at least ambivalent. Forcing people into anything like this usually goes poorly.
   

Well everytime i saw things like this in games i and my guild had a blast. I think what you describe is the saying that people dont eat what they dont know.

• give players a chance to create their own content within the game. (Eve and Ryzom - well done!)
  
  Requires server space. And someone to watch the content to make sure nothing inappropriate gets through. Not saying it's not doable...but gives most devs the willies.
   

Well Ryzom manages it very well and if most games have one thing too much then its server space.

• stop to make everything automated and macroable - crafting can be done like in EQ2 and must not be watching a progression bar finishing 20 of the same recipe. (LOTRO)
  
  /Agree
   
• let things decay and let players decide what pieces of their equipment are epic and to be blessed UNDESTROYABLE.
  
  Item decay exists in most mainstream MMOs. And the "indestructible" tag (you played MUDS didn't you?) will never happen in most of those cases. item decay=moneysink.
  

I think you misunderstood, i was not talking about items that can be repaired. I was talking about items that are destroyed / unusable once they where used too much. The only game that i know doing this is Ryzom and its fun. It is a dev taboo to take something away from a player - breaking taboos is taking risks.

• Stop linearity and herding. Remember how EQ used to have Freeport, Qeynos, Kelethin, Felwith, Akanon, Neriak as starting cities for the first 6 months it was almost like several different games. A gnome would know where the bank is in Akanon but an elf got completely lost down there. The plane of Knowledge came years after release but in new games everything is centralised really quick, making the different carreers pretty identical. WoW does that well too if i recall correct.
  
  I both agree and disagree. The reason this has been done in most games is because in, say, EQ, you ended up with a game that sometimes felt empty, because no one was around. Forcing people into 1-2 central hubs gives you a feeling of more life. At the same time, it DOES feel like herding, so i understand how you feel.

No when EQ came out all capitals where rather crowded because there was enough content around them to bind people 2-3 weeks nearby. In modern games you are put on the mainstream rail really quick following the identical quests and carreers. Of course it is done like this, because it is much easier to balance and much cheaper to develope. But it is less fun and does not feel like a world.

• stop exagerating the number of servers at launch, rather you have not enough servers than empty ones. In my opinion WAR had too many servers at launch. Those that i tried where pretty empty, hardly found anyone for the public quests.
  
  You ever win on this one. Not enough servers and you get a laggy, crashy opening. Too many, you have ghsottowns. It's hard for devs to accurately forecast their server needs at opening in time to get the servers up and running FOR said opening. So this one is, sadly, often unavoidable.

 

You will only get the crashy and laggy opening if you allow too many players on the same server at the same time. To be honest i would rather have had some crashes in WAR than finding myself being the only one with 3 others doing a public quest in a 4 weeks old game.

 

 

Originally posted by outthislife

I have a life so I can't spend 24/7 or even close on video games. I used to be able to, and I found out that now that I can't anymore it really kind of kills the point of a lot of games.

After a day at work, or just to kill boredom, what games would you recommend? I don't even know if MMORPG's are the right place to look for this heh.

One of the most casual + solo friendly MMOs is LOTRO. You say you used to play video games alot in the past, titles? Nice games for an MMO beginner might also be WAR if you are into PvP some. Also WoW can be played very casual, log in do some quests or join a pvp battleground it also has some decent raiding if you ever break a leg and have 8 weeks to burn in front of the computer.

Originally posted by GreenChaos

There are plenty of companies taking risks.  But the gamers (you) are blind to them most of the time.

PotBS is a great multilayer ship based business simulator.  - that was a risk.  For those of you that say it was crap, compared to a single player equivalent, like Anno 1701/ 1701 AD (a highly respected game in the genre) PotBS was actually much better (imho).

The follow new games are trying something new:

Lego universe -
Build anything you want, by yourself or with other people. Explore what other people make, make your objects destructible if you wish. Purchase the legos for what you made in game, to make it in real life. One of the most innovative MMOs ever and how many of you people are going to check it out? Or are you just going to ignore it and continue to complain that nothing new is coming out?

The old republic – heavy emphasis on story with voice acted dialog, quests that give you choices.

CitiesXL – City building MMO.

The Agency – Real aiming, gear based classes.

And I'm sure there are others, I don't research every new game coming out.

Thanks alot for the hint with lego universe i will definitly have a look at it.

I have been looking for a more sandbox like game where the environment interacts with player behaviour. I think the big derail that has happened in the genre is that the new games are more linear theme parks  than open worlds. With the certain attractions feeling very static and repetitive being boring very fast.

MMO's are about the communities (at least for me)

Some risks developers should think about that come to my mind are:

• reward for interacting with others. Similar to "facebook" where more contacts feel rewarding to some. Why not count people that put you on their friendslist? (people from other guilds count more) - in New Worlds Online you gain experience when you introduce yourself to another player. I would like a game where not a title and a name hover above peoples heads but question marks and only once this player has introduced to you - you see their name. Before that its more like: "A dwarf tells you "text"" or "A gnome greets you".
• bring back teamplay to MMO's we have enough solo grinders now. Look how Ryzom allows harvesting in a team. The idea is not that new - would love to see similar for crafting. Let a guild craft their own ships and siege weapons.
• work with the /played time a certain account has - use that number for both, penalties and rewards. Casual gamers and hardcore gamers do not connect well in the same environment but have to play on same servers. So use that number to balance things. (especially in PvP but also some in PvE)
• encourage roleplaying - look the nice music system of LOTRO, why is it not used for quests? Play the correct melody practised with an NPC (random keystrokes) during a battle or event to progress. Anyone remember the EQ raid where you had to finish song lines in the middle of a fight to calm down skelleton adds?
• give players a chance to create their own content within the game. (Eve and Ryzom - well done!)
• stop to make everything automated and macroable - crafting can be done like in EQ2 and must not be watching a progression bar finishing 20 of the same recipe. (LOTRO)
• let things decay and let players decide what pieces of their equipment are epic and to be blessed UNDESTROYABLE.
• Stop linearity and herding. Remember how EQ used to have Freeport, Qeynos, Kelethin, Felwith, Akanon, Neriak as starting cities for the first 6 months it was almost like several different games. A gnome would know where the bank is in Akanon but an elf got completely lost down there. The plane of Knowledge came years after release but in new games everything is centralised really quick, making the different carreers pretty identical. WoW does that well too if i recall correct.
• stop exagerating the number of servers at launch, rather you have not enough servers than empty ones. In my opinion WAR had too many servers at launch. Those that i tried where pretty empty, hardly found anyone for the public quests.