f13.net

Fun to be patched in later. (http://www.f13.net/index2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1080685565&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2&)

Know what’s really cool? At level 20 you get to a ‘specialist class’ and the fun actually starts. (In theory)

…

As to the stupid fang intro quest: You know what I’d like to login to?

“You there! Solder! The Onongoians are invading our city right now! Here is your Musket. Here is your red hat. Go to the other side of the ridge and shoot at the Guys in the Purple Hats until they stop invading our city. If you survive then perhaps we can talk about your unique opportunities for advancement. Now, GO GO GO!”

Or, if the city wasn’t being invaded at that moment, how about:

“Another new recruit? Where the hell do they keep dredging you maggots from? There is nothing pressing going on at the moment, so here is your Musket and Red Hat. Go to the firing range. If you manage not to blow your head off, perhaps I’ll give you something more useful to do. Now get the hell out of my sight.”

But then, I guess my game wouldn’t get a ‘T’ rating.

Al that being said I do like the Male Dwarf and Orc avatars. Of course, the Female Dwarf is an pedophiles anime wet dream. YMMV.

I was explaining to someone that I was trying the linage 2 beta and they asked me why when I already knew I wouldn't be playing come release day.  I gave them my standard line about wanting to try all new mmorpgs to see what they had to offer.  But in retrospect, I think Haemish is right, I'm just mentally ill when it comes to mmorpgs.  Oh well, admitting I have an addiction to new shiny games is the first step towards recovery right?

Bleh.

From a game design standpoint, I think Lin2 is actually a form of negative progress; it's causes the genre to move backwards in time.

Speaking of time, I asked a fellow game this the other day and am curious to see what others think.  He's a time limited gamer (since "casual" gamer seems to be a much misunderstood term) like myself who enjoys mmorpgs.  

"If you had all the disposable leisure time you wanted (no job, no wife/kids, plenty of money etc etc), what MMORPG would you be playing?"

He said EQ for pure diversity of content.  I cant make of my mind but my intial reaction was to say "none of 'em".  I think I'll stick with that for now, but one thing I DO know for certain, it sure as hell wouldn't be Lin2.

Xilren
PS One the hopefully plus side; you can also sign up (http://www.cityofheros.com/news/item205.html) for the beta of CoH if you haven't already.

Thanks for taking one for the team, Haemish. Your review just confirmed what I long suspected. Now get into the WoW beta and tell me what's up...

Funny that you ran into Rhibald...I am surprised he can play MMOGs any more after the godawful hours the poor bastard logged in Shadowbane trying to keep HD from flying apart at the seams in the off hours.

I will stick with my parting thoughts to Haemish in the game surrounded by dead doglike things (the foxlike things actually use the EXACT sounds that SWG durnis make):

"Well, try to have fun, or the MMOG equivalent of it"

Nothing new.  As a tech demo it is pretty, but you can have pretty tech demo with prepatched in FUN by playing Far Cry.  And you don't have to pay monthly for that either.  Not a hard choice.

The water effects were nice, could see your reflection in them, you could watch yourself fighting mobs in them if you got the camera right... but this statement kind of tells you how fun the combat is if I am trying to look at my reflection in the middle of a fight.

Oh, and Far Cry has just as nice water.  And that 'fun' thing.

Lineage 2 by that standard is like a fantasy version of a rolling tech demo of farcry that is broken into lots of little parts that you have to double click on in succession to keep watching the video.

Thanks for saving me an hour of my life.  God, it's bad enough when games are boring and derivative, but when they actually manage to step back and digress, well.. that's something special.

Heh, I felt the same way about AC2, but then my friends actually managed to convince to me stay and play with them for the PVP on Darktide.  If the game isn't fun or especially interesting in the first hour you play it, it never will be.

OMG I'm still laughing. Great great review. Though I don't honestly think language quite is capable of expressing exactly how stupid the playerbase is.



Guilds are limited to I think it's 40 members and then only after the leader spending massive numbers of SPs. While this prevents uberguild symdrome (or wants to), it pretty much locks out casual members. If someone's leaving at 10pm because she has a job (like me) then they're just not going to be worth a slot.

As far as I can tell, there is no hope for a casual player in L2.

Fully agree, teh stupid must be experienced first-hand.  Haemish has actually understated it.

On the other hand, it did keep me entertained while killing endless numbers of mushrooms, marsh zombies and the occasional level 1 moron attempting to PK me.

Nice review, maybe I do need help as I'm enjoying it.  Sure the servers are massively overloaded at the minute and you do look like a clone but it's got real pvp...

Are you that desparate for PVP? Can you name a single good, fun aspect of the game besides the promise of good PVP in the future?

There's no ingame manual.  I think that the text boxes fit the Korean text, not the English translation.  And Koreans probably don't worry about how their glyph-words wrap.

I agree, the game sucks.  I wouldn't have ranted about it, but in your case it's probably more like a vent than a rant.  Can you imagine the extra frustration and suck for all those sobs who play the game to win the contests?

fixed.

while it may be the case that Lineage2 does suck I dont think you can find that out by playing the beta for a few hours or even a few weeks.

I dont really think you can judge a MMORPG until you play it for at least a few months to be honest.  

The sieging and pvp may be totally awesome and you would never know.

I mean I'm not sure how much fun any MMORPG is when you start out?

A game should always be fun otherwise its a failure.  The whole point of playing a game is because you want to have fun.  Unless you are a bit whacked and actually want to own some guy you have never met from Sheboygan or something...

I should not have to earn fun out of a videogame.  It better be fun from the get go.  I earned my fun by buying it or wasting time DLing it in the case of freeware and betas and stuff.

Yes.

The graphics are nice, *shrug* I'm playing a Dwarf going scavenger which may or may not make me equipment rich due to extra drops.  The game is meant to be pro soloing, pro twinking and anti nerfing with strong emphasis on items.  As someone who rerolls often, generally hunts solo and loves guild politics it might have been designed just for me.

TAO, HOS, TOE, DoO and TR are all playing on my server too plus rumours that Blood from AC1 Darktide might put in an appearance.  It's the bastard child of AC1 Darktide and UO pre Trammel, I'm giving it a go, even though I do see the flaws that everyone else is pointing out.

Not what I wanted to say, but ok.  The frustration doesn't happen when they lose, it happens right now because they play the game in an "OMG I gotta kill faster more more more can't login dammit!" mode, as opposed to Haemish, who had a casual "I don't really care but maybe I'll get pleasantly surprised or something" type of play.

What sort of fucking lollipop land are you living in? Try a game for a few months in case it might be fun? WHAAA?

SEEK HELP. What you're suggesting is like panning for gold in a river of shit.

Hmm.

--matt

I was able to try the Lineage 2 beta during it's Korean beta test, and after getting past all of the language barriers.....found out the game was pretty much all graphics.

I believe my character was level 15 before I got stuck in some rocks in the landscape.  I didn't know how to suicide/recall...and calling a gm or whatever they are called would have been no help since I couldn't converse with them.

It was nothing to see a person who was obviously too powerful for the npc they were fighting show up and kill the entire field of npcs.  The only reason I could fathom was for SPs, money, or waiting to PVP people walked through.  So I spent a lot of my team wandering trying to find something to kill, getting lost, dieing...repeating.  Then the game ending "stuck in rocks".

Never figured out how to get out of the "orc area" ...I wandered along the edges of the map trying to find a tunnel or zone line.   One time I was walking up a big hill and all the sudden Im floating in mid air with about 20 NPCs most of which were much stronger than I.  Only way to escape was to suicide on their claws.  Then I found a neat statue, and while I was walking around the area it was in..got stuck in those rocks....thought it mighta been a tunnel out of the area I was land/water locked in.


And as for above comments of playing a MMO for many monthes to get the feel of it....  I'd have to say "yes" it's true for the high end game, BUT it really shouldn't be that way.  It adds a caveat to playing the game..."won't be fun until you're this experienced/levelled/monetarily invested in."

Looking at Everquest's purchasing model.....you pay 40-50 for game and about 25-30 for each expansion.  They've released roughly six expansions, and if you've played for their entire five year lifespan you've got quite a bit of cash tied up in it.   If that game has hurdles that make the game so tedious and mind-numbing as EQ, I think you've been scammed.  Honestly I don't think that the content that most of their expansions adds justifies spending another 30 dollars on the game AFTER you've paid month after month of subscriptions for "bug fixes/content/server usage/*very minimal*gm events/poor customer service."  And while I paid for the expansions and subscription fees for three years off and on I was repeatedly told "You need to be level X to have fun and be good."  So I'd get level X,  then I'd need items.  I'd get items, then I'd need a key to get to wherever.  Then an expansion would come out, and I'd need levels again...then AA points....then items....then a guild......then the guild has too many of my class......  so either you keep repeating that pattern...or you make a new guy have some fun up till about level 30 because you're twinked..then repeat the pattern you did with the old guy.  Not my definition of fun.  It's something to do, but it's not fun.  And EQ also goes out of it's way to make it difficult to solo, so if you're a class that's over played and underpowered like druids were...you couldn't solo too easily due to the other druids soloing in the suitable spots for it....and you couldn't find a group due to the underpower thing.  Not fun.


Here's a little sidenote, I spent an ENTIRE week talking to the SOE CS staff via email trying to get my email address updated in my account so I could retrieve my password.  It took an average of two days per email to respond, and about 3-4 emails....and it all looked very automated until the very last email I received solving the issue.


Concerning SWG, for this game alone I believe there should be a law concerning "lemon" software.  If a company released such a spectacularly uninspired piece of trash as that, they should be forced to refund money to anyone who requests it.  This goes for Shadowbane as well, but SWG pissed me.  I played SWG for two months, about two days after my second month started I realized I had made a mistake.  This was during the period they kept modifying every profession about once a week.  At the end of the "balancing" my character was so utterly bad...   so I quit.  A friend of mine stayed on for months after and has recently quit.  He had millions of credits, was mayor of a city, ran two accounts, master chef...both favorite characters were wookies.     Now if you have kept up with SWG...you'll see that after all that "class balancing" they added armor that started making the races become unbalanced.  This left wookies at dead last because they had no protection against anything the other players could throw at them in PVP.

The point of all this is, if a company doesnt have the MMO right when it hits the shelves...more than likely it's too broken to be fixed.

If these games continue along the path they follow release after release... picking a game will be like voting for president.  Different look but same ol' shit.

I never said you need to try a game for a few months in case it might be fun, I said you cant JUDGE a game based on a few days or hours gameplay.

Its like watching the first few hours of a movie or reading the first few chapters of a book IMO.

I dont expect everyone to play a game they think is boring to start with but for me, I dont really enjoy being a newbie in MMORPG and the enjoyment comes from the anticipation of the end game which is where the game can actually be judged.

I mean the first few days I played UO I absolutely hated it, I kept dying and lagging out etc etc but I stuck with it and ended up playing the game for like 3-4 years.  

Since I only play MMORPGs for pvp in any case, the idea of judging a game based on newbie gameplay is just stupid to me.  I would be very interested to know what high lvl pvp and sieging is like in lineage 2 though.

I really like how you made the text red and bold. Just incase some one might not be able to figure out what you changed.

Way to shoot for the LCD.

You're welcome.

Most of the movies I watch are finished by that time... and if the haven't provided me with any entertainment in that timespan, I walk out.
Books I put down - there's plenty of others to choose from.
Judging from the low subscribtion numbers of most new MMOGS (especially compared to the predictions about the potential market that came out before SWG and TSO), I'd say that this is what most gamers do too, when trying out a mmog. Put it down and move along - the open betas just allows us to do so before actually paying.

The kind of crap people like you are willing to wade through in order to reach some endgame, pvp or other magical time of non-suck really boggles my mind.

The singleplayer equivalent would be if EA released Battlefield:Vietnam and told people to go through 20 hours of target practise followed by 100 hours of fighting their godawful bots before the multiplayer part of the game would be unlocked.
... and I'm sure someone thinks this would be a good idea ("that way, the idiots would have to train before being allowed behind the stick in a chopper") luckily people with this mindset are only put in charge of mmogs.
No wonder the numbers look bad compared to singleplayer games.

Lum said it so much better in one of his rare more than a paragraph long essays (http://www.brokentoys.org)

Why can't I judge it? I buy/play a game for FUN. If it isn't fun, why the fuck am I playing it? If the newbie game is not even as interesting as TELEVISION, why aren't I just watching television? If a movie sucks, I might watch it through to the end, but that's only 2 hours of my life. If a tv series is boring the first episode or two, I'm probably not going to watch it through the end of the season in the hopes it gets better. If a book bores me five chapters in, that book gets tossed back in the "Maybe I'll read it later" pile.

I have more than enough entertainment options available to me to put up with stupid, boring gameplay in the HOPES that some mythical endgame will make it suck less. And while there may be hordes of people willing to pay a monthly fee for hope, I am not one of them. More importantly for the future of MMOG's, 90% of people aren't one of them either. Lum did say it best.

As for not enjoying the newbie experience, here's some anecdotes.

DAoC's newbie experience was a blast. There were plenty of quests, many of which were interesting, including the first one you get as a Highland Warrior. It involved going to a bridge and helping fight off a massive attack of bandits, who come streaming out of the woods at you and the guards beside you. It made me feel a part of the world. Even EQ's newbie experience was fun; part of that was the novelty of that particular type of game at the time, but part of it was that it was a much more complete experience at release than this piece of trash. Even Shadowbane's newbie experience was better; you got new skills/stuff to play with pretty early and regularly.

The newbie experience not only shouldn't suck, it should be at least as fun as the mythical "endgame" because that's the only way you get people hooked enough to pay for at least a month.

FTFY.  (LCD and whatnot.)

Yes.  Exactly.  I really like character growth ingame.  But you have to START with enough skills to be FUN.  Then add tons more as time goes on to add complexity.  Simple is okay at low level.  Boring is not.  What is boring will be different for different people, but repeatedly double clicking on mobs to initiate combat and then just doing nothing is not 'fun' for many that don't need drool guards to keep from shorting out their keyboards.

By this same standard I think early DAOC and EQ also failed in this way.  Sure the first brigand quest was cute, but the quests from that point on pretty much sucked for awhile.  It was better than lineage2, but not by much.  The first four levels of DAOC were no more exciting than the first four in lineage2.  The only saving grace is they went by fast.  They should not have been in the game though.

I fear EQ2 will fall into the same stupid trap with their branching classes.  Who the FUCK played the first four levels of DAOC and thought



I suppose that line of thought is accurate, but the 'what I want to do after 20 levels' is play another game.  Although I can figure that out faster than 20 levels.

To be fair to EQ2 it is not released yet, so maybe the base classes do have some interesting skills.  I just doubt it.

Surely you mean that you broke it for him (http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif).

On-topic comment: Lineage 2 sounds thoroughly unappetizing and has no chance whatsoever of attracting me to so much as a free demo.

Amusingly enough, Schild's usage is correct.  You sir, are a moron of the first water.

Its the same thing as reading a book for 10 pages or watching a movie for 30 minutes, then writing a review.

You can give your opinion of your initial impressions, but reviewing a game based on small amount of play time is what the lazies at Gamespot do. Or when PC Gamer reviewed Black and White simply based on the tutorial. A review of anything is a review of the entire product, not just up until you got bored.

I can think of several things that got better overtime. Star Trek TNG didn't get good until the 3rd season. Titans vs Rams in the Superbowl wasn't exciting until the last 5 minutes. Silent Hill 3.

Your standard "fun" arguement is fine if you don't want to play, but don't try to write reviews, wether you believe it or not, reviewers have to play through games they don't like, unless you want to get a job at Gamespot.

And you sir are a living, mouthbreating example of the Lowest Common Denominator.  Thanks for playing, Capt. Obvious.


Apologies to the thread for the continued derail of another derail. To go on topic for just a second I'd just like to say about anyone who wrote that games need to be fun from the get-go that I agree with what you said.  (Harumph!)

And yet, Lum works for a company whose flagship product has its players do just that. Oh, the irony.

I couldn't agree with you more, but it seems to me this is -very- common. I think it stems from two things:
1. A total lack of critical aesthetic among game reviewers. In other words, it's just some guys giving their opinions, as opposed to working within a critical framework like a good film or book reviewer may. It's mainly just a function of the youth of the games industry though.

2. The fact that MMORPGs are -long- and to really properly review them is not cost-effective. Let's say you have 3 "qualified" reviewers on staff. You can't have one of them spending 1000 hours on a single game. You certainly can't just recruit one of the long-time players to write a review, as a long-time player almost certainly lacks the ability to view the game in anything approaching an objective manner.

So while I agree, I don't see that it's really possible to properly review MMORPGs for the most part.

--matt

Ohhhh, so you were breaking his post about a fix he did to another post in order to be "funny".  I see.

<RAY>END YOURSELF</RAY>

I completely disagree.  If the game is not fun in the first four hours (c.f. Raph's laws of gaming, et al), preferrably in the first ten minutes, then that's that folks.  Wrap it up.  Unless your target is the hardcore.  In which case, some hardcore player can review the game for the rest of the hardcore.  Haemish, as a "casual" player, is more than qualified to review an MMOG for people who are sick and fucking tired of being told they will never ever reach the fun, because they don't have the time to catass through the original game, much less the additional content added to keep the catasses happy.

If Haemish wants to review the first 4 hours of a game experience, that's fine. Just don't label it a review of the game as a whole. One doesn't watch 10 minutes of a movie or read 10 pages of a book and review it based on that. Or rather, a quality review of the entire product that does not make.
--matt

Apples and oranges.  A movie is two hours.  A book is maybe around 10 hours for most people.  An MMOG is potentially 50+ days /played, or more.  You can argue that someone should put in 20 days /played before writing an actual review, but I'd disagree strenuously.  Such a review would take months of playtime, and would probably not even be relevant by the time it was released.  (Content additions and bug fixes could potentially alter earlier parts of the review.)

I'm sure, as a developer, you don't want to see people dismiss a game as unfun because the early levels suck.  Pardon me for saying, "Too fucking bad."  Make all the game fun, or don't show up to the dance.  God knows I would have snapped my KotOR CD in half in about the first 10 minutes if I had to sit and kill rabbits with a fucking butter knife before I could even start "having fun".

This isn't 1998 anymore, and we aren't going to take the abuse of having unfun buggyass pieces of shit foisted on us anymore.  Fucking deal.

Your not that stupid.  I know your not.  He labeled the fucking thing exactly what it was.  A review of the first 5 levels.  It was right in the fucking title, what you might even call a 'label'.  And then he proceeded to say it half a dozen times in the article itself.  It he made a point to hide his lack of playing or never bothered stating that he didn't play much of the game you would have a point.  But he broke his fucking back repeatedly pointing that out.

If you read an article and fail to notice things as big as that, I am shocked you can drive yourself to work instead of just getting confused looking for the steering wheel of your car.

So off the damn high horse and take the article for what it was CLEARLY labeled as.

Somewhere in all my writing you seem to have mstaken me for a journalist. I'm just a loudmouth asshole with a penchant for turning a phrase. I don't have nor do I care to have a "critical aesthetic." I'm not a journalist, nor do I wish to be. At best, I'm an editorialist, and a vulgar one at that.

I tell you my opinions of a game. You agree or disagree. That's about as deep as it goes.

If a game doesn't interest me enough to play to the mythical fun stage, I think I am qualified to come to the conclusion that I do not like the game, and that others whose opinion sometimes matches mine might agree with me.

If the 'hook' in a product sucks, the product sucks, plain and simple. If I don't like the trailer for a movie, they won't get my movie dollars, if I don't like the first chapter of a book I won't finish it, if the scenes before opening credits on a tv show sucks, i won't watch it. What you  have said, considering you develop 'games' or whatever, worries me to the core. It basically says 'hey fuck you gamer, we don't want to give you fun til you work for it!' WRONG ANSWER! Your response should be 'Hey, you paid us, here's your fun.' Don't 'patch it in later', don't tell us 'Hey, but the endgame is awesome.' or 'hey, you didn't play long enough.' Bring the fun or fuckoff.

I'm of the opinion with Haemish on the issue of reviewing something on its parts rather than the whole. Simply put, MMOGs are the only games which seem to want to claim that after 4 hours you can't figure out whether or not it is fun. This is of course crap. I can play any console game for 4 hours and know whether it was fun, and I can do the same with any single player PC game. Hell, I can do that with almost any multiplayer game ala Diablo 2, Warcraft, Savage, etc. Somewhere down the line I think people truly forget exactly how much time 4 hours really accounts for.

To answer the question of how much you can determine about the game in a brief time, you can look at other games. In DAOC, if you didn't like the idea of auto-attack, grinding xp, bashing mobs, and doing goofy little errand quests...Well the rest of the game isn't going to turn it around for you. But wait, you say, what about the PvP and RvR. Well in reality, those things are just another grind as is, and people spend time in Emain farming each other for xp rather than mobs. The point is that the mechanics that held the game together never change, they just get slightly more complicated. To those who compare the first 4 hours to reading the first few chapters, I have to say that's incorrect. It's more like reading the first chapter, and then realizing that 90% of the book is the same chapter except longer and told from a different POV.

But, then again if MMO's were books, they'd be a million pages long and give you the middle finger every so often.

First off, this post is not a defense of L2.  I have a level 9 fighter and I will say that I think this game is possibly the worst MMORPG I have ever played.  The end game does look cool, but it looks like it requires a huge amount of dedication - more so than I can put into a game at this point.

Onto some generalizations though.  I think the problem lies in how cost effective it is for a game company to put time into the newbie experience.  I mean, really think about it.

The newbie experience is one that lasts a very short while.  If the devs are shooting for 1000+ hours of game play, how much dev time should they focus on the first 2 hours.  The newbie experience also is not one that will be replayed - people that have been through it once and are rerolling a character are probably going to do their damndest to blow through it as fast as possible.  The high level content is really where the re-playability comes in - if the company doesn't spend enough time on that, then the game effectively ends and they loose the high end players which is very damaging for the community of the game.  You also cannot afford to give away all your tricks right off the bat... if you give everyone a bunch of skills from the start, they will never feel like the progress and will get bored.  Plenty of games have this problem too where your progress is just the numbers on your skill getting bigger - that is quite boring as well.  There has to be some balance.

On the other hand, the newbie experience is the hook that draws people in and gets them interested.  A good newbie experience will suck in the more casual gamers and earn you good reviews from the game sites.  

The bottom line though, from a business perspective - honestly, how important is it for a MMORPG to draw in casual gamers?  You HAVE to give up design elements that appeal to the hardcore gamers to do this - and you will loose some of the hardcore element.  I honestly don't think we know the answer to this question yet.  It is fairly apparent though by looking at the successful games out there - EQ and FFXI are probably the 2 hardest games on the market, and they are the most popular.  They have good content as well, but most casual gamers abhor these 2 games.

The other thing about MMORPGs is the exploration factor.  Some people do not like to explore, they find it boring.  Other people enjoy hunting around and turning over every rock and looking in every crevice.  Most MMORPGs have plenty of content - it just requires you to search it out.  This too needs balance so that people have enough content that is spood fed to them to keep them interested, but to also have enough content that it makes the world around you worth exploring.  I think its important to note though that people that do not like exploration will never fully enjoy most MMORPGs... thats part of the game and many other people do find it interesting.

Hmm..

Good write Haemish.  As the thread has pointed out, and been nudged by Lum, I think the errors of the current MMORPG design theory are starting to show glaringly.  If masocism is a required trait to enjoy a game or any entertainment avenue, then they can count me out.  If I want to go watch the cubbies and suddenly it is required to spend two weeks in the Gym pumping iron to get a seat or running a treadmill for forty hours to spit a ticket at me, then I will not be going to see the cubbies.  I want entertainment, not a JOB.

It is the most important thing an MMOG can do, whether the makers really want to admit it or not.

Casual or "time-starved" players take up less bandwidth. They typically do not use message boards, or use them much more sparingly than hardcore. They have longer subscription times, because it takes them longer to access "enough" content to sate them. They generate less customer service costs. And most importantly, THEY ARE THE MAJORITY.

you will ever get anything but a sarcastic, whiny, review of an mmog on this site you will be waiting until death I am sure.

This is a site of jaded mmog players, who don't play games, especially mmog's anymore they just whine about them.

Lineage 2.

Graphics - 8.5

They did a nice job with the Unreal Engine, but anything under 1Mhz, and not  a "decent" video card its going to feel like your running an old ford model t.

Movement/Controls - 6.5

Alot to be desired here, you can point and click or use the arrow keys for movement, both are sluggish and definetely needs some work.

Chat System - 8.0

After SWG any chat system will look good after using that piece of shit.

Gameplay - 9.0

Why? Ok I will name as many factors as possible. Although this game is most definetely NOT for the casual player. For the Hardcore player its a dream.

PvP - Amazing PvP system that keeps it where it should. Castle sieges, race warring. If your a ganker or a griefer you wont be around long, being red is like putting a gun to your head in this game.

Leveling - Tremendously difficult, people who put time into their characters get the added benefit of growing attached to their avatar. There wont be a ton of "alts" in this game not for a long time. The lack of a hardcap will also keep the "catasses" busy striving to reach xx level.

The guild system - Maximum number of people in a guild is 40, with alliance its 240. Still a little too high in my opinion, but not daoc or sb zerglike in quality.

Castle controlling - not unique, daoc has done it, but in this game people will actually want their own castle.

PvE - I am only level 22, but what I DO like about the pve is leveling solo is JUSt as easy as grouping. And I hear this is true up until around level 35. A definite plus for people who dont want to be LFG all day long. Mob AI is mmog typical atm, get within a certain range of an aggressive mob they will attack.

I compare the PvE mostly to EQ, there is crowd control (A necessity at higher levels, again from what I hear), and a well balanced group is necessary at later levels for both PvP and PvE.

Loot/Looting/Exp Death - 6.0 - 5.0 - 1.0

Loot is dropped at random, from any mob, and could be anything. From an antidote potion to a nice piece of armor.

Upon a death both PvE and PvP you have a chance of dropping an item, moreso if you are red and die the chance of dropping an item is greater. This is a big problem with me, dropping an item while soloing and dying to a mob in PvE can sometimes really suck. Why?

Because you also incur an EXP penalty upon every single death no matter how ya die. And as hard as it is to level as you get higher, this just will piss off you off ad-nauseum. But like I said this game is not for the casual player. Haemish did have it right, in this aspect Koreans are insane.

Crafting - I cannot tell you alot about this yet, but the crafting system is in. Someone who knows about this can elaborate. I have looted a couple recipes off of mobs though.

Quests - Plentiful, and some are quite good. And the rewards make you actually want to do them.

Extensive amount of races, classes, and skills moreso than any other top notch mmo at the moment.

Character customization is terrible imo, they really screwed the pooch on this one imo. I would have loved to be able to differentiate my character more.

Overall rating on the game SO FAR is an 8.0 for me.

Hawken,

I think you are missing the point of what this community wants in an MMOG. Everything you described about Lineage makes me want to stab the developers. You basically agreed that character customization sucks and that the game is an even longer treadmill than most. Here's a hint, the reason we are jaded and pissed off is because WE HATE THE FUCKING TREADMILL! Treadmills are not a game, they are a distraction to take away from the fact that you our portioning out your life in game hours. To make another MMO with an even longer treadmill is so in the opposite of what the majority of the playerbase wants, it's simply insane. Perhaps in Korea, they love the treadmill, and they don't like sleep. Fine, here in America, the biggest hits against developers is pushing more of the grind on us.

I mean my god, look at the clusterfuck that was SWG. That game is a treadmill that just forgot to put a carrot at the end. In DAOC, TOA is railed against for making the game an treadmilling nightmare by the addition of camping for inane crap just so you can be effective. In simple terms, the treadmill is uninspired and as such is not fun. To tell me that Lineage is great because it is DAOC with 50% more catassing doesn't say anything to me about its fun factor. That's basically all you told us.

You just encapsulated the entire problem with the genre as it is currently being implemented.

Thank you.

I'm honestly not convinced though.  I think that a game built for casual gaming will have a shorter life cycle - I believe one thing you are overlooking is that it is HARD to build a 1000 hours of game play into a casual game design.  This leads to a mass exodous of the hardcore players which keep the community together, and shorter subscription cycles over all.

Show me the money HaemishM :)  The attempted "casual" MMORPGs that have come out so far have fallen flat on their faces.  

The design that many WT people are calling for requires massive, massive amounts of content and there is no way the devs can keep up with that.

Its kind of interesting because I think WoW is going to try for this.  The lower level graphics makes it easier for them to add new content, and they are putting a big effort into adding tons of content (which I think is sacrificing some of the depth of the game).  WoW looks like it will be a blast to play and a great time, but I wonder how long it will hold people?

Thats very narrowminded view. Thats what people with attention deficent disorder might base all their opinions on. Its the kind of people who miss the first basket they shoot in basketball and then claim the game sucks.

He labled it "Five Levels is Too Much: Beta Review of Lineage 2". He made it clear he only played for 5 levels, yet still went on to say the entire game was bad because of his experience with 5 levels. I think you're the one who is confused here.

It would be like me saying "I read 10 pages of Harry Potter and I say the entire book sucks." It doesn't matter how many times in the review I say I only read 10 pages and put "NOTE I only read 10 pages", its still a review an entire product on a small amount of reading.

If i was going to do a 10 page review of Harry Potter I'd say "my impressions of the first 10 pages are yadda yadda yadda...the rest of the book may or may not get better, but I couldn't get past the first 10 pages" So whats the point of a 10 page review? Nothing really except to hear myself talk.

Nah, I think you will hear a pretty long and pretty positive one once the CoH NDA drops.  Probably on the 7th with the preorder beta, but maybe not until later.

The reviewers here jump on this shit fast because they have fucking played it back when it was called eq, or daoc, or shadowbane.  Lineage 2 is not a new game.

CoH isn't exactly new either, but at least it feels like a pretty damn good mod.

1. Hawken - I really didn't want to attack people openly on a site that my name is attached to but, you sir are a total fucking moron fanboi idiot dumbass cockbiter. I spend almost every hour of my day playing games or mmogs. You *NEED* to troll more before you pin the tail on the donkey here. I'm glad you like shitty games, you're one less person who's opinion I have to care about. Oh and the SWG chat system pwned the Lineage 2 one.

2. Sloth - sigh, dude, if the low levels of a game - which are typically the first 2-8 hours are boring, what's the point of going on. Most single player games now'a'days can be beaten in 8-10 hours. I beat Deus Ex 2 on the first time through in 6, Splinter Cell is going to take me about 6 (MAYBE), Ninja Gaiden - I'm just about to rack up my 3rd or 4th hour and I'm probably approaching the halfway point (maybe not, I don't know). Point is you can judge a game, and books, movies, and TV from the first quarter of the show (15 mnutes for tv, 1-2 hours for a book, and 30 minutes for a movie).

To think you can't is insanely naieve, it has nothing to do with ADD or anything else. If I pay for a form of entertainment I want it to be fun from beginning to end, not a second job. Lineage 2, after the first 5 levels was a second job. Star Wars, after you exhausted the shiny of clothing, housing, and 'war' was a second job (to get to jedi, or to rack up faction points).

If you don't like something from the moment you log in, especially in a beta, why do you keep going? I'm not into S&M.

This whole thread and the review are totally moronic.

This is Lineage2: The casual need not apply.

If you want a MMORPG with no leveling, don't play.  This is not the game you are looking for.  There is no need to cry about it.

Some of us want a game where it takes a long time (Months) to get to a point where you can PvP.  In fact, I'd say there are a lot of us.

The rest of you can go play something else.

Nah. They'd be Robert Jordon works - 800 pages about the draperies, and a page and a half of action.

Made level 12 Dwarf today, hanging out in the Dwarf mines, finally completed the Silversmith Hammer quest.  

Now have a full suit of wood armour and really enjoying the hp bonus.  Also discovered I can hunt lower level mobs for more exp per hour than normal level mobs and do it with almost no down time.

Got a Doom Dagger rare drop too even though my hammer rocks.

Requesting permission to join Hawkens "total fucking moron fanboi idiot dumbass cockbiter" club please because I fucking love this game.

Might I remind you that some of you people played EQ for more than 2 hours for gods sake.....

There are more of us than there are of you.

And I thought I did so I would go and play something else, or at the very least, wouldn't be playing this turd.

Actually, Haemish's review is dead on then, sloggo.  The review, as read by someone who finds ONS a helluva lot more fun than say, getting PLed in Shadowbane, tells me that L2 is not the game for me.  Taken from that perspective, the review is a massive success.  I mean, attack something, and watch the screen?  For five levels?  Then you get one ability you can use every so often?  And this continues to level twenty, when you actually start to finally diverge?

Now, if you want a review from a hardcore perspective, go for it.  Let us know in about three months how great the game is.  Until then, I'll be having fun in D2X and UT2k4.

Re:  Reds in L2.  I predict there will be entire guilds of reds, owning everything in their path.  So what if the penalties are harsh?  That really worked in UO!  Wait... no it didn't...

Yep.  What I don't get is why you even played in the first place.  It's not like they advertised "NO LEVELING IN LINEAGE."  Not to mention that it's pretty much well known among anyone who knows anything about Korean MMORPG's knows that they make games fpr the catass.

The Red system works pretty well in L2, since its 90% item centric (like EQ) and you drop items when you die as a red.  My guild consists of the most extreme pkers I know (The Fallen Angels) and we don't go Red.  

Also, I'm level 17, so I might just take you up on that review (but I'm a sucky writer)

Ya don't say. </tongue-in-cheek>

I tried it out because it's free, I do like PVP when it doesn't suck, and I like to at least have some knowledge of something before I make a final judgement on its suckitude. I also hoped against hope that it might actually have something beyond what it appeared on the surface.

The surface was about all I could stomach, though.

Fair enough.  I told everyone in #hate they all wouldn't like it either and not to bother.

The engame PvP is very much based on being able to work as a team, using Terrain to your advantage, etc.  The siege system works extremely well, and its what SB should have been.  Of course, to make it work SB would have had to been made as a catass game, but that's beside the point.

Just keep in mind, I wouldn't bother with L2 if you consider yourself a casual gamer.

The really sad thing is that once again, the 'end game' sounds pretty fun. It is to bad that characters don't 'start' at level 20. *shrug*

You are right though. This game is *NOT* for the 'time constrained'.

Someone on the L2 forums linked the review on this site and they're now "commenting" about it there (http://boards.lineage2.com/tm.asp?m=114923).  Expect a huge influx of people dropping by to give us their opinion of Waterthread.

Nah, that post has scrolled off the first page already.

I read the first few responses. I seriously think these people don't have the mental capacity to get past the introduction. Ironically enough, that completely validates his review.

Ya can't call a review about a game trash because the reviewer didn't play long enough if ya don't read the whole review. Hypocrites.

Heh, keep reading. ;)

TV shows can grow on you. I can name alot of TV shows that I started off not liking, then started liking when I watched them in syndication. Like Fresh Prince of Bel Air, the first season I only watched two episodes, but when it came out in Syndication, watching it every day it started growing on me and the final couple seasons I really liked.

Silent Hill 3 I thought was a mess and boring the first half, then when I finally got back to the girls apartment the plot started making sense and there was a point. Now I wouldn't have stuck with SH3 had I not loved SH2, but at that point I just wanted to see the end. Now the second half though is pretty good.

As far as L2 goes, obviously if you don't like leveling to 5 you aren't going to like leveling to 50, but you should know that before you even begin to play.  The difference is if you do like the MMOG levelfest, basing your decision of l2 on the first 5 levels is just doing yourself a disservice because the newbie levels really aren't indicitive of what the later levels are like. Once you start getting Skill Points, you'll be training alot within each level, so the actual act of leveling goes by the wayside , instead you go after Skill Points.

Yes they are, and if they aren't they should be.

-edited a 2nd time to remove catass. You make enough fun of yourself.

Clearly you've not played EQ. Oasis of Marr is really in no way indicative of of what the Planes of Power are going to be like.

That said, I've given up games after 30 minutes. There's enough good stuff out there that I don't need to be frustrated at all in my entertainment.

But I'm a picky bastard.

I just don't get this whole silliness about having to earn the fun parts.  It boggles my mind.  It should always be fun.  I know there will be lulls in the awesome bits, but it should always be enjoyable in some way.  Obviously from my avatar I play miniatures games.  I get in arguements with people who think one should spend dozens if not hundreds of hours painting and converting their silly toy soldiers before they are even allowed to be used.  I quickly cut off the flash, glue em together, and run them on the field.  If I had to spend all this time making them pretty before playing I would never play.  Which is why those Wizkids prepainted collectible minis sell by the bucketload.  Its instant fun.  Sure I go back and paint my minis, but that is because I had FUN PLAYING and want them to look nice on the field because I have some pride and am anal retentive so painted makes me feel better down in the soul.

Sure KOTOR was a little slow to start, but it was still interesting and it then lead to the mindblowing bits.  It was never crappy.  If a movie starts lame I am not gonna enjoy it even if it gets better.  I have seen some shows that got much better in later seasons.  If the early episodes weren't at least midly entertaining I would have never reached the Betty Badass episodes.

If it sucks to start, its a complete failure, even if it gets better.  You only have one chance to make a first impression.  Like dating and stuff in a way.  If you go out with someone who looks like they spent a week sleeping in their clothes without a bath who talk to you while their hand is scratching their crotch, you are not gonna deal with them any more.  Sure, they could really be worth a million bucks, and normally take luxuriant bubble baths in a pool sized tub and are the most romantic person and best lover ever, but they started out like such a dipstick you simply aren't interested in finding out.  They failed.

Yep, I agree with all this. I've got no problem with writing about your experience in a game. I was just pointing out (not really to you but whomever started this offshoot about the validity of calling it a review) more or less just what you said. =)

--matt

You're telling me you base what movies you see off advertising (a trailer) produced by the publisher? You, my man, are Madison Avenue's wet dream. ;)

And I said none of what you're attributing to me. I just said that what Haemish wrote isn't what I would consider a proper review and that, in fact, it's nearly impossible to do proper reviews on MMORPGs due to the length of time needed to really see the product.

Personally I agree that games should be fun from just about the get-go (I'll grant that installation and putting in your credit card info doesn't have to be fun though it'd be nice!)

--matt

That depends on the business model. In a subscription model that's mostly true (though you certainly want hardcore users who will evangelize to others about the game). In our model the answer is a little fuzzier. It's sometimes more attractive to more casual players (I don't really believe the 'casual player' has any interest in an MMORPG experience. At best MMORPGs attract moderate and hardcore players right now.) because they can spend money to get advantages that others with more time can get by spending that time, but it's also the hardcore players who spend the most.

Just going after "the majority", though, is a poor strategy. "The majority" is humankind generally but nobody aside from global brands like Coca-cola can target "everybody". It'd be a waste of my time, for instance, to target grandmothers who like to play bridge and don't yet own a computer. It'd be only slightly less wasteful to target grandmothers who like to play bridge online.

--matt

I don't think you thought before you posted this. Why, in the name of god, would any developer present all options available to elders players to newbies? These games are very difficult to begin with. Why confuse the newbie? The idea should be to present the game to a player in an ever-expanding circle. You start out and the range of what you can do is small. You get larger, it gets bigger. Yes, it should be fun at -all- stages, but in our games, for instance, it would make absolutely no sense to present the experience of being involved in city-state government to a newbie. It'd be meaningless and a bit inconceivable really since the governments are elected.

Plenty of other examples if you want them. The game should -not- be the same at the newbie stage as at the elder stage (why would anyone keep playing the same thing over and over in an MMORPG. If that's what you want, why not play an FPS?)  
--matt

Going after casual gamers is moronic at best and a horrible way to do business at worst.  Casual gamers have very little loyalty and will leave your game for the next new shiney to be released.

Casual gamers also dramatically outnumber the hardcore gamers.

Yeah, but you could say the same thing about people generally: Non-gamers dramatically outnumber casual gamers. Does it make sense to try to target these people? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on your venture. It's certainly not as simplistic as "Target casual gamers because they're the majority."

--matt

This right here is the fucking problem. For us here who dont like L2, and dont like grinding. We dont want to think of games in terms of "Exp per hour". This makes me sick. What kind of fucked up shit are you people on where you enjoy camping one spot for he best "Exp Per Hour". it fucking boggles the mind.

We want fun. Camping is not fun. Grinding is not fun. Its the mindless shit they give you to keep you going and giving them money.

Ever hear the term "walking wallet" well, that should go hand in hand with "Exp per hour".

Color me amazed, after the first few, "OMG cuss words hes 12" replys, a lot of people seemed to agree. I thought it would be full of blabbering idiots and mouthbreathers, but some of them even had some rational thoughts and replys.

How about "Target casual gamers because they're a huge market unserved by the current offerings?"

I mean, yes it makes sense to target non-gamers. Look at Deer Hunter, or Myst, or The Sims. You think the audiences of those games were gamers?

I should have explained myself but, frankly, Sloth didn't deserve it. Here's my view on this however.

If the lower levels suck, the games got nothing going for it. I want the first 10-15 levels (assuming the level cap is about 60) to be smooth, easy, and basically training levels. After that, up the playcurve, leave in the fun, but make the battles more thought provoking than (click here). City of Heroes does this (and I'll explain more when the NDA is dropped, though I'm quite sure I've broken it anyway).

Frankly, if a designer can make the beginning of the game fun, I have faith for him in the end game. I've always dreaded the mid game, and always expect it to be the worst part of the game, so I tend to be more lenient. But I'll be goddamned if I ever let myself play a game as boring as L2 in the beginning again.

Seriously, there's just no excuse anymore. The Smurfs for Colecovision had a better beginning game.

While I agree with you in general terms,  by the time you are half-way to participating in the endgame you should be doing something more substantive and different than you were doing as a newbie.  In Lineage II you are doing almost exactly the same (boring) things at level 20 that you did at level 1.

L2 seems to have been designed to include only those elements that support the castle seige/clan versus clan endgame, and little else - no fluff, and no fun, either.

well in the case of L2 it obviously isnt targetted at casual gamers, so should it be criticised because a casual gamer cant hop in and have fun right away?

The game could be spectacularly awesome at the end game.  

Personally, levelling will never ever be fun for me so if I was reviewing MMORPGs I would just play for a day and slag off the game because its not fun right away?

For me the enjoyment in a MMORPG comes as you play over a longer period of time, interact with the community, make friendships, join a guild and then finally achieve something with that guild or friends you made in the end game.  None of which can be done in the first few hours of playing.

And I dont see anything wrong with that, there are plenty of games which are fun right out of the box, MMORPGs usually are designed for longetivity not instant gratification.

I have already posted in this thread that it's pvp I'm interested in, that's my major focus I like it.

I also posted that I didn't play EQ for more than 2 hours, you then turn that into I "enjoy camping one spot ".

You nuts or just twisting my words to get a rise?  The grind is just a necessary part of the process in developing your character to the point where you can kill people more effectively.  The quickest way of achieving that goal is to pay a little bit of attention to how much exp you are earning doing different mobs.  I didn't invent the term exp per hour, honest, trust me I didn't.

If there is no grind there can be no character advancement, if there is no character advancement then it would make more sense to play Quake to kill people.

If your major problem with Lineage 2 is that the killing mobs bit is boring, then we will not like the same games because I always always find that bit boring.  The fact that you like killing mobs in more interesting ways with more interesting spell effects and tactics and I don't, doesn't make me right and you wrong.  It just means we disagree, why throw the "walking wallet" comment at me you pink squashy bag of mostly water?

I perfected defeating computer AI in 1981 on the Atari 2600, I find Human intelligence much more interesting to defeat.

heh I totally agree with you

Please tell me you forgot the sarcasm tags.

Well, I just got a chance to play the game.  Its pretty lame.  Combat is probably the most boring and primitive unfun design yet, and the tutorials leave a lot to be desired.  No tactics and its slow.  Im up to level 6, and unlike almost every other MMORPG I have played, I am tired of it in under 2 hours.  I equipped a few minor items and my generally generic avatar looks almost exactly like she did when I hopped into the world unequipped.  Even basic Everquest had more customization.  No modifiers to the control scheme, and almost every keyboard hotkey is based around an ALT key command.  Even movement doesnt have keys from what I can see.  Its just click to move.  WASD with Q for autorun please.  Oh.. and while I certainly wished I had a butt capable of wearing the thong my avatar seems to wear, I don't need to see it that much because she runs with her ass in the air and her face mostly looking at the ground.  Nobody runs like that.  Even sprinters aren't bent over like that!!

I was hoping for at least some free fun like Shadowbane gave in its massively laggy beta.  Or Earth & Beyond.  So far I haven't even got that!!  This is a sequel?  I don't even want to imagine how bad the original must be...  AC2 which seems to get a lot of hate was a heck of a lot more fun than this.  I have a feeling I won't be playing this beta very long...

Heh heh heh, I just imagined what the first L2 Convention could be like, with players donning costumes and running around like that.

Ok, I've got a great idea for all you developers out there.  Put in a button that says, "HI, I LEARNED HOW TO AUTO ATTACK.  DING/GRATZ PLZ!"

And you can keep that button in for the whole game.  Once someone understands the oh so complicated tactical options provided to them by the current (and most likely near future) crop of MMORPGS, they can hit their DING/GRATZ button and advance to the next level.

Ok, first, I am ALL about the PVP endgame. What I am fighting against is the "Grind to the Fun". fuck that, if its fun, and not monotonous, then its not a grind, its fun gameplay.

I do not want to *grind* my way up to the fun part. I want fun and compelling gameplay all the way to the endgame. If you're willing to "grind" to the fun, then you should be happy with most of the games on the market, and L2 should be just fine and dandy for you. For most of us here, thats not what we want. We demand fun all the way, or those fuckers are not going to get our money and time.

Tell me, do you really have that much free time, where two to three months of mind numbing camping and exping for 4 to 6 hours a day is worth the chance that the endgame pvp will rock? Not for me, and I can bet not for a lot of people here.

seacrest out

Well, again, as I said, it depends on your venture. Games like Deer Hunter and the Sims have a big appeal to the WalMart crowd. Games like Everquest do not. I don't care what your game design is: If it has elves, orcs, and dragons, your average Joe doesn't give a shit. If you can be PvP'd without consent, your average Joe is just going to leave.

So that leaves you with designing a type of game engineered for the casual gamer, alienating everyone on this board (since by definition none of you are casual. Casual gamers don't spend time ranting on sites about games.) You'd soon be complaining, "Why can't they make games that cater to niches? Sure, you won't have coca-cola, but doesn't Weinhards rootbeer survive nicely, if not at the same scale?"

I don't drink Coca-cola, I don't like McDonalds, and I don't read Harry Potter. It's well and good that some people are making products for the casual masses but as a consumer I'll take my products hardcore thank you very much.

Besides, as someone who targets a niche (text MMORPGs) within a niche (MMORPGs), I'll be the first to tell you that niches can be a Very Good Thing to target.
--matt

Not at all. Hand your average person an Everquest install and let them start playing it. They're not hard in the sense that getting good at chess is hard. They're hard in the sense that they're a foreign concept to most people. I think some of you forget how niche MMORPGs are as an entertainment medium, at least in the West.

--matt

Yeah, but, frankly, does the hardcore playerbase need another MMOG catered to them? I mean, let's face it, the last few haven't done that well.

Those "fuckers" (btw is swearing new to you or something?), are doing quite well in Korea thank you very much.

Your first post twists my words with insults when I call you on it, your second changes tack totally to being all about pvp dude.  Yet you seem to believe you can pvp without grinding to some extent and then presume to tell me what I should enjoy playing....

Just don't quote me again fuckwit, till you make your mind up about what you actually want to argue about, that suit you ok?

Not at all.  L2 truly an international game.  Its been through beta in Taiwan, Japan, etc.  So the only cost is porting the game to english.  Judgeing from the craziness I've seen on the Open Beta servers (they are adding a 4th due to the high amount of players) I'd guess it will have between 50,000 and 100,000 subs (numbers pulled from my ass) and the US release will have a marginal cost NCSoft about 1/10th of a regular MMORPG, so it should be very profitable.

I think more companies should learn from Lineage:  know your target market and go after it full guns.  Lineage is for the Hardcore player who likes to PvP and level with their guild.  If that's not your thing, then don't buy it.  You can't have accountable PvP when you can reroll new characters every week.

It's a niche product.

Does the hardcore playerbase need another MMOG? Need it in order to do what? I'd say that it needs them in order to play new MMOGs. ;) I mean, so what if a bunch of games fail? I guarantee you that as long as games like Everquest and Lineage and Red Moon and the other biggies are around, companies will keep making them.

Most games of all sort are failures, so I don't think that many failures and a few spectacular successes in MMOGs is anything but expected. Everquest and company will be succeeded by other games someday.
--matt

Which is why Super Mario Bros is the top selling video game of all time.

But do you really want Super Mario Bros as an MMORPG?  Think about that carefully...

The business model for a MMORPG is very different than a single player game.  People may not like certain aspects of MMORPGs, but it is actually the business side of the games that make them like that.  I think the genre is still struggling to come up with a business model to support the casual gamers... it is being tried, but many of these more casual games are failing.

Yeah, but, let's face it, the games appealing to the hardcore players aren't doing that well either.

Maybe you should, you know, read my post. Instead of getting hung up on the word fuck, then calling me a fuckwit.

After you read it, maybe you will get my point.

I am against the *Grind* you know, the boring, time consuming, tedium that most MMOGs today have you perform for several months untill you get to the *fun*.

I think games should be fun all the way to the endgame. I dont enjoy spending my little game time doing some shit that is boring and not fun. I refuse to play a so called "Game" that makes me do this.

Like I said, I love PVP, that is really the only reason I play these games, well that and to hang with my online friends. But it seems to me, you feel that with out having a *Grind*, then you cant have good pvp. If so, you;re an idiot, and to use your word, fuckwit, but maybe lackwit would be better.

Who says a mmog has to suck to have fun PVP? right now most do, and that why myself and many other posters here are not playing any game at the moment.

Maybe you just dont know what "Grind" means. It means the camping, the tenium, the horrible long playing sessions. Games dont *have* to have this. Thats what Im talking about.

How about I requote you, just cause you love it so.



How about, bullshit. The advancement does not have to be a grind, it could be fun, quest based play sessions that lead to advancement with no grind. Thats what I am hoping against hope that WoW gives, and have heard from a few people it comes close. We will see.

With this method of thinking, I can see that L2 is perfect for you.

Yes, leaping over tufts of grass and fences was quite exciting.

The Smurfs was all about the bats...Smurfs newb!
---

Anyway, I just want to interject something somewhat off-topic. Wasn't the conventional wisdom around here 2 months ago that COH was going to totally suck?

Funny how opinions can change when people actually, you know, *play* the thing.

I always hate reading boards like this and hearing "omg it has no villains, this is the worst game ever." Or "omg it has experience, forget it." That's not "teh hate" that "teh retardation." The devil is in the details on most things, and games especially so.

Heh. You're a little late to the game, and it seems you haven't read a lot of the threads, but thanks for your comments.

AC2 had quest advancement look how well that turned out.  WOW will not be fun for me because it does not have pvp as a priority, you talk about what is fun for you and talk down to me because it is different from what I find fun.  You say you are ALL about the pvp one minute and then look forward to WOW.  Hey, whatever floats your boat I guess, was it an Amiga you had or an Atari ST?

Your point was "I want games to be fun" I believe, hold the frontpage!

I should maybe just have let this pass but I tend to respond to terminally stupid comments directed towards me.

Sorry for pointlessly derailing the thread further.  Morphiend buddy, pal, if you wish to continue this debate please pm me so I continue to be entertained.  I have not been mauled by a dead sheep in a long time and am quite enjoying this.

Last I checked Lineage2 had more than 20 servers runnng worldwide. Seems to me the games that are not doing are the ones that try to appeal to the Casual and the Hardcore.  Earth and Beyond Offline leveling anyone?

I think we all agree that DAOC and EQ could be considered successfull as well.  My guildmates from the WoW beta tell me that the Leveling was made much more difficult in the latest version.

This website isn't about MMORPGS anymore I take it.  Instead, it's about former MMORPG players that talk about about how much they don't like MMORPGs anymore and do Television reviews instead.

Ouch!

Doesn't approximately 20% of the people who buy a MMOG never even reach 2 hours /played?
A review of the first few hours seems in order.

The "you can't judge a MMOG from the first few days" argument is bs. Yes you can. Your judgment might be wrong - but so?

If a company can't be bothered to make the first couple of hours at least mildly interesting, why the fuck should I trust them to make anything interesting?

If you, for some reason, need to put "masturbate with a cheese grater" type gameplay in your game - don't do so at level 1. That's just incredibly stupid. Wait till people have played a few hours, build some commitment to the character - hook them. Then first should you go HAHAHAHA PWNED!!1!

I'm sure wife beaters don't hit a girl on the first date either...

Dude... have you read this post of yours? Read it again.

Now, here's a rundown:

- You are ALL ABOUT PVP.
- You find killing monsters BORING.
- You believe killing monsters is necessary to grow... so you can kill stronger poeple... who are only stronger because THEY TOO went out and killed monsters. So you grind because everyone else grinds, and they grind because everyone else grinds, who grind because everyone else grinds, who grind because everyone else grinds, who grind because THE WORLD IS FULL OF STUPID FUCKERS.

Now, I can understand if someone says "I hate leveling, but I'll do it if I have to", but... you WANT to do shit you find boring a repetitive just so you can do something else entirely later on? And you want to PAY for the privelidge? o_O

What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Smoking?

My brain hurts.

"1. Hawken - I really didn't want to attack people openly on a site that my name is attached to but, you sir are a total fucking moron fanboi idiot dumbass cockbiter. I spend almost every hour of my day playing games or mmogs. You *NEED* to troll more before you pin the tail on the donkey here. I'm glad you like shitty games, you're one less person who's opinion I have to care about. Oh and the SWG chat system pwned the Lineage 2 one. "

First off this is your site not mine. I am a follow over from Waterthread. And believe me your witty use of sardonic "fanboi" calls and verbal vitriol such as "fucking moron" and "dumbass cockbiter" do not phase me in the least. I am not a newbie.

Secondly you can shove yer "I play xx hours a week or days" you couldn't possibly hold a candle to how long I have played, teams I have ran, and hours I have put in. And no I am not proud of it. But all I do is play mmog's (and poker) I don't play any single player or console games (except the gameboy with my daughter).

Now that being said, I like Haemish, most of his reviews are spot on. Most of his articles are wonderful to read. When Lum sent me to waterthread 2 or 3 years ago because I begged him to give me a site that would feed my 1000 clicks a day habit that needed to be replaced when his site went down he sent me here.

Someone mentioned that when COH is released it will get "good" reviews here. It should if you like THAT kind of game. But believe me there IS a grind there also.

And you are complete jerkoff if you thought the SWG chat system was good or better than any chat sans ac2 since 1994 you fucking dolt. Thats pretty much a consensus among any mmog'er worth a salt that played that game.

SWG the treadmill was easy, 1 month to max your character even if your casual. Shadowbane even easier. INSTEAD of reviewing a game from now on as a general type of mmog you are going to start to have to classify a category for each one.

Otherwise your reviews are skewed. And not just biased. Hell they should be "biased" otherwise whats the fucking point of a review.

1. Hardcore/Treadmill - EQ
2. Hardcore/Treadmill/PVP - Daoc, Lineage II, AC1
3. Easy/Carebear/No Pvp - City of Heroes, toontown online, you get my drift.


I thought Haemish enjoyed PvP, and what he reviewed on top of everything else was an open beta with a gagillion fucktards in it. Even reviewing an open beta type game is ridiculous I mean now were reviewing games still in beta? And Schlid completely missed the point of my post. I never said I am going to stay with Lineage II, so how the fuck can I be a "fanboi".

People that know me, will definetely agree that I don't kiss up to devs or make favorable impressions of a game without a reason, hell I ripped SB countless times (and I played the shit out of it) when Haemish made decent reviews about it so fuck off okay?

Reviewing an "open beta" of Lineage II (Which does have some faults, what mmog doesn't?) to level 5 (yes he said that in his review) where the whole game really doesn't take place till post level 35 is FUCKING RETARDED. If you do not want to take the time to level up a character to give a proper review of something then don't review it. Just sit back stfu, and let someone else who LIKES that type of game decide whether its a heap of shit or not.

And lastly, to say "we dont like treadmills" we wont play it or review it well is something you better get used to or go play fucking quake, cause levels aren't going anywhere. Quit trying to make these games out to be more than what they are. A time sucking, black hole, of mindless fun.

Now get off my box.

And I almost forgot.

Where are you getting your statistics that the "casual" gamer so grossly outweighs the "non-casual" gamer? In this thread a number of times it was said "that the casual games is what makes the money".

I call bullshit. Maybe in the first 2 months, but your long standing subscribers sure as HELL are going to be what makes you money. Its the people that play the game for years and become attached to it and subscribe and stay subscribed even after an abscense is where the money comes from.

I would really like the devs from daoc and eq (these are the 2 biggest subscriber basis right?) And have them tell me what the time is the "average" player for each game fucking plays. MMOG's were never ever made for the casual gamer, and the ones that tried have all ended up in the shitter. If a game is good I am guessing a large majority of the player base doesn't play it "casually".

So many people have been accosted by various mmog's over the last 7 or 8 years that I am almost positive the tide is beginning to turn (if it hasn't already) and the casual gamer is not something devs want to attract anymore.

They want a game with a hook, to keep you playing, keep you subscribed, and get you addicted to it.

I don't get these "hard core" players.  Nerf there +57 flaming eternal sword of shadows to +56 and they'll bitch and moan on vnboards for days, start a letter campaign, and threaten to cancel their account.   Yet, give them simple, repetitive, mind numbing game play and they don't even complain. Worse they defend it.  

If developers are so lazy and unimaginative that the first 4 hours of the game suck, why would you continue to pay to play?  How can you argue with a straight face that people should invest days and days of play time and months of subscription fees so that they can finally get to the fun part?  The "hard core" players are being taken advantage of by game developers. They're being exploited and cheated, but they're so fixated on hearing that 'ding' that they can't see the big picture. They need a fucking intervention.

Some people like to "invest" in their characters.

God forbid.

Welcome to the year 2004, enjoy your stay.

This site hasn't been about MMORPGs for a solid year.  Because quite frankly no one's made any strides besides putting out more derivative, treadmill laden crap (which I guess you just can't get enough of).  I guess we're all sorry that our tastes have evolved and you're still trying to slither on to land.  

So, TV reviews? /shrug I guess they had to fill the void with something.  

But hey, with COH and WoW on the horizon I'm sure we'll see some positive MMORPG reviews in the next year (I've heard people like these games as games).

By invest do you mean sit in front of your computer for 8 hours a day fighting the same old shit so you can update your sig pic with a new level number?

You're all fucking nuts. That's not investment, that's masochism.

Have fun thinking its any different in COH or WoW.

Cause yes there is levels in both of those games. Except in both of those games you can do it cartoon style.

Yay.

In WOW I've heard most of your leveling can be done through questing. That already gives it a heads up on L2.  I like to feel I'm progressing in the world rather than just wacking foozles because it's the only way.  

And I've heard COH actually has engaging, fun combat.  So ++ for them to.  

Yes, these games will all have levels and all have some sort of linear to exponential progression. But for fuck's sake, it doesn't necessarily have to suck.

The same principle in writing should apply to MMOG's when it comes to the overall length of your game.

Give people a good beginning and a good ending, and they will forget about the mediocre middle.

That's the key to a good MMO, its to draw them in with good gameplay at the lower levels, ratchet them up for the end game, and then hit it out of the park with said endgame. It doesn't matter that the middle was a grind if it was at least a fun grind part of the time. If the gameplay is not fun at the beginning, and only fun at the end, then the game is missing a serious part of attracting a serious audience. Not just this hardcore vs. casual BS.

I don't want to defend grinding, but I pay to do things I don't enjoy in order to enjoy something more later all the time. Everytime I go on vacation I'm forced to actually travel to the location, something I find extremely odious. It's worth the payoff though.

When I start a new martial art I'm usually forced to go through a bunch of boring crap before I can get to the fun stuff: sparring. Is it worth it? To me it is. To others, perhaps not.

The first time I read the Silmarillion I was bored shitless the first 20 or 30 pages. Worth slogging through that to get to the rest? Hell yes.

My point is that some of you are dramatically oversimplifying the dynamic at work here, which is not a black/white good/bad dynamic. It's one of cost vs. expected reward. If you expect the elder game will be worth the grind, then it behooves you to do the grind. If you don't, then don't. Simple cost/benefit analysis.

--matt

Wow, that's pretty funny. Most text gamers would consider you and just about everyone playing graphical muds as underevolved primates who value eyecandy over gameplay.

Personally, I think that stance, and your stance, is a bit absurd. Your tastes have changed. To call them an evolution and imply that you're somehow "better" because you no longer like levelling is just as absurd as hardcore roleplayers saying they're inherently superior because they use far more creativity in their gameplay than you do.

--matt

Agreed, sorry about that.

I'll say this again. The devil is in the details. "These games all have levels, so they're exactly the same!" is idiotic. Having levels is not the problem. The problem is when you have to sit in the same place levelling for hours Dragon Warrior 2 style.

From what I've heard in WoW people go up levels naturally by doing quests. That's quite different than standing on one place for 10 hours pulling rabbits. Nearly every single player RPG uses the "level as you quest" model. Most MMORPGs don't.

Maybe I was just trying to hard to be insulting/funneh.  I believe truly that my tastes have changed for the better. I used to be content with mindless treadmills because the games they were attached with were shiny and new. I played the hell out of EQ for a good 3 years.  My last resubs to EQ didn't last over a month a piece. I spent maybe 3-4 months in DAoC.  With games like AC2 and AO I didn't last a week after the shiny wore off (a bit of a month of total playtime in each).  

I really just can't fathom how people will pay for these mindless, whack-a-mole contests FOR MONTHS AT A TIME with some sort of mythical, end-game-somewhere-over-the-rainbow promises.  It took me a while to realize that putting up with that crap is just a pointless waste of time.

How can rebuking boring, shitty, dull gameplay not be considered better?

Blah, fuck it. Back to the old two sides that will never see eye to eye. Carry on, enjoy your grind.

So before your tastes changed, you had a great 3 years playing EQ. Now, you've got no interest. Net result: You don't have any MMORPGs you like right now. How is that a change for the better? ;)  (I'm only being half serious.)


But you answered your own question above. You played EQ for 3 years. You're one of the people you're wondering about.


Because 'better' is subjective, as is 'boring', 'shitty', and 'dull.' It's pretty clear that level grinding is immensely attractive to a whole ton of players. Certainly way more attractive than PvP in an MMORPG is, sadly.


I don't enjoy the grind. I don't even enjoy graphical MMORPGs yet as I feel like I'm playing a text mud from 10 years ago with some eyecandy slapped on.

I'm just pointing out that your preferences are just that: Your preferences. They aren't an indication of anything but that they happen to be your preferences.

--matt

This whole thread nicely illustrates why I think we need to break out of the 'traditional' leveling paradigm. Let people invest in their characters through differentiation and specialization, but get rid of the evolving Hit Point mechanism where a level 1 newb can die of a hangnail, and a level 50bajillion character at the 'endgame' can solo deities

That mechanism works great for Pen and Paper Heroic Role playing in which a small group of characters are the protagonists and the setting is highly influenced via GM/player interactions. It is quite simply silly in a PSW, ESPECIALLY if it is going to have player competition of any sort (wither that is direct PvP or indirect raiding ala EQ).

And until someone ‘gets this’ I don’t think the genre is going to go anywhere except in circles. With Bondage Dark Elves utilizing tity-bounce vector calculations. In 3D.

And in all honesty, the sorts of 'changes I talk about aren't 'to hard', they are simply different. - and subject to institutional gestalt in both the development and playerbase culture.

*shrug*

Matt et al, that not what he said at all and I hope you know it.  Why is everone insistent in mistating the problem.  It's not levels are bad or levels are boring, it about the gameplay NOW is boring us to tears.  Lineage might have the greatest pvp ever, but to require someone invest  months of real time doing unfun things to get their is insane.

Because here's the rub, you are driving off a lot of people would like the endgame if they could actually enjoy the trip to get there.  DAoC had the same problem with it's pvp; to get there you had to go do some less than fun thing for entirely too long.  Why would you want to drive off potential customers with something that is so arbitrary as a large "time investment needed beforeo end game" that has no instrinsic value to anything?

Let me ask you it this way.  Let's say pvp in lineage really begins and is quite fun at level 35.  What do you think the reaction would be to simply doubling the exp and money granted by every mob.  Presto chango, I've shortened the pve grind by half.  I changed the cost/benefit analysis with no real impact on anything.  Would anyone who plans to play/is playing Lineage2 already react negatively to this?  If the answer is no (and I susepct it is), then what purpose is served by keeping the grind as long as it is?  Is it simply to squeeze out a few more months of average revenue per play?  I hope not, but I suspect that is either the primary reason or there actually is no good reason for it.

But you know what I (and others in this thread) would prefer instead, engaging gameplay from the word go.  Levels and experience curves and such are completely artibrary and artifical things made up by the dev team.  They have no value outside the system and this has always been the case no matter what crpg or even pnp rpg you played.  I could care less if a game has 10 levels or 100 or 1000 if im having fun no matter what level i am.  If you say it's neccessary to get to level X strictly through pve to open up the pvp castle seiging portion, I'm ok with that, so long as getting to level X is enjoyable.   What's so wrong with wanting have fun at the beginning, middle and end of one of these games?

Xilren

It's simple.

Give me a game that does not make me stop. I hesitate to admit this, but one day after having played EQ for three years straight, as I was Cannibalizing with my shaman and then sitting to regain mana, it hit me. Why the fuck is my character doing the exact same thing I am in real life? Sitting on his ass. WTF? That's not epic adventure.

When I think of playing an epic hero, I'm thinking along the lines of Beowulf. Give me a character who can hold his breath for a day and administer an epic ass whooping to Grendel's mother. Don't give me the old, bland "preparation for the big day" bullshit. These characters are supposed to be amazing heroes of their worlds. Sure, they start out as greenhorns, but that's why they kill rabbits, rats, snakes and spiders, no? That's torture enough.

How to give people a game that doesn't make them stop? Quest based advancement. Sure, you may have to run all over the world to find items, kill mobs, go to another town, but at least your character is not sitting on its ass. At least there is the illusion that you are doing something and at least there is a story to what you are doing. It's like getting involved in a little novella or a chapter in the greater scheme of the 3D novel.

Sure, Beowulf probably rested, but you don't see a hell of a lot written about that do you? Why? Because it's fucking boring. So why again are you making me read about my rests between every fight in a fantasy world? I'll give AC2 one thing, they had regen rates right. Fast. I never once had to sit in that game unless I chose to do so for a meeting or roleplaying.

As to CoH and WoW, it remains to be seen if they leave their current systems intact and refrain from creating a grind by nerfing exp or raising the exp to level. But if they can manage to release games that allow me to go questing and gaining levels is a by-product of said questing, then they've got my cash. I'm not holding my breath though, because the majority of players who like to burn through the content, since they are the proud owners of great swaths of free time, like to bitch about how they got to the end too fast. And it's funny because we casual players say that it's their fault for leveling too fast. Conversely, if it's a tedious grind, the hardcore catasses look at the bitching casuals and say that it's our fault for not investing enough time and to go play single player if we want a fast game. *sigh* And the devs all watch and laugh at us.

I have been trying a dwarf in lineage 2 and I have to say that is probably the dullest worst mmrpg setup for one of a very limited ammounts of classes ever.

The only cookie they get is item crafting and until level 20 they are not even any good at that nor could they afford to actually use it.

For the first 20 levels your be all end all wack a mole ability is auto attack. Thats it they have nothing else. It is the most dreadfully dull boring thing I have ever tried. I am by no means a casual player and my time in lineage 2 rates a great big WTF. DAOC used to be the winner with 5 levels of suck but now that I have truly seen the suck champion daoc's first five levels are a blast.

It really does appear that after level 35 or 40 the game may be fun but to get to that point it is just awful. The only thing I can think of is the game is designed with multiple people playing the same character so you wouldn't notice the massive tedium as much as you would not have to do it all yourself.

I have played almost every major mmrpg out there and I still play many of them. Hell I am a mmrpg fanboi but I just cannot stomach lineage 2 at all. I guess it is good to know where ones limits are and L2 is mine.

Kaid

Right. It's boring -you- to tears. Meanwhile Everquest has 400,000+ subscribers. *shrug*

--matt

Anyone who thinks they're going to win over any of EQ's 400k users by having "all the level grind, and only 25% of the content!" then they deserve to fail.

Oh, agreed. My point is just that grind games are clearly entertaining to many people.

--matt

And my point is that, as the past few years of MMOGs have shown, they're not going to leave EQ. Not when SoE can put out a new GUI and new content with enough frequency. I mean, there's really no reason to think EQ is going to fall off of its peak anytime soon. Or anytime later. Because it has years of dev time now, and players have ages /played.

I repeat - there is no reason to try to clone EQ. The EQ players are happy.

Eh, they've been happy for a mere 5 years. They won't be happy forever. And no one is suggesting cloning EQ. Having a similar major gameplay aspect is hardly a game-killing 'flaw'. If it was, nobody would bother making an FPS after Doom, or an RPG after the early Ultimas.

--matt

Doom and the Ultima games had meaningful endpoints - at some point, you ran out of game.

That's not a factor for EQ. Neither, frankly, is a decline of shininess, as they've demonstrated.

So what's going to be the motivating factor for people to move off the game?

Grinds are entertaining for only so long.  Eventually, people acquire families, careers, things that get in the way of soul devouring timewasters, which is what current "hardcore" mmogs are.

Hey, if what you want is to appeal to a "hardcore" audience comprised of highschool and college age punk males, so be it.  Enjoy the cesspool!  I hope someone makes a game aimed at people with less time on their hands.  It'll be a goldmine.  I'm waiting, cash in hand, for that game to arrive.

One thing I don't understand is why companies focus on timesinks. I mean, ultimately, they don't care how much time you spend connected to their servers. Frankly, in terms of bandwidth, CS time, etc, the best customer is one who never logs on.

Why design timesinks when you can just have a game that people play less? Especially something like SoE or EA, where they have other games that you could be paying them not to play too.

Hehe, UO had the ultimate version of this going for quite some time, and maybe still do.  A house is a powerful attachment to the game and lots of people hod accounts open just to have the privelage to login and refresh a house before logging out.

Maybe we have to back up abit here and get our definitions straight.

A treadmill to me is a series of actions that is done in order to progress in a game.

A "GRIND" is a BORING, repetitive treadmill that is not 'fun'.

I have no problems at all with treadmills or levels.  But the grind is the problem.  What defines a grind will differ from one to another because the definition of 'fun' is subjective.

This forum generall sees 'click autoattack and see if you win' gameplay the epitome of a grind.  People who still love that are often viewed here with the same level of horrified awe as people who enjoy making or watching scat films.  We dislike eating shit SO much it is hard for us to comprehend that there are those out there that enjoy it.

Let me clarify the word 'still' above.  I don't think others on this thread are being internally inconsistent (as Matt pointed out above) by playing EQ for years and then vehemently attacking the same gameplay in lineage.  It is in fact incredibly logical to me.

The hit the lever get the pellet gameplay is actually casually enjoyable for awhile.  The game becomes a colorful IRC chatroom.  The vehement hatred of that is when after playing it for 3 years and utterly being SICK AND TIRED of it, they go onto NEW games expecting... well... a NEW game.  What they get is the same autoattack with occasional button press combat again and again and again.  EQ, daoc, ac, ac2, ao, sb, lineage, lineage2, earth and beyond, horizons, swg...  They are all essentially the same combat, and although that is accepted in some genres (rts, fps, etc...) it seems to uniquely grate on the nerves of most veterens over time.

RTS and FPS games, whether you enjoy them or not actively involve the user.  MMOG combat generally does not.  I am sad to see WoW has pretty much stuck with the same tired paradigm.  Leveling through questing may be enough to save it by taking some focus off the darn horrible combat.  It has worked for other rpg games with shitty combat (NWN comes to mind, where it DIDNT work for lionheart).

That is my take on it.

Oh, and one more thing.  The comments that the casual gamer outnumbers the hardcore are pretty strongly supported by the insane success of games like the sims and deer hunter.

*Sigh*.  No shit.  I hear Deer Hunter is really popular too.
And in case you missed it in the latest pc gamer (#123) article on EQ2, there are over 1.6 million people who USED to play EQ but don't anymore.  Yes, that includes me.  Guess we shouldn't bother trying to make something better to get those customers already pre-disposed to the genre eh?

Besides, I thought the huge appeal of Lin2 was supposed to be the kickass pvp at the end of the rainbow; something eq most certainly does not have.  So why are they asking people to play a pve game that actually worse than original eq for weeks/months until they get there again?  Who is that supposed to appeal to exactly?

And as a futher question to people who like lin2 despite it's grind, how exactly can anyone know if the pvp is any good if it takes months to get there without investing the time?

Xilren

I don't think it will be a goldmine.  Look at other Subscription content.   Only those with a very strong vested interest are willing to pay.  People who don't watch much TV tend to not pay 100 bucks a month for 500 TV channels.

I think it's reasonable to say that people simply are not willing to pay 15 bucks a month for a game they play 10 hours a month.

I am still amused that people see "quests" and think it is all of the sudden going to be better.  My level 9 DE in L2 has 4 "quests" running, the content at the low levels is not extensive, but it is also not non-existant.  Just because you can go kill wolves on auto-attack and advance for 10 hours straight doesn't mean you have to, lol.

I think what people are looking for is a game that throws quests at you one after the other and leads you by the nose through a linear story line.  If they have to spend 3 minutes exploring the world to find their next quest, thats "boring" and they get fed up and go kill wolves on auto-attack.

A PSW is supposed to be immersive and open-ended - at least that is why many people like them.  By its very nature, that means you have to go out and explore and choose your own path.

Not that I am defending L2 - like I said above, its possibly the worst MMORPG I have played in the low levels, but I think people are focusing on the wrong things here.

Who knows. It will happen though. Nothing lasts forever. =)

--matt

Yep. Good for Deer Hunter! A well-targetted game, if not my thing.



Unless you're a developer that's a moot question. I think the companies that make graphical muds should certainly try to make something that's going to appeal to people disenchanted with Everquest. I don't call that better, just different.
--matt

Cliff notes for the last 3 pages:

(http://archive.gamespy.com/devcorner/january01/carlson/pong.gif)

Hmm...

Slog, I think here is your most askew view in the argument your making.  I have always rationalized my entertainment dollar on a per hour vestment.  Most casuals are not playing 10 hours a month, but more in line with 10 hours every two weeks or even a week.  At $15.00 for 20 hours a month, that is a $ 0.75 price per hour.  The biggest bite is the initial box cost, which much of the Beta before you buy crowd are overjoy'd about.

I play MMORPG's for the enjoyment of meeting a challenge not only with friends, but strangers with in a world of fantasy.  UO allowed great flexability in this regard, EQ less so but more than most of the flavor currently out there.  However, the difference between UO and EQ is the fact that the more time I invest in my character, the greater time I need to invest in that character to accomplish something with EQ.  It never felt that way in UO.

From what I understand of this thread, your sense of accomplishment from the game comes from the treadmill and the sense of beating that treadmill.  My sense of accomplishment comes from defeating the challenges, not from the ding.  I play till I no longer enjoy the game.  EQ, DAOC, Ect stratify the player base, which breaks up friends with different time constraints.  It stratifies in an exponential rate the power gain from level 1 to whatever.

Now.. one question not asked that seems like it needs to be asked, do you enjoy a game two months after you max a character out and beat that treadmill?

Yes, but not everything is replaced.

Bullshit.

EQ has not sold 2 million boxes.

Sidebar: I'm just repeating what the article said.  On the surface, I find it wholly believable from anecdotal evidence simply b/c I know a lot of people who used to play EQ but no longer do compared to any who currently do.  I don't think a 20% overall lifetime retention rate for 5 years is that out of whack for eq.  What would you guesstimate it to be?

Besides, if you include expansion purchases as a "box sale" the 400k current subscribes could probably account for more than 2 million box sales all by themselves...

Xilren

Didn't eq run a free trial a few times of classic oldworld EQ sometime post SoL?  Think there was a downloadable free client for that and it lasted a week or a month or something.  The problem with that is no way in hell anyone but SOE has ANY numbers on the subs during that period.

PC gamer is pulling shit out of their ass.  You can tell by the stench.

And the problem I have with Lin2 is it's no better and actually no different than it's predecessors.  It's actually a step backwards.  The mythic end game fun might as well not even exist if a player can;t get to it within the 30 day trial that a box purcahse usually brings.  And if the initial gameplay itself isn't better or different than what's gone before...  

well, that is how this whole thread got started.

One thing which I dont recall seeing in this too long thread, Matt, have you actually tried the closed or open beta on Lin2 and what do you think of it?

Xilren

Yeah, but we don't include expansions - those are tracked as individual games in sales figures.

Also, buying an expansion doesn't do you much good, since you require the full version of EQ to play - so it's only sales of Kunark, Classic, Trilogy, and Gold that are going to contribute towards box sales of EQ that could lead to cancelled accounts.

For comparison's sake, The Sims has only sold 6.3 million copies. Doom only sold 2.9 million in its first five years of release.

There is no fucking way that EQ has sold the two million boxes that 1.6 million cancelled accounts would require.

The only way to know for sure is to try it or read a review of someone who has tried it and you believe has similar tastes to you.  

You are 100% correct it might be terrible, inital signs are promising, the lack of customisation to reduce lag, the battles over leveling spots that will be a major factor just due to the pvp+ nature of the game, the castles etc.  

In a couple of weeks when the larger guilds have lots of members in the 40+ range and the first major clan wars break out that's when the verdict will come in, either flames or a frenzy of excitement will grip the vault boards.  Funny that should just about tie in with release.......

Lineage 2 will succeed despite what has been said here, it is already a major hit and I would bet heavily that, providing pvp is worthwhile, it will be a major hit in the usa too.  They do need to fix the current technical problems with server 2 fast (please fix my server).  

The only long term problems I forsee are the same as the original darktide macros/exploits.

Do you have some figures to back that up or is it just a best guess?

Raph has stated several times that no MMOG has hit the one million mark.

The problem with that analogy is that you have valid reasons to go through the crap before you get to the good stuff.

Let me put your analogies into context.

- The travel company can instantly teleport you to your destination for the same price. Instead they make you go by plane because they know you're a massocistic bastard who thinks it's necessary despite it boring you to tears.

- Your karate instructors are aware you are at a level where you can sparr, but they make you train for a few more months just for kicks and giggles (although I found the training kinda fun).

- And the Silmarillion comment doesn't fit because (and in any case, it would be there for a reason beyond Tolkien being a sadistic bastard, actually I never got past the 10th or so page before giving up, but I was about 12 so I guess that's fair enough)...

And my main problem was that he wanted to be bored to tears. This isn't him soldiering on to get to the good stuff, this is him wanting to be bored to tears before he can get to the good stuiff. You like doing boring shit because you have a strange idea of fun? Fair enough. You're willing to go through boring shit because you have to in order to get to what you want? Fair enough. You want to have to put some effort into developing a character? Fair enough. But this is something else...

Inspired by this wonderful vault thread (http://vnboards.ign.com/Horizons_General_Board/b5252/66734011/?70) on the Horizons board...

Which is better, Horizons or L2?  Its like the MMORPG special olympics ;)

And if you win you're still a retard.

I don't want to be bored leveling I never said that, but lets face it just how exciting is it?  The best leveling experience I ever had was AC because it was partly twitch related, also if you created an extreme template character you could tank some insanely high levels, but a week later is that still as exciting?  Really is it?  Nope.

UO was not know for the thrill of killing litch lords, DAoC after a certain point when do you stop trying different tactics to level and just wait for someone who can Mez?

SWG PVE was a joke, SB was a piece of badly coded crap I couldn't get into.

EQ required a far stronger stomach than I have.  

I have just set my expectations based on my previous experiences and therefore avoid disappointment, I expect the leveling to suck in lineage 2

As a result am quite surprised I don't have to sit and regain health all the time.  Also consider I have been listening to all you EQ players telling me for years how you used to read books while leveling I was expecting that and prepared myself for it.

Lum played EQ for gods sake, I even tried the thing twice I would rather poke my eyes out than play that, at least in L2 I can look forward to an end game I might actually enjoy.

At least 2 American guilds will have to make it to an endgame for there to be an endgame. Of course, you'll have to be a member of one of those guilds. Then you'll have to be a high enough level to help one of those guilds, and your guild will either need tons of money, a super loser guild leader, and one of each dwarf type maxing out their levels and available 24 hours for sweeping/spoiling. Remind me, how the fuck do you like this game?

Server 1:
WestKnights http://www.westknights.com
Sinister http://www.afraidyet.net
Shadows of Carnage http://www.shadowsofcarnage.org
Blackguard http://www.blackguardclan.com
Knights of Endless Glory http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/callyn
Combine
The Birthright
DDH http://www.darkhand.com
Berzerk http://www.Berserk4Life.com
Invictus http://www.invictusguild.com
FCA http://funkycoldadena.com
Bleeding Dawn
Italian Clan RIOT http://www.forumfree.net/?c=19947
Brew Crew (BC)
Army of Darkness
Clan Legacy
Karas Hur http://www.pk-hq.com
GoDs Wrath Clan [GoD] http://www.godswrathclan.net
Shaolin pledge http://www.daysoflineage.amg.cx/
Circle of Power
NebularRavens http://www.rpgpub.net/honr
IronForge Clan
ShadowDemons
WARANGEL
Clan Wyvern http://wyvern.fragism.com
OSX http://www.familyosx.com
Clan Bane


Server 2:
The Ancient Order (TAO) http://theancientorder.com
The Dominion http://www.thedominion-l2.com
The Band of Hawks http://www.bandofhawks.com
The Regulators http://www.theregulators.org
IceClan http://www.iceclan.com
House of Sagacious http://www.HouseofSagacious.com
KINGSCourt
VII http://www.vii-l2.tk
Defenders of Order http://www.defendersoforder.com
SD (name to be changed)
NYC
Circle Of Shadows http://circleofshadows.proboards22.com
Call Of Fate http://www.calloffate.com
Dark Covenant http://www.l2darkcovenant.com/index.html
The Ring Alliance http://www.ringalliance.com
Sovereignty of Defiance http://www.sdguild.com
Elven Shadows
Shadowleague http://www.shadowleague.de/
Lords of the Eternal Realm (LER) http://lerworld.com
RookHaven
Iron Striders http://www.guildportal.com/Guild.aspx?GuildID=13842&TabID=115948
Smurfarna
Sharpedge Pledge
Virtue
Blackthorne Clan http://www.blackthornes.org/forums
MoragTong
Silent Reprisal http://silentreprisal.kharras.com
SouffleDuDragon http://www.lesouffledudragon.fr.st
Lords of Fear http://www.lordsoffear.net


Server 3:
The Round Table http://wald.heim.at/sherwood/532455
Above the Rest
Redemption
Children of Einhasad
The Illuminati Clan
Black Sphere http://www.black-sphere.com
One
Silver Fangs http://www.legionofgamers.com/Forum/phpBB2/index.php
Darkchivalry (TDE) http://www.Darkchivalry.com
House Lok-ri http://www.houselokri.com
Disciples of Valor http://www.disciplesofvalor.com
}{ispanuS Clan http://www.hispanus.tk
The Divine Angel (TDA) http://forums.hollowinteractive.com/lineage2/
Legion of Honor http://www.legion-of-honor.com/
Honour
Knights Of Crusade http://www.kocguild.org
BWC
Firestorm
RavensMyst http://www.ravensmyst.com
The DemiGods
Dragon Family
Weapons of Mass Destruction http://sc-sb.com
Crimson Dawn
Eclipse Alliance http://www.eclipsepledge.com
Clan Ogati
IronFist
Wolf's Dragoons http://www.wolfsdragoons.org
Clan StarFall http://www.cablespeed.com/~keithh/
Sword of the Dragon http://www.9thsword.org
Unforgiven
The BloodHorde Clan http://www.bloodhorde.tk
Les Templiers Templars Templer http://www.lestempliers.org


Server 4:

Shadow Sanctuary http://www.shadowsanctuary.com
Circle of Kaijin
Blood Pact http://www.bloodpact.net
The Forgotten Brotherhood http://www.forgottenbrotherhood.tk
House Sy'ruul http://home.comcast.net/~ogretoe/syruul/main.htm
Dragon Family龍的傳人 http://www.dragonsfamily.com
Virakar http://www.virakar.com
The Black Scythe http://www.TheBlackScythe.com
Storm Haven
The-Gathering http://www.the-gathering.org
The Silver Flame http://www.silverflame.org
Storm Shadow[SS] http://lineage.forcefedmultimedia.com

Castle battles are fought on a 2 hour window once a week I believe, guilds are not a problem due to the limit of 40 characters, hence encouraging new guilds to form.

I like it, shoot me.

I played on Darktide, so when I PvMed it was usually grinding to keep up with the Jonses.  But probably the most fun PvM times I had where in the Olthoi Horde Nest going for the acid gem.  Man, that place was crazy, especially when we got stuck at the bridge and all the buffs started dropping.  I don't think our group had enough high level warriors, but that made it fun.

Come to think of it, it was always the quests that kept you moving through the dungeon.  Any other time, I'd be hauling ass through the obsidian planes with 23907842938434 mobs on my back, while I traveled to my tusker spawn.

I don't agree with this statement.  Leading a guild in Lineage requires tons of actual ingame sacrifice in ADDITION to the normal cat herding that leading a competitive guild entails.  The number of even halfway decent leaders will be an extremely limited resource.  The small guild size means you need a LOT, a metric FUCKTON of guild leaders for most players to have reasonable guilds.  I don't think those leaders will exist in that quantity.  And the result will be that only the creame of the crop (in mmog terms the ones with the most freetime) will fit into the precious few guildslot.  The best guild will be the one with the members with the most time and no fat on the roster.  This will become clear very soon.

My problem with L2 is that you have TWO active skills you can use till level 20.  Then you get MAYBE a third depending on which class you pick (warrior only gets three passive shit).  How fucking fun will autoattack and 2 hotkeys be?  Even in pvp?

At least in EQ I could have setup about 3 dozen unique hotkeys for my ranger for class specific actions he could do (and that is counting each spell line as 1 action).  And I at least had to be at my keyboard to follow the mob and point toward it.

I'm not in a position to disagree with you on that Alluvian, I just don't know as yet.  I do know TAO, HOS, DOO are all heavy weight AC1 Darktide Honour/Anti guilds and will most likely have already organised their own sub clans.  RhyssaFireheart who posts here is a member of HOS and might be able to provide more details on HOS, I left TAO over a year ago but still hear things from friends.

As for the keys and pvp being be too simplistic, yup you could be right there too.  I'll no doubt start another Lineage 2 thread in 3 months when I really know what I'm talking about.

well most of those guilds in that list are established pvp guilds from other games and wouldnt have any problem adapting to L2 or any game really.

G-Zeus-H, love it or hate it or something in the middle, anyone with an interest in MMOGs should want L2 to see some margin of success.  Success expands the overall market and fills a slot, by a major industry player, with a particular type of gameplay.  

There's no value in begruding NCsoft for their subscriber numbers any more than begrudging Anheuser-Bush for their Bud-Lite drinking hoards.  Drink your micro-brew and forget about it.  

Nice work Arthur_Parker.  I have zero interest in L2 but I look forward to seeing your opinion in a few months.  



Heh, so this has become the epitome of the old Life Cereal commercial.

Kid1: What's this?
Kid2: Some MMOG.  S'possed to be fun to play.  
Kid1: You gonna play it?
Kid2: I'm not gonna play it!  You play it!
Kid1: I'm not gonna play it.  Hey, let's get Haemish!
Kid2: He won't play it.  He hates everything.
Kid1: He likes it!  
Kid2: Hey Haemish!

...

If only there were some micro brew for us to drink...

if currently EQ has around 450k subscribers it would seem to me to make sense that they would have had over 1.5 million total ppl who have played it, hell I would have thought it would be a lot more.  I played it and so did about 50 other people I know and almost none of those people are still playing it.

There is a difference between accounts and boxes. One box can support multiple accounts no? So that includes people playing two characters, people who stopped playing for a while and started again with a new character, bots, etc.

Only if they changed it. Friend of mine had two accounts in Everquest and needed two boxes for it. So at least at one time you needed one box per account which might have skewed the numbers.

One box does NOT support multiple accounts.  You need another key, that is in another box.  Its pretty standard for MMOGs, otherwise they would sell one box to the internet saavy and everyone would use that key and download the software.  The one box, one key, one account makes them pretty immune to pirating with the exception of those on emulated servers.

But there is also not a direct corrolation between boxes and accounts.  One account could have bought multiple boxes.  I know a few who quit pre-kunark and then rejoined later by buying one of the "all in one minus latest expansion" boxes so that he would be up to speed.  Those boxes can be found pretty cheap and are pretty much intended for both new players and oldtime players who want to catch up.  So if you count boxes alone, some people would be counted twice.

Whats to stop people creating Uberguild1 of 40 chars, Uberguild2 of 40 chars, Uberguild3 of 40 chars and so on?  Not trying to be a prick, but thats the first way I would, in my inebriated state, get around that limitation to create my Zerg horde.

The larger guilds are doing this with sub clans lead by a trusted guild officer, it is the logical thing to do as I mentioned briefly above about HOS etc.

The reason I believe it still encourages new guilds to form is if you have limited spaces in a large guild sorting out the sub clans is a pain, a new clan only has 10 slots and the clan leader has to buy extra to a maximum of 40 using his skill points.  It's very expensive later on and so you are less likely to hand the slots out to just anyone.

So I believe larger guilds will tend to have more restrictive recruitment policies than normal.  

Tie this in with fact that only the clan leader gets the dragon and I believe that means lots and lots of tiny clans forming.  Clan leader is L2's version of a Jedi.

Thanks but I can't take credit for that list it was created by Owyn of the Defenders of Order.  First step in the political game of a pvp+ server is to identify all the players (Guilds).

Shortly afterwards the creation of alliances/betrayals/KOS lists will begin.  This is just the grind before the storm.

In MMORPGs, there is also a good amount of account selling/trading.  And I'm not talking about the big dollar EBay accounts, but the $20 or giveaways.  I'm not saying this is the majority of the accounts, but when you are talking about total number of people played, and total number of boxes sold - this could add up over time.  Some of these accounts might have had 5 different people play them but only had one original box sale, they just passed the account key along.

In SUBSCRIPTIONS active at one time. He did not say that no MMOG has hit the one million mark in boxes sold. I do remember that at one time about 2-3 years ago, EQ had sold over 700,000 boxes, so I can see it hitting the million mark in boxes sold not including expansions. 2 million may be stretching it.

As for quests, yes Lineage 2 had quests at the lower levels. They involved killing the mobs I (and everyone else in the world) would have been killing for experience anyway and bringing back drops from those kills. Oh, the drops were random and quite rare, especially considering the congestion in the zone from everyone else doing those quests. They might not have been so bad had not the newbie zones been so overcrowded. They were, however, mind-numbingly boring in the "Kill this to get that" sort of way. DAoC had much more interesting quests, even in the "ride a horse to six different places in the world" type of quests.

EDIT: Holy Fuck, I'm Mikey.

There were also at least three low level delivery quests in the starting hometown for humans.  One given by a guard where you delivered items they wanted, one that was a series of running around to get a guy up enough nerve to ask his lust bunny out on a hot date, and one that was delivering a message to the guy standing at the foot of the victory tower.

Not exactly exciting, but they were about as exciting as the daoc horseride quests.  Both games had the kill quests.  Daoc had a few fun and more interactive quests but they were very few and very far between when I played (started about 2 months after launch, beta didnt convince me to buy the game, and then for about 3 months before I quit).  I think I remember doing about 3 quests I actually thought were 'fun' while leveling up one character on all three sides to 20.  Most of the DAOC quests were still just 'kill this thing' or 'go here' variety.  If you want to give DAOC big props for their few involving quests you have to do the same thing to EQ which did that on a much larger scale with some of their quests.  The dwarf/giant war in velious for one, that turned an entire zone into a huge warzone.  And the earlier part of that quest involved some huge forces spawning at an orc fort.

For the record, there are a few low-level Fed-Ex type quests in Lineage II. I remember doing one that involve traveling here and there delivering letters or somesuch for a warehouse NPC, for which I got something like 5000 adena (pretty good at the level I was).

I imagine the fact that reading the quest text was like trying to decipher a screed in Mongoloid Moron about going to the bathroom in the dead of winter, it's no surprise that I talked to NPC's almost as little as I talked to the Retard Brigade oustide the walls killing dogs.

Heh, I understand that one.  For some reason I didn't have much problem reading the text though.  Pretty amazing they could not manage wordwrap.  Notepad can even manage wordwrap.

I had no problem reading the window text, either.  But you didn't miss much, Haemish.

Example of the window quest text:



I only wish that I was kidding.

Sweet screenshot!

But I like more boobies!!!

Seriously, I don't know too many people who have tried this game and not said almos the same exact thing as you did in your review. Maybe if they get someone who didn't play EQ,DAOC,SWG,SB then they might find a customer who will tolorate a rehash of what's come before.

95% of the comments I've seen around the community from people or guilds that I respect has been negative about this game, and that's all it takes for me to not bother wasting my time with it.

Yup, exactly like that.  You find that hard to read?  Other than how thin the windows were I never had much problem reading them or reading what you posted above for that matter.  Interesting.

None of this changes your general conclusions that the game sucks though.  I went to the website and looked up skills... You know that one button you got that did a power attack?  Besides the fact that you can start with a bow and use that power attack as well, you don't get anything else till level 20.  THEN, if you take warrior, you only get passive skills that improve your stats.  NO new buttons at all.  The other options gave you a whopping one new button and two passive skills.  As a knight for instance you could get the ability to basically do a vampiric touch.  Um... okay... A new button to press.  Um... Yippe?  20 shit levels to get a new button?

How the hell will this game have fun pvp when the fighters have a grand total of 2-3 skills and identical stats in every other way?

The utter lack of skills and diversity does help balance out pvp but frankly I doubt this game will appeal in the long run to anybody who likes any sort of individualism. It mainly will appeal to those who are more about a guilds wellbeing and not their characters. Basically if you like being a basic faceless footsoldier this is your nirvana.

The really sad thing is most of the people who really liked it from closed beta said it was pretty fun after level 40. I have to say no to any game that the first 2/3s of it are boring beyond belief only to be trudged through in vain hope the last 20 levels really are amusing.


Kaid

Wellp, I catassed to level 11 or so, solo caster.  Game gives shiney often, in terms of spells you can train in-between levels, but otherwise it's just a grind.  Better than an EQ grind (no sitting, and no downtime now that the crowd has levelled way ahead of me and moved out of the areas I'm in).

I grouped too, tried to be a healer for a bunch of tanks.  The interface for it is cumbersome, and I hate spells that don't recycle instantly, but there's a workaround by cycling 2 heals or 2 attacks.

I have no plans to get in a clan or do PvP, so ultimately I'm playing just to waste time.

Regarding PvP, I think this game may have a slight problem:  it attracts PvP'ers.  That's not bad in-and-of-itself, but that includes wolves looking for unwilling sheep, and when said wolves discover that red=bad, they turn to working around the game mechanics (instead of leaving the game).

This was posted on the main page (http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com) of CTRLALTDEL (the web comic).



I don't think he gets it. Hopefully he'll still have a righticle after he's done with the WoW open beta community.

If anyone actually cares, you can see all of the low level quests right here (http://www.lineage2.com/Knowledge/quest.asp).

You can also get a list of weapons and gear (http://www.lineage2.com/Knowledge/item.asp) broken down too.

Still meh, but reading the board or all the people unable to log is amusing in a trainwreck sort of way...

Xilren

He's hoping that the WoW community will be a good thing, and you want him to remain fertile?

I found the only actual interaction in combat during my last time playing it.  I gained that Dark Elf fighter power attack skill.  Well, if you overkill the target you gain extra xp!  So basically if you use your special combat ability juuust before the beastie dies, you gain extra xp based on how much you overkilled it.  It was very stupid yet amusing.    Its kind of like Disagea's combo system except totally not fun...

There are more casual gamers than there are hardcore gamers, but that doesn't mean they are going to pay monthly fees or even be inclined to like MMOGs. Thats how companies like EA think, they see a game sell a million copies and think those consumers will buy anything if its marketed toward them.

There are more people who play Pogo and Zone type web games than there are that play FPS. Does that mean a FPS could be made to appeal to Pogo.commers? You might raise some interest but by and large you'll be met with indifference and those consumers will go back to playing on the Zone.

Players are going to gravitate toward games they like to play. Its the old adage you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

The key is knowing what you want. For alot of people they don't know what they want.

Inasmuch as this topic is winding down a bit; here's a link to a guide/FAQ for Lin2 that I saw and thought you'd appreciate whichever side of the Lin2 fence you're on.  The author seems to have a bit of teh ol' h8 and unflinchingly lays bare the games weak and strong points (as he sees them).

Lineage 2 Newbie Guide (http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~darsen/l2guide.htm)

I particularly liked the introductary parts and he does a good job explaining the PK/karma stuff later on.  Wish I'd understood it fully earlier... I never would have fought back against that purple who started fighting me and instead just let him turn red or stop fighting me.

That's a pretty good guide actually. There are a few things he could have pointed out a bit more though, like:

Don't play human if you're a casual player. You start on a godforsaken island, with no money quest, and the only way to get off is to either take a boat that leave once an hour, and take 15 minutes to cross (yes, they managed to take the eq boat ride and make it an even more horrifying experience) - or pay 16k for a teleport.

There is absolutely no point in killing monsters that are higher level than you, no matter how large your group is. He does mention it, but not how absolute the rules are. There's an xp cap depending on how many people there are in your group (e.g.: solo I can get 250xp killing mobs that con below me in level, with 2 people in my group I'll get 150xp for killing deep red cons). The most efficient xp groups are 2-3 players killing monsters all of them can solo easily. There is one small thing that might balance this out, skillpoints - they don't scale this way. If you kill harder mobs you'll get a nice SP/XP ratio, but the way things scale in this game I don't think that'll matter a lot in the long run.


And the one thing that, in my humble opinion, must be the stupidest "new shiny" I've seen in a game for a long time: Their player vendor system. This is good for 2 things: lag and lag. Basically you use your character as a vendor, sounds like a good idea - right? Except, you have to be logged on, so you add a connection to the server. Anyone who's going to do any serious trading at all is going to have a 24/7 shop account - for a dwarf (tradeskill character) I'd say it is a requirement - maybe unless you're in a large and active guild. So now you have a stupid amount of additional accounts that are online, lagging out the connection (there's a reason all the servers report net congestion in the login view). Now, where do you think these people will be setting up shop? That's right, in town squares and town entrances - making even the thought of going to town painful - and adds yet another reason why you really don't want to die.

The Unreal engine is supposed to be good, but some of the towns require more than 1gb ram (or, for those who have less - a lot of swapping), in addition to a lot of ram on your gfx card (you can still crash due to some out of texture memory error with 64mb at least).

That is as good an explanation as to why I didn't like this game as any.

Yep that's definetly the case.  100 peeps will always beat 20 peeps.

I don't mind numbers winning most times; sure it encourages the zerg rush mentality, but in actuality, that's what strategy boiled down to in a melee-centric war (or even now). Be there firstest with the mostest.

Since MMOG PVP combat generally doesn't have considerations like terrain, LOS, and morale into play, the zerg rush always wins. There is no 300 Spartans against the 10,000 Persians in MMOG's, unless level > everything, which also has little to no skill involved.

A Caster needs LOS to hit you (you can break LOS by moving behind Terrain).  Same for Ranged (archers).  It makes for some interesting battles, since a healer cannot heal you if you break LOS as well.

Actually, some of my experiences:

- I'm actually dying on purpose whenever I need to go to town to train more stuff.  Yes there are teleport scrolls and they're not that expensive, but shrug.  Basically, skill points matter more than XP, and I'd rather stay the same level and keep the same mobs while I purchase abilities with SP and become stronger, so that when I do move to the uber mobs I can actually take them out.

- Solo interface is ok, you get used to the camera and controls after a while.  Group interface absolutely sucks:  there's no way to quickly select other party members so you can heal them.  I have to click.  Clicking sucks (sluggish).

- Aggro is weird.  You can proxy-aggro one monster out of a group of 5 together (by inching forward till it aggroes), but if you damage-aggro it, the whole group comes.  However, if you're kiting an aggro mob through a group of similar creatures, they usually don't aggro.  Return when you've killed your target, and they'll proxy-aggro on you.  Maybe I'm wrong, but those have been my experiences.

- Weapon affects spell damage for casters.  Basically casters need the biggest slowest 2 hander staff possible, because spell damage is affected by the weapon damage, but spell speed isn't affected by the weapon speed.

- The Karma system confuses everyone into being griefed.  On a blue EQ server, you can be KS'd, trained, harrassed, etc., and there's nothing you can do, and you know that so you just take it easy, log off, whatever.  In L2, you can get KS'd, trained, harrassed, etc., and a lot of people snap and go red, which only opens the door to more griefing being done to them.

And yes, they got a few things wrong (most MMOG's have evolved past this point):  the aggro system, the UI, the boats, the fact that people can exploit mob pathing...

Not to mention that if you should happen to click on someone you already have targeted (in other words: twice) - you run over and whack them in the head! Which can make healing people in large battles rather frustrating.
I see absolutely no use for this feature. If you want to attack someone in your party (often used to bait others into attacking you) - you should be perfectly fine doing it the same way you attack other white characters...



Seems unavoidable currently - with the exception of teleporting mobs. There are, I believe, pathfinding algorithms that are strong enough - but they take too much cpu time.

I spent a few moments going over this post a friend linked to me. Seeing different opinions on the state of MMORPG’s etc. As someone who has played EQ to level 65 three times, earned 450 AA and been POT flagged, played AO to 158, DAOC to 50, FFXI to 55.  I have a perspective on these games and the “treadmill” effect.
   Lets look at games like this. Each game has advancement, much like a sport of any skill you try to increase. Advancement means you repeat a task, whether it is climbing or biking or swimming or baseball. You repeat this task to gain skill and achieve better results at whatever you are trying to do.
   An MMORPG is just the same, but lets correlate this.  When you ride a bike you petal the same petals on the same bike for hours on end. What changes in the terrain but not the action, and if you use a stationary bike not even the terrain changes. Like any sport you have extreme version where you go down hill biking or beach biking etc but the skill you are using remains the same.
   Likening this to Lineage you might complain the petals (chat commands) and the seat (the slash commands) are not comfortable or well usable. I wouldn’t argue that at all and the response time on some in game commands needs work or PVP won’t be a fun encounter.  All that being said the argument over the treadmill issue; hard-core/casual gamer has existed since EQ came out.
   One thing anyone who plays any skill based/advancement based/experience based game HAS to accept is that any game that requires your avatar/character/toon to grow will take time and will be repetitive. Sorry that’s life, current technology does not allow, and I don’t think it would be fun, a game to redesign combat and skills or so radically redefine encounters per fight as to allow you to experience a totally new experience for every fight. A system is just that, it is a system; it has to have close defined and yes repetitive actions that define it. Fighting can only be so interactive; I for one don’t want to play any MMORPG where I have to click every time I want to attack, that would quickly tire my finger out. No carpal tunnels please, thank you.
   Secondly any game that requires advancement requires time to complete and casual gamers will always lag behind power games. If you look at the single defining attribute of power games, its not some superior intellect, its just time. Those who have more time to put into an advancement based game will advance more quickly.  How does that relate to the low end game as this review is titled? Very simply and more directly related to the first point, all games have mechanics, which are repeated from the first encounter to the last.  Mastery of those mechanics is what defines the most efficient mathematical progression in a system that is after all mathematical. So whether its this game or another or the next game, WOW included, get ready to ride the leveling treadmill doing the same pedaling on their brand of bike.
   I can respect you don’t like the scenery (the game you choose) but if that’s the case change games. If you don’t like repetitive kill based (skill/exp) games then don’t play MMORPG’s, they aren’t for you.

And side note: Just like in Hardware sales, Power Games spend more and play more and account for a larger profit base than casual gamers. You can reference profit reports from companies for their statistics on multiple account ownership to account for this.

Sorry, Dave.

If you dont like it dont play games who's entire concept is based around levelling and advancing skills via repeating encounters.

I have never understood people who argue against wanting to level and play in a mathmatical system that will by definition be repetitve yet clamor to play games that are just that.

Perhaps I should have been more specific.  Some time, and some repetition I can handle.  The fact that raiding orc_camp_001 will be similar to raiding orc_camp_002.  I can do that.

What I am no longer willing to do is Progressquest my way for x number of days /played, just to get to some pre-planned point where The Endgame starts.

For example: I've only made it to level 29 in DAoC, and you know what?  I still need to wack-a-mole for 16 levels before I get to the point where I'm not just a speed bump in The Endgame.

Fuck that, I've hit enough foozles.  I want my fun now.

Again MMORPG's are just that, if you dont enjoy it , dont play them.

Its just that simple. Play a FPS or a RTS but not an MMORPG.

Hey, we already have one brickheaded moron here to spout that mantra to death (HIS NAME RHYMES WITH HOTH).

Really, be a tad more near sighted.  Everything evolves and changes, even gaming. Moron.

You stupid inbred fuck, they are like that.  The point is they don't have to be like that.  It's not some fucking law of existance that MMOGs need to involve X hours of suck before the fun kicks in.  If you like the way MMOGs are right now, good for you.  Me?  I want something, new, better, and different.  And a pony.

No Atlas, CURRENT MMORPGs are just like that.  But all a MMORPG by strict definition is an RPG with lots of people in it.

Advancement can be achieved without grind.  KOTOR never felt like a grind, but I went from not having any force powers to being a flipping whirling ball of light sabered death.  All just while playing the game and having fun.  I didn't sit around and kill womp rats for two days, then sit around and kill eopies for two days, then kill banthas for a week...

Baldurs gate and NWN had leveling up the wazoo.  Never stopped to just kill deer for hours/days/weeks to level up my character.

Advancement should not be about just killing stuff, but about achieving goals that are on their own fun to achieve.

WoW is trying for this.  Not sure if they will succeed for very long.  The problem with WoW, is... What do you do when you run out of quests?  If there is something fun to fall back on then that's great.  I have my worries.

City of Heroes is going for actual fun game elements.  The combat is a lot more fun, there are the missions that feel right in place, and simple mobility is a blast.  This will eventually wear thin of course.  All that is good must come to an end.

But to simply sit back and think that MMOGS are boring by design, and that is the players fault for wanting fun is asanine.

Oh, and your list of 'accomplishments' you so proudly state makes me think you need psychiatric help more than medals and accolades.  You are the mouse that would keep pressing the bar to get the pellet long after the pellet machine has broken down.  Just the click the bar makes when you press it seems to be enough for you.

Takes all kinds I suppose.

You stationary bike comparison was about right though.  But nobody rides a fucking stationary bike for 'fun'.  They do it for exercise.  There is no side benefit in a MMOG.  If it aint fun there is no reason at ALL to do it.

Bullshit. Double bullshit. And triple bullshit, and you've bought the whole shit sandwich. You happen to enjoy the taste of this shit; I do not.

See, while the underpinnings of computer games may be nothing more than mathematical equations, the HEART and SPIRIT of them are not. They are the illusions that are placed on top of the calculations. They are the fun part. The math is not. If math was fun, I'd have been a programmer; since it isn't, I'm a gamer.

There are games out there that require player skill, totally separated from avatar skill. See, avatar skill is what MMOG's (the ones that suck) work off of. Everything else is secondary to avatar skill. And in MMOG's, avatar skill is gained by spending time. Nothing else matters so much as the time played. Which puts me at a disadvantage I (as a casual player with little time to play) at an automatic disadvantage. I have no skill to contribute to the game. MMOG's do not have to be all avatar skill, it just so happens that's the easiest thing to do.

As for your argument about the hardcore gamer (pssst, we call them and you catass), that's bullshit. Sure, they may hold multiple accounts, of that you are correct. But, and here's the salient bit, they are online longer (which contributes to higher overhead from bandwidth costs), they require more customer service time (more operating costs) and often cause the most headaches to the developers by being the loudest minority. Per player, they HAVE to have multiple accounts just to be a profitable customer. A casual player uses less bandwidth, doesn't read the message boards and has less CS issues, meaning the costs of keeping that customer are less. Not to mention the fact that they take longer to consume content, which means they can hold subscriptions longer.

In short, reality does not coincide with your view of hardcore gamers. But thanks for having bought into the developer excuse line.

So much tact and ability to speak ideas coherently I see.

I very simply stated that if you want to play and ADVANCEMENT based game then you will have to accept it takes time and repeition.

There are quite a few gaming networks where those criteria are not required.

Perhaps instead of your interesting use of grammar and obvious hostility towards someone who has presented logical arguements that still have not been countered at all beyond a simple No I dont like it you might investigate those games and networks. It would surely increase your social awareness and abilities Im sure.

And perhaps other than ranting with so much suprising hatred over the state of games you might actually contact developers and generate a mailing list to show consumer demand for a game such as you seek and even perhaps suggest features and implementation ideas you might like to see on these forums in debates such as this. You claim I am hard headed and ignorant but I offered facts and reason for my thoughts. I have yet to see the same presented in support of your alternative demands.

It might get you more than this message board to rant on, perhaps the game you wish to play?

I await your barrage of whitty comebacks and colorful use of the english language.

EDIT in reply to the reply that hit while I was posting.

Even MMORPG;s require player skill, EQ, DAOC, all those require player skill that is not internally dependant on the avatar's skill.

And you can call for the spirit of the game but it still must be housed in the mathmatics of the gaming system.

Time is all I used to define a power gamer, he has more time to play than you. How is that not correct?

And actually I look at profit reports and margins that come from business executives not developrs BS. I tend to watch financial trends not egg head speak. So nothing to do with your counter. Thank you for your thoughts though.

As a final challenge explain how a gaming system that was not server side intensive and proccess intensive to the point of stalling would redefine a combat system per fight so it was new and totally different?

I am still curious awaiting any comments that are factual and offer a workable solution to the issue. Hopefully you can affect the change you seek. Due to the social skills of my respondents, I wont hold my breath.

Here's a hopeful redirect to the point you missed.  It's not the leveling in and of itself that causes people to deem games mindless treadmills, it's the a) length of the repetition (which is wholly arbitrary) and b) the system itself which lack and sort of fun or engaging game play prior to getting to the "fun endgame".

Your real world example just doesn't jibe.  You mentioned getting better at things like biking or baseball, and yes repitition is important to get better.  But you know what, if you like baseball, playing a baseball game (no matter how many times you do it) is actually FUN no matter what "level" baseball player you are.  It doesn't matter if your in a softball league, high school baseball, semi-pro or pro, you get to perform all the meaningful actions there are from day 1 (hitting, fielding, running, throwing, play any position you can).  You don't wait to start hitting until you've played for 2 years...

Just because you accept that you have to trudge through boring gameplay for 3 months before a game gets fun, that's your choice.  It's not an immutable law of gaming...

Xilren

Sorry, you haven't been here for the last year and a half to see the ideas I've "presented to the developers." Perhaps I should archive my old series of articles on "The Mature MMOG," which did exactly that, giving my ideas about alternative approaches to MMOG design. Most of the devs who read them at the time told me I was crazy, my ideas were unworkable, too expensive, etc. etc. etc.

Yeah, I'll start a mailing list and try to get devs to listen to my ideas about game design. Ideas are cheap; every idiot on a message board (including me) knows how to "fix" the current games. Devs have no shortage of ideas on how to fix it. They just have either no money, no time, or no desire to change the status quo which seems to be making them money.



And I never stated that I wanted to play an advancement based game. I think focusing on advancement based games is strangling our industry in a vortex of suck stronger than fluffers on a porn set. I want a game that eschews linear-based advancement in favor of a flat power curve.

Less levelling, more adventuring, y0.

Tact.  That was funny.  Came to the wrong place.



Not true.  Advancement does not by definition require repitition.  You could advance any number of ways.  Use, killing a monster, completing any of hundreds of quests...  the problem is that the killing a monster gets focused on as the only method in the shitty games.  So that you do nothing but kill monsters.  If I am going to be forced to kill monsters, I want some entertaining gameplay.  Something none of the current persistent state worlds really provides.  Planetside, but its not really a PSW, and that is it's major failing.  SWG provided multiple modes of advancement for multiple different professions, but the combat was so horribly boring and broken that I played it using three buttons on my keyboard and didn't have to look at the screen.

As I stated, WoW is focusing on quest advancement over killing polygon advancement.  The degree of repitition depends on the variety of quests.  Unknown how it will turn out.

But I stated this all before.

Xilren,

I accept some people dont like the level or repeition involved in some games and even said if thats the case then dont play the game.

I do accept your point on some levels about the example not being 100% the same. You make interesting points. I do however feel that in any skill or advancement based action you will repeat actions over and over again, sometimes in baseball all you do is just bat over and over again, batting practice. That is just as repetative and demands the same coeeficent, time.

One comment as well. I would be be definition a power game , due to the time I have to play the game, my wife has cancer I have to care for her, so I do have one question in regards to a point you made. Who says the endgame is fun? DAOC was a bit boring to me at the end game, EQ was mind numbing hours of raiding. I hate to say this, the end games are just as repetitive as the beginning. I fear if you are looking for a massive reward or change at the end of any game you wont find it. Its still a mathmatical system with limits, regardless of your level in it. I never said I spoke the truth of gaming I just said I spoke the definitions of advancement and repitition in advancement based situations.

I appreeciate the mostly civil comments though Xilren.

I disagree.  The coeficient in baseball is skill.  Skill can be improved to some degree with practice, but no matter how much I practice I will never be a MLB star.  Others are naturally gifted and pick it up quickly.

Also, batting practice gains you some degree of skill.  Killing in a foozle does not.  It increments your character's skill.  There is very little if any player skill in these games.  And the reasons for it (lag) are mostly fluff.

If you don't expect the endgame to be fun, why on earth do you put up with the grind?

By the way, who says that MMORPGs must have advancement, and lots of it?  EQ is a popular model, but it's not the only one.

HaemishM, intersting points and good to see you have made attempts but as I said in my very first post, in light of current technology the systems that you all are asking for are not possible.

I see the developers do agree. And if you think they and I are wrong, which we may be, then please challenge and it push technology, that is how innovations are made. I wish you luck on that, valdi attempts at that will be much more productive than bashing people who dont agree and present opnions with thoughts to explain them. Interesting thoughts and I look foward to see what you develop. ALthough in an advancement based game you cant have linear power structures do to the fact that those that have more time to play advance more quickly. Time is the undenyable coefficent to advancement.

Alluvian

Interesting points as well but somewhat erroneous. EQ actually has quests and it has been done before to level your character all the way to 65 without killing a single thing. I think it has been done on Cazic Thule, I will see if I can find which server for sure.  So people might perhaps choose to only kill but it is not the only way. Quest based levelers whom do not wish to kill are a very small minority of the player based as evidenced by the people who take advantage of that levelling avenue in existing games where it is presented. Most people dont even know most of the quests available in EQ much less utilize them. I do see the point of your post and respect it, I just know that current game systems do allow what you seek but it is miserably under utilized and ironically very repetitive.

Arnold,

I dont know who said that. Sims has no advancment. UO doesnt demand it, Most games actually dont, just seems to be a sticking point.


Alluvian


I still somewhat disagree , although this might be a point we just agree to disagree on.

I level much faster than my friends in the same amount of time. As you said people have ability levels that are reflective of thier skill. Considering that arguement true then there must be a reason related to my skill and how I play my character to account for the fact I level faster than friends of the same class and race in the same areas.

That would be my skill would it not considering the characters skills are as you have pointed out exaclty the same?

Nice troll Atlas, as someone who writes very well your basic point comes down to if "you don't like it don't play it"?

Which was your favourite game and what elements of it made it so?

It's easy to show up on a dead thread, throw stones in and disappear into the distance feeling superior, but apart from the fact that we know you have lots of free time to play we don't know much else...


Edited cause I never could spell.

Yeah, and I'll bet it was done by handing in 16 billion purchased/dropped items to some bugged NPC.  EXP rewards for questing have always been negligable in EQ and as a longtime player you damn well know that.  I have a 59 myself, and although I choose not to gring much his /played is embarassingly high.  Anyone questing to 65 is really damn bored and only doing it to show that he can.  Everything in EQ revolves around combat except for some post office delivery quests.  There is no purpose to level in that game beyond combat.  And leveling through quests makes a useless noskill character that still has to grind monsters after all that to defeat a fruit fly.

Yes, actually they both did. Sims Online had those stupid things like making gnomes or pizzas or whatever it was that was almost required to upgrade your place. UO had skill advancement.

The difference between UO and EQ in terms of advancement? The amount of time it took you to be "competitive" with most of the player base or able to see and survive most of the content in UO was a great deal less than in EQ. And almost every game since EQ has followed its mold.

You're deluding yourself.  Maybe your friends grind like I grind.  20 minutes, then instead of sticking a gun in your head they get up to wander the kitchen like a zombie looking for something to eat, then go back, kill a few things, start watching TV, forget the character sitting there on the ground as you find the geiko commercial more fun than the foozle.

The fact that you can stay working joblike at gaining experience when your friends are slower/more distracted or talking to other friends does not grant you one iota of skill.  You are just a bigger glutton for punishment.  As shown by how many different games you have 'catassed to victory' in.

Is that because players aren't interested in questing, or is it because the game is designed with more foozles to wack then quests to do?  Games like EQ have a population that overall is OK with massive time investment, and level grind technology.  The people who loath that gameplay have probably already quit.

Puzzle Pirates has puzzle based combat/crafting/travel, and ATITD has mini-game based crafting.  Their successes indicate that there is more potential for growth in the MMOG field.

By your argument, we would have never gotten System Shock or Deus Ex, because "If you want character development, go play a RPG."

Acutally I mentioned some other paths and people on this board have taken them, I did say that considering the current crop of MMORPG and how they dont meet the needs people have expressed they should not play. MMORPG as we currently know them do not meet the demands mentioned here.

Should I have told them tough and play them? It seems no opnion besides utter agreement is acceptable.

Actually I have active accounts in 6 games, all of them have pros and cons. I play for the social aspect, I have a group of friends I play all the games with, and because I do enjoy seeing new enviorments and helping to Beta test games. Its a hobby I can enjoy and due inside my constraints as defined by RL.

I do apologize I was linked this thread and didnt realize it was a mostly dead issue. A message board fou pa, I agree and I do apologize.

And Arthur Im touched, you want to know more about me? Well you first, ASL?

I didnt know it had bearing on my opnion.

Sure, but it's optional unless your on an organized team like a school or semi/pro and your coach (read boss) makes you.  If you simply play baseball for fun, batting practice is not a requirement (though heading down to the batting cages every so often is fun too) before you can play in a game.



Not me, but it's a common defense given by many powergamers as to why they put up with substandard gameplay.  "If i can just get to level X/skill Y, the game will be fun".  In EQ it was the raid game, in SB/DAoC it was the pvp.  Lin2 supposedly has that same stance; a fun pvp elder game that you can only experience by grinding through a metric ton of boring pve gameplay.  The thing is, even IF (and it's a big if) the endgame was more fun than barrel of naked drunk cheerleaders, many players will leave before they ever get that far.  And because the mathmatical level curve is totally arbirtrary, there really isn't any solid reason to make advancing to max take the average time that it does now.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying its impossible to enjoy such treadmill type games b/c obviously plenty of people do.  I just want much more than that.  I played EQ for 1.5 years, that was enough; I now want something better and when every subsequent "new" mmorpgs released since aren't "better" in anything other than graphics, I bitch about it.  Lin2 just happens to draw a lot of fire because it's like the epitome of everything I deem wrong or unenjoyable about the whole genre rolled up into a new package.  And I'm sure it will bit a hit, which reinforces the very suck I;m trying to avoid in future titles.

Xilren

Xilren

Heading home all, will check this from the house.

Be well all.

Intersting debate once the conversation become somewhat civil.

I'm touched that you are touched, 34 Male UK.

The only thing you have posted here has been opinion, not seen any facts or figures, any links to documents supporting your "don't play it" argument so more information on your gaming background apart from the number of uber characters could be of interest.

It's a rather dark corner of the web you have been linked to, I'm just trying to get you to stick around and say more so I can watch the resulting fallout :)

Spelling again.

It's just that you forgot the third option: Demand something better.

Which is why I do not currently pay for or play any MMOG and why I gave Lineage 2 such a hard time. It is nothing whatsoever new the genre other than a different shiny. In many ways, it is a complete step back. It's as if someone made a new X-Box game that could have been made on the Atari 2600 and wants me to pay $50 buck for it like it's some new game. It's not. It's retread, and a crappy retread at that.

The stance of "Tough, play them" is the stance most the companies making these games have taken. Which is why I take Dave's option 3, and don't play or pay for anything until they make something that does appeal to me.

To hell with MMOG's with flashy graphics and no play value. Go play a MUD instead,and let your mind produce the graphics. Humm...that sounded a bit farfetched. Anywho:

Do you read books? Try some MUDs. Haven't read a book since the english teacher made the whole class read that book years ago? Forget MUDs.

Hey AP, isnt this basically the same conversation/argument you and I had about 5 pages back in this same thread?

And are you sure its the fallout you want in having him here, not just a fellow glutton for the Grind?




Nice Haemish, thats what I was trying to say a few pages back in this thread, before it turned in to the "Pong" thread.

Double Post

I could rehash the pong image if it makes you feel better.

It should be obvious by now that there isn't a game coming out anytime sooon like that.

Ok trying to slowly dig through the posts, forgive me if I miss a point, not ignoring anyone on purpose.

Arthuer, I would unfortunately agree with Slog forthe most part. a MMORPG that doesnt require advancement does not seem to be in the works.

I would recommend making one to meet the market demand you say is there, demanding a better one obviously hasnt worked as evidenced by your own comments.

Actually contact Sony's Investor Relations Board and they can provide usage and profit statistics, I can provide the link but I would assume that both Sony and Mythic for that matter are familiar to you and the websites are not to difficult to naviagate. If so though please let me know and I will get you the contact numbers.

I still fail to see how my personal details are relevant, and I would argue that the nature of MMORPG which is in fact your complaint is documentation of the current machanics of them. Please let me know though and I can provide links to some sites that have broken  Code and can show the exp needed and kills needed for each level in DAOC and EQ. I will have to look more in depth for AO and FFXI.

If a opposing opnion causes fallout then I fear you will have a hard time negotiating your stance with any game developer you find willing to entertain your ideals. I hope that isnt the case.

Xilren, A common defense that powergames use perhaps, but just like any sport when played to repitition, I lettered in 2 sports in high school, because mind numbing so does the end game and I have never used that defense, I accept you have seen it used before.

Dave,Actually at Fan Faire in Orlando the developers of EQ held a conference on quests and thier functionality. I would assume because it is a business model that the paying player base, of which you all are by decleation not, do not wish to quest as much as you do, and there fore do not garnish the business effort. The comments given during Fan Faire where just that there wasnt enough response. I will see if Sony has transcripts of this but Im not sure they do.

Alluvan, Im not sure how Im deluding myself in any game concentration is part of skill. By your argument concentration has no effect on skill.  I would hate  to see someone attempt to hit a 85 mile per hour fast ball not paying attention or hit it and then not watch the ball after to see how many bases they might take. I would say they would fare poorly. Skill is a combination of many things, observation and concentration being two of them.  Side note: Actually it wasnt from bug quests , the player was even given the title. Im sure it was repatitive for him but any game system will be given technology at this time.

So let me ask this since you all have clearly defined what you dont want and only loosely defined what you do.

What do you want? State in definative games terms and examples of mechanics. I am curious only because any advance of any type will favor those with more time to play. How will you make it so that someone that plays 40 hours a week has the same abilities as someone who plays 8 hours a week? Define non linear advancement.

Nope don't think so, Atlas is being rude in more sorta general way towards everyone, you picked me out especially.  Atlas has a point even though I disagree with it, you didn't appear to have one.

Edited to add Atlas, you need to go reread this thread, (if you can bothered), already explained my position in depth and don't see the need to further.  Short version cos it's a long thread, prepared to accept a long grind in L2 for the hopefully (yup probably will be disppointed again) good end game.  believe there has to be some sort of grind for advancement, though just about given up hope anyone will ever do it right so pretty much stopped bitching about it.

Can you get me the contact numbers for Mythic though that would be great. (Um that's a joke)

EDIT:http://www.mythicentertainment.com/contact/index.html

Heh you added the joke comment after I got the information, forgive me I thought your comments were a constructive attempt to actually facilitate what you wanted, not just random comments.


This link has most of the non support information for contacting Mythic, if you email them in a non we hate you tone with your concerns and requests they can answer most any questions you have.

But Arthur, as I mentioned in my open question define doing it right?

Seriously and sincerely curious. I dont feel I have been rude just stating opnions, I apologize if they have been abrasive, I have refrained from using some of the more colorful dialects I have seen here and I can see as how most people seem bitter my tone may be implied to be as such.

Dunno why this is directed at me, if it is, but I'll go with it.  I'm playing Lineage 2 at the moment but am developing a game in my spare time, it's going to be under the company name Red Brick Dragon Trading.  All Beta testers get the cheap deal of $50 for a Beta CD, you get one t-shirt free with that and a discount on golf clubs.

Moved beyond the "if you are not making a game or intending to you have no right to comment on design issues" sometime ago.  But heck if you reread this thread I wasn't actually suggesting any game design choices just pointing out the ones I like in L2.

Atlas I'm entirely sure any thoughts you have on the subject would be of more value than mine, after all you have leveled 3 characters to 65 in EQ. That would certainly lead me to believe that you have had more time to consider the matters in greater detail.

Asking the EQ playerbase whether they prefer hunting vs. questing is like asking visitors to Microsoft.com (www.microsoft.com) what OS they use.  If they're visiting the site, then they are more than likely current customers, similarly anyone playing EQ most likely enjoys hunting just fine, as that is what the game is focused on.

A discount on golf clubs you say?

Define your wants.

Define Non linear advancement, your disagreement with me is well documented, present a viable alternative using examples of game mechanics.

Actually I was just picking out your one line "Exp per Hour", had nothing to do with you.

My point was that Rasix needs to rehash the pong image for this thread.

Referring back to the original post, adding statements that refer to me in bold cause you seem a little slow, also doing the same for statements that exclude me from the hive mind.  



Ever hear the term Fuckwit?  That would seem to apply to what us here think of you there who hasn't posted one original thread thought in this whole thread.  Oh wait lets see you make posts agreeing with Haemish and Rasix and turn up again 5 pages later to have another  pop at me saying it's not about me...

Catch up here (http://www.brokentoys.org/private/), stick around and I might if bored enough.

Speaking for myself, what i want is a mmorpg with a much much much shorter power curve where a newbie to a skill isn't ineffectual compared to a master (say a newbie with minimal training is 50% effective vs a masters 90% with only 10 gradients in between), non-equipment dependent (say a max of +/- 5%), skill based (instead of class) game with a large breath of potential skills (rather than only a few skill which have massive ladders to climb like say eq).  I want advancement to mean less about make your stats go up then accomplishing something in the world (be it minor things like titles and fame to land and property ownership), intestesting tradeskills (that are active, not click and watch progress bar), engaging combat that is slower paced to allow some strategy (again, this means a wide variety of skills and abilities that have counters rather than the rock paper sissors of tank beats ranged support beats mage beats tank; think Magic the gathering type duels with much more limited card pools) in a non static world that can respond to both player actions over time but also can have shard divergence and geogrphic diversity and relevance (i.e. travel times have meaning and areas have sensible natural resources to help foster a trading economy).  Equipment can take examples from SB and diablo for random yet still desirable equipment produced via tradeskill that wans't imbalancing, and does wear out.  I want instanced adventure zones of well written content that allow for more of a true dnd module feel (i.e. you have a set of goals but multiple ways to acheive such) rather than the random blandness of AO missions or SWG's points of interest.  I want characters to be able to create content be it quest creation or even mini zone ownership (i.e. your guild might own a mine that they need to defend from npc invasion or enemy players if pvp is part of the world).  I want a live team that does nothing but dynamically add content beyond spawn uber mobs and kill newbies. I want lots of props and shineys that aren't inherently imbalancing (see UO).  I want a magic system which allows lots of abilties unrelated to combat (instead of just flame bolt 1, flame bolt 2, buff, debuff mez and summon).  In terms of base game systems, what i want is closer to Gurps than D&D, though a shared world of linked NWN module ares and common connectors comes closer to acheiving my wants than most mmorpgs on the market.  Top it off with a robust  guild and communication package decent graphics and an engine that allows for easy and graceful addition of content and change to the gameworld and you're on to something.

And I want a pony.  :-p

Xilren

Xilren

Xilren ,

Excellent post, unfortunaltely its late but I promise you a response. Excellent to see a post of that nature but I dont think I can help with the pony ;)

See you in the morning.

Ok, see that where it says you people? that was a generalization. It was the phrase "Exp per hour" that got me going. If you would like to include your self in that group. Fine with me, seems as you belong there.
I stopped posting because we where just going back and forth. Pointless.

Yes I agree with Haemish when he says he doesnt like the current stock of EQ clones, and refuses to play them. Which is more that you can say for your self. You admitted you didnt like exping, but you still pay money to do it.  As I stated earlier, I refuse to pay to waist my time, which I dont have that much of any more. You dont agree. So, there we have it. Sorry if that makes me the idiot for stopping posting on a pointless pong topic.

Go ahead and play your exp per hour, I hope the end game is worth the boring part.

Now pay the man bitch.

Oh, by the way, I see you're being a huge] contributor to this forum also.

Yup will do, it's open beta, that means it's free at the moment.  

Am I your bitch?  Is that something you desire?  Are you aware you are thinking out loud again?

I only ever commented on things that interested me, I'm funny like that, on the other hand, I guess there might be people out there who just post "I agree with what you just said, my aren't you wonderful" to suck up to a mod or writer...  Given that this thread is by far the longest thread on this site you could argue that some people out there and lets face it, increasing "out there" and "not here" are still interested in the games, funny that.

I agree with what you just said.

Hence, my membership card in the "Whiny Bitches of the Month" club.

No, but there are FUN games coming out.  I am playing one of them now.  City of Heroes.  And WoW is fun from all accounts as well.  There is light, and it aint L2.  L2 is a backwards trip to pre-eq days.  M59 with new graphics would be a better game.

Yes, there is light, and a faint glimmer of hope. It's name is City of Heroes.

I'm as surprised as the rest of you.

Well, SOME of us have been trying to point it out for awhile now Haemish.  You know, to lessen the shock and all.  Hope you enjoy the game.

yeah if you want a PvE game those could be good alternatives.

I just want a FUN game. PVP is something I had thought was going to be a requirement for a long time, and the lack of it really turned me off to City of Heroes.

I'm pretty sure I was wrong about that, btw.

"Yes, there is light, and a faint glimmer of hope. It's name is City of Heroes.

I'm as surprised as the rest of you."

The hypocrisy out of you Haemish is astounding to say the least. CoH is as big a fucking treadmill as lineage is/was without any endgame or pvp.

And don't give me the quest BS. Because theire quests are no different than any game I have ever played, goto xxx, kil xxx, get reward.

BIG FUCKING DEAL.

I am now sure of the fact you have turned into an assface, limpwrister, who prefers to spend 2 hrs at the character creation screen making gimp hero fag#322.

The only good part of that game is making your character after that its the same old shit exceph in this case the shit does stink.


Fuck this gay site, and the horseshit you guys turned into and are fucking spewing I have better things to do with my time from now on, then see a bunch of veteran mmog'ers get excited about playing superman.

Fucking retard.

Ehhh? Twat's that you say? I cunt hear you.

Here's the thing COH has that Lineage 2 does not have and probably never will have.

It's fun. It's fun to fight, even AI. Had Lineage 2 gotten even that most basic of thing right, I'd be singing its praises from the fucking heavens, mainly because it has PVP.

The core of everything I've ever said about game design has revolved around "make it fun." I prefer PVP, but if the game is fun, it can get a good review from me without it.

In other words, heh.

Two words- DRAMA QUEEN.

Can you show the doctor where the superhero touched you? Jesus.

Are you reading comprehesion impared or something?

How many times and in how many way does it need to be said.

It not the that a fucking treadmill exists which makes a game suck, it's the lack of engaging and FUN gameplay that does. And FUN should happen no matter what level you are.   Large level curves are fine if you progress up them naturally as a result of having fun.  For examples, see almost every single player crpg ever made.

Haemish says CoH is fun out of the gate and you say "Big fucking deal"?  It IS the whole fucking deal you gameplay sadomasochist.

Xilren

Xilren

Me love you long time. kkthx

Isn't this where we are supposed to post UO2 walking-babe?

Feh. I never coudl keep score anyway.

For what it's worth:

Lineage 2 is basically Lineage with pretty 3D atop Unreal. Which means that the first 20 levels are awful, the subsequent 10 are bearable, and after that it becomes reasonably entertaining, but progress is incredibly slow. I soon realised that what made Lineage bearable was that it was already established, and I had access to a bunch of folks who were great to party/chat with and who helped get the first 30 levels out of the way quickly. I was unable to reach level 20 in Lineage 2. After the last wipe, I had no desire to start over.

If you can find a bunch of masochists who are prepared to build up a guild, which then suffers from attrition and has vacancies, and if they are then prepared to twink your character and chat to you while you abuse drugs as it goes through the motions of automated fighting, it could be playable in the future. The Lineage siege system is quite entertaining, large-scale and fairly lag-free if you can get there. However, the price of doing so is way too high.

Unless you have a guild of amusing people to chat to, the game is simply a mindless grind - for money even more than experience. Lineage had a global chat that was abused in the same way that shout is in Lineage. You turned it off an listened only to guild chat and tells. Give it three months, and if you have friends in Lineage 2 with vacancies in their guild, give it a spin if large-scale PvP is your thing. Otherwise, avoid it.

See, here is the problem with PvP, at least my experince with it, in games without leveling.  In particular, Shadowbane.

In SB, you can max a character in less than a week.  This results in not knowing who you are actually fighting against, since the Guild leader you talked to 5 days ago has since re-rolled twice, and the PK guild has changed names completly and joined your guild with 56 of their alts.

None of the shit happens in Lineage, mainly because Leveling is difficult.  So what you end up with is a good end game that has good mechanics and player accountability.

The problem is that current MMORPG game mechanics don't allow any other way to do it.

FWIW, Haemish's "review" of Lineage 2 is getting some more run on the official boards and they're eating it up with a spoon.

http://boards.lineage2.com/tm.asp?m=181135&mpage=1&key=

What am *I* doing over there you ask?  Um...

These poor saps don't take Haemish seriously. Personally, if I found out one of my friends got to the endgame in Lineage 2 without severe head trauma I'd invite everyone he knows over to his place for an intervention. Friends don't let friends play shitty MMORPGs.

One or two of those posters had some sense, but lets hope we dont get to much bleed from the L2 site. The majority seems like they could teach the Vault users a thing or two about ignorance.

From the L2 board thread about Haemish's review-



Translation-
I am a giant catass! I laugh up my sleeve at those of you with jobs, social lives, and other hobbies! My leveling peen puts yours to shame! I will rule the fake world!!!!

What a fucking tool.

HAHA, leveling peen. I like that. dont worry, that guy is going to die in a catlitter fire.

Another gem:



Like, OMG, that's some grasp of english you've got there, LOL.

First off, that's an excellent, honest review of Lineage2. Glad to see an honest review by someone other than a fanboi.

You did, however, forget to mention the fact that the game client does not de-allocate memory (textures) when you walk from one "map" to another, thus causing your game to consume more and more system resources until you start lagging and eventually crash. When you start the game next time, look at the used resources... Somewhere about 300mb I bet. Play for an hour and look at it again. Play for 2 or 4 hours (if you can).

I crahsed 2 times today walking from one city to another. While it was on the other side of the continent, that's still unacceptable. That's with the graphics settings and textures set to the lowest possible settings, and 16 bit instead of 32 bit.



If I go to a restaurant and order a steak, and the waiter brings me back a slab of rancid meat, I'm not going to eat the whole thing in hopes the last bite will be pretty good.

If it looks bad, it most likely is. If something looks bad and you keep telling yourself it's not, and spooning it into your pie hole, you're a fucking idiot.

Looks bad to me.

Well I'm bored stupid leveling, big surprise, world is overrun with foreign bot players, also appears to be a dupe exploit that might or might not have been fixed.

Messing about with a macro tool myself so I can at least watch tv while half a disinterested eye watches the grind continue.

Client is as stable as a rock for me though, even on the highest settings.

I couldn't stand to play the game for more than 2 hours at a time, so never ran into that.

But let's face it, the only way the review could have rated the game any worse was if it had come alive in my apartment, lit my bed on fire and raped my television.

Your TV really had it coming for wearing such a skimpy case.

In other words, a living personification of Boog?

Boog as the avatar of Lineage 2.

That fits so perfectly.

I thought the game was kind of interesting for the first half hour.  After the first 8 hours of play you actually get to attack some real enemies, but you're stopped by someone with the name angellovekiss killing everything in sight.
rang rang you go ok, says the player.  Rang means go away, rudely in Mandarin Chinese.  There are more chinese money farmers and ebay sellers in the game than actual players playing it.
The game managers (in game support staff) say adena (game money) selling has "zero tolerance" but also that their action to the selling "depends on the severity of the offense."
The point is, NCsoft is getting $15 a month from the Chinese adena sellers just like every other user and they wouldn't want to alienate half their customers by enforcing their rules.  A few other things: Korea's server only allows Korean players.  Japan's server only allow Japanese players.  Taiwan's server only allows Taiwanese players.  North American server allows everyone, including the Chines that were banned from all other servers.  Oh, and look up what "cao ni ma" means.  No swearing allowed says the GMs.
Stay away from this one guys.  NCsoft is milking the legit players and the money sellers.

Isn't that like warning someone not to eat dog shit?  The mere fact that it's the shit of a dog is enough to keep me (and any half way rational person) from eating it.

Apparently you've spent a lot of time eating dog shit.  While I commend you for warning other people about the perils of eating dog shit, I'm still going to laugh at you for eating it in the first place.

I don't want to be friends with people who find Lineage II fun. Shit, I don't want to KNOW people who find LineageII fun.

I think it's in the nature of an RPG to have levels. Shooters don't, but that's a different sort of game. RPG mean levels. If there's no levels, it's a different genre (eg adventure). All well and good if what you want is an MMO Adventure. All of the MMORPGs to date have been so focused on avatar levels because they're RPGs. OK, with that out of the way:

I think people play EQ and the rest in order to get better characters. They WANT to level up. The game tells them "you are a tool unless you are max level" and so the players try to impress the machine. It's a proxy for self-esteem. People that don't get respect in real life can get it in the machine world, just by putting in time. Respect comes from catassing, and any talentless tool can catass their way to some measure of MMO respect.

I play RPGs. Yet I haven't in a long while. After not playing anything for a long time, now I'm playing WoW. I'm asking myself the same questions: why do you grind? The fun bits for me right now are trading items--hunting for rare resources and selling them to other players. The vast majority of quests in WoW just hide the fact that you're grinding; yet they do force you to change the scenery. I get new skills on a regular basis, and that's fun, too.

So looking at my own play: I keep playing to try new things. What if there was no barrier to content? Huh, I'm not sure that there's content that I want access to.

But there's something to testing yourself against (say) the Scarlet Monastery. It's a challenge, and that's fun. Some more fun in the game is coming back to a level that used to be scary hard but now SMACKING DOWN those damn mobs. Yesterday, I was scared by Fleshstalkers. Today, they're fodder. It's a power trip.

So, yeah, the existence of those levels lends context to the game that makes levelling up fun. Being a higher level relative to yesterday is fun. Hence, the goal is to get to a higher level, and the process can usually be interesting at times, sometimes fun, and usually not boring. There's lots of new content to see.

The barrier to content helps ensure that I don't get bored of the game quick. I want to see new content, and I'm not forced to stare at one chunk of content so much that I get bored of it.



Either 5% is meaningful or it isn't. If it is, then 50-90% might as well be 1-99%. If it isn't, then get rid of equipment altogether.

The drive to acquire equipment is driven by the effect that equipment has. If the reward is meaningless, people won't pursue the goal. It's like getting to 65 in EQ without ever killing anything. There'll be a couple people who do it, but who cares about them? They're catasses. If equipment has such little effect, only the catasses will have good equipment. Why waste dev time on those four players? Put those dev dollars into creating fun, instead.

If that 5% equipment change is signifigant though, then the 50%-90% difference from noob to expert is very signifigant--in which case the design might as well be as it currently is.



I think the reason why skill based games don't do well is that Joe Moron hates being gimped. Joe Moron wants someone to hold his hand. Joe Moron wants someone to tell him "do this." Joe Moron is the guy in the general channel asking for spoilers to EVERY SINGLE QUEST. Joe Moron is 95% of the paying audience.

No offense to anyone on this board, but no developer wants your money.



If everybody accomplishes something in the world, then what have you accomplished that the other 9,999 subscribers on this shard haven't?



I want this, too. I think it is very possible. I think it requires an economy, and I'm worried about the Joe Moron implications of an economy. Joe Moron really hates losing that rare robe he spent a week saving up for. This problem warrants further investigation. It's actually the game-design problem I'm currently spending my free time thinking about.



I want this, too. Designing such a system is difficult. Card collection as a basic mechanic did not work well with a ton of other design goals. (btw I've worked as a dev on a couple MMOs.) MtG-like combat, though, is something I think could work. My first pass taught me that the important bit is reacting to your opponent. I haven't had time to implement a second pass, since that would have to be on my own.



Again, if the other 9,999 subscribers on your shard are also having an impact on the game, what exactly is it that you are doing? Is having the game world responding to you meaningful to you if no-one else notices or cares about what you did?

There's this quest in Arathi Highlands (WoW) wherein I convince this disenchanted Orc that life really is worth living. It's kinda pointless when I realize that the next person to do the quest is going to talk to the same despairing Orc that I did, even though the quest told ME that *I* cured his depression. And then I realize that there's already been a thousand people who have done the quest in front of me, and a thousand more behind me. And that's just on this one shard.

What could I hope to impact that would be the case of a GM-run event where five people get rewarded and 9,995 do not?




Agreed and agreed.



This can help, but 95% of the audience creates shitty modules. NWN is a good example. With a small community, it's easy to police quality. In a mass-market game, Joe Moron rules. Sadly, the bad NWN designers were arrogant enough to think that their shit didn't stink.

Player-created content can answer some volume-of-content problems. I agree that it should be persued.



U FUCKING POSERS AND UR DAMN PONIES ROT IN HELL NOOB U NO NOTH1NG OF GAME DESIGN

k i feel better now thx.

Actually, levels and RPG's are NOT in any way dependent on each other. You do NOT have to have levels to make an RPG. It's thinking like that which has forced the crutch of levels onto the MMOG market.

Sure, you do have to have some from of numerical comparison for the game engine to determine success/failure/competition, but again, this is not exclusively D&D style levels. An MMOG Adventure is really probably where I've been talking about making improvements in the game.

MMOG's now, even the best of them, are about the levels and little else. Even my favorite, City of Heroes, is about the levels. The levels are used to gate content, and if the content is fun all along the way (instead of being boring for half the levels, then it suddenly gets interesting), the levels don't matter much. But what we've seen in most MMOG's, especially the shitty ones like L2, the majority of the content we'll see along the way is stupefyingly boring. Maddeningly boring. Aagin, it's all about the journey, and if the journey's not fun, it doesn't matter how fast or slow the leveling curve is, the game will suck and you will do what you can to avoid the unfun part. See Shadowbane's PVE or Lineage 2's.

Adventure games are about the story and the steps you take to reveal that story. If that approach could be translated to an MMOG, and I don't mean like Uru, it could create a good, casual game.

Or it could be like Uru.

The fact that you think RPG = levels made me skip the rest of your observations.  I am sure they were even more stupid than your initial one.

I think the 'crutch' that the MMOG market has grabbed is that people love the sense of accomplishment that comes from being a higher level. I don't see why that's a bad thing. I loved the bits in Halo where I could jump in a tank and mow down those pesky blue alien punks, and this was nothing but a level-based power trip. I think the joy that some here feel playing CoH isn't because CoH has "more than levels" so much as that it doesn't suck in the insane ways that L2 does.



I'm tempted to say that Soulflame thinks "levels cause brain damage," which I seriously disagree with. Please clarify.

Both Haemish and Soulflame bring up a point that I had forgotten: there are two types of CRPGs. The kind with levels, and the Ultima IV kind where one plays a role. I failed to make that distinction. Yet here's my point: if 99% of games called CRPGs have levels, would having levels be considered an essential part of being an RPG? There are diceless and levelless tabletop, LARP, and "living-room" role-playing games, but is it mentally economical to lump these two groups together? Sadly the latter group is more deserving of the name, yet the former has laid claim to it through extensive use.

That's where I come from. What use is it to rail against a society that has made levels an essential de facto component of RPGs? I think "RPG" is the title given to a game with levels.

Levels work. They segregate content. The current MMO business model requires that people have something to do for a very long time, and levels are a proven way to support that. The people on the WoW beta boards asking for the removal of corpse runs (which are insanely cheap! omg!) like levels. They are bar-pushing pellet-monkeys of the lowest, basest order. Yet they've got power in numbers; the conditioned response audience makes a game like WoW possible. They're the reason why ATITD has three ugly player models to choose from.

So what's wrong with levels qua levels? It's what's built around the levels that is important. L2 abuses levels. I think EQ is all about collecting, treadmills, and levels, and I hate it for that. WoW and CoH have something else in the game other than a mindless treadmill (yet I still wish they had more). I strongly agree that the game is about the journey, and if the journey's not fun it doesn't matter what else is in the game.

I have this picture of an MMO where 90% of the quests are fun, different, and creative. I'd play that. I think WoW is taking the first step towards that goal by making quests the heart of the game (note that combat is still the core mechanic). Playing WoW tugs at my conscience, however, because 90% of the quests are kill and collection quests.

I'm starting to get frustrated with that. Either I grind so that I can play with my friends, or I do the fun stuff and get stuck grouping with randoms. Are levels the cause? If we got rid of levels completely, would something else core to the game break? If not, would more than thirteen people play the result?

Nope.  Puzzle Pirates and ATITD don't have levels.  They don't have the biggest player bases either, but they work and are fun.  Fun to someone that is.

I never got Master Chief past 18th level. You rock.

People who gain a sense of accomplishment from enduring the repetetive levelling treadmills that are the major mmorpgs need some counseling, imo.

If I want to get a sense of accomplishment, I'll clean out my garage, not sit in front of a computer monitor for weeks on end to the detriment of my life. Games are to be fun, and that's it. If it's not fun, it's not a game.

But hey, as long as people are broken, others will capitalize on it.

A direct result of the move of "civilized" culture from hunter/gatherers to agriculture based. Mind you, it's a long timeline to look at, and I'm not suggesting that tribal societies don't have their own sets of problems, but at least in tribal culture, you had to pull your own weight if you expected to eat. When you ceased to be a contributing member of the tribe, you were on your way out as far as life was concerned. It may seem a brutal way of life, but just look at some of the things we "civilized" people do. Assisted suicide? Death penalty? Well, I'm sure you can see the similarities and differences and the pros and cons of each so I won't get into it here, and as I said, it's a stretch... but plausible.

How about "levels cause lack of brain activity in most dev shops" instead?



That's what's being said here.  It's not levels = auto suck, but if the primary attraction of a title is the leveling curve that most likely it will.  Gameplay that holds your attention is the thing.  Keep em active and having fun and who cares what level they are?  When I wrote that "what I want from an mmorpg", I full recognized that I am a niche, not the mass market who already likes games like EQ and L2.  I don't expect to see an mmorpg with most of what I want any time soon, so I will stick to "fun" gameplay at the expense of "world".  Which is why I'm playing CoH.  I fully admit, I expected too much from mmorpgs too soon; so I'll judge them purely based on fun rather than the depth and breath of the gameworld for proabably another 10 years at least.



Level's aren't the cause per se, but lazy implementation of them can lead to all sort of self induced gameplay headaches.  Typically, what we have seen is dev's take a leveling scheme ala D&D and drop it wholesale into an mmorpg without thinking it through enough to spot the problems and design good ways to deal with them.  Pen and paper RPG are typically based on small group of players have a directed adventure and leveling as a result of playing through the story.  Even single player crpg's tend to follow that pattern.  MMORPG's?  Adding the massive nature and persistence of the shared world makes them so different they might as well not even be called "rpgs" Fer instance, PvP in a level based mmorpg can be a nightmare unless it is designed not to be; simply throwing the switch that allows players to attack each other does not a fun pvp system make.  That doesn't mean it couldn't be done, just that it hasn't been done well yet.

Best example in recent weeks?  Without a doubt, CoH's sidekicking.  A simple solution to allow lower levels to play with their higher friends and actually contribute without imbalancing the rewards either gets.  I expect most future titles and even a host of current ones (i.e. DAoC is already experiementing with this) to "borrow" this idea.

Xilren

Again, you are incorrect. Completely. Just because the CRPG industry has completely lost its fucking mind, doesn't make their skewed perceptions of RPG's correct. RPG's and levels are not exclusive to each other.

If this was 1997 and the only MMOG on the market was UO, would MMORPG's HAVE to have levels? Because UO didn't have levels, it was all skill-based. Just because EQ and its mentality has attached itself to the MMOG industry like a goddamn leech doesn't mean RPG's = a game with levels.



Levels aren't WHOLLY the cause, but they are a symptom of the greater problem, lack of imagination. Developers think the only way they can maintain a large player base for a long period of time is to segregate content by levels, then make those levels take increasingly obsessive amounts of time to get through. They haven't built in any more gameplay than a single-player game like Prince of Persia (and I'm including CoH in this). They've just made it take longer to access all the content. CoH has a lot of different strategies and such, but they segregate the strategic sections into level bands. The reason they get a pass is because each of the level ranges is fun in its own right, because of good, core fundamentals. L2 does not do that, and neither do a lot of the games on the market today.

Again, levels aren't the cause, they are the symptom, the crutch developers use to lengthen content consumption without really making any more content available.

I think we're all arguing past each other.

I agree that most dev shops lack brain activity. I touched on that a bit on a post in a newer thread (http://forums.f13.net/viewtopic.php?p=13065).

The biggest problem I have with levels is not grouping with my friends.

I think time-based limitation of content is cricital to maintaining a player base over time, yet I'm willing to grant that I might be wrong.

I wonder what the long-term effects of sidekicking are. Once a handful of people get to the level cap, will everyone constantly re-explore the most lootarific dungeons? Or the most fun? Will the level designers out-compete themselves to the point that no-one goes to Sol-B ever again? Will players fixated on the biggest and the mostest get bored of the one biggest and mostest and quit after a month?

The stupid, boring, bad-developer-no-donut response is "fuck it, levels." The better developer response is "damn, we thought about this for months, and really, this is the lesser of two evils. Either all of you rush for Uber Dungeon and quit, or we have level-based access to content." The best developer response is "[new approach X that no-one on this thread has mentioned yet]". Maybe sidekicks will actually be approach X. Um, I'll be back in a month?

-

What reward is a level if it is easy to achieve? What reward is it playing with your friends if you are always the bitch^H^H^H sidekick? If all of my friends already have all the cool abilities, then what do I contribute?

I feel left out of the Scarlet Monastery (current L39 "end-level" instanced dungeon in WoW) because, even though I've run it, everyone else that I group with has done it so many times that I'm always the passenger on the journey. The level cap is one way of letting me group with my friends, and yet as the sidekick it is less rewarding than discovering a new zone by myself. "Ooh, cool, I found Feralas!"

Which is yet another problem. The rest of guild: "finally, you schmuck, we've all snuck past the guards and explored the whole zone, noob."

-

One of the things I most want in WoW is a shared player reputation system, so that others can flag the asshats so that I know not to group with them, since I'm not grouping with my friends. Or, to be in a bigger clan, or one with fewer asshats of its own. All of these are solutions to the problem of: I can't group with the people I want to group with because of level-based access to content.

And I want to group with those people because I made friends with them in the last game I played. (or in RL, but RL can go rot)

So why not encourage me to make new friends? Maybe I'll have more fun that way.

Sounds like those are not very good friends. Good friends wouldn't diminish your enjoyment of a new experience, although perhaps boredom drives some people to say stupid shit like that. I wouldn't know. ;)

I agree that encouraging people to meet other people with similar playstyles/playtimes/etc. can be a good thing. New friends are never bad and can only help to make the whole experience feel that much more robust.

True - but it is worth recognising that in leiu of a way to provide conetnt at a rate much higher than even current EQ, levels are the only way anyone seems to have found to keep populations high enough to justify any new content at all.

Planetside is an example of a setup that already offers non-level based pvp centric MMOG play without any sort of treadmill.

But it's populations are too low to justify adding any content. I'd contend it's populations are low precisely because people quit when they had 'done everything' after a month.

And without content gating I don't see how you provide enough content to prevent this - a single player game rarely has enough content to run for a month at a content-burn rate set for 'maximum fun'. It's difficult to see how this can be achieved in a MMOG.

I agree treadmills suck. I intensely dislike levelling from 1 to xx just to get to the 'real game'.

However, at the moment I can't think of an alternate solution.

Like how people quit playing chess because they've consumed all the content. Or Civilization.

Those are the models for online gaming, or should be. Repeatable experiences ad nauseum because /playing/ the game itself is fun, not reaching some forced goal of an underwhelming nature (foozle and/or treadmill).

Keep setting up games where you can 'burn' through the content that is apparently the only good thing about these crappy games, and you'll keep getting these crappy games with artificial retention methods.

Is Planetside perfect? Nothing is, but it at least seems to be the only premium online service that 'gets it', so I vote with my dollars (and have a lot of fun besides!). I won't reward the seemingly constant flow of crappy EQ clones and treadmills, which most people around here seem willing to do, hoping it will somehow be a good game. It won't be, it'll be more of the same, until you stop rewarding that design philosophy.

All the board discussions in the world won't change the core flaws in mmog design. Only cash flow, which the people who make these games possible actually care about, will.

I think the only solution is to change the entire model of the way MMOG's are built, bought and paid for.

Get rid of the free month. Fuck it, get rid of the box and offer the game as a download. I mean really, is the box sale, with all its required expenses really so much more profitable than a download? Bandwidth is expensive, but is it more expensive than dropping 200k CD's over a six-month period, of which 190k sell the first week? Stop targeting the crowd and target the niche. Why buy server capacity for 100k, when 50k is profitable?

I think MMOG's are trying to be too much to too many people at the same time, and it's costing all of them users and money.

The only reason I really even comment on the genre these days is to add in my lonely voice, repeating my recent mantra: "Don't put your EQ in my Planetside..."

If you like EQish games, play them. Don't attempt to crap your mechanics into every game on the market.