f13.net

WoW Beta Patch Notes (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/patch-4-13-04.shtml#reststate)

So they ripped SWG rest system, making it affect XP rather than performance, and kicked the timer up to 8 hours to become fully rested.  Depending on the size of the bonuses and penalties involved, this could go in one of many ways, we'll have to wait and see.  No decent articles from the trenches out yet, though its only 2 days old or so now.

I wonder how many forum topics were created to bash the system between when the notes were posted yet before the servers came back up...

EDIT: Thanks AOFanboi.  This is what I get for posting at 3am after 5 hours of mind numbing burger flipping.  Apologies all.

Other way around and sans the quotes: WoW Beta Patch Notes (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/patch-4-13-04.shtml#reststate)

Judging by the forum threads (not being in the beta I cannot post there though), a lot of "hardcore" players complain loudly. With "hardcore" I mean "apparently want to spend 24/7 whacking mobs to level" to which I would really want to reply:

• If you cannot tear yourself away from rat-whacking for eight stinking hours, see a doctor ASAP. Sleep deprivation is not healthy even when you are a willing victim.
• Go download Progressquest (http://www.progressquest.com) instead, no rest time there.[/list:u]Now, this is exactly why developers don't put interesting ideas in their games, they get shot down by the conservative crowd of powerlamerz who don't want anything interfering in their search for a better Diablo.

This begs the question: Does this really help the casual player? Or rather does it just enforce unneccessary downtime across the board?


Catass_001 will play 3 different characters on a rotation and have them to uber status in a relatively short period of time.

Casual_001 will play one character and end up having slowed progress due to experience rate lowering.


Their attempts to combat catassing are poorly thought out. A catass will always beat the system merely because they have the time to do so. The only way to slow the catass in the game would be to limit the number of hours allowed to be played per account. But see, then folks would just buy multiple accounts. There's always a way around. ;)

It seems like a decent system to me. I mean the catasser can only play 1 char at the time anyway, and when the catasser reaches end game with all of his 3 chars, a somewhat casual player with only 1 char shouldn't be very far behind.

However, I can see a problem with people which only plays on weekends, but plays a lot on those occassions.

Blizzard has fundamentally errored in their rationalization. They have based their rest system on daily hours played. They say a casual player plays 2-3 hours a night. But all this is based on playing every night. You can actually play less hours than 3 hours a night for 7 days by just playing 8 hours straight on Sat and Sun. And under blizzards rest system the guy playing for 16 hours on the weekend is going to be penalized despite playing less time overall than what blizzard defines as casual player.

Their system isn't designed to stop power gamers its to slow down everyone without making the level times longer. They've worded it so people think they are helping casual players, but what they've really done is turn the 24 hour MMOG into a 2-3 hour MMOG. Basically WoW might as well only be up from 6pm to 10pm M-F. Which is Blizzards way of controlling how fast people level.

Its really just limiting by scheduling.

This is a draft I'll post soon on the beta forums:

There's a mistake in the system as I'm trying to explain everywhere.

The behaviour of your players don't depend on their craziness. It depends on what you offer. If you offer a treadmill you get catassing. In a way or another, even the system about "rest states" will be catassed.

That's the endgame, that's what the players will try to reach. And that's why the system is broken. You built the system to push the players to grind less and diversify their experience:



Ok? That's why the exp from quests will be untouched.

The wrong part is that the whole thing is worthless. If the game is solid, real and valid, you don't need anything to show this depth to the players. The game stands on its own. And the questing system already demonstrated this. I never grinded anything in this game, I just played it and had fun. No interest about having fun at level 5 or 15 or 30. I'm just going through the game. I'm not looking to the clock to surpass some record, I'm not playing a race. I don't care at all if millions of players will reach the end months ahead of me. Their problem. I'm having fun, I pay and that's what matters here.

The big mistake here is to balance the time you spend between the levels based on a fucking "general theory of mmorpgs", instead of balancing it on what's in the game.

The time is to be balanced considered on what you can offer. If you don't have anything to offer the growth must be quick or I'll be bored after an hour. This is the logic. Nothing to offer = moving on something different. Something different isn't present? Serious problem. Deal with the problem for god's sake, do not try to cover it and make a big smile.

The more interesting things you offer to the player the more you can expect him to pass his time in the game. The more you offer the more the treadmill can be slow. Because you have plenty of fun things to do. And you don't care about the treadmill in the first place.

INSTEAD till now mmorpgs had nothing to offer. A big pile of nothing (and crap). The treadmills became the only way to HIDE this. Treadmills exist mainly because there's nothing behind them and you hook the players (stupid herd of sheep) offering them the hope of something fun in the future. A future that WILL NEVER HAPPEN!

EverQuest here is an exception, clone it and you'll finish with a Big Failure (see what will happen to EQ2 and laugh with me, please). You can fool the players once with a shiny void, but it won't work again. Even the (clueless) developers are becoming so dumb and they just try to grind the mmorpg genre. No more ideas. Just stupid loud discussions about the time, about the balance, about the economy and so on.

These discussions happen for one reason only: There. Is. No. Game.

When the game is empty and faked peoples start to babble about the void around it, the treadmills, the timesinks and so on. When this happens the game has already FAILED. Big time. Perhaps it can still be somewhat succesful (because the market died long ago), but it hasn't anything to offer aside an embellishment of the void. A hole. Anus. It sucks life from everything. The players' brains. Ideas. Everything. It's brainwashing, not about creating something with some ambition and value.

Please STOP ranting about the time. Start talking about what you want to do with that time. About what the game offers (and should offer), not about what the game enforces. If the game is good it won't need a way to push the players in the good direction. The players will flock toward the fun. No matter how stupid (or young) they are.

This is valid even for the devs, not only for the players. Devs need to start working on "where's the game". The "endgame" but not in its stupidest sense. Not at what you do at the end. When the void of the treadmill is exhausted. But WHILE you go through the game. The "endgame" is always mistaken with something at the end, in the future. But it's about something FROM THE START TO THE END. NOW and THEN. The endgame is ALL. It's about the first and only question: Why I'm spending time playing a game sitting on a chair for many hours?

Someone is able to provide a good reason? Or we are just fooling each other?

Hint: Who is writing thinks there are valid answers to the question.

To conclude I still quote what Blizzard said about this:



I think they chose the wrong time. First they need to offer different advancement paths, then they can start thinking about directing players in the right direction. And I still think that once the game works you don't need any kind of enforcement.

Whatever you do in the Final Draft, DO NOT remove the word "Anus".

Not in beta, was undecided about the game (it has pros and cons for me; I won't list them), now I don't really feel like buying the game due to this change.  Hate having restrictions on my gaming.  Just like I hate the MB limits on supposedly unlimited internet access.

But, regardless.

One thing I didn't see discussed on the boards is what effect this has on grouping...  It could be almost impossible to find a fully rested group, when you're fully rested.   The cleric could decide to leave cause he's tired. Etc. Etc.  Does grouping not happen much in WoW?

Anyway.

Grouping is per quest basis, in general you hang for a bit then the group dies and you move to something else. I've read players complaining on the forums about peoples leaving because they are tired, though.

Oh I see.  Thanks for clearing it up for me.

Read the posts from people in the beta who are actually looking at the system instead of whining, "OMG SO UNFAIR!1!!!"  The take Haemish posted from Penny-Arcade is a good place to start.  It shouldn't affect anyone too drasticaly and the only barrier is the one in your head.  I like it, if only because it's to discourage "grinding" and encourage more questing.

 There were already people posting that leveling was too fast because of questiong.  That they go so much XP while persuing those quests that the zone would turn 'grey' before they'd finished all the quests in it.  This, IMO, is a good thing.

Also, we've already had the discussion that a powergamer is less valuable than a casual one to the bean counters. This is one way to start to ensure you're getting more profit than pain from a subscriber.  I expect more MMO companies will do things like this in the future rather than raising prices.   $15 is a breaking point for a lot of people, regarless of how you analyze the value logicaly. Psychological barriers like to ignore logic like that.  Besides, it's limit subscriber login times or put Pepsi and Doritos ads into your fantasy MMO. (Perhaps Depends would be better for the crowd that seems to think MMOs are a lifestyle rather than a hobby.) (http://www.gucomics.com/archives/view.php?cdate=20040406)

As to the "But this hurts the 16-hour once a week 'casual' player."  If you do ANYTHING for 16 hours in one day, it's not a casual experience.  It just means you have something else to do the other 6 days of the week that prevent you from doing that activity 16 hours on those days.

8 Hours is too much, but I can understand the system.

Casual players who DO want to spend a day playing are screwed. They only have one characater.

In conclusion, the rest game mechanic is here to stay, but will be reduced to something more casual, proabbly 4-6 hours.

Blizzard defined casual player as someone who plays 2-3 hours every night. If you play 16 hours over 2 days you are still under their total time spent playing in a week. It doesn't matter if you binge on two days, the point is that the rest system is penalizing someone who falls under the casual hour limit which is what the Rest system is based on.

The theory behind the rest system is to help people who have less time to play, BUT under the system its not helping everyone who has limited time to play, it only helps those who have limited time to play over a week.

Thus the error in the system. And why the system is really about scheduling and controlling the leveling speed and not about boosting casual players.

Uhh am I missing something? They defined a casual player as someone who plays 2-3 hours a night. Not under 20 a week. If you play a game for 8+ hours a day 2 days a week I wouldn't say you're a casual player. Besides the number of players who do play 16 hours on weekends and not at all during the week is probably no where near high enough for them to have to worry about.

All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.

You pick what you're designing for and ignore the abberations.  As Stu said, they defined casual as 2-3 hours a night. I imagine to ignore splitting hairs as fine as you're attempting to do.

Now, if they balance the number of hours to max out your level based on the xp 'bonus', then yes, the system is a package of lies.  If they balance the time for what they're advertising as 100%xp (which some people are choosing to view as 75%), then it's all roses and rainbows as far as I'm concerned and the cries of 'omg this is to slow us down, unfair' are unwarranted.

To really help casual players they have to allow  play 6-8 hours on weekends without penalties . System like that imho would work:



Players characters  have “advancement points” –they gain them regardless of time spent in game. -Effectively their characters start gaining those advancement points as soon as character is created. Multiple characters on same account share same advancement points pool. Player cann allocate advancement points to one character or another – depending on which one he wants to level .  Gaining of advancement points is completely automatical and is the same for all players , regardless of how much time they spend in game. Total amount of advancement point is fixed –its effective cap of players level. Advancement points pool and gaining per day is set according to how much devs intend  player to spend time on developing his character to high-end . Those advancement points can be spent on players character to gain new abilities/skills.

That would be an actual leveling mechanism .By having fixed measuring of how much each player can advance we can effectively plan  for powergamers and casuals to be on the equal footing.  As I plan actual PvP game – I wouldn’t set the time to gain all advancement points for too long – month or two imho is enough to ensure necessary accountability and draw –in period for  new players.

Players can’t though spent their advancement points right  away, without doing any – in-game stuff. But in order to do so player should be able to have some amount of “experience points”.   Player can get as many experience points as he has unused advancements points .  Gaining experience points worth of one day of advancement points would be up to developers to balance and decide ,but I would set it to about 1-2 hours. – So casuals can steady level during the week ,or catch up during week-end ,or any time later.  Powergamers on the other hand won’t be bale to advance any faster than preset amount .

Okay, I have here the proof that my post won't have any effect.

it's bedtime. Time to rest .. but thought I'd post here first.

Today, I dropped below well-rested ::gasp::

Played one character all day, with breaks for meals and stuff here and there. Probably 9 - 10 hours of intermittent gaming. When I hit the 150% xp point, I pouted a little bit, thought about it, and kept playing for another couple hours. It didn't interupt my enjoyment of the game at all. I rarely look at the xp bar anyway.

See even the players are so focued on the catassing they can't even see the game...

I thought you post was good, and I would hope one dev out there would read it and take note.  Like you said, when players start bitching about the "void" you know your game doesn't exist.

Are you trying to say someone who plays 2-3 hours a night which is 21 hours a week is casual, but someone who plays 8 hours on Sat and Sun for a total of 16 hours a week is not casual? That makes no sense at all.

You seem to be basing casual play simply on consecutive hours played. If that is the case, what do you call someone who plays 2 hours every 4 hours? He'll end up with 12 hours a day, but because they aren't consecutive he must be a casual player. Your logic simply doesn't hold water. Casual play has to be defined as cumulative hours per week, it can't be a day by day basis because no one plays every night. People often skip multiple nights and play when they have the most time.

30+ per week is "hardcore"
15+ per week is average
15 or less per week is casual

That's my definition of each type. I fall under casual and I play MMOGs less than 15 hours total per week, usually on the order of 8 to 10 hours. Anything more than 15 hours is not casual play regardless of the increments that total up to your amount of hours. If MMOGs (or games in general) are your hobby, then chances are you fall into the average category as a regular hobby will often take up as much time as a part time job (if not more), no matter what that hobby is.

Yes it does, and no I'm not baising it in consecutive hours played. I'm baising it on number of hours played in a day. Its the same as drinking. I'd say someone who has a couple of drinks a day is a casual drinker but I wouldn't say someone who has 8+ drinks 2 days a week is.

And again I'm not sure how this is at all important. No Blizzards system does not cover every single possible playing style however it doesn't have to. It works fine for the vast majority of players and thats all that matters.

You aren't talking time with drinking you are talking quantity. In terms of time you'd have to say how long it takes you to drink something. Like One beer takes you 2-3 hours or 8 hours. You can't compare two different concepts like time and quantity to the same scale. Binge drinking and casual drinking are different types of drinkers, neither would probably classify themselves as alcoholics.

It is important because most players are likely to play for long periods of time on the weekend than on the weekdays. Blizzard is basing the rest system on the principle of Hours Per Night. Most people do not play every night. You seem to be forgetting that only 10% of the user base is on at any given time. Now if everyone logged in every night, it would be far greater than 10%. So what happens? Most people play in bursts. They play 6 hours on Monday, 4 hours on Thursday, maybe 8 hours on Sun. They aren't logging in for 3 hours every night to meet Blizzards pre defined quota.

Blizzard's rest system is flawed because it says 2-3 hours a night is casual, but the schedule is inflexible. If the rest system says 21 hours a week is casual, then you should be able to divide up those 21 hours however you want. As it stands, they are pre defined as 3 hours a night. And if you fail to meet it, you'll be penalized despite playing less time overall.

I'd say someone who plays for 8 hours a day is a binge player. Maybe Blizzards want to put a stop to that as well. The inflexibility of the rest system is not a flaw. It was put there intentionally. And apparently you have some magical data that I'm not aware of but if you could share it I'd love to take a look at it.

And of course there is also the fact that you can play for more than 2-3 hours in a row and never leave the top tier state. In fact from what I understand players have played up to 10 hours of non stop exping and have only droped down to the normal state.

Then why even implement the system? Are they trying to save someone from dying of playing 24 straight hours? Shouldn't marathon gaming be the players choice? Can't we allow the herd to be culled and rid ourselves of some more of the idiot people that are bred? Heroes in CoH never get tired. Why must heroes in a fantasy setting always tire? Beowulf? Beowulf?

Dev teams, here's a tip: If one of your team members pipes up in a meeting and starts a sentence thusly, "But in real life, yada yada yada..." Fire them on the spot. No questions asked. If you're making a fun game and some Jackalope wants to add realism and it involves some mechanic like fatigue that diminishes the fun... don't implement it. Fun = good.

This is an overeaction.

After 9-10 hours of gaming in one 24-hour period, you finally start to see a reduction in XP, but even at this point there is no reduction in quest XP, which by all accounts is a large portion of the overall XP gained.  

Woo.

Then why even implement the system in the first place? You probably don't have the answer to that, but I'd sure like to hear it from Blizzard.

I assume that it was to create a perception that constant mob-pulling is unproductive.   We all know that given a choice between what is fun and what is productive, players will gleefully pick the productive thing, then complain about the lack of fun.  

This is a brute-force attempt at pushing players towards the fun.  In a perfect world, where quest scripts fall out of the sky and competent programmers would put them into the game for free, WoW would have so many great quests that simply pulling a monster and killing it would gain 0 XP.  All XP would be gained only after the character had been supplied with an in-game motivation to kill said mob.  

But thats asking a lot from quests, and this is a kind of half-measure.  Allow players to go "mobbing," but discourage them.  In this respect it has nothing to do with catassing, it has everything to do with steering players towards the strongpoint of the game (quests), and away from the boring things that they're accustomed to from other games (mob-pulling), and then, of course, blaming the devs for the boredom.



I don't know if we could actually expect Blizzard to say "This will pwn the catass," but the quote above suggests player steering, not catass crushing.  We already know that WoW follows the "Theme Park" model, for better or for worse.  This is part of that.

Until the US courts start taking the position of personal responsibility is greater than corporate culpability in all cases, then no. (Hell, do they even have that luxury?) All it would take is one dead catass whose parents had enough money to make this a problem. So until the court system changes it will be the various MMOs responsibility to police the players I imagine.  But that's a side issue, and not the reason this was implemented.

I despise this country. I <sarcasm>love</sarcasm> how personal responsibility and consequences of your choices can be shirked off and then be blamed on others. "But your Honor, the cocaine was just so addictive. How was I, as a consumer, supposed to know I would end up like this?! It's the dealers fault, not mine. He should have to pay my medical expenses and any future funeral expenses should I die from continued use, even if I die from a completely unrelated incident." Caveat Emptor?

But that's off-topic. So now Blizzard is trying to control playstyle to funnel people toward the fun. I'm sorry, but I don't agree that ALL players will pick the grind over the fun. But you're probably right in that a large majority would just because it's there and because it's what they're used to doing from previous MMOGs. And that majority that would pick the grind would blow through Blizzard's content (or what would appear to be a lack of because they would skip the questing and claim there's nothing to do but monster bashing) and then sit at the top whining for more and for raising the bar to a higher level. All within the first month.

Nah, not likely.

Why?

Because Blizzard has made sure to tie uber loot to the quest system. The catasses of the world aren't going to pass that up, but they will certainly rip through quests as quickly as possible on their level grind to glory.

/clap
As I said this is a gameplay problem. If peoples took the grind path it's because games just offered that till now.

It's so simple that noone is able to understand this.

I think that the player tendency that I mentioned (grind & gripe) is pretty well documented.   Players have been conditioned to do this by previous games and its understandable to fear that players would do it in WoW through sheer habit.  Step two would be deciding that the WoW grind is no more fun than the EQ grind or the DAoC grind, and Step 3 would be slipping back into those two games.

That's because the system is not tuned right now.  They put it in place, but left it so unrestrictive that it wouldn't generate much comment after the initial outcry.  Next push, it'll take one hour of play to get from well rested to exhausted.

On topic:
The people who get screwed hard by this are the weekend warrior types who play little or not at all during the week and then binge on the weekend.  The 2-hour a night guy gets 100% of his time at full xp, but the 7 hour saturday/sunday guy spends a considerable amount of time under the xp penalty.

People who think that "quests" are somehow magically different than "grinds" are misguided.  Whether I spend 4 hours hitting hotkeys killing bunnies or I spend 1 minute telling an NPC "Yes [I will kill bunnies]" and then 3 hours and 59 minutes hitting hotkeys killing bunnies I am doing the same shit.

Off topic:
Also, the point that people only grind because other "more fun" methods are unavailable are misguided.  The old-fashioned pull-low-bues-to-camp xp grind is successful because (a) it provides the stability (and time to chat) necessary for community that the RUN RUN CLICK CLICK RUN RUN "fun" dungeon crawl does not and (b) it makes it easy for people to AFK when needed or to swap characters when someone logs, which again is difficult to pull off in the "fun" game.

The basic problem here is that a lot of people think MMOGs are what people do instead of Counterstrike.  They think that MMOGs therefore need to be more like action packed video games.  On the other hand, I tend to think of MMOGs are what people do instead of going fishing, which is more of an excuse to socialize than an action packed event.

Why is that perfect?  Why should slaughtering orc pawns for their shot glasses because Bily the Bartender asked me to be rewarded with enormous xp welfare while me and my group taking on a tough dungeon just to say we did it or to see what is at the bottom are brutally punished?

People act like MMOG quests are like reading The Odyssey for the first time.  They aren't.  Even in magic Blizzardland where your PC grows arms and massages your feet while you play.

PS- I have read of people who do groups in WoW dungeons getting fatigued much, much faster than 9 hours.

For me, MMOGs are an alternative to online FPS play. They offer a different type of gaming experience, but one that I still want to be fairly fast paced. Perhaps I'm in a minority, but when I want to socialize, I go out of my house and do it. Unless I'm at work, in which case, these and a couple other boards suffice quite well. I enjoy socialization in MMOGs as a nice perk to playing that type of game. I don't think the game should be built around those who wish to waste their time chatting online. There are lovely programs for that called mIRC and AIM and MSN Messenger, etc. You get my point. Enforced downtime to encourage socialization is just an excuse to cover for lack of fun gameplay.

That's another point. It's obvious that noone will pass active time at an Inn. You have various ways to fill holes in the game. One is by adding a timesink another is to enforce the players in a direction.

When you need rules it means things are already not working as they should.

Good point. This harks back to the text MUD days where you would encounter a MUD with more rules than players and too much Administrator intervention to prevent breaking of the rules.

I've always been an advocate of hard-coding rules, which I suppose Blizzard is attempting to do here. Rather than just saying no killing mobs for more than X hours and if we catch you we nerf your experience gain, they just programmed the rule into the game. I'm all for that. This is not to say I like the rule, nor do I think that the gameplay is as fun as it could be in its current state.

So you are saying that someone who takes this easy, no attention, no strategy, socializing aspect of grinding, should get just as much experience as the person who is doing quests or participating in combat that actually take an attention span? How dare Blizzard reward you for  looking at something other than your hot pocket and the TV while playing.


This is the first time I've heard anything about the rest state that I don't think is good. Dungeon crawls should never drop below well rested if you started out that way.

No, I was saying that players play that way for reasons other than "the developers didn't give them any other option."  It had no direct applicability to Blizzard.

But if you want to talk about Blizzard, explain why you should get full, no-fatigue XP for doing utterly mindless, trivial FedEx or "collect bunny ear" quests for 20 hours straight.  Your "Hot Pocket and TV" rant is irrelevant, because there are just as many "Hot  Pocket and TV" quests are there are "Hot pocket and TV" xp spots.

And yeah, players who hit dungeons hard are claiming that thet get fatigued in under 3 hours. http://fohguild.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=190324#post190324

Jesus H fucking christ on a pogo stick the size of Texas.

NO casual player has 6-8 hours to string together for anything. Unless they decide to forgo sanity and sleep. With a job and a couple of kids, I'd be unbelievably freaking lucky to get *2* hours to sting together, let alone 6.

And you twits wonder why people like me don't play MMOG's.

my bet is that it is a general attempt to mitigate combat macroing

Considering the link El Gallo provided was people talking about combat macroing and how it was proving to be a less efficient way of netting XP, I'm beginning to think you're right.

Folks who macro, then think their complaints about getting fatigued in under 3 hours are valid make me laugh.

Agreed.  6-8 hours is the definition of catass/hardcore even if you only limit it to the weekend.  Although I do get more time on the weekend sometimes, I still can only play for at most 4 hours straight and that is if I am playing after my kids go to bed and I stay up way too late. (9-1am)

Just by having this argument it shows that no matter what they code into the game, the hardcore will continue to be hardcore and casuals will continue to be casuals.  Yes, having your guildmates burn through more content than you is annoying and takes some fun out of the game for you, but live with it.  Such is the life of a casual player.

Even if the hardcore players are limited to 8 hours a day per character, they will have 8 hours a day consistently.  If they can put that kind of time into a MMOG, they are by definition hardcore still and will level their characters up WAY faster than the casuals.  It would still be that way if the limit was made 4 hours.  What's the difference?

You could say it is that the hardcores are slowed down, but that doesn't matter.  If the hardcore players are just 4 levels higher than the casual, they probably won't group together anymore.  That gap will continue to grow.  It doesn't matter how slowly that gap grows.

I think they should drop this constraint personally.  It just doesn't seem worth the time, effort, and pain (players and devs.)  I'd rather see the devs turn their efforts towards the "fun" of the game rather than trying to restrict players that might actually have time on their hands.  That sounds just as bad as forcing players to go through a dreadful treadmill to get to the good juicy stuff.  Oh wait, it sounds exactly the same!

Merusk, people are claiming that they get fatigued in 2-3 hours, sometimes less, not by macroing but by playing hard in the instanced dungeons.


Generally,
I think that there is the usual nomenclature problem here.  I tend to think of "hardcore" and "casual" as styles of play not directly related to the number of hours played.  I think that the rest penalty breaks down as follows:

1. hardcore player with lots of time to play every day: hurt a little by the system

2. time-starved hardcore player who plays a lot on the weekends and very little during the week: brutally assraped by the system

3. time-starved hardcore player who play a couple hours or so every day: this system is the best thing that ever happened to them.

4. casual players, whether time starved or not: don't care, because "keeping up with the Furors" is not what their gameplay is about.  Maybe casual players who play massive amounts of hours benefit from the system because the developers will be able to make less hardcore content in future expansions.

Yeah, I did not mean to suggest that these people don't exist, and I have no idea who is in the minority.  I think that the problem with catering to these people is that you have to make persistence worth a monthly fee when the base combat is always going to be less pure and laggier than free FPS combat.  But I do think that "Planetside or Shadowbane done right" could be very successful just like I think that "Everquest or Trammel done right" could be.



I think you missed my point about fishing.  I have an uncle who I consider myself close to.  We used to go fishing together a few times a year.  We learned some tricks of trade and had some fun with the actual game of fishing, but it was obvious that the real reason we did it was to have an excuse to sit around and shoot the shit all afternoon.   Now, at any time we could have called each other on the phone (or AIM) and talked for 5 hours straight.  But we never did.  I don't think that me and my uncle are some bizarre psychological outliers, either.  I think that this is pretty typical for people, or at least for men.  

The game for these people gives them an excuse to socialize, something to talk about and something to bond over.  It isn't a replacement for the "press back, up, A, back, X, X, right in a second for the powerup" games.  It is a replacement for fishing.

I'm not saying this is right, but it makes sense according to a few things I've read.  I've seen a few threads that indicate the fatigue bar drops based on your avg XP/Hour.  If you're fighting harder creatures then you're getting more xp/hour and your bar is going to drop faster.  They need to tweak their fomula to correct that glitch, if in fact, anti-macroing is the goal and not anti-catassing.

well, ac1 is the only other game to have an exponential end-game leveling curve with no cap (IIRC, same as WoW is planning on having) and the only way that people really reached level 126 back in the day was to combat macro. Sure that one sword guy on Thistledown hit level 100 back in the day after the BSDs were released, so it can be done, but he was nowhere near the cap of level 126.

Anyways, this is the best answer I've seen yet to combat macroing, and if AC1 implemented it or something like it on thier new servers (the ones with no allegiance xp passup) along with thier graphics engine update then it would make for a great-great game.

Really though, everyone's take on this change all depends on what games you've played in the past: people that come from EQ/DAoC will hate it, while people that come from AC1 (where combat macroing killed the game, for pretty much everyone) will not mind it, realizing what macroing can do to games (Hackeron's Call :d).

If the game can be combat macroed with any degree of efficiency, the game sucks ass, period.  Not because macroers mess things up, but because if a bot can play the game pretty well, it is way, way, way, way, way too trivial for a human being to enjoy.  

The "best answer yet" to combat macroing is not to make a game like Asherons Call where a monkey hitting random keys plays 95% as well as the best gamer in the world.

This is a very good point. I don't geive a damn if John Q. Catass plugs his brain into your game 24x7. What pisses me off are mechanics that ACTIVELY PREVENT me from playing with him 2 months from now.

Just thought I would share a few gems from the Beta Forums.


I sure hope so, the 3 hours a night is about what I get. Perfict.



Jesus, the guy couldnt even take 8 hours off between logging out, getting ready for bed, sleeping, waking up, getting ready for what ever he does.




Sounds good.




Heh heh



I love this. I mean, after writing this, didnt it ever occure to him that maybe every one should be playing online "games" for fun?

Thats whats fucked up with MMOGs now, and lets not get in to it, but this just struck me as really funny that poeple actually admit they are not playing for fun.

My concern is that Blizzard gets backed into the same corner that SOE did when they started designing content around guilds/players who log 40+ hours a week.

How many zones in EQ are designed from the ground up to challenge raiding guilds, and any zone designed for raiding guilds will most likely be forever off limits to casual players.

Raven

Why wouldn't a casual player have 6-8 hours to string together? You seem to be defining casual player too specifically. There is a huge range of casual players out there. From people who only have 2 hours a night to people who only play once or twice a week. You can't label them all as people who never have 8 hours to play.

if you define a casual player as someone who can't play more than X hours consecutively, then your definition would effectively be only a minority of people who define themselves as casual

What is wrong in the system is that it has side-effects. It isn't important if it will affect you or not. Having a timer upon your head still makes the whole expereince worst.

From the start to the end. Everyone here plays games to have fun and also to relax. The system Blizzard introduced increase the stress on you.

Even if it's logically impossible.

So you don't get optimal xp if you play for a long period of time. Big deal.  In any of the current mmorpgs you very seldom get optimal xp.  If I think about the best times that I had playing EQ or DAoC or any number of muds, those times had nothing to do with how fast I was gaining xp.

If you're playing just because you're getting good xp and you log as soon as  you're out of the bonus then you're totally missing the point.   If it's fun you'll play even when you're losing xp.

Hi, long time lurker, first time poster. Why would you *want* to play with John Q. Catass?  I mean, based on your posts here, you don't like, or should I say, hate the catass players. So, why would you want to play with them? And why does it matter to you that they could level and go through the content quicker than you?

The endgame is PvP no? So you and John Q Catass will have to interact at that point, unless of course you are secretly Abashi and like being a 'victim'.

No, the endgame appears to be raiding.

It's not that we want to play with the catasses of the world. It's the the catasses rip through the content and then start to bitch and whine non-stop on the boards and via email to the devs that they want more catass mechanics added to the game. And if history shows us anything, it's that they end up being catered to and that ruins the game for those who do not wish to devote their lives to it. It's destructive of fun game mechanics, etc. I could go on, but I think you get my point.

Ok. Let me try again. I don't care in the least of they 'level' or go through 'content' faster than I do. Not an issue. But when I start to play a game with some friends who may have significantly more free time than I do, I should reasonably expect to be able to continue playing with them 6 months down the road. Further, if there is direct competition, it would be nice if something other than time played dictated the outcome of any encounter between me and Mr. Catass. If I loose because someone understands the game better than I do then cool – I probably learned something in the exchange. If I loose because I’m level 15 and they are level 20Bafinity, what’s the point?

So in a sense, you are correct - I don't really want to play with John Q. Catass. But it really pisses me off when the game mechanics actively removes the option from consideration.

Like so many threads this one seems to be suffering from peronsal definitions of terms varying.

Hardcore gamer vs casual vs catass.

I think a lot here thinking casual are really imagining a hardcore gamer suffering from time constraints so they can't play much.  That does not magically turn them into a casual gamer.  If you game for 8-10 hours on a weekend because you don't have time during the week, I am sorry but you are a hardcore gamer who has time constraints, NOT a casual gamer.  Regardless if you only play 20 hours.

The way I see it the casual is actually a casual gamer.  Who will put in less hours because they feel like it not because their wife is beggng them to get off the game.  The casual to me is someone who would log out to read a book or watch tv or just take a walk without being pried away or leaving because they dont like it.

I don't think the introduction of artificial time constraints magically turns the hardcore gamer into a casual gamer.  A hardcore gamer with unlimited time is a catass, a hardcore gamer with limited time in not a casual by my definition.

Some of your definations may (and obviously do) vary.

That's a bit...I don't know what's the word for it. It's like, I hate oatmeal, I do not want to eat oatmeal, but I'm pissed that there's no oatmeal on the breakfast table because now I don't have the option to eat it..even though I do not want to eat it.

Exactly. Nothing wrong with that. Consumer want options, even if they don't like those options. I have a friend who hates iced tea and we were recently at a restaurant that only serves raspberry iced tea and he noticed that on the menu. He actually bitched about them not having regular iced tea. It's an amazing phenomenon.

My above statement, taken by itself, can be mapped to the allegory you created above. Unfortunately, in the process of making the clever analogy, you have completely ignored the point I’ve been trying to get across (missing the forest for the tree as it were): don’t artificially segregate the player base.

For the third time: I don’t have a lot of time to play these games. Friends of mine have significantly more free time – to the point that some could enter the magical category of ‘catass’.  I find it frustrating when a game implicitly removes the option of me playing with these people six months for now simply because of time they have played.

And if an explicitly multiplayer game forcibly removes the option of me playing with friends, I won’t bother with playing it.

Why is this a difficult concept to grasp?

But what any of this sub-conversation has to do with WoW is beyond me at this point.

*shrug*

In the interest of decreasing jackassery 'round these parts, I have edited meandering, verbose crap into the following straightforward, non-verbose crap:

PROBLEM:You have a 100 players, who play from 1 through 100 hours a week. The 1 hour guy and the 100 hour guy are friends. How do you let them play together?

WRONG ANSWER TO PROBLEM: Limit all 100 people to 1 hour of advancement per week.

POSSIBLE ALBIET INCONVENIENT ANSWER TO PROBLEM: Have your friend play an alt with you when you are online sometimes, or voluntarily handicap himself in some way to play with you (by farming in a zone you can get xp in or something).

I'll choose option three: make player skill more important than time played. thanks.

P.S.
We won't  get into how self-centered / assanine it would be for me to expect everyone to switch to their 'alts' just because 'married dude with a day-job' managed to find an hour to play....

I can agree with this. Of course, in a lot of activities, skill has a direct correlation to time invested as well. Unfortunately, most MMOGs remove the neccesity of skill altogether.

Worst.  Analogy.  Ever.

You must realize that.  So why even waste the time to type it?

And your oatmeal analogy was fucking awful as well.  I sometimes wish there was some king of analogy license so we could take it away from people like you while batting you with a rolled up newspaper.

Your oatmeal analogy would only be vaguely be accurate if he once said "I don't like oatmeal" after eating some really bland oatmeal and then you took it all away from him.  When the reality is that he likes strawberry oatmeal, oatmeal cookies, and oatmeal breakfast bars.  A statement like "I don't like catasses" is not something that will EVER be global, and you know that.  Some of those will be his friends, and the friend part means more to him than the catass part.  Except in a game that separates the catass from everyone else.

It is avoidable.  CoH does not do this.  SWG does not do this.  UO did not do this.  EQ is a huge culprit and all indications are that WoW is following in its tracks (in this regard).  This system will do fuckall to stop the problem, and everyone knows it.

Which explains why I'm giving CoH some serious thought. I may never be 'Superman' in that game, but You damn betcha I could give 'The Moth' a run for his money.

The golf course does not PREVENT you from playing with your friend (as many MMOGs prevent disparate levels from grouping together).

If you play with your friend, the golf course does not prevent either one of your from putting out (in the way that MMOGs prevent one of the characters of disparate levels from gaining XPs).

Should I even bother pointing out that golf HAS A BUILT IN HANDICAP SYSTEM TO ALLOW GOLFERS OF DISPARATE SKILLS TO PLAY TOGETHER?

I have to agree- worst analogy ever.

In the interest of decreasing jackassery 'round these parts, I have edited meandering, verbose crap into the following straightforward, non-verbose crap:

PROBLEM:You have a 100 players, who play from 1 through 100 hours a week. The 1 hour guy and the 100 hour guy are friends. How do you let them play together?

WRONG ANSWER TO PROBLEM: Limit all 100 people to 1 hour of advancement per week.

POSSIBLE ALBIET INCONVENIENT ANSWER TO PROBLEM: Have your friend play an alt with you when you are online sometimes, or voluntarily handicap himself in some way to play with you (by farming in a zone you can get xp in or something).

NEVER GONNA HAPPEN ANSWER THAT PROBABLY SHOULD NOT HAPPEN ANYWAY: Turn WoW into a skill based twitch game.

In the interest of decreasing jackassery 'round these parts, I have edited meandering, verbose crap into the following straightforward, non-verbose crap:

ANOTHER POSSIBLE ANSWER:  Make a game like SWG or UO where you can group across "levels" easier.  I don't like this because the same mechanics that made SWG and UO non-segregated (solo oriented combat) made the combat in those games suck.

I would rather stab my eyes out with a hot iron poker.


I apologize if I attacked you on two shitty comparisons when you only made one shitty comparison.

I would go back and find out about who made the fucking stupid oatmeal statement but I keep coming back to that hot iron poker and the eye stabbing.

The topic is so far off any point it is ridiculous.  I know I am doing nothing to help, but I don't find the original point worth coming back to.

Playing an alt when you don't want to be playing an alt sucks ass and breeds resentment for the game.  That is good enough reason for avoiding segregation.  I had to have 5 fucking alts in EQ all specifically frozen ni time at certain levels so I could play with all of my friends.  It sucked ass.  Not only did I need all those alts but I could not play them on their own because then they would progress and then I could not use them anymore for their purpose.

So I would have a level 20, a 30, a 40... ugh.  Then a few level 30 friends are on for a few weeks and my level 30 is now level 40.  Then a friend who was away from the game awhile comes back with his level 30 SHIT.  Now I don't have a level 30!  What do I do?  Intentionally get in a bind death loop to delevel to him?  WTF?  Do I have to quick power level my level 20 to match and then power level ANOTHER level 20 in case a friend comes on who is level 20?

It is fucking assanine.

Blizzard's attempt to slow down the leading edge just might do that (I doubt it) but it does not solve the problem.  The person who starts 4 months into the game will still by WAY behind.  Make an alt for him... then another friend hears from the other friend and joins two months later... make another fucking alt?  When does it end?  I don't want to have to keep 1 of every level group around and feel BAD for playing them when the friend they were designed for is not online.

Does anyone think that is fun?

There are ways to avoid it.  Flattening the level curve helps in having less alts around, but does not really solve it.

CoH sidekick system has pretty much fixed it.  But you can't have TWO friends sidekicked.  That is still a limitation.  But it a big step in the right direction.

If you put together some simple stats on how often accounts stayed logged into the game per day you could see whether the rest system is a good or bad idea. Blizzard has all the capabilities of doing this, and I'm sure they are tracking it. If you simply removed the 10% of players on both ends of the catass/absent outliers, you'd get a fairly good view of how often people play per day. I'd hazard a guess that the average player gets about 20 hours a week into the game. Mind you that's a guess. Without the actual numbers you have no idea if the catasses comprise the majority of your game. I would think they don't but they are the loudest contingent. Frankly, if they are the great majority, then you should cater to them as a business, consequences be damned. If not, then they will whine until they join up with Lineage 2, which will cater to their needs. Blizzard just needs to decide where it's market is, and they will follow the money to casual/hardcore just like any other service.

I'd love to see this be a trend in a game that caters to the casual player as I have to believe there are more of us out there who will stay satisfied with less content. That means less work on new stuff for developers in a rush, and it means longer subscriptions to reach the more high end stuff. You'd think its a wet-dream market to cater to, but you have to convince them that they can get there eventually without horrific inputs. I'd say three months of casual play (20 hours a week) to get to the highest level would be great for that market. Of course, catasses could do this in two weeks, but if they aren't the market and if you don't care if that small percentage quits, why bother? If pissing off catasses keeps your majority playing that seems to be key. We just never see the numbers behind the business decisions which would vindicate our position. Until then, it's either trust the company or STFU.

Hmm. Waterthread is gone, so I can’t simply link to the Game Dev forum.

Synopsis answer: broad but shallow advancement. Allow for skill differentiation and specialization without jacking players ability to stand up to each other. Limit Hit Point and deal able damage advancement. Add more routs of advancement – social prestige, troops to command, territorial control, etc as opposed to more higher numbers.

In other words, stop simply implementing the mechanics of the single player RPG (which are wholly inappropriate to the MMOG setting) and try to implement the ‘gameplay’ of the single player RPG in a MMOg setting.

And if you can't differentiate between gameplay and mechanics then, well,  there isn't much else to say.

We've been around that issue before, but it seems to me just a fancy way of saying that you can't advance more than hour a week.  Advancement is either meaningful or it isn't.  If its meaningful, you will create barriers.  It it isn't you won't create barriers, but the advancement will be meaningless.

You can't have it both ways.  You can make a broad and shallow game that combines combat with magic with healing with architecture with Civ3 with chess with Madden 2004 with hearts with...ad infinitum where you quickly (or instantly) softcap each one.  Yeah, #1 and #100 could play together.  But your game will suck because it is very hard to make a game with even 1 of these facets that does not suck, much less 50 facets.  And even if you have 50 facets, your frequent players will have softcapped every one of them in a couple months, and then you are back to "no meaningful advancement".

I just think that it is unlikely that there is a quick and obvious answer.  People just plain like meaningful advancement, and meaningful advancement leads to segregation.

Advancement is meaningful in CoH and there are not these barriers.  You can have it both ways.

Advancement is meaningful in Planetside and there are not these barriers.  You can have it both ways.

Translation:

Daeven: I don't like current mmog's because their 'meaningful advancemt' dillutes the playerbase and fun. Therefore we should minimize 'meaningful advancement' and focus on fun instead.

El Gallo: STFU. I like 'meaningful advancement' your game ideas sound boring.

It comes down to this. Either you like MMOG's as current implemented, or you think they are pale, shallow implementations of RPG's with all of the focus on 'advancement'. I'm in the latter camp. El Gallo is in the former. Thereby ending any chance of meaningful dialog.

Have a nice day.

Make me MMOG with no/very little advancement that is worth paying a monthly fee for because it is fun and I will pony up the money pronto.  I think "Planetside done right" could maybe be a lot of fun.  Not all games need "meaningful advancement" and I am allowed to like both kinds =)  WoW, however, appears to be focused on it, which is what this thread used to be about.  I just think it's impossible or really, really hard to have a game with meaningful advancement without segregation unless you have a literally impossible amount of breadth.  Others disagree. C'est la vie.

Anyway, I am going home to catass.  Someone please help Paelos derail this clusterfuck back on topic!

Paelos: Why not just have a game (or servers of a game) where you get to play x hours a week/month and that's it?

No, just design games not around treadmills.

Oooo, analogy police. So sorry.

Guess I'm simple, but where I live we don't have any other oatmeal products like you seem to have. So when somebody here says "oatmeal", there's only one type of oatmeal he could refer to. Chalk it up to cultural differences.

You missed the point in your oatmeal post. Most people don't want to keep up with John Q. Catass or whoever, the point is sometimes IT NEEDS TO BE DONE or you just have the urge to play nonstop for 24 hours. Let's use City of Heroes as the example:

Preorder players can play for 3 days before the general public is let in. Many of us will be catassing - not because we want to - but because we DON'T want to deal with the rush of newbies in the newbie zones. What's the best way to do it? Ya get the fuck outta them before they can bother you with endless questions about how to script or whatever other dumb shit they can come up with. If they took away the ability to catass, there would be near no reason to give us 3 days before because at best we'll be 3 days ahead of them. Right now, with the ability to catass, we can turn that three days into 2-3 weeks with our current knowledge of the game. Yes, catassing can be that advantageous under the proper circumstances.

As to your oatmeal analogy, here's an oatmeal analogy for you -

Blizzard Entertainment is really an IHOP. I like the oatmeal at Blizzard. But one day the owner decides HE doesn't like oatmeal and takes it off the menu. Now no one can order oatmeal because the owner is a stupid prick.

Now replace the word oatmeal with the word catass. See how that works?

Analogies are hard. I know.

Timmy, I think she's trying to tell us something! What is it, Lassie? ;)

This thread makes no sense to me anymore.  I will just have the waffles please.  And some OJ.

C'mon...  

WoW.  Oatmeal.  Everyone else gets it.

Yes, with the current crop of "gameplay equals whacking rats for exp" leveling treadmills that is a problem.

But it's not wrong to wish for a world where MMOGs don't have that problem.

How about another solution, a la CoH? Make it so that players of disparate levels/power ranges (in CoH it's a range of 4 levels difference) can play together by "sidekicking." The lower level player is brought up to the base statistics of the higher level character's level -1. So if my catass friend is level 20, and I'm level 10, I can hunt and sidekick with him as if I was an unenhanced level 19. Sure, I'm not quite on the same level, but I can fucking contribute and be with my friend without making him play an alt character.

See, it isn't impossible, it just takes some fucking thought.

It helps *one* friend at most and I have no doubt that it will be abused to hell and back by multiboxers, etc.  But I agree that it sounds like a promising start.  Can you advance while in sidekick mode? (i.e. if I am a level 5 foozle and am /sidekicked up to a level 19 foozle, do the things I do as a level 19 foozle help advance me to a level 6 foozle?)

I was thinking that a similar situation might work better, because it would not be limited to one person.  How about if your MMOG contains a /delevel command.  So whenever your lowbie friend is online, you hit /delevel and are reduced to his level (until you hit /relevel or whatever).  If you have multiple friends, you all /delevel to her level when you want to play together.  That way, you can all play together.  If possible, we'd throw in some way to allow the high level characters to gain xp or whatever while they are in delevelled mode (though this will be a huge bitch to balance).

Personally, I suspect that the issue is a red herring for people who are lying to themselves about why they want to be ub4r, but if its a legitimate concern, that should fix it.

Negative ping code and fetapults are coming any day now.  GLITCHLESS 4 LIFE!

Yes, they gain exp, but exp relative to their unsidekicked level.  So if they are sidekicked up to 19, killing a level 19 mob (an even) will give them the same exp that they would get by killing an even mob before they were sidekicked.  So there is no way to powerlevel someone by sidekicking them.  They get proper proportionate exp.  It is just like they were doing a mission against level 10 mobs in a group of level 10s except now they can help out their buddy and have fun.




A /delevel command?

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST NO.

What is wrong with you man?  Given an option of having two disparate level character and the choice to give one a boon or to punish one you think PUNISHING one is the right choice?  WTF?

I can see the problems with only being able to sidekick one, but the solution then would be to have multiple sidekicks or a group sidekick function.  It isn't in CoH so the system is not perfect.  If you have 2 level 30s and 3 level 5s who want to group you got a problem.  One of those level 5s will be left behind unless you find another level 30 to sidekick them.

But to make the 30s play at level 5 does not seem like a good solution to me at all.  That would be punishing them for being higher level (because I think having level 5 mobs suddenly dish out level 30 proportionate exp is wrong).  Something which is pretty retarded.




I disagree.  Even in a fun game having to make sure you have every potential level appropriate toon for every potential friend that might log on any given day will become a chore.  Unless every character is the exact same gameplay (which would suck ass) everyone will have their favorite characters.  This might even change day to day depending on mood.  Having to keep this complex matrix of properly leveled characters makes the higher level have to play a character he may not want to just to be with a friend.

The answer of "Well, thats just what you have to do" is become more and more inadequate as more and more options are showing the myth behind that statement.  There are other ways to do it.  And my choice might be to just play a different game with those friends.

I have never called CoH the holy grail or even revolutionary in any way.  The sidekick system borders on that and it is so fucking painfully simple it stuns me that everyone does not have it.  Even CoH has not perfected it though.  As shown in the case above.  But it is a far sight better than those higher level characters saying "Sorry, billy, I can't play with you.  I don't HAVE a level 10 character.... he leveled to 15 last week when playing with george.  You should have been there.  Now you just need new friends."

I also think it is a far sight better than the 30 deleveling to 5 to fight things he fought months ago.  Boost the 5 up and give him a cool new experience.

Yes but "some fucking thought" seems unrelated to mmorpgs.

CoH made me forget that. I'll try to pull out the doll tonight to point out the places where EQ touched me in the bad way.

Because then you could allow unlimited grouping, not just 1 or 2 sidekicks.  If you have the unlimited /delevel, you can play with all your friends, whether there is 1 or 100.  If you have an unlimited /levelup command, grats on every single person being 1 level lower than the highest person on the server all the time, and goodbye to meaningful advancement in your game.  Which is fine if you have a game that is worth playing with no advancement, but good luck with that.  Sure, you can arbitrarily cut off the number of sidekicks at x, but the guy with x+1 friends will always bitch.

I completely see your point about it feeling cheesy to have lvl 5 mobs cough up level 30 xp when they are killed by a level 30 /delevelled to 5; but it also seems odd for a whole group of level 1's to become level 100 when a friend waves their magic wand, but for the level 100 mobs to only give the xp level 1 mobs give.

Really, the whole situation is very messy and I think that an elegant solution will be hard to find.

Why the fuck are we talking about CoH in a WoW thread, when there's three fucking CoH threads in this forum and two more in Distort/Decide?!?!

Anyway.  They are changing the Rest System a bit. (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-general&T=31929&P=1&ReplyCount=104#post31929)

Because it's just that fucking good, that's why.

Isn't there a special forum for blatant fanboism?

Eh, fuck it.  It's your fucking site and if you want to turn it into a CoH fansite, it's your prerogative.  I think someone even predicted this would happen a while back.

At least we're not talking about shadowbane.

Jesus christ man, bitch much?  It's been like this for every single mmog release in the history of the community.  Just in the last fucking year every conversation was constantly redirected to Shadowbane during it's release, then Star Wars Galaxies during that release.  We always do this shit, when WoW is just about to be released you'll see the same stuff happen.

Besides, there are two threads about WoW's rest state system AND a front page update on the subject, it's not like we have been ignoring it.

Ohh, and btw, I've included your name and link above in monday's MMOG News post, part of which I wrote this morning..

Eh, well, that's my problem then, I've only started visiting this site a few months ago.

I still contend that people are completely missing the point of the Rest State system.  

Its not about anti-catass, its about pushing players towards quests rather than simple camping.  As people have noted, the Rest State is character-specific and nothing stops a catass from simply switching characters.  And because it doesn't apply to quests or PvP, (by all accounts quests are the single largest source of XP in the game) the catass - even when using only one character  - can easily chain quests together (something WoW seems to blatantly encourage) or constantly hang out in PvP areas to get max XP.  Overall there are so many completely obvious ways around the "Rest State as catass control" theory that it seems much more sensible to simply take Blizzard on their word:  



Rest State is only a problem if you stubbornly insist on the most boring possible playstyle for a single character in the face of far better alternatives.  As it turns out, stubbornly insisting on the most boring possible playstyle for a single character is the modus operandi for all EQ and DAoC catasses.  So they bitch, because they aren't thinking.  And in response to their bitching we're only seeing Rest State as something it isn't.

Stop making sense.  It's out of place in this thread.

Every MMOG gets its day. WT.O was all about Shadowbane in the month before release, and the month after release. And when the big problems hit, it was all about how SB fucked up. Both FFXI and SWG got their moments in the sun, though FFXI got significantly less than others because no one doing front page stuff wanted to play it.

CoH just happens to be pushing our buttons right now.

Not really, because levels are only a part of the equation.  Levels are only there for comparitive hitrolls and hitpoints and scaled damage and that stuff.

The MEANINGFUL leveling is not about boring things like hitrolls and bigger numbers on the same power. That would be stupid.  The meaningful leveling is about power selection and enhancement slots. You get new slots every other level and new powers every other level.  You could /sidekick everyone to level 40 tomorrow and you would still have meaningful leveling.

I am not sure that I would say that an evening spent crawling a great dungeon with a tight group is more boring than an evening of solo/disposable group "collect 30 foozle paws" quests.

The wow rest system is being tweaked and at this time noone can tell what the final version of it may be.
Maybe it will be cool. Maybe it will suck...  at the very least its a step on the game(mmorpg) evolution ladder.

As for friends who want to play with eachother..?  they will find a way to do it or they arent really friends..  Friendship is sooo much bigger than some lousy game mechanics.

So, fucktards.. (hehe) care more about your friend than the stupid game and you will all be happier.

But by all accounts that great dungeon crawling will most likely come during the course of a quest.  Theres a guy posting at that other site whose Gnome Rogue is level 15, he's spent plenty of time in dungeons, and he says he's quested all the way.

This is exactly the tendency I'm talking about. You've assumed that quests are not compatible with an enjoyable game, and Blizzard is trying to defeat this mindset.

Yep- they will find another game to play, and kiss your restrictive catass game goodbye.