Vanguard chatter

[Nebu]

WoW's leveling period is one of the best games, not just MMOs but games, ever made. You're exploring, and questing, and constantly leveling and improving your character, and it's all incredibly seamless and polished. The endgame is pedestrian, so skip it.

Can I qualify this?  WoW is a good game IF you like linear progression and teh shiny.  It's a min-maxxer's dream and the hand-holding is top notch.  I bored with it by about the mid 30's, but your mileage may vary.

[sam, an eggplant]

Progression, yes, but I'm more on the explorer side of the scale and I found WoW's leveling game incredibly satisfying.

[Slayerik]

Can't someone get shiz a trial or something.


The first rock is free.

[Venkman]

Nebu and Sam, I think you're both right. WoW is a competitive min-maxers dream. It also holds your hand quite effectively. It's also very satisfying if you like a light RPG with objectives. It also can be satisfying if you actually get into the backstory of Warcraft, read the quest text and follow the storylines (There isn't something for everyone but there is some depth for those who are interested in it). This is potentially a strong point for the Everquests and LoTRO, because the former has some appreicable backstory to it, and the latter is playing with the granddaddy of them all (though less than effectively as yet imho).

Like any MMO, there's the surface game experience and there's stuff for people to dig into. It isn't anywhere near as deep as Eve from an immersion standpoint, and doesn't have the built-in levergable legacy of LoTR. But it's more than just grinding your way to Arena fights if you're someone not looking to do that.

Can't someone get shiz a trial or something.

You'd have to go out of your way to not find one. It's becoming like AOL from the 90s ;). In any case, here's a good place to start.

[shiznitz]

Can't someone get shiz a trial or something.

It is not a question of execution, but one of motivation.

[Rhonstet]

I only play MMOGs. Single player games don't do it for me anymore, or at least they stopped doing it for me some years ago and I haven't been tempted back by anything seriously since (HL2, Railroad Tycoon 2, Civ4 were the last.) I just like the social aura of the games even if I branch away from my MMOG internet family.

Except WoW. I don't know why but I have zero interest in it. Strange.

I don't see how you can consider yourself a fan of MMOs, especially new ones, while deliberately avoiding WoW.  It dominates the genre. 

It's one thing to say, "I played it and it sucks" or "I played it and it had no appeal", but to actually avoid it...

[Nebu]

I didn't care much for WoW, but I do recommend that anyone with an interest in MMO's at least give it a shot.  It's got a large following for a reason... Blizzard has done many things very well. 

[Morfiend]

I only play MMOGs.

Except WoW.

So... You like eating, but you dont like food?

[Azazel]

More like.. he likes eating, but is a Vegan by choice.

I'd also suggest you give WoW a shot, just start and level up through to 70 or even 50-ish. Then bin it by all means. I barely play it anymore, myself.

[Evildrider]

I couldn't get past 45 before I became utterly bored with WoW.  I like me my DDO... it's lacking in areas, but at least every time I log on I don't just have to go to one area of a map and kill a bunch of spawns.

[shiznitz]

If I implied I am intentionally avoiding WoW out of spite or for some other reason, I did not mean to. The simple answer is that MMOGs are still time hogs and since I only have 10 hours a week to play, starting a new MMOG is tough. Still, I did dabble in VG so that doesn't explain it completely, although the launch of VG coincided with a guild merger.

[Jerrith]

So, in other Vanguard news, Brotherhoods (formerly know as Fellowships) have been enabled on the live servers, and from what I've heard so far, the sky is not falling. ;-)   For those who don't know what it is:  Brotherhoods let you form a "permanent" group of up to 6 players who share all experience gains (except those used to repay debt generated by dying) evenly between all members, even while offline.  There's also a level restriction which (basically) makes it so that all members need to be within 5 levels of each other, and a leave/rejoin timer of 4 hours played time, to keep people from creating and disbanding them all the time.

Disclaimer: I was a big fan of this system back I was at Sigil, and I coded the initial implementation back in Dec '06. 

I thought I'd ask if anyone had any thoughts on this, and how it compares with mentor/sidekick systems or other systems designed to allow players who are RL friends play together despite different amounts of playtime, or systems that allow a group to keep someone who needs to go away for a little bit caught up with everyone else. 

I'm sure I haven't thought of every possible system, but I think it fills a role no other system I've seen does, and I'd like to see it show up in other games, in the future.

[sam, an eggplant]

I come out against any mechanic that permits power gain without involvement, because it deemphasizes actually playing the game. In dikus where character advancement is incremented by time /played it makes time another commodity that could be traded for gold, items, real money, favors, etc. More importantly, when core advancement is dependent upon time /played, devaluing players' time short-circuits the operant conditioning patterns that are supposed to addict your customers and keep them paying their $15/month to subsidize your Porsche performance upgrades.

Mentoring systems have the opposite effect, encouraging more advanced characters to drop back and (re)experience content that they may have otherwise outleveled. They make sense.

Of course I'm vehemently against standard diku time /played advancement mechanics in the first place; skinner boxes are effective at retaining customers because they're dangerously addictive, but they don't actually produce fun games. I'm a major proponent of strictly limited advancement based upon alternate paths like player skill, community respect (popularity contests), etc, with retention covered by levereging players to create massive quantities of compelling high quality content on a regular basis.

[Lt.Dan]

I prefer the mentoring systems.

I would find it hard to split XP with people not there helping me.  Basically the person still online is handicapping themselves and getting no reward.  At least in a mentoring system everyone benefits from grouping (faster kills, higher level mobs, better loot, working off debt, playing with buddies).  Brotherhoods seem to provide none of these benefits, although it would be a nice way for max level characters to level up their buddies on the home stretch.  A brotherhood would also be good if you had a regular play group - then if you missed a session here or there you would lose group effectiveness.

[Merusk]

community respect (popularity contests)

So you're against time /played because it's "too addictive and time consuming" but you're for popularity contests... that require even more time and personal investment than the /played mechanic.  You've got a bit of a disconnect there, sam.

As to 'brotherhoods' or whatever, yeah it's an easy way to level-up alts or to leech xp off your hardcore friends.  It's also a fantastic way to create multiple accounts for resale at once.  Whoops.

[Arthur_Parker]

Although this is a nice feature to use with people you really trust, I'm certain it's going to be more trouble than it's worth.  In addition to what Merusk said about character selling.  An out of game, unenforceable, agreement to trade something of value (leveling time) between anonymous people on the internet involving trust is going to leave a lot of people shafted.

Person A, I'm on holiday for a month, when I get back I'll level you up for a month.
Person B, k
*Month of leveling*
Person A, Back, later sucka. *leaves Brotherhood*

The drama should be good though.  If the aim is to allow RL friends to always be able to play together (which would obviously help retention) then I much prefer Eve's real time advancement & advanced skills system.

Edit to add, AC1 had a good low-mid level mentoring system before the phrase was even invented.  A high level character could buff a low level character and imperil mobs to level them up insanely fast. 

Also I hope the days of thinking "twinking is bad" are gone, you can't be anti twinking and pro faster low level advancement (with help) at the same time.  Twinking helps alts and also aids retention, WoW is pretty twink friendly which might help to explain, in part, the large number of alts people have.

[sam, an eggplant]

So you're against time /played because it's "too addictive and time consuming" but you're for popularity contests... that require even more time and personal investment than the /played mechanic.  You've got a bit of a disconnect there, sam.

Personal investment perhaps, time no. You want players to be invested in your game. That's never a bad thing.

Popularity could be something as simple as easily finding a group, or how many people added you as their friend, or highly rated your kurt cobain tribute poem, or saved that awkwardly angled cameraphone photo of your tits. It's the ideal advancement mechanism for social networking myspace/facebook type MUSHes.

[shiznitz]

I prefer the mentoring systems.

I would find it hard to split XP with people not there helping me.  Basically the person still online is handicapping themselves and getting no reward.  At least in a mentoring system everyone benefits from grouping (faster kills, higher level mobs, better loot, working off debt, playing with buddies).  Brotherhoods seem to provide none of these benefits, although it would be a nice way for max level characters to level up their buddies on the home stretch.  A brotherhood would also be good if you had a regular play group - then if you missed a session here or there you would lose group effectiveness.

Agreed. The offline person is gaining exp at the online person's expense. The online person gets nothing in return. This system will be used sparingly.

[Mrbloodworth]

So, in other Vanguard news, Brotherhoods (formerly know as Fellowships) have been enabled on the live servers, and from what I've heard so far, the sky is not falling. ;-)   For those who don't know what it is:  Brotherhoods let you form a "permanent" group of up to 6 players who share all experience gains (except those used to repay debt generated by dying) evenly between all members, even while offline.  There's also a level restriction which (basically) makes it so that all members need to be within 5 levels of each other, and a leave/rejoin timer of 4 hours played time, to keep people from creating and disbanding them all the time.

Disclaimer: I was a big fan of this system back I was at Sigil, and I coded the initial implementation back in Dec '06. 

I thought I'd ask if anyone had any thoughts on this, and how it compares with mentor/sidekick systems or other systems designed to allow players who are RL friends play together despite different amounts of playtime, or systems that allow a group to keep someone who needs to go away for a little bit caught up with everyone else. 

I'm sure I haven't thought of every possible system, but I think it fills a role no other system I've seen does, and I'd like to see it show up in other games, in the future.

I think all moos should have a system of this type, i play MMO's to play with my friends (Real, and online)...i really couldn't care abut the "Joneses" (And i am REALLY not sure why others in this thread are so concerned with others. I understand the "Exploit" arguments however).. I just want to play with my friends, and i find it horrible to be gated from doing so. Like, my girl friend, she will NEVER have as mutch time to play as i do..so in most MMO's, we cant play together.

However, as many cool things as VG has, idea wise, it not for modern peoples.

[Merusk]

So you're against time /played because it's "too addictive and time consuming" but you're for popularity contests... that require even more time and personal investment than the /played mechanic.  You've got a bit of a disconnect there, sam.

Personal investment perhaps, time no. You want players to be invested in your game. That's never a bad thing.

Popularity could be something as simple as easily finding a group, or how many people added you as their friend, or highly rated your kurt cobain tribute poem, or saved that awkwardly angled cameraphone photo of your tits. It's the ideal advancement mechanism for social networking myspace/facebook type MUSHes.

Well then say you're talking about attention whoring and My Space and whatever Raph's latest project that's "Not for YOU GUYS" is, not MMOs. 

And everything you list?  I'd rather see korean-type timesinks implemented before anything vaguely related to that kind of asshattery.

[Jerrith]

As to 'brotherhoods' or whatever, yeah it's an easy way to level-up alts or to leech xp off your hardcore friends.  It's also a fantastic way to create multiple accounts for resale at once.  Whoops.

I don't really think this is an issue.  The reason being, you could always just spend the time playing each account, and you'd be in better shape than if you spent 2x the time on one character (because the second wouldn't have gotten skills or loot, etc, and advancement is likely slower because you're only doing quests once, not twice). 

The one thing in this regard that it does do (a little) is even out the advancement rate for different classes.  If you take a class that solos really well, and one that doesn't, and fellowship them, you end up with a situation where you can advance them both at the "solos really well" rate (cut in half because you're applying it to two characters, but if you were going to level up both classes anyways, that's no loss).

[Yegolev]

As someone that plays all games at a slower rate than anyone else I know, the Brotherhood idea has merit for me.  Could I convince the one guy I would play a MOG with to let me eat half his XP?  Probably, given that he gets all the loot and doesn't have to worry that I will inevitably lose relevancy due to being outleveled.  Also, if it's optional, how can anyone complain about it?

[Venkman]

I thought I'd ask if anyone had any thoughts on this, and how it compares with mentor/sidekick systems or other systems designed to allow players who are RL friends play together despite different amounts of playtime, or systems that allow a group to keep someone who needs to go away for a little bit caught up with everyone else.

Who does this benefit? Many people in group-centric games already have dedicated groups they play these games with, probably even more so in VG given the tightness of the community. As such, they're already either coordinating their activities as a mini-economy unto themselves or off hunting and leveling together. It's a good way to ensure someone away for a week doesn't get ditched, but social groups have long adapted to that too.

As you note, it does help for classes that can't solo as well. But then, chances are someone playing that class is already grouping often anyway because they realized the issues of soloing or chose the class specifically because they don't plan to solo it.

I also don't think it relates to mentoring/sidekicking much. Those are designed to erase the penalties of disparate time investment amongst more casually-linked friends at that moment  The above system rewards the type of personalities that wouldn't gain much benefit from mentoring/sidekicking because of their playstyle, and it doesn't benefit the casual dabbler anywhere near as much as sidekicking does..

To me, Brotherhoods could be improved if they emulated more closely AC1's experience-sharing Allegiances system, or straight-up sidekicking ala CoX (which is both ways) or EQ2 (which only does leveling-down).

[Jerrith]

I thought I'd ask if anyone had any thoughts on this, and how it compares with mentor/sidekick systems or other systems designed to allow players who are RL friends play together despite different amounts of playtime, or systems that allow a group to keep someone who needs to go away for a little bit caught up with everyone else.

Who does this benefit? Many people in group-centric games already have dedicated groups they play these games with, probably even more so in VG given the tightness of the community. As such, they're already either coordinating their activities as a mini-economy unto themselves or off hunting and leveling together. It's a good way to ensure someone away for a week doesn't get ditched, but social groups have long adapted to that too.

I think the largest benefit goes to dedicated groups with members that have different amounts of playtime.  Without a brotherhood-like system, they are forced to either adapt, advancing no faster than the slowest / least playtime member, or break up once the level difference becomes too large.  The adapting, at least in Vanguard, generally involves doing something other than adventuring...  If you have an hour more to play each day, you can't spend that hour adventuring or you'll get too far ahead, you have to do something else, like crafting, harvesting, or diplomacy instead.  With a brotherhood, you're free to adventure all the time, if that's your interest, without breaking up the group.

As you note, it does help for classes that can't solo as well. But then, chances are someone playing that class is already grouping often anyway because they realized the issues of soloing or chose the class specifically because they don't plan to solo it.

I agree, it's not a frequent situation.

I also don't think it relates to mentoring/sidekicking much. Those are designed to erase the penalties of disparate time investment amongst more casually-linked friends at that moment  The above system rewards the type of personalities that wouldn't gain much benefit from mentoring/sidekicking because of their playstyle, and it doesn't benefit the casual dabbler anywhere near as much as sidekicking does..

I think you've brought out a really good point there.  Mentoring/Sidekicking is better for more casually-linked friends, while Brotherhoods benefit those with stronger links.  There's also a subtle point in that those stronger links are not necessarily "hardcore" players.  A good example would be the husband and wife with different amounts of playtime that want to advance at the same rate.

To me, Brotherhoods could be improved if they emulated more closely AC1's experience-sharing Allegiances system, or straight-up sidekicking ala CoX (which is both ways) or EQ2 (which only does leveling-down).

I disagree, I think they're different systems that serve different purposes.  AC1's Allegiances is interesting to bring up.  How does it fit in?  At least partially, it's a tool to help improve newbie retention, right?  Experienced players are encouraged to help new ones in exchange for their allegiance.  What are the benefits of Allegiances between two experienced players?  I played some AC1, but not enough to have experienced that. 

[Venkman]

The Allegiance system was basically a link between every player in it. There could be (and were) thousands of characters in that chain. Iirc, upper-level players would donate some of their XP to people who've declared allegiance to them. In turn, the person who declared also dedicates some of their XP to that upper-level player. This link was a subset of the AC1 guilds, an XP-sharing benefit based somewhat on a pyramid scheme, though in a good way. And much more casual because it rewarded for any activity at all, regardless of level, location in world, time online, etc.

I'd need someone like Grimwell to clarify though. He was pretty into AC1.

Without a brotherhood-like system, they are forced to either adapt, advancing no faster than the slowest / least playtime member, or break up once the level difference becomes too large.

I agree. That was part of my point though. Groups such that would benefit least from this system are those that come to VG already socially-grouped, from other MMORPGs like, or even just the usual game-night thing (DnD, RTS, board, whatever). There's a long history of gaming groups and they've all adapted in some way to the vageries of the medium/experience. In a sense, Brotherhoods feel like a GM-rule for DnD to account for someone who can't play that week, but here again they already would sometimes do that.

And just to clarify, I'm not ripping on Brotherhoods. That anything is done to remove the time segregation in any game should be embraced. I just wonder on this particular implementation.

There's also a subtle point in that those stronger links are not necessarily "hardcore" players.

That is a good point. I generally catch myself when using "hardcore", replacing it with the more appropriate "dedicated". You can be dedicated without being hardcore, dedicated to a group/partnering, dedicated to a goal, dedicated to an element of an experience. But you don't need to be hardcore Achiever forget-the-world focused on that to the expense of everything else. For this type of player, I agree Brotherhoods would be a good thing.

[Rasix]

Iirc, upper-level players would donate some of their XP to people who've declared allegiance to them.

Wrong.  It all went uphill.  Getting at the top of some of those XP chains was quite lucrative.

In AC2, which also had a monarchy system, we used to shuffle the monarchy dependent on who we were pushing towards 50.

[Venkman]

Ok, that brings me back, thanks. Think I last thought about AC1 when I left seven years ago :)

So the benefits to the serfs was the usual twinkage and money then right?

[sam, an eggplant]

Well then say you're talking about attention whoring and My Space and whatever Raph's latest project that's "Not for YOU GUYS" is, not MMOs. 

Social girly K-games with dancing pink teddy bears giggling and talking about cute boys are MMOs too.

Instead of charged terms like attention whoring or ambiguous ones like community respect, what if I used the word "leadership"? You lead a team, you get shit done faster and better with less casualties because you're a badass leader of men, a supreme tactician, and your standing improves. Is that sufficiently masculine so you don't dismiss it without consideration?

But anyway, popularity was just one example of an advancement mechanism not strictly tied to time /played. I tend to gravitate towards some combination of popularity and player skill, either twitch or non. Preferably non.

[Rasix]

Ok, that brings me back, thanks. Think I last thought about AC1 when I left seven years ago :)

So the benefits to the serfs was the usual twinkage and money then right?

Yep, it's all about getting yourself a sugar daddy as a vassal.  The protection aspect might be part of it on a Darktide (only played AC2 Darktide) server, although every monarchy comes complete with its own set of enemies.

[BigBlack]

Edit to add, AC1 had a good low-mid level mentoring system before the phrase was even invented.

AC1 did a lot of things well before the industry collectively got to understand what those things were.  A fair number of them were done well unintentionally.  I can only imagine that when the industry finally decides to break out of the Diku box and is looking for new things to try, AC1 is going to get heavily mined for ideas at last.  Then again, I though that five years ago too, so perhaps not so much.

[Rasix]

Let's not try to make it too obvious who you are. Getting around bans is a banable offense, ya know?

[cmlancas]

Edit to add, AC1 had a good low-mid level mentoring system before the phrase was even invented.

AC1 did a lot of things well before the industry collectively got to understand what those things were.  A fair number of them were done well unintentionally.  I can only imagine that when the industry finally decides to break out of the Diku box and is looking for new things to try, AC1 is going to get heavily mined for ideas at last.  Then again, I though that five years ago too, so perhaps not so much.

Fixed it.

[Merusk]

No you didn't. It's the other one.

[cmlancas]

You missed my joke. Sorry, I can't embed green in a quote :/

[Merusk]

You missed my joke. Sorry, I can't embed green in a quote :/

That? Nope, saw that.  Like I said, tis the other one.