EQ 'Next'

[Ingmar]

There's still something that rubs me the wrong way about even a system like that. It rewards one playstyle directly at the expense of another, I think, almost like a crafting version of ganking someone in STV.

EDIT: OK that's overstating it. But still, I don't think the item maintenance minigame adds much 'fun' unless you're specifically trying to capture a setting flavor thing like Fallout 3, where there just aren't any new things being made.

[Kageru]

The wow crafting system works fine. Crafters can make a number of highly desirable items but they're all consumable (potions, item enhancers), crafter unique advantages (eg. enchanters are the only ones with ring buffs) or vanity items (the hog). It also provides specialised gear (like a newbie PvP suit) and raid gear via recipes dropped in raids. So crafting and the raw materials to feed it do have a high value.

What it doesn't do is allow crafters to be the core of item progression, which would make no sense in a PvE progression game.

[Xurtan]

I must be the one person that positively loathed the WoW crafting system. I'm still rather partial to EQII's current system, personally. (Not to mention the click one button > craft all aspect makes me want to /wrist. I want to make the item, damnit, not watch a bar go across the screen. But then, that's a whole different complaint.)

[Lantyssa]

EDIT: OK that's overstating it. But still, I don't think the item maintenance minigame adds much 'fun' unless you're specifically trying to capture a setting flavor thing like Fallout 3, where there just aren't any new things being made.

I'm of two minds about it.  If you have a serious crafter focus, then there needs to be a way to make all kinds of items desirable.  However I am against ever taking away items.

Think of WoW as it is now.  Not so much the crafting aspect, but item damage.  If you could buy a sword (or whatever item) and use it to repair your weapon in the field, would you like that?

Appearance tabs and social clothes are another way.  I had so many sets of clothes in SWG it was unreal.  Houses dedicated to clothing storage.

[WindupAtheist]

Man I miss UO circa like 2001. After they nerfed PK but before they removed meaningful item decay so they could add uberitems and Diabloize everything. You'd go up to the public forge in Britain where there were always 2 or 3 player blacksmiths hanging out. Then you'd tell one of them you wanted a valorite platemail suit with a norse helmet, two broadswords, and a heater shield. He'd tell what it cost. You'd offer to buy two sets and throw in a nice tip. You'd put one set on, chuck the other one in the bank, and that was it. You were good to do anything in the game. You could go ages without interacting with an NPC for any reason other than to stable your pets or access your bank.

[Kageru]

Why this is being discussed in an EQ thread escapes me. From memory EQ crafting was buy lots of vendor items, maybe a couple you found yourself, and hope the combine doesn't fail.

I'm not sure how you can "loathe" WoW crafting. Raw materials go in, usable items come out and the implementation is fully supportive of their design goals of being adventure focused rather than people hanging around a forge. I can see wanting a game about crafting, but WoW will never be that game. Better animations for the trade-skills? Why when nobody watches them anyway.

I'm quite enjoying crafting in Fallen Earth though. In a post-apocalyptic world it makes sense that people would be scrounging and making stuff. Their system of crafts taking a long time but running in the background is not realistic but excellent for slowing the pace of production without making gameplay dull. More complex items having more subcomponents, experimentation to suck up some of the excess production and advantages to being a dedicated crafter is all quite cool.

[Stabs]

What I would like to see in Everquest Next is a game that focusses on levelling.

I preferred levelling to the stuff there is to do at level cap. I like getting exp and dings but don't need 3 dings an hour. I remember Diablo 2 with great affection, a game where no one hit max level for almost a year (and it was an exciting race between GerBarb and RusBarb).

Instead of trying to be bad WoW it would be great to see this title aim for a now empty niche of a game where virtually no one has maxxed out. For many MMO fans our favourite memories are of times when everyone was trying to progress through the ranks.

I realise I'm basically asking for grind but I'd prefer that to aimlessly flying circles around Dalaran wondering if I can be bothered to do a daily for gold I don't need.

[Kageh]

I agree, the journey to get to the endgame has lost a lot of importance since everyone seems to design the game around the concept of all the fun being at the endgame.

I actually think that vanilla WoW was awesome (and the oldskool EQ had merit too) in that regard, because so much of the PVE content was original and memorable to experience. Zone design, instances (dungeons in EQ), the unbelievably long and "epic" quest chains that led you all the across the world - assuming the reward was worth it - all that was contributing to not feel like "You're missing out of all the fun if you're not at the endgame".

The problem is that, unless the game has a very steady influx of new players, everyone drifts to the top of the level pyramid eventually, and not enough lowbies start to keep the low-level game fun. You noticed that even in WoW after a while, and WoW certainly kept selling boxes at an unbelievable pace. Then, one day, the whole effort you put into the low-level game becomes obsolete.

[statisticalfool]

I agree, the journey to get to the endgame has lost a lot of importance since everyone seems to design the game around the concept of all the fun being at the endgame.

I actually think that vanilla WoW was awesome (and the oldskool EQ had merit too) in that regard, because so much of the PVE content was original and memorable to experience. Zone design, instances (dungeons in EQ), the unbelievably long and "epic" quest chains that led you all the across the world - assuming the reward was worth it - all that was contributing to not feel like "You're missing out of all the fun if you're not at the endgame".

The problem is that, unless the game has a very steady influx of new players, everyone drifts to the top of the level pyramid eventually, and not enough lowbies start to keep the low-level game fun. You noticed that even in WoW after a while, and WoW certainly kept selling boxes at an unbelievable pace. Then, one day, the whole effort you put into the low-level game becomes obsolete.

I think for a traditional level-based game, only studios like Blizzard working on AAA games can afford to spend lots of time making lots of high-quality non-level-cap content. It certainly has paid off handsomely, but there just isn't enough money in most efforts to sustain building 3 or 4 different places for level 20-25 players to go for ten hours.

WAR seems in specific to have failed along these lines: wasted effort on duplication (home cities), a T1 that was fun, and then both, too long of a grind to get to T4, because they were scared of people finding out how poorly thought out T4 was.

(maybe they should make T4 free to play, and then force you to subscribe to be able to play T1)

[Draegan]

Remove levels.
Character advancement is based on equipment, and skill acquisition.
Add in full loot PVP with a little flavor of even noobs can tackle.

Sounds awesome to me.

[Kageh]

Agree on the levels, full looting is kind of harsh though, especially if you link advancement to levels. It's like losing half of your character progress, if the items are all you have to show for it.

I'd rather want levels as a general indicator and not as the absolute deal-breaker that they are today. Something like Guild Wars levels. Or Demon's Souls, which actually has an awesome leveling/PVP implementation IMO.

I think for a traditional level-based game, only studios like Blizzard working on AAA games can afford to spend lots of time making lots of high-quality non-level-cap content. It certainly has paid off handsomely, but there just isn't enough money in most efforts to sustain building 3 or 4 different places for level 20-25 players to go for ten hours.

This is a good observation, and I think that WoWs polish at lower levels (1-40 mainly) originates from a time where lower levels were supposed to take a lot longer than they were tweaked to in the retail launch. Back in 2004, I was marveling at the time and ressources it must've taken to design various dungeons and unique equipment pieces in the 10-20 level range (think: an entire blue *set* from wailing caverns for levels 13-17), when a focused player can mow through all that in a day and jump from level 9 green equipment to level 21 green equipment. I kept hearing that back in WoW closed beta leveling took a lot longer.

It also probably would be possible to have the lower level (non-endgame) take longer if your game is polished and content-featured enough to be fun at that stage. 20 hours for 20-25 can be very short if you're having fun or one heck of a problem if you keep counting mob kills to next ding.

[raydeen]

Remove levels.
Character advancement is based on equipment, and skill acquisition.
Add in full loot PVP with a little flavor of even noobs can tackle.

Sounds awesome to me.

So Guild Wars++? The only problem I see with that it is that A.) They'll never do it because Blizz hasn't done it yet and therefore it would never work in their minds, and B.) it completely negates 99 and 44/100ths of the game they worked so long on. I loved the concept of GW's instant 20(?) PvP but at that point it became old because it was basically Quake or UT with swords and spells instead of blasters and I got tired of that real quick. I'd like the model more if it was placed in an open world instead of a set number of small maps. When I saw some of the teaser vids of WAR where there were dozens (maybe hundreds) of players attacking and defending a city, I thought it was going to be fantastic. And as everyone has said, T1 was great, but then the bottom fell out and frankly I lost the will to get to the point where I could have maybe participated in an epic fight like that. And from what I've read, I don't even think it would've been possible given their engine and server tech.

Sometimes I just want to say 'Fuck it' and go back to Arena and Daggerfall. They both felt like MMOs before I had ever played one.  I'm still hoping that someday I'll find a game that's close to being Daggerfall Online.  Probably never happen.

[Draegan]

Remove levels.
Character advancement is based on equipment, and skill acquisition.
Add in full loot PVP with a little flavor of even noobs can tackle.

Sounds awesome to me.

So Guild Wars++? The only problem I see with that it is that A.) They'll never do it because Blizz hasn't done it yet and therefore it would never work in their minds, and B.) it completely negates 99 and 44/100ths of the game they worked so long on. I loved the concept of GW's instant 20(?) PvP but at that point it became old because it was basically Quake or UT with swords and spells instead of blasters and I got tired of that real quick. I'd like the model more if it was placed in an open world instead of a set number of small maps.

Well it was more of a general armchair dev statement.  Also my game would be in a small-medium sized world with no instancing and a max online server population numbering in the 100's rather than 1000's.

Agree on the levels, full looting is kind of harsh though, especially if you link advancement to levels. It's like losing half of your character progress, if the items are all you have to show for it.

I'd rather want levels as a general indicator and not as the absolute deal-breaker that they are today. Something like Guild Wars levels. Or Demon's Souls, which actually has an awesome leveling/PVP implementation IMO.

Full loot is fine because in my magic game gear acquisition is easier and isn't as a pain in the ass as WOW.  Think diablo style gear dropping but maybe not as random.

[Valmorian]

Draegan has the right idea.

Character progression could concentrate on breadth and vanity instead of power level.  The level 80 game in WoW demonstrates quite clearly that people will spend tons of time without the promise of new levels, so why not just remove them?  Have Talent trees and diversification of abilities become the new progression path.

Other ways to progress might include gaining damage bonuses vs. specific creature types after fighting them long enough, character titles, vanity items like customizable armor and weapon appearances, character reputation that would open up new quests, etc..

Since character power stays relatively constant, new content would be accessable to a larger group of players, a much larger "game world" results as well...

[Draegan]

I retyped this post and added a bit to it in the game dev forum as to not annoy people with shitty armchair developing.

However, to the point of these DIKU games, people love the gear chase and the dungeon crawl.  They hate having to go through tons of content just to get to where their friends are.  Take out levels.  A noob will be like doing heroics with someone doing 1200 dps.  It can be done, it just takes longer and usually others pick up the slack.

The only difference is that they arn't slogging through leveling content while everyone else is at the party.

Replace the level grind completely with the gear grind.  This also happens to get rid of the kill 10 rat quests and leave just "quests" for cool gear.  Give me a few million dollars some programmers, artists and whatever else I need and I'll make a DIKU game even schild would play for more than a week.

[Pennilenko]

I retyped this post and added a bit to it in the game dev forum as to not annoy people with shitty armchair developing.

However, to the point of these DIKU games, people love the gear chase and the dungeon crawl.  They hate having to go through tons of content just to get to where their friends are.  Take out levels.  A noob will be like doing heroics with someone doing 1200 dps.  It can be done, it just takes longer and usually others pick up the slack.

The only difference is that they arn't slogging through leveling content while everyone else is at the party.

Replace the level grind completely with the gear grind.  This also happens to get rid of the kill 10 rat quests and leave just "quests" for cool gear.  Give me a few million dollars some programmers, artists and whatever else I need and I'll make a DIKU game even schild would play for more than a week.

I would play the type of game you are preaching, it wouldn't even have to be perfect.

[Typhon]

I think you are drastically underestimating the importance of the emotional bond that gets created between a player and the toon during the leveling period.  If your game doesn't in some way replace this, your game wont have long-term subscribers.  A large number of long-term subscribers are what get Blizzard from one glacially-delivered Wow release to the next.

Levels, skills, experience, whatever a particular game calls for are inherent to your character.  Loot, on the other hand, only really becomes important once you have a character that you want to pimp out.  People don't become attached to wearable loot simply because they are ephemeral - the player knows that he's going to replace those items.

Maybe there is some way of building out a character's bio without the use of levels that gate access to content (allowing everyone to play together), but "let's get rid of levels!!!" is only half the solution.  Currently the character bio consists of 1) inherent 'stuff' (e.g. levels/skills/etc), 2) wearable items and 3) memories of play the player has with that character.

I suppose housing might work, but what percent of the total playerbase would accept playing house versus forming an attachement to a toon.  I'm certain it's not 100%.  My gut tells me it's not even 50%.

[Malakili]

I would play the type of game you are preaching, it wouldn't even have to be perfect.

Sounds like EVE with a focus on hand crafted PvE content instead of PvP.

[statisticalfool]

I think you are drastically underestimating the importance of the emotional bond that gets created between a player and the toon during the leveling period.  If your game doesn't in some way replace this, your game wont have long-term subscribers.  A large number of long-term subscribers are what get Blizzard from one glacially-delivered Wow release to the next.

Levels, skills, experience, whatever a particular game calls for are inherent to your character.  Loot, on the other hand, only really becomes important once you have a character that you want to pimp out.  People don't become attached to wearable loot simply because they are ephemeral - the player knows that he's going to replace those items.

Maybe there is some way of building out a character's bio without the use of levels that gate access to content (allowing everyone to play together), but "let's get rid of levels!!!" is only half the solution.  Currently the character bio consists of 1) inherent 'stuff' (e.g. levels/skills/etc), 2) wearable items and 3) memories of play the player has with that character.

I suppose housing might work, but what percent of the total playerbase would accept playing house versus forming an attachement to a toon.  I'm certain it's not 100%.  My gut tells me it's not even 50%.

I am totally with you that something is needed to attach people to toons, (and give gamers a ramp-up from 1 button to press to 20) but do you think that you need a full on classic WoW or EQ grind? I feel like a GW length campaign hits the sweet spot (and makes it plausible to develop more of those, as they did).

[Lantyssa]

Guild Wars campaigns could stand to be shorter.  Even if you had several leading up to one grand story, there need to be more discrete, short arcs.  As much as I love GW, I've still only ever beaten one campaign despite putting in some ungodly number of hours.

I'm hoping GW2 will be a good model for a lot of these ideas.

[Draegan]

I think you are drastically underestimating the importance of the emotional bond that gets created between a player and the toon during the leveling period.  If your game doesn't in some way replace this, your game wont have long-term subscribers.  A large number of long-term subscribers are what get Blizzard from one glacially-delivered Wow release to the next.

Levels, skills, experience, whatever a particular game calls for are inherent to your character.  Loot, on the other hand, only really becomes important once you have a character that you want to pimp out.  People don't become attached to wearable loot simply because they are ephemeral - the player knows that he's going to replace those items.

I think you're wrong.  "Building up your character" doesn't have to be spending 12 weeks or 8 days /played to max out your characters xp bar.  Once you put a new piece of gear onto your character and you see tangible results especially after getting new skills you become more and more attached.

In my game your skills don't pop out of a trainer in your hometown.  You have to find them in the world from hidden/not so hidden trainers.  Behind PVP or PVE encounters.  The details arn't important, but you get my idea.  That's your attachment and you didn't once have to kill 10 rats to get a chunk of xp.

I would play the type of game you are preaching, it wouldn't even have to be perfect.

Sounds like EVE with a focus on hand crafted PvE content instead of PvP.

It's not EVE since you're playing the game and not watching it like EVE.

You can make this game PVE or PVP.  I prefer PVP with full loot.  Especially if you near Diablo-like gear dropping levels.

[Nebu]

In my game your skills don't pop out of a trainer in your hometown.  You have to find them in the world from hidden/not so hidden trainers.  Behind PVP or PVE encounters.  The details arn't important, but you get my idea.  That's your attachment and you didn't once have to kill 10 rats to get a chunk of xp.

While I would love to play a game like the one you describe, it will never happen.  Creating a game with "Kill 10 rats" advancement takes 1000 times fewer resources than your game.  Your game is far to content intensive to a) be made on a practical budget and b) to generate enough content in a timely fashion to keep players entertained over the long-term. 

[Murgos]

In my game your skills don't pop out of a trainer in your hometown.  You have to find them in the world from hidden/not so hidden trainers.  Behind PVP or PVE encounters.  The details arn't important, but you get my idea.  That's your attachment and you didn't once have to kill 10 rats to get a chunk of xp.

While I would love to play a game like the one you describe, it will never happen.  Creating a game with "Kill 10 rats" advancement takes 1000 times fewer resources than your game.  Your game is far to content intensive to a) be made on a practical budget and b) to generate enough content in a timely fashion to keep players entertained over the long-term. 

It's happened before.  He pretty much just described Shadowbanes skill system.  You found runes that dropped off mobs that represented skills, either you could learn them yourself or trade them to others.

[Draegan]

In my game your skills don't pop out of a trainer in your hometown.  You have to find them in the world from hidden/not so hidden trainers.  Behind PVP or PVE encounters.  The details arn't important, but you get my idea.  That's your attachment and you didn't once have to kill 10 rats to get a chunk of xp.

While I would love to play a game like the one you describe, it will never happen.  Creating a game with "Kill 10 rats" advancement takes 1000 times fewer resources than your game.  Your game is far to content intensive to a) be made on a practical budget and b) to generate enough content in a timely fashion to keep players entertained over the long-term.  

I would say it's less.  You're not creating newbie zones, low level zones, medium level zones.  You're doing less writing, creating less quests etc.  All content doesn't need to be scripting WOW raid zones.  You can create simple non instance areas where you have bosses and other mobs to fight.  

Of course combat would have to be a quicker pace with minimal downtime so you're just not grinding mobs over and over.

[Malakili]

It's not EVE since you're playing the game and not watching it like EVE.

You can make this game PVE or PVP.  I prefer PVP with full loot.  Especially if you near Diablo-like gear dropping levels.

So, UO with Diablo like loot?

[Draegan]

It's not EVE since you're playing the game and not watching it like EVE.

You can make this game PVE or PVP.  I prefer PVP with full loot.  Especially if you near Diablo-like gear dropping levels.

So, UO with Diablo like loot?

Sort of but not quite.


I posted that in the game dev forum.   You take out leveling, create a limited skill base system.  I prefer a PVP based game, but you can design it around strictly PVE.  UO is sort of like it, but if I remember maybe people didn't use the best gear for fear of losing it?  This game you would want to use it.

edit to add:
I've played this game before (but with levels and other grindy crap in it) in the 90s as a MUD.  It's an incredibly fun game.  It also works on a real small scale too.

[Ingmar]

Think of WoW as it is now.  Not so much the crafting aspect, but item damage.  If you could buy a sword (or whatever item) and use it to repair your weapon in the field, would you like that?

Well, you could do it that way (although from a realism standpoint it makes little sense in a pre-industrial* game, swords don't exactly have interchangeable parts like factory-made guns), but the question is what does it add? Mostly it sounds like it just adds extra interface headaches. Now you're dedicating some bag space to your extra thing to carry around, you might have to add an interface for repairing the item, and otherwise just adding extra clicks to a process that's really only there to give a bit of drag to the economy. (And of course in WoW engineers already can provide this service via repair bots, although that's really only cost-effective for raid groups I think.)

I think the conclusion I come to is big elaborate crafting systems are fine or even necessary for games like Fallen Earth or ATITD, where the goal or setting is very focused on it, but most action-oriented games really benefit more from a crafting system that just acts in service to (and stays out of the way of) the central goal jumping in and beating stuff up for treasure.

*On the other hand in sci-fi games personal crafting I often find even more jarring for other reasons. It really, really irritated me that I was turning out industrial quality goods from animal hides and bones in my brief trial of SWG.

[Malakili]

It's not EVE since you're playing the game and not watching it like EVE.

You can make this game PVE or PVP.  I prefer PVP with full loot.  Especially if you near Diablo-like gear dropping levels.

So, UO with Diablo like loot?

Sort of but not quite.


I posted that in the game dev forum.   You take out leveling, create a limited skill base system.  I prefer a PVP based game, but you can design it around strictly PVE.  UO is sort of like it, but if I remember maybe people didn't use the best gear for fear of losing it?  This game you would want to use it.

edit to add:
I've played this game before (but with levels and other grindy crap in it) in the 90s as a MUD.  It's an incredibly fun game.  It also works on a real small scale too.

Sounds somewhat Darkfallish actually now that you spell it all out.  No levels, check.  Skills increased by usage, check. Max skill level based on stats (not check, max skill level is always 100).   Gear can be worn by anyone (check, though skills can make you better at wearing certain stuff/wielding certain weapons). 

I'm not sure what you mean by  "Advanced skills being prerequisite for less advanced skills" Do you mean the oposite? I.E, skill up something like lesser magic, then you can learn greater magic, which is a totally separate skill?  Not sure.

Diablo style loot is a bit of a sticking point.  Also, Darkfall is about clan politics/city sieges and such, I think, so its not solo friendly, I'm not sure if that is something that matters in your design.

[Draegan]

Skills and spells are like Civilization tech trees.  You need x and y before getting z.  But you're limited, based on race, on how many you can learn.

I'm not sure how skilling up in Darkfall, but there is no grind in my game just so people arn't forced to macro shit.

If my game were PVP it wouldn't be FFA it would be a 2 or 3 (preferred) faction type of game. 

[Stabs]

I think for a traditional level-based game, only studios like Blizzard working on AAA games can afford to spend lots of time making lots of high-quality non-level-cap content. It certainly has paid off handsomely, but there just isn't enough money in most efforts to sustain building 3 or 4 different places for level 20-25 players to go for ten hours.

Agreed Tastyhat.

What I had in mind was that 20-25 would take three months. That does make it worth doing for developers, the content they carefully craft will see a lot of use.. The reason people wanted to do Scarlet Monastery et al back in early WoW was because it was a long wait after that instance until the next one with decent loot.

Tobold stated recently that it took about 500 hours to hit 60 in early WoW for an average player, that's a year for a 10 hours a week casual.

You could even omit end game content entirely.

Now some hardcores will burn through your content however hard you make it unless you secretly turn off exp completely. But that's ok, let the vocal 0.1% whine that there's nothing to do at endgame and leave. As long as 99.9% are happy levelling.

As for the pvp ideas isn't that simply a different game? It may well do better without the millstone of an IP but if you want a MMO-inspired IP surely UO2 or Shadowbane 2 would be a better fit than EQ Next.

[Montague]

What I had in mind was that 20-25 would take three months.
You could even omit end game content entirely.
But that's ok, let the vocal 0.1% whine that there's nothing to do at endgame and leave. As long as 99.9% are happy levelling.

Somebody give Emmert his red name, plz.

[Stabs]

Blush

Well there are certainly worse designers to be compared to.

Just to clarify I'm not anti-raid or anti-pvp. I love to see radically different games around though and I think an old fashioned levelling game will, in 5 years time, be very fresh.

[Draegan]

I think for a traditional level-based game, only studios like Blizzard working on AAA games can afford to spend lots of time making lots of high-quality non-level-cap content. It certainly has paid off handsomely, but there just isn't enough money in most efforts to sustain building 3 or 4 different places for level 20-25 players to go for ten hours.

Agreed Tastyhat.

What I had in mind was that 20-25 would take three months. That does make it worth doing for developers, the content they carefully craft will see a lot of use.. The reason people wanted to do Scarlet Monastery et al back in early WoW was because it was a long wait after that instance until the next one with decent loot.

Tobold stated recently that it took about 500 hours to hit 60 in early WoW for an average player, that's a year for a 10 hours a week casual.

You could even omit end game content entirely.

Now some hardcores will burn through your content however hard you make it unless you secretly turn off exp completely. But that's ok, let the vocal 0.1% whine that there's nothing to do at endgame and leave. As long as 99.9% are happy levelling.

As for the pvp ideas isn't that simply a different game? It may well do better without the millstone of an IP but if you want a MMO-inspired IP surely UO2 or Shadowbane 2 would be a better fit than EQ Next.

All your PVE ideas are terrible.  

You want to extend mid range levels for months at a time?  Have you not seen Aion?  That doesn't even make sense at all.

You want to omit end game content?  Ok.  Ding Grats Level 60, please cancel your sub.  You just spent 10 years leveling a character, there's nothing else to do.  Oh here's a coupon for Lineage 2.

What hardcores are you talking about that's some arbitrary 0.1% vocal whine?  Everyone reaches the end game, everyone wants to keep playing.  Aion is a perfect example of why you don't extend early levels.  If you want to spend a billion years grinding out levels, EQ and 1999 are waiting for you.

[DLRiley]

Lolz. Hate to remind everyone but a gear grind (if I'm understanding you correctly) is the same as a level grind to the player. Unless the gear is vanity items your asking today's player base to give applause because you replaced mob grinding with quest grinding. While technically all mmo's have a level grind followed by a gear grind, so technically your idea is 50% less grindy than the norm. But 50% less grindy isn't necessarily less grindy as far as players are concerned.

Skills are unlocked, not found like pokemon. Players should be able to map their future progress (without opening their browser). Complicating skill progression is guaranteed to end in tears for all but a extremely niche playerbase. No one should be expected to auto-attack through encounters or simply go without skills because their too noob to find it. Maybe 1 out of 8 skills need to be unlocked through some hoop and ladder mechanism(it was done with success in Guild Wars), but to make that norm for all your skills in clown shoes.

Hand crafting content is only viable if your player base regularly uses it as their game. Spending the resources on the before max areas in the game is arguably retarded. New players need enough time to get used to the game. The early levels or whatever should be used to teach them the game and make them competitive. This is not a 24 hour+ activity. After you have prepared them for the game, that is when they should be in the officially dumped into the "end game" which should be 90% of your game and lateral progression should end.

[Malakili]

Words

Why do I get the impression you have no idea what you are talking about.