Crowfall aka Play2Crush aka Shadowbane II aka Nostalgia Online

[Zane0]

You guys have a thing now where you try aggressively to see over the horizon viz. 'persistence is dead,' 'dikus are dead,' 'mmos are dead.' I think this critical disposition has outpaced the actually quite stolid and basic market formula still represented by WoW and its successors. The fatigue is on one hand very real. The standard formula seem to be stagnating, even regressing. WoW has lobotomized a lot of its own persistent features; FFXIV, SWTOR, Wildstar, have been subjected here and elsewhere to sometimes deserved, sometimes gleefully rapacious takedowns; and a lot of recent dev studios, perhaps broadly in response, have turned to open-worlds and moba-likes in search of the next winning formula.

But FFXIV and SWTOR, I should remind you, have actually turned around -- SWTOR being still garbage IMO. And I am playing Wildstar on a lark and it is actually a remarkably polished and engaging themepark mmo--particularly considering the criticism it has attracted--that will also almost surely be a success when the dev team throws it into f2p and/or democratizes its endgame content.

I guess I just want to say I'm optimistic about the immediate future? The market has a fairly reliable formula to fall back on that it is also attempting to innovate (through EQ3, Archeage, Black Desert, and w/e else is going on) in ways that seem a lot more promising than several years ago when everything seemed to be failing. If persistency very generally is a casualty then it is a casualty of our own market behaviour; unlike perhaps a lot of you I think the DIKU formula is the hell we deserve (and I am satisfied to live in it -- even if its persistency is boiled down to where it stands at the moment with WoW). More ambitious MMOs have almost always fallen victim not just to shitty development but to the inability and unwillingness of most people to treat these games as anything more than an hour or two of casual entertainment. That is to say: the more open and dynamic the world, the more significantly power disparities open up, the more dysfunctional and broken the world becomes for the generalized 'end-user,' and so on.

[sam, an eggplant]

I'm not ashamed to say I love diku combat. I loved it in EQ, and I love it in WoW, FFXXXVI, wildstar, and what have you. Diku combat works-- threat is simple to understand, and dependency between players simply works. It works.

Diku combat isn't the problem, lack of content and forced repetition to artificially extend playtime is and always has been the problem. Imagine if WoW released a full expansion worth of material spread out over every 8 months. A WoW-sized patch every 2 months, then after 4 of em a new expansion. Golly, I'd play (and pay) forever.

Hard modes suck ass. Dailies can blow a goat. Repetition is the mind-killer. Give me new shit frequently and I'm a happy player.

Sadly, it seems I am essentially asking for the moon.

[Draegan]

Someone needs to revamp/rework or put a new spin on levels. Get rid of leveling with a new way to track progression. Stop making your game 90% leveling content and 10% level cap content. WOW put a new spin on leveling from grinding to quest based. Someone needs to do that with the leveling process and get rid of it.

Make it achievement based, or something.

[Threash]

Or make leveling about increasing your options rather than your power.

[Malakili]

Or make leveling about increasing your options rather than your power.

The first often amounts to the second.  If you have more flexibility to adapt to the situation/boss/dungeon/quest you are going to be more powerful.

[Khaldun]

I would love someone figuring out how to have your power reflect your cumulative choices, to be driven as much by narrative progression as anything else, in both a standard RPG and an MMO. I don't mind the idea of content being gated in some sense by whether I'm a young warrior swinging my sword for the first time or a grizzled old adventurer with fifty scars, but I hate the idea of advancing kill-by-kill, mission-by-mission. That's what's wrong with levels--the incremental Pavlovian conditioning, the need to make every play session matter because you got a bit further towards the next level rather than had an intrinsically interesting experience with the content.

[Malakili]

I would love someone figuring out how to have your power reflect your cumulative choices, to be driven as much by narrative progression as anything else, in both a standard RPG and an MMO. I don't mind the idea of content being gated in some sense by whether I'm a young warrior swinging my sword for the first time or a grizzled old adventurer with fifty scars, but I hate the idea of advancing kill-by-kill, mission-by-mission. That's what's wrong with levels--the incremental Pavlovian conditioning, the need to make every play session matter because you got a bit further towards the next level rather than had an intrinsically interesting experience with the content.

I wholeheartedly agree and long for such a game.  But it seems like that to me in a computerized environment every game is going to be analyzed to death to the point where even if you are designing a game that tries to avoid it, people will still treat it like a math problem.  The fastest way to level will still be found, the best abilities to use will still be found, and the playerbase will make that the "normal" way to approach playing the game because if you don't do those things you'll be left out.

The other side of that is that "an intrinsically interesting experience with the content" is just really hard to pull off when it comes to a game people are supposed to be playing for years on end.  SWTOR sort of tried that, but it's impossible to put that level of effort into content people are ultimately chewing through over the long haul.  So instead you get repetitive, uninteresting content with small, frequent rewards as a way of keeping it engaging.  But once you see through that illusion, it's practically the same mob grind that EQ was, just with a veneer of questing over it.  It fooled me for a while, but in the end it was barely different at all.

[Draegan]

Barely different? Are we really forgetting how it was a very different experience. It kept you moving through a map, seeing different locations, giving you item rewards along the way. Quests were a huge improvement.

I think you're distilling things to much and I think you are assuming everyone is going to minmax whatever.

[sam, an eggplant]

Definitely, WoW quest leveling was a huuuuuuge improvement.

Remember back in EQ, you would log in and basically camp mobs respawning every 6 minutes for hours on end. And that's if you were lucky, and didn't choose the ranger class 80 days /played back, and get to sit at the zone line endlessly advertising for a group in /ooc. Over time people forget just how awful EQ truly was.

[Malakili]

Definitely, WoW quest leveling was a huuuuuuge improvement.

Remember back in EQ, you would log in and basically camp mobs respawning every 6 minutes for hours on end. And that's if you were lucky, and didn't choose the ranger class 80 days /played back, and get to sit at the zone line endlessly advertising for a group in /ooc. Over time people forget just how awful EQ truly was.

Yes, it absolutely WAS a huge improvement.  But the point is by now it feels like just as much of a grind as ever.  At this point I have exactly as much patience for WoW style questing as I do for camping spawns.  None.

[Draegan]

Definitely, WoW quest leveling was a huuuuuuge improvement.

Remember back in EQ, you would log in and basically camp mobs respawning every 6 minutes for hours on end. And that's if you were lucky, and didn't choose the ranger class 80 days /played back, and get to sit at the zone line endlessly advertising for a group in /ooc. Over time people forget just how awful EQ truly was.

Yes, it absolutely WAS a huge improvement.  But the point is by now it feels like just as much of a grind as ever.  At this point I have exactly as much patience for WoW style questing as I do for camping spawns.  None.

Didn't know you meant now, 10+ years later. I agree with that statement then. Which is why I advocate for not having levels and doing something else to progress/track progress of a character.

[WayAbvPar]

Or make leveling about increasing your options rather than your power.

That is why I always liked use-based skills rather than levels. Yes, people can macro. So what? people can grind out levels too. Skills allow new players to become narrowly useful relatively quickly, while allowing veteran players to broaden their options.

As for questing vs spawn camping- I am DONE running quests. So dull. I actually miss being able to camp a spawn and make decent progress.

[Rasix]

Or make leveling about increasing your options rather than your power.

That is why I always liked use-based skills rather than levels. Yes, people can macro. So what? people can grind out levels too. Skills allow new players to become narrowly useful relatively quickly, while allowing veteran players to broaden their options.

As for questing vs spawn camping- I am DONE running quests. So dull. I actually miss being able to camp a spawn and make decent progress.

[Count Nerfedalot]

I like what LOTRO did with this. You have quest lines taking you new places and pointing you at things to kill.  You also get decent exp for killing things in general plus achievements with worthwhile rewards plus drops that can be turned in for yet more quest rewards.  It makes it so if you find a fun place to hunt you can stay there quite a while and have fun while still making progress.
It's not enough. But it was a good blend of rewarding both questing and non - quest hunting.
The bigger problem is it's still a tired old story in a world where nothing changes no matter what you do when what many of think we want is a world that changes and evolves whether we do anything or not, but we have a chance of maybe affecting the results of those changes if we choose to.

[KallDrexx]

Levelling is never going away, for better or for worse.  Too many people tie into that number for achievement that it's staggering (it's amazing how many people complained about getting to max level in GW1 right away, even though by that time you've still only saw 10-15% of the content). 

I'd like to see advancement in questing though.  While I never played WoW at release, questing right now at low levels is a chore to me because they just bombard you with quests that make me have zero desire to actually figure out what's going on.  I literally just created a new level 1 and after the first quest (a "go talk to this guy" quest) I'm immediately bombarded with 3 parallel quests.  I want to enjoy and see whats going on, but I"m not going to read 3 windows of quest text to do it, knowing that once I hand them in I'm going to get blasted with a ton of more text.

[rk47]

Go there. Kill 10 goats.

[Malakili]

I want to enjoy and see whats going on

Nothing is going on, that's the problem.

[Rendakor]

Levelling is never going away, for better or for worse.  Too many people tie into that number for achievement that it's staggering (it's amazing how many people complained about getting to max level in GW1 right away, even though by that time you've still only saw 10-15% of the content). 

I'd like to see advancement in questing though.  While I never played WoW at release, questing right now at low levels is a chore to me because they just bombard you with quests that make me have zero desire to actually figure out what's going on.  I literally just created a new level 1 and after the first quest (a "go talk to this guy" quest) I'm immediately bombarded with 3 parallel quests.  I want to enjoy and see whats going on, but I"m not going to read 3 windows of quest text to do it, knowing that once I hand them in I'm going to get blasted with a ton of more text.

Play Secret World; quests in that are really interesting, the combat is just very unappealing to me (GW2/Wildstar's constant fire-dodging without TERA's awesome combat and a limited action set which is a huge turnoff for me).

[rk47]

Been meaning to try TSW, but how's the requirements? Installation size and stuff?

[CmdrSlack]

I was a senior guide in EQ. In hindsight, once you got outside the E Ro Tunnel, there weren't a TON of social spots, it was a bit odd to just watch groups sit at a static spawn. With the ability to be invisible and never draw aggro, you could really observe people playing in a way that was more difficult for the normal player to do. Back then, plane raids weren't an exact science and rubicite had been recently removed from the game.

The thing that EQ got right was rare spawns. What it got wrong was tying "essential" items to those rare spawns. That was stupid as hell. I dealt with lots of griefing petitions based on spawn disputes. The chance to find a neat spawn that most people didn't get to find was cool. The dickish hoarding of the spawn point was what ruined it.

[Scold]

UO > EQ and all the mediocre dikus that followed it.

[HaemishM]

As much as the IDEA of camping sucks monkey balls, it actually was a fun time in EQ1. It created a lot of socializing opportunities that you don't get with questing lines, raids and the like. Looking at a spellbook was a fucking nightmare, as was watching your health/mana slowly tick back up to a manageable level. It's biggest drawbacks were as CmdrSlack mentioned, rare spawns for essential items, a situation which created a shitload of griefing and unnecessary conflict. And of course, combat as in most DIKU's got really fucking boring after a while, especially with the leveling curve you had to face in that game. Hell levels especially were galling, because you spent forever doing the same things over and over again (things you had to be in a group to survive). I recognized early how boring that stuff was going to get, so I tried to make sure I moved myself and my guild around, never spending more than a week in one leveling place. I even ran specific event weeks to dungeons that we might not have gotten to just to keep the game a bit fresh.

But in the end, the natural tendency for people was to approach the leveling in the most efficient way possible which limited their "camping" to only specific leveling spots the higher up they went. And of course, there were those essential, class-defining items that everyone HAD to get which drove everyone to the same places and spawns.

[Threash]

It was really not though.

[HaemishM]

Ok, let me rephrase - camping was fun if you were in your group, with your friends/guildmates you liked. Random cockgobblers? Yeah, that was a highly variable experience.

The future of MMOG's really isn't MORE PLAYERS IN MORE PLACES!!!! It's more players in smaller, closer knit groups doing content they feel was made for them. Crafting a boutique experience for smaller, MOBA-sized teams of players should be more important than making a PLAY2CRUSH world where only the ones able to put the most time or real money into the game get to win.

[Malakili]

Well, the parts I remember fondly about these games were playing socially with people.  It was novel and interesting and even when it was tedious it was totally unlike other games I had played in the past.  That counted for a lot.  But now having instant access to thousands of other gamers is practically a given regardless of the genre you're playing.  In fact, now that the novelty has worn off most people just want to play alone and not have to be bothered by anyone else.  I think part of what is going on is that there isn't one eternal formula for a good game.  What was good 10-12 years ago isn't good now.  That doesn't mean it wasn't good then.  But it also means that just trying to go back to the old way isn't satisfying to most people either, even the people who had a good time the first time around.  

What people really want - I believe - is to feel like they felt playing those old school MMOs, but I'm not sure it's possible to recreate that experience of a totally novel genre, exploring a huge game world and running into people for the first time, etc.  Nostalgia counts for something, but it wears off the same way the novelty did.  

[Threash]

Ok, let me rephrase - camping was fun if you were in your group, with your friends/guildmates you liked. Random cockgobblers? Yeah, that was a highly variable experience.

The future of MMOG's really isn't MORE PLAYERS IN MORE PLACES!!!! It's more players in smaller, closer knit groups doing content they feel was made for them. Crafting a boutique experience for smaller, MOBA-sized teams of players should be more important than making a PLAY2CRUSH world where only the ones able to put the most time or real money into the game get to win.

Hell getting a group at all was not automatic unless you were one of three out of like fourteen classes.

[sam, an eggplant]

Ok, let me rephrase - camping was fun if you were in your group, with your friends/guildmates you liked

To further rephrase, what you're really saying is "I like hanging out with my friends". It had nothing to do with the actual game.

[Tmon]

Ok, let me rephrase - camping was fun if you were in your group, with your friends/guildmates you liked

To further rephrase, what you're really saying is "I like hanging out with my friends". It had nothing to do with the actual game.

The problem for me came when my friends all out leveled me,  the penalties for grouping with a higher level player were just horrendous.

[Draegan]

Ok, let me rephrase - camping was fun if you were in your group, with your friends/guildmates you liked

To further rephrase, what you're really saying is "I like hanging out with my friends". It had nothing to do with the actual game.

If you had camping today, most people would be alt-tab'd or doing something else while they played. Back then people were basically stuck doing one thing on their PC.

[WayAbvPar]

Ok, let me rephrase - camping was fun if you were in your group, with your friends/guildmates you liked. Random cockgobblers? Yeah, that was a highly variable experience.

The future of MMOG's really isn't MORE PLAYERS IN MORE PLACES!!!! It's more players in smaller, closer knit groups doing content they feel was made for them. Crafting a boutique experience for smaller, MOBA-sized teams of players should be more important than making a PLAY2CRUSH world where only the ones able to put the most time or real money into the game get to win.

Hell getting a group at all was not automatic unless you were one of three out of like fourteen classes.

Yep. I played an enchanter specifically so I would rarely have trouble finding a group. I was a damned good enchanter too. I miss having to actually use a bit of skill/knowledge/awareness during fights.

[sam, an eggplant]

If you had camping today, most people would be alt-tab'd or doing something else while they played. Back then people were basically stuck doing one thing on their PC.

Not basically, literally-- Everquest did not allow players to alt-tab from the client.

[Tmon]

There was also the fun of having your spell book fill the screen while your character sat and memorized spells.  Or was it when you regenerated manna?

[sam, an eggplant]

It was when you "meditated", yes, which was the primary way to regenerate mana. WoW innovated tracking whether the player was "in combat", allowing for different regeneration rates. This is one of its more important improvements to the genre which many people don't recognize, actually. It's what allows you to run around and kill monsters without waiting for extended periods between kills.

[Ingmar]

Pretty sure DAOC did that first actually? Endurance regen in/out of combat was different I think?

[sam, an eggplant]

Did it track combat status? I only played DAoC to level 15 or so, honestly don't remember.