Blizzard breaks the game, fun

[HRose]

I just noticed this and I paste here my message:

They broke the game. Fun.

Sometimes Blizzard really looks like a bunch of tards. While reading the patch notes I put something for granted but it seems that it wasn't. The new item decay on death is still applied even if you go PvP (-10% for each death).

Basically if you try to PvP you'll have to stop every half an hour or less because your equipment is unusable. So you have to run back to a city and spend your money to fix your stuff.

I was expecting *incentives* for PvP, instead they applied an absurd, forced and damn boring timesink, because you have to leave the zone and go back to a town (it interrupts the gameplay), and a moneysink.

Even on DAoC they learnt after years that PvP should give you money so that you are able to choose it as an alternative advancement path. Instead here they going in the opposite direction, transforming the PvP into a burden that you'll try to avoid the best you can.

[EviLore]

There's no PVP honor system implemented yet, right? So at the moment the griefers are screaming in delight at the prospect of forcing money loss from PVP.

[Mark Asher]

PvP isn't done yet. There's supposed to be an honor system but it isn't in yet.

I don't like the decay stuff for PvP, but I'll wait to see what happens in the next two weeks before the retail release.

[BDGE]

It's pretty humorous, a friend of mine asked to check this game out tonight being a fan of warcraft in the past, he was very curious through namebrand only(the guy is completely ignorant to the whole MMO structure and design stuff)

Even knowing this wasn't an RTS, he assumed it would still feature the typical trappings of the older games. When I began discussing my character, he immediately querried if it was possible to just be an actual peon grunt, ya know...fortifying castles, building personalized forts, repairing the damage from major sieges and such, all the while dishing snarky remarks in between.

I -actually- paused for a second completely stunned and thought it would have been a really fucking cool idea. So much that I felt a wave of discouragement come over me as I had to begin lecturing about level grinding, spawn zones, mob agro, fed-ex tasks, etc...

The dissent grew when he asked to see what a normal mission entails...flipping through my little black log of outstanding quests revealed a whole lot of 'kill x goons and report back to y' stuff that would in no way be interesting to a spectactor. The instance zones are multi-hour jaunts that are unfeasible to just tour(as cool as they are), and boy did I feel petty and shameful when I jokingly avoided the quest routine by showing off how pretty those griffon taxi rides are...

I do really love the game, but man it can be a hard sell even without PVP issues.

[VegasRobb]

Interesting stuff BDGE, it's easy to imagine that everyone knows what's going on and it looking at WoW/EQ2/etc through the same telescope as the rest of us.

I know people who love Star Wars for just the crafting aspects, same for DAoC.

[TheWombat]

The item decay thing is not one of my favorite mechanics that's for sure. In any game. What effect it will have on PvP is hard to say, though. Most PvP happens in places very close to towns/settlements with merchants capable of repairing. And every player has a hearthstone that (albeit with a 60 minute cooldown) can teleport them to an inn. So I suspect the main effect will be to slow down the fight cycle. Coupled with the other change to item decay/death--i.e., if you use the spirit healer rather than retrieving your corpse, you suffer 100% item decay on all items--what you'll likely see is people who are ganked and have little chance of redressing the situation taking the 100% penalty and immediately repairing in town. That will turn the death penalty into a monetary penalty, though how much of one remains to be seen.

Otherwise it'll be a somewhat slower version of the old death cycle: get killed, run back for corpse, rez, run away/recall to town, repair, return. I agree though that there is mucho room for griefing here, in forcing people into the 100% item decay and consequent repair bills.

It also looks like Battlegrouns (instanced PvP) won't make it into the release version, which is a shame.

[McBain]

Decay? How utterly stupid. Why not just implement looting? At least that way, the winner is able to recoup what he lost earlier.

I always thought UO's PvP system was remarkably fun. I mean, if people don't want to PvP, why don't they just include a "pussy" or "schoolmarm" server for that demographic?

[TheWombat]

The problem here is that "PvP" is a misnomer. It's something between PvP and RvR (DAOC's faction-based consensual PvP system). It's not intended to be free for all PvP. What it is intended to be is still a bit fuzzy though. It is clearly not Blizzard's intent to create a UO style PvP situation, yet they are not moving clearly towards a pure consensual approach either. On the one hand the say they are against griefing and on the other they do little to implement a structure that controls it. So it's in a bit of a flux at the moment.

There are some in the beta who have been asking for a no holds barred FFA PvP server. They are a small minority, and it's unclear but unlikely whether Blizzard will have such a server (and certainly not at launch). Of the rest of the PvP'ers, it seems most like the HvA factional stuff but are looking for some mechanic to regulate, reward, and govern the combat.

[_Fury_]

The 10% durability loss on death is a good thing and I'm glad they added it. Otherwise you get the situation we had in darkshore the other night where about 100 horde players came in and disrupted the zone and we couldn't drive them back no matter how many times we killed them - they just kept respawning. This makes it so that if your town (and darkshore is allied territory) is under siege - you can mount a defense that can physically make the enemy leave after a while. This was previously impossible.

[TheWombat]

The 10% durability loss on death is a good thing and I'm glad they added it. Otherwise you get the situation we had in darkshore the other night where about 100 horde players came in and disrupted the zone and we couldn't drive them back no matter how many times we killed them - they just kept respawning. This makes it so that if your town (and darkshore is allied territory) is under siege - you can mount a defense that can physically make the enemy leave after a while. This was previously impossible.

That seems to be one of the goals of the policy. It might work too. Unfortunately, it also makes the other side of the coin possible, the groups of high levels ganking lower levels and forcing them to take 100% item decay penalties. Supposedly the full honor system will help address this, if it ever shows up.

[Mark Asher]

No one likes item decay. They do need some mechanism for sucking money out of the economy though. I don't know if item decay will be enough.

I'll give you an example. There was a dagger at the auction house, about a level 40-50 dagger, and I wanted it. In a normal economy it might sell for 10-20g. I paid 75g for it just because I had tons of gold to spend.

That was in beta. Think how much money players will have after a year in the game? That same dagger might go for 250g then. It effectively shuts out new players at the auction house. Level 60 players will even be scooping up low level items at inflated prices for alts.

I don't know if any MMO has really solved this problem.

[TheWombat]

I don't know if any MMO has really solved this problem.

Not that I've seen, no. In DAOC the biggest sinks are crafting and housing. Mostly that's dominated by guilds though, and there is little shortage of plat. My guild has chapters on three servers right now, but might be consolidating or shrinking some when WoW goes live. So on one server the guildmaster (who is fleeing to WoW) is stockpiling 100 plat in the guild house pay box to keep the house going in its present form for a couple of years. If we junk the second story we have like nine years of pre-paid rent stored up. No real shortage of money....

[Mark Asher]

WoW is going to add housing at some point and hero advancement, both of which will take money I'm sure. All that does is lengthen the time until a player is just accumulating more and more cash, though. They'll probably add boats too. I wouldn't be surprised to see hero mounts either.

I don't know if I'd ever buy a house, even. I hate the way DAoC does it. They're in a separate zone so I see no real advantage to them, other than storage I suppose. UO was more interesting because the houses are in the actual game world. That created other problems though.

[Jackstar]

Strictly from a PvE perspective, I do not appreciate the new death penalty. Before I could go out and kill myself over and over and over again, if I so chose, and the only cost to me was running from the graveyard to my body as many times as I felt like it.

Now, everytime I die equates to money out of pocket. It's a death tax. It's not a trivial sum, either; I killed myself and took the Spirit Healer hit to see how bad the damage would be. 40 sp at level 20 isn't really a lot in the grand scheme of things but it is still a tidy sum.

But I'm not really entirely clear on whether I'm objecting to the death penalty consisting of any money at all, or if the amount of money demanded is simply too much. I think the former, but the PvP issues are definitely a concern.

Usually this is where I'd start talking about my brilliant idea to fix it but I simply don't have one at this point. Also, I need to go kill some ogre guy.

[TheWombat]

I don't know if I'd ever buy a house, even. I hate the way DAoC does it. They're in a separate zone so I see no real advantage to them, other than storage I suppose. UO was more interesting because the houses are in the actual game world. That created other problems though.

The ony real purpose beyond vanity for houses in DAOC is as you note storage, plus the consignment merchants, which are the number one source of income for high level players. You farm, you consign, you profit. Can't have a CM without a house.

[Nathan Phoenix]

This was part of the reason I stopped playing DAOC a while ago, because all of the houses on my server were bought, and my guild didn't let anyone but officers touch the consignment merchant on the guild house. i was effectively denied this potential income stream, and if I would advertise items in broadcast I would get told to STFU and stop spamming...

FFXI and WoW do this way better in that there's one place where everyone can go and do all of this, without a ton of running around and without a massive cash outlay just to participate (assuming you didn't miss the boat in the first place).

[TheWombat]

Unfortunately there seems to be more bad stuff in this latest patch, judging from what I've seen on the boards. I haven't been in to play much with the new patch.

One thing is that resurrection sickness is now 30 minutes. That's right, one full half-hour. Apparently that's if you get a player rez; rezzing from the Spirit Healer doles out a sickness time scaled to your level. From the beginning the game's approach to player rezzing has been bizarre to say the least, making it so undesirable that unless you are in an instance you'd be an idiot to accept a player rez. Now, this 30 minute diminuition of ability, combined with the recent disabling of rez in combat, means officially that resurrection is the least useful thing any healing class can do.

Combat rezzing is a vital part of PvP in DAOC I know, and in WoW many times I've been in battles where timely combat rezzing by Paladins or Priests has meant the difference between winning and losing. It's the mark of a good healer that they can ninja rez and get you into the fight. Now apparently that's gone; you die, you die. In addition to this making party wipes vastly more likely (combined with the nerfing of soulstones last patch), it will further push the Priest class into a pseudo-mage with marginally better melee. Already combat healing is pretty lame given the poor monitoring tools and poor CC available (and the nerf this patch to Warriors' taunting skills as well) , so the reason to have a Priest really is to minimize downtime and add back up nukage and dottage.

Some high level warriors have also been blasting the changes in Taunt, which apparently make instances dreadfully hard because Warriors can no longer hold agro at all. Whether this is true or not I don't know first hand but I've yet to see any dissent, and usually claims like this get at least some opposition.

And on a lesser but weird note, high end Paladin armor for female paladins, as shown by some screenies posted in the WoW forums, looks like Boris Valejo got loose in the Blizzard art room. There have been many complaints already about the Lineage 2-style armor designs for female characters in WoW, but these shots are even weirder--strapless, backless armor and g-strings? For high-end gear for a 60 Paladin? Odd.

Ah well we'll have to see what happens with release. I'm not one to get too upset until I see how all this works out, and if it's as bad as some say, it'll probably get a fix soon enough. But it's indicative of a certain lack of fortitude on Blizzard's part I think--they seem to sway with the wind too often in these changes. Or if these changes ARE in line with their philosophy, that philosophy is not very clear at all.

[Charles]

I've been thinking that blizzard should have at least saved this patch for retail, that way they would have suckered me out of 50$.

But the biggest thing about this patch is that they increased the experience required to level post 30 by 25%. That is them going out of their way to increase the grind... and I won't take that.

At this point, I have decided that I'm not buying WoW at retail, even though a week ago I was still leaning towards it. It doesn't help that they took away everything I liked about the warrior class. Adding in death penalties... well, there's just not much left for me in WoW.

It's sad... but I saw the trend. From the time I started playing (Beta 3) to now, each patch has removed some of the fun, and increased some of the grind. At this point, I feel that enough fun has been removed that I'm not going to play. I will however watch patch notes once it hits retail, and if I think they've changed anything in a way I'd like, I'll pick it up. But right now? Sorry Blizz. You had me but then you lost me.

[EFlannum]

Agree 100% witht he previous poster. I started playing WoW in alpha and it was non-stop fun each patch has seen it get worse and worse. This final patch may actually be the last nail in the coffin for me... I simply don't want to level grind in these games any longer. Harsher death penalties plus longer experience times will most likely equal no purchase for me.

[Mark Asher]

It's still a fast-leveling game and the added XP requirement is offset by instances giving more XP.

I don't like the change though since instances can be a pain in the ass.

I don't know if there's appreciably more grinding but it definitely looks like Blizzard wants to make the basic gameplay more difficult.

I didn't know the rez thing was 30 minutes. Only thing I can think of is Blizzard is trying to make the instances more difficult, since those are the places where players use rez the most. A lot of the changes seem designed to make the instances more difficult, and as I noted there's more pressure to do the instances now. I don't know why they've taken this tack.

[TheWombat]

Supposedly the increase in XP value for dungeon (instance) mobs above level 30 compensates for the XP requirement increase (or vice versa), but yeah that sounds icky to me too. After all a lot of your exp gain comes from non-instance fighting, for a few reasons. One, instances take too damn long, and require a significant comittment of time in uninterrupted blocs. Two, there is no PvP in instances, and on the PvP server, you are there mostly because you WANT some PvP. Three, once you've done an instance, it's appeal lessens dramatically. Unless you're farming it, you generally want to go do something new, and there just aren't that many instances.

I still will be getting this because my guild is heading there en masse, but I'm not letting my DAOC stuff lapse. I've been trying to tell folks in my guild that they should not burn any bridges before testing out WoW in full, because I share the feeling that the game in beta has progressively worsened in some respects, even while it's gotten technically more robust.

[Charles]

I have never played an instance properly. Only times I go in is when I have a high level with me who can walk me through it for an item.

I'm a casual gamer nowadays, at least in time allocation. I cannot dedicated 2-4 hours to doing an instance. Requiring me to do so is ridiculous. And what do they do? Punish me for not being able to catass. Well, fuck you blizzard. I have a life, and luckily WoW used to be structured in a way which allowed me to play and have fun without sacrificing so much of my time. Obviously, though, they want nothing but the catass power gamers. Well, they can have em. I don't like playing with those people anyway.

[Mark Asher]

Charles, no offence but good luck playing any MMO in small bits and pieces. These games just aren't amenable to that kind of play style.

I think you're probably an unusual kind of player if you're willing to pay a monthly fee and not play that often.

[Mark Asher]

Supposedly the increase in XP value for dungeon (instance) mobs above level 30 compensates for the XP requirement increase (or vice versa), but yeah that sounds icky to me too. After all a lot of your exp gain comes from non-instance fighting, for a few reasons. One, instances take too damn long, and require a significant comittment of time in uninterrupted blocs. Two, there is no PvP in instances, and on the PvP server, you are there mostly because you WANT some PvP. Three, once you've done an instance, it's appeal lessens dramatically. Unless you're farming it, you generally want to go do something new, and there just aren't that many instances.

I still will be getting this because my guild is heading there en masse, but I'm not letting my DAOC stuff lapse. I've been trying to tell folks in my guild that they should not burn any bridges before testing out WoW in full, because I share the feeling that the game in beta has progressively worsened in some respects, even while it's gotten technically more robust.

Why can't you let your DAoC account lapse? They save the characters and items, don't they?

I agree about the instances, though I do think there are enough for players to get to level 60.

They really need the instanced PvP though. I know this was planned. I can only assume it's not ready yet.

[Charles]

Charles, no offence but good luck playing any MMO in small bits and pieces. These games just aren't amenable to that kind of play style.

I think you're probably an unusual kind of player if you're willing to pay a monthly fee and not play that often.

It was working with WoW. I was able to play 30 minutes here, 45 minutes there, all the way to level 46. WoW was great for it, I could do a single quest in 30 minutes to an hour, which is a reasonable amount of progress.

I liked the game, and was able to have fun even while crunching at work and spending evenings/weekends with my girlfriend. But with the increase in the grind and the increasing requirement to do instances, that's just not realistic anymore.

I thought WoW was great because it didn't require you to invest absurd amounts of time to a single play session.

edit: And just to make it clear, I was playing at least once every two days, usually I could manage an hour or so in a day. I was playing more than enough to justify the cost.

[Nathan Phoenix]

Well, if nothing else, I hope that the death issue is resolved in a timely manner. I never really saw WoW as more than just another MMO, although there are some nice innovations here and there. I was going to move there with a guild of buddies mainly because they were, but that whole 30 min res sick thing, and then the death tax... ugh, count me out.

[SlyFrog]

I don't get the problem. They are making death hurt a bit more. I actually like that; I often feel like I play too "cowboy" style and just rush into fights without thought. Things like this make me thing a bit more, and make the game less of a thoughtless button clicker.

You may disagree that additional death penalties are good, but to act as though there is no possible merit to them is strange to me.

[olaf]

Some of the art for high end plate for females has always been skank wear.

I have some screens of my human female warrior here http://www.gamerifts.com/previews/worldwarcraft_p5.shtml that illustrate what I am talking about. Even though they have redone stats since those screens, those two items look the same when worn. Some of the high end legs have a garter and stockings look and perhaps the best plate tank BP in the game looks very similar to the one depicted in my screens above, except its gold. I cant say that it really bothers me too much, this is the first time I have played a female in an MMO and I like looking at her. Still, its almost over the top.

I was disappointed in the patch, which continues a trend for me going back a long way now. They seem to make the game more tedious and less fun with each patch.

The durability stuff...ugh. It was almost universally panned across dozens and dozens of pages of threads when it was introduced, and they ignored almost all of those complaints. Even though the rate of combat decay has slowed down a hair, the overall rate has increased with this death decay bullshit. As a warrior I carry a bag full of weapon/armor to swap out as the situation dictates. We are talking big time gold if all of that plus my equipped stuff breaks when I spirit heal, 10G or more....maybe I will test it out.

They also added in components to all? high level buff and travel spells. Another bad move if you ask me. I dont understand why they dont try and deal with the economy on the supply side, by reducing coin drops from monsters.

The taunt changes also suck. Basically taunt went from having no cool down to having a 10 second cooldown. Game breaking unless every other class adjusts accordingly, ie. heal more efficiently, nuke less, rogues turn off attack (lol). etc. How did this get out of internal testing? Not sure. Not to mention that when the patch first went live, taunt was missing entirely.

Oh and their BT client still blows. It is getting better, I guess...but it still uses all available upstream bandwidth, which is a no-no for many folks as it pretty much kills internet access for other apps.

olaf

[Creole Ned]

Charles, no offence but good luck playing any MMO in small bits and pieces. These games just aren't amenable to that kind of play style.

I think you're probably an unusual kind of player if you're willing to pay a monthly fee and not play that often.
You can play City of Heroes this way. Apart from task forces and trials, which are clearly billed as optional epic-length team-oriented endeavours, most of the door missions in CoH take less than an hour to complete. Now, CoH may not be your cup of tea for various reasons, but it is and remains very casual-friendly.

[Mark Asher]

It was working with WoW. I was able to play 30 minutes here, 45 minutes there, all the way to level 46. WoW was great for it, I could do a single quest in 30 minutes to an hour, which is a reasonable amount of progress.

Well, level progression is the same up to level 30. That hasn't changed. It will take you 30% longer after level 30 if you never do any instances. I doubt that equates to a huge amount of time. If going from 30 to 60 took 200 hours, it would now take 260. That's probably not a gamebreaker for most players.

[EFlannum]

Charles, no offence but good luck playing any MMO in small bits and pieces. These games just aren't amenable to that kind of play style.

I think you're probably an unusual kind of player if you're willing to pay a monthly fee and not play that often.

Two words... Guild Wars. Seemed very friendly to small chunks of playing time... although admitedly it's not a traditional MMORPG.

[Sparky2003]

I don't know if any MMO has really solved this problem.

Not that I've seen, no. In DAOC the biggest sinks are crafting and housing. Mostly that's dominated by guilds though, and there is little shortage of plat. My guild has chapters on three servers right now, but might be consolidating or shrinking some when WoW goes live. So on one server the guildmaster (who is fleeing to WoW) is stockpiling 100 plat in the guild house pay box to keep the house going in its present form for a couple of years. If we junk the second story we have like nine years of pre-paid rent stored up. No real shortage of money....

I thought you could only prepay rent for a couple of weeks max. Sure he’s not planning to Ebay it? :wink:

[Mark Asher]

Olaf, I don't think messing with the supply side would do any good if the amount of cash players have is still relative to one another. It just sets initial prices lower, but high level players will still drive up prices until they are out of reach for all but high level players.

They just have to have money drains. I don't think there's any other solution, other than to design a game so there is no player economy. The problem with money drains is that no one will ever like them.

[TheWombat]

EDIT: Blizzard has announced that the item decay loss will NOT apply to PvP deaths. That removes a huge chunk of the aggravation. It also seems that, from what one person who usually is right on this sort of thing told me that rez sickness doesn't apply to player rezzes. If so, then the situation is much much better than previously thought :D

Mark, I won't let my DAOC stuff lapse because I'll still be playing it :) Catacombs looks quite good. And I like the battlegrounds in DAOC. So while my cooperative MMO time (evenings, weekends) will often be WoW with my wife and our guild, any other time I have (as a teacher my schedule gets kinda weird sometimes) will be in DAOC.



Sparky, I don' think they're ebaying the guild house, no :)

[Charles]

Well, level progression is the same up to level 30. That hasn't changed. It will take you 30% longer after level 30 if you never do any instances. I doubt that equates to a huge amount of time. If going from 30 to 60 took 200 hours, it would now take 260. That's probably not a gamebreaker for most players.

When you play an hour a day, that equates to two more months. It is a game breaker to me. Mostly because it's not needed. They added it in to slow progress. I am against that because slowing my progress makes the game less fun. I like knowing I am making progress, the more of a grind there is, the less chance of making real progress.

[BDGE]

Just wanted to chime in with my experiment results.

The cost for my level 21 warrior to -fully- repair equipment post spirit revive was ~23 silver(double what most of the "yellow" quest rewards offer right now in my journal).

The resurrection disease only lasts 11 minutes(still completely stupid, but my guess is that 30-minute stuff is only for -real- high level heroes)

I have also noticed that durability now RARELY goes down if at all during combat. This offsets the 10% loss almost entirely for death, and considering most of my equipment has durability ratios nearing 80 or more, that 10% really isn't such a devastating tax. In the 21 levels I have spent playing this game over the past week, I have probably spirit rezzed only 3 times, including the test I performed last night for this post. Of course I am less likely to bother with it now, but it was pretty much emergency use only anyway(why not offer an XP or durability loss to the gamer though?)

Bottom line: I dig the 10% loss, which is hardly such a devastating move by Blizzard(From the getgo I found death to be nothing more than an irritating diversion, this somewhat fixes that, and I really did wanted it to be punishing to my character in some sense, and not just to my wasted time running back to corpse)

[HRose]

This was a joke. Now in the PvP this is REAL. PvP now directly cost a fee if you want to take part.
http://www.gucomics.com/comics/gu_20041018.jpg

Aside this. There were three big issues that where reported over and over by the players during the previous beta:

1- The experience in instances was too low
2- The item decay forced players to interrupt the gameplay to go back to towns, becoming the second cause of "group breaking" after the quick quests
3- The PvP need a different death system to address the various issues

Now. FOR ALL THREE, Rob Pardo came on the boards to type three answers. The answers were basically the same:

1a- Don't worry, we are fixing the exp in instances next patch
2a- Don't worry, the item decay is indeed a moneysink but it isn't suppose to interrupt the gameplay and become annoying, we'll retune it properly next patch
3a- Don't worry, the PvP system isn't finished and it will adjusted to address the problems

The patch arrived and we had three new anwers:

1b- Fantastic! We have increased the exp in the instances as we said. Woot! But we also increased the exp requirements! Teehee!
2b- Superb! Not only we didn't change the item decay system, but we have consolidated it, now you take a 10% durability hit each time you die!
3b- Awesome! The death system for PvP is unchanged, but we added the item decay to it as well. Want PvP? No money? No party.

Now the fun part is that all these three changes not only break the previous problems that were reported, But they CREATED A BUNCH OF NEW SERIOUS ISSUES:

1- The increase in experience in the instances comes with an increase of the experience requirements, making any change at all. The fun part is that solo players are, by definition, out of instances and so for them the "present" is a +20-25% for each level. Fun!
2- The decay system wasn't broken because it was a (perhaps needed) moneysink. It was broken because it broke the gameplay, forced you to stop in a middle of an instance or a quest to return to a town. It was broken as a boring timesink. Now they even improved this by adding another 10% for each death. As a consequence this becomes a major *game breaking* for new players that use to die often since they need to get use to a new genre.
3- The PvP was broken, who cares? Instead of implementing a different death system to address the issues, they broke it even more, adding problems. Now it's the grief paradise. Normal players will have to avoid PvP if they don't want to loose money, while organized grief guild can have way more fun because now not only they can corpse-camping, but they can also inflict money penalties to their victims, forcing, at best, a res at the spirit healer and a 100% item decay.

Want solutions to have fun, not-broken PvP? Here:
The "incentive", about which you write, shouldn't be "excused" by a penalty. But it should involve a *purpose*. Give the players and groups objectives to achieve, give them reasons to fight for. *This* will make the combat meaningful because there will be a structure that tells you what you should achieve and why.

If the reward is about the rejoice for the winning group because they made the other group face a downtime and a moneyloss, well, the game is really weak.

A better idea, spawning from your graveyard solution, could be about building a very simple CTF (Capture The Flag) system. I agree that both Horde and Alliance should respawn at their own graveyard (no corpse run if you die in PvP, *just a respawn* at your graveyard. No choice.). But we also build a system so that EVERY contested zone has "generic" graveyards that can be "conquered" and flagged. Once the Horde (for example) own the graveyard, they'll be able to respawn there, while the Alliance will only able to respawn at their nearest "owned" graveyard (which can be in a zone nearby).

In this way we start to offer something to fight for and with a purpose.

I also DO NOT accept this (http://www.cesspit.net/misc/palanude.jpg). It's a PLATE armor.

[Calistas]

You're all welcome to come play DarkLife on SecondLife.. no real grind, lots of fun haha :)

Peter

[olaf]

The top on display has been in the game for months, or least that was the look of the Warrior's Embrace on my Human female Warrior when I first looted it way back when, and still is the look as of last night. The pants are a new look though, I think. Still, there were things almost as revealing that have been in the game for just as long.

I really dont see this as an issue of any import compared to things like nerfing xp requirements, adding money sinks and generally making the game more work and less fun.

olaf

[HRose]

Update:
- They announced that they'll take away the durability hit from PvP. So we go back at the previous, still broken, issue.

- The release policy to respec talents is a new moneysink. Each time you respec the cost goes up.

[Mark Asher]

How is durability broken? Who needs to leave a group to repair? Your items are fully effective until they reach zero durability. Are you planning on dying 9-10 times every time you're in a group?

The game needs moneysinks. Does anyone think differently? Without them the economy will be owned by high level players and low levels will be shut out. Moneysinks are no fun but what's the alternative? A broken economy is no fun either.

The rez thing isn't all that bad either. I misunderstood it. I never use the spirit healer anyway until I hit level 60. Now at 60 I won't use it anymore.

It's actually more benign now because you don't lose XP. If I don't feel like making a corpse run I can spirit heal and just do something else for awhile, like check auctions, chat, etc.

My biggest complaint about this patch is the increased XP requirements past level 30 and the increased pressure to do instances.

[Mark Asher]

Well, level progression is the same up to level 30. That hasn't changed. It will take you 30% longer after level 30 if you never do any instances. I doubt that equates to a huge amount of time. If going from 30 to 60 took 200 hours, it would now take 260. That's probably not a gamebreaker for most players.

When you play an hour a day, that equates to two more months. It is a game breaker to me. Mostly because it's not needed. They added it in to slow progress. I am against that because slowing my progress makes the game less fun. I like knowing I am making progress, the more of a grind there is, the less chance of making real progress.

If you're playing an hour a day it's going to take you a loooong time to reach 60 regardless.

I don't know why you wouldn't feel like you were making progress. You can still log on for an hour and complete a quest or two.

Anyway, I don't like it either but I don't see it making a big difference in the game.

[olaf]

Is the purpose of durability and reagents to allow low level players to participate in auctions, or the economy? If so, I think they failed.

These moneysinks apply to everyone, the guy playing 40 hours a week is still going to have tons more money than a casual player. So what is the point? Its just tedium from my perspective. If they really wanted to put the squeeze on high level players than they ought to add some kind of raid tax. Not that I would like that, but to me these changes look global and I dont see them doing anything to help the economy that supply side changes couldnt have accomplished.

Having to keep track of reagents, having to go and get your gear repaired, neither are fun, both are unnecessary.

olaf

[HRose]

How is durability broken? Who needs to leave a group to repair? Your items are fully effective until they reach zero durability. Are you planning on dying 9-10 times every time you're in a group?
Yes, in PvP that's common. When I wrote they didn't say that the penalty was going to be removed for PvP.

Anyway. Just SLOW DOWN the damn decay. BY MUCH. And boost up the cost. So I'll need to repair every, say, 10 hours of gameplay. This leaves the moneysink INTACT. And doesn't make it awfully annoying.

It's too much to ask this?

The game needs moneysinks. Does anyone think differently?
Me. But it's not an easy issue and it's way too complex to explain here. As a basic, YOU CANNOT have an economy in a PvE game. You cannot even TRY. So make this clear and go in the right direction. In a game where your equipment will come from questing and drops, WHO CARES if an idiot puts a sword in an auction with an insane price? Noone will buy it.

As I wrote months ago. Keep the money AWAY from a game like WoW, it adds nothing fun or interesting to it. Keep things on a simple level and DO NOT add reasons to link "power" with "money".

This is how you fix economy in this type of game: avoiding the money to take the lead on its mechanics.

[Mark Asher]

HRose, players like to craft and an inflated economy will have a negative impact on this too.

Sure, if 100% of your equipment came from bind on pickup drops and quests there would be no need for moneysinks. However, players like to make things. They like to sell things. They like to buy things. You have to have an economy for those kinds of activities to take place.

Olaf, I don't know if item decay will work, but they really do have to take money out of the economy. You played EQ. You saw how inflated that economy got.

One thing Blizz could do is simply let you repair on the spot. I bet players would be happier with that.

[HRose]

HRose, players like to craft and an inflated economy will have a negative impact on this too.
Try to go read this article (http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/165) that Lum wrote and I saved on my website. He explain things way better than how I'm able to.

[Mark Asher]

I don't see anything in that article that argues against moneysinks. You can have moneysinks that aren't oppressive, you know. Here's a WoW example: Every other level I have to buy new abilities, and the cost is such that it drains the better portion of my money. Is that a terrible burden? Not really. In a sense it adds perceived value to the new abilities I have. They didn't come cheap.

[HRose]

I don't see anything in that article that argues against moneysinks. You can have moneysinks that aren't oppressive, you know..
I told you.

If you read what I wrote here you see that what bugs me isn't directly the moneysink (aside that it's a huge issue for a newbie more than it is for a level 60 player, so it's obviously unbalanced as it is now). But the gameplay-breaking effect it has. I also said how I'd fix it. Slow down the decay and push up the costs. No hit on a death.

If you read what Lum wrote, instead, you should have understood why fixing the economy isn't possible and it only breaks the game more and more, till the money becomes the main purpose of the game.

And I finished saying: the way to not fall into this whirlpool is preventing the money to take the lead and drive the game mechanics. Ignore the money, nerf it value and effect into the game. Money is no fun in a game like WoW and its importance should be secondary to the gameplay.

[Mark Asher]

As I said, players like to make things, they like to sell things, and they like to buy things. Explain to me how you let them do that without having some kind of an economy.

If you don't let players do that, many of them will be unhappy with your game no matter how good the rest of the experience is.

The decay has been meaningless to me so far, and that's with a level 19 character that doesn't have any money. It's a few silver once a day. I don't even have to repair once a day, really. I just do every time I'm in a town, which is quite often.

It's not a gamebreaker by any means unless you continually meditate upon it until it balloons in your imagination to much more than it really is.

[HRose]

As I said, players like to make things, they like to sell things, and they like to buy things. Explain to me how you let them do that without having some kind of an economy.

If you don't let players do that, many of them will be unhappy with your game no matter how good the rest of the experience is.
I'm not saying to remove that part. But it must be solved on its own. Crafted items must compete with PvE items. I'm all to give crafted items a small advantage. But if this follows this plan you'll have a game where you can choose to buy items or get slightly better items from players.

If at some point someone will sell something overpriced, the players will ignore him and use the PvE equipment. The PvE drops will directly balance the economy this way. If I can buy a +4 sword from a player for 10 gold and I have an NPC selling a +3 sword for 2 gold I'll have the possibility to choose, ok?

The more the economy goes inflated the more the player crafter will push further the price of its +4 sword. Till the point I'll say, "who cares?" and I'll go to the NPC and buy the +3 swords with which I can still play the game nicely.

This type competition makes the game balanced. If there are players with millions of gold, who cares? If the game works you simply have worthless money because the money MUST BE WORTHLESS. The meaning of the money is to buy the stuff you need. If you have too much of it, again, who cares?

Do not let the money take the lead in the game.

[Jason McCullough]

It's like Every Other Argument About an MMORPG, ever! Can we get Bill Murray to guest post?

[TheWombat]

- The release policy to respec talents is a new moneysink. Each time you respec the cost goes up.

And this is bad? In beta you had people respeccing talents for an instance, then respeccing once they were done for PvP, then respeccing again for normal PvE. Fine in beta, but for character-defining abilities, that's bogus for release. So the graduated system--free one-time respec, then something like 5gp per each time until you hit a max of (I think) 50gp), that's fair. Gives you insurance against screwing up totally but makes it very expensive to respec for tactical gain.

[HRose]

- The release policy to respec talents is a new moneysink. Each time you respec the cost goes up.
And this is bad?
No but I would have choosed another direction. For example letting respec once a month and for each attempt the possibility to correct it within 48 hours.

They are trying too many cross references between unrelated systems to solve completely unrelated problems. The economy must be fixed with the economy, not with the talents.

EDIT: And I think you are too optimist if you think there will be a cap.

[Jackstar]

Fun Fact about durability: there's four or five blacksmiths huddled around the big forge in the middle of Ironforge. None of them can repair your gear.

Apparently blacksmiths are too busy? Well, player blacksmiths can't repair gear either. Only NPC vendors can. I think I might prefer it if they just called it "virtual property tax."

There's two questions here, whether the durability/XP/money triangle needs redesigning, or just retuning. I'm tempted to say that it just needs tuning, but I sympathize with the people who are pushing for redesign.

Because, frankly, one of the things that I like about things breaking and money being scarce and XP being hard to get, is hearing from all the people complaining about their stuff breaking and them not getting as much XP as fast as they'd like and them not having enough money.

It's not because I feel the idea of items wearing out or experience points actually meaning something or money being valuable are important to a game. Those are valid points. But mostly, it's because I like their pain. And having been in pain once or twice before myself, I can sympathize with their desire for the hurting to stop.

It's an online game, people. Pain of some sort is compulsory and inevitable. There are three options. Don't play the game. Suffer. Rise above it.

My point that I'm getting to here in a roundabout way is that all this talk of redesigning stuff is utterly laughable. It is what it is and it sure as hell isn't going to be overhauled anytime before launch and certainly not any time soon after. Instead, what can happen is "tuning." So if you're unhappy with how things are, the best way to deal with it is to (not play the game, obviously) provide insights into "tuning" the system as much as possible, so if it is shown to be an obvious failure later, the likelihood is greater that a significant redesign will happen.

You've got to figure that, present company excluded, absolutely all people playing WoW are masochistic, ignorant smacktards. Try looking at things from the other side of the table if you want to either understand or impact how Blizzard is going to implement their pain. Er, I mean, plan.

[Gourmand]

Is the purpose of durability and reagents to allow low level players to participate in auctions, or the economy? If so, I think they failed.

These moneysinks apply to everyone, the guy playing 40 hours a week is still going to have tons more money than a casual player. So what is the point? Its just tedium from my perspective. If they really wanted to put the squeeze on high level players than they ought to add some kind of raid tax. Not that I would like that, but to me these changes look global and I dont see them doing anything to help the economy that supply side changes couldnt have accomplished.

Having to keep track of reagents, having to go and get your gear repaired, neither are fun, both are unnecessary.

olaf

Olaf, from what I saw the preist fortitude spell only requires reagents after it reaches a certain rank. So, it only taxes the high level players if that is the consistent model for all players. Assuming they do this for spells that are going to be used the most often or moderately often (depending on how hard they want the tax to be) it sounds just fine IMO.

Also, Hrose: I was going to write out a long point by point analysis of all your solutions but I don't care. Fact of the matter is, in this thread, and others you state unfounded opinions as facts. To add insult to injury you pontificate these points like you have real clout in the industry and we should just take your word on it because you have the background to back these less than empirical posts up. You don't have that.

In this, and many of the other threads I've read you post in you have said "No you don't understand at all" many times. And you talk down to the people you're engaged in conversation with occassionally as well. It looks like you've completely ignored the consensus Mark Asher and the other people involved in the conversation have come to (that time sinks are necessary), and once again referenced another unfounded opinion as the basis for your unfounded musings.

And you know, Lum is a good person to reference. He's an MMO luminary, but I believe even another thread (http://www.quartertothree.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=321335&highlight=#321335) people have pointed out that with games in general you're really just poking at what your best guess to what "fun" is anyways. Completely ignoring empirical research and data in such an unexplored and misunderstood field just makes your opinions even more difficult to swallow.

Example: Planetside, to my knowledge, is the only MMO out there without a PvE component, yet it has NO economy. You said an economy is impossible in a PvE game? What are you talking about? Where is your evidence aside from random musings on the subject matter? Don't link to another blog or another opinion article. It doesn't count for jack diddley.

Example 2: Anyway. Just SLOW DOWN the damn decay. BY MUCH. And boost up the cost. So I'll need to repair every, say, 10 hours of gameplay. This leaves the moneysink INTACT. And doesn't make it awfully annoying.
This doesn't address the problem that _Fury_ pointed out what-so-ever. Players need to be disqualified or hindered from throwing corpse after corpse during a siege somehow.

IMO, the only time you can make an unfounded opinion like that is if no one contests it, or the basis for it is held to be general knowledge: Which generally isn't the case with your posts. Instead, you talk down to the other participants in the conversation, and speak with authority that you don't have. That's not a cogent arguement.

Because of this, I don't believe a word of what you're saying. It sounds like it's confusing to most other people as well.

That said, you do sound like you do follow the market very closely - which is a very good thing. I don't follow the news or features of these games near as closely as you do. The foundation of a good analysis is going to be a larger sampling of data and better education on the rote knowledge involved with this. On average you post interesting ideas, but those ideas are not facts, and they are indeed contestable despite your bombastic responses stating otherwise. I think, because of this deficiency the research and other reading you do is all but worthless once you begin analyzing it. You need to either A) post concrete support of your ideas instead of adopting meandering rationale, or B) attain a position in the industry and prove to everyone that your guesses are accurate representation of how things really work.

Saying you "will" achieve the latter doesn't help your current arguements ,and IMO you need to adopt the former method into your posts or find an equivalent alternative to validate your ideas. Right now it's just ridiculous rambling.

[Jackstar]

Golly, and I thought I might have been going over the top. Guess not, huh?

[HRose]

A) post concrete support of your ideas instead of adopting meandering rationale, or B) attain a position in the industry and prove to everyone that your guesses are accurate representation of how things really work.
A- How? Suggestions and critics I write are about my reason. It's all about knowledge, learing and logic. It's nothing concrete that I can concretely demonstrate. And I don't have an army behind my shoulders like Lum nodding to what I say.
B- I'm not in the position to do that.

When things go bad it's with the mind that you can figure out how to fix that. Another mind hearing your ideas can demonstrate to you why it is flawed. All I can do practically in a forum is explain my ideas and confrontate them with what other peoples think.

This is what I do.

[HRose]

Btw, just to conclude. I said above that systems must be fixed inside themselves. The problem that Fury pointed out is a PvP problem. I criticize when you try to solve a PvP problem with a moneysink. Again because they are unrelated.

In my website I wrote pages and pages about what Fury points out because it's a big a legitimate issue. I just believe that there are better way to fix it.

So yes, my suggestion to the item decay doesn't fix the PvP. But it fixes the moneysink itself. I never even tried to fix the other problem.

[olaf]

Letting you repair stuff in the field would go a long way with making it easier to swallow for me. Also, just let me hit a button and let it repair everything on me, equipped and in bags.

As for EQ's economy...yeah it did get inflated, I guess. I mean over the course of eight expansions, there was bigtime plat inflation, sure.

Even so, some stuff held a consistent value for months, even across multiple expansions. Were newbies priced out of the economy? I dont know, I was not a newbie for long. Maybe? But its not like they were priced out of being able to PLAY. So they couldnt afford the best twink gear, big deal. And with a new expansion every 6-9 months, there was always plenty of stuff to buy dirt cheap.

I still dont see these moneysinks in WoW as something that is going to allow the 10 hour/week gamer to compete with the 40+ hour/week gamer for any limited resource in the AH.

olaf

[Jackstar]

I can't see having players being able to fix their own equipment anywhere being workable for a number of reasons. I like the idea of allowing PC blacksmiths to be able to create one-shot repair kits that can be sold to other players, though. That could easily meet the goals of the current system and offers additional benefits.

[Gourmand]

A- How? Suggestions and critics I write are about my reason. It's all about knowledge, learing and logic. It's nothing concrete that I can concretely demonstrate. And I don't have an army behind my shoulders like Lum nodding to what I say.


How about you qualify your statements better and provide evidence when you can. For instance, in the above you stated that Economies are impossible in PvE MMO's? What? How about pointing out UO's heavy focus on PvP, but still relatively robust economy (because it was possible to actually lose items), and consider the natural contradictions to that statement that exist (planetside). You've just made a blank statement without those qualifiers.

Also, money sinks and PvP problems are related the instant you make them related (check out what a "relation" is between two objects in a discrete math sense if you're confused by that statement). If you believe you can solve PvP problems completely inside the PvP system you need to state that, and argue why it is a more efficient solution. Not everyone reads every article you post on your site.

I'm tired, and very well could have missed something while reading your post (so please correct me if I missed it), but all I read was "you are wrong, and here is the correct system". That's bodacious, and doesn't benefit anyone. No one can properly respond to that statement without the info that is apparently tucked away on your private site.

Einstein didn't just say "HAY U GUYZ! E= MC^2! LOL!" He made sure the relevant calculations were present, instead of just writing E=MC^2 on a sheet of paper and turning it in for peer review.

[HRose]

Also, money sinks and PvP problems are related the instant you make them related (check out what a "relation" is between two objects in a discrete math sense if you're confused by that statement). If you believe you can solve PvP problems completely inside the PvP system you need to state that, and argue why it is a more efficient solution. Not everyone reads every article you post on your site.
They are related in the design. I wrote often that I don't want to see the designer when I play a game. I know not everyone reads my site but these issues are complex and I cannot write pages to explain each one. I'm not going to spam here an article about how to fix the PvP, because noone will read it either.

The reason why this system isn't perfect is because it's unfun and hinders the PvP. While exactly the opposite should happen. PvP must be fun, fast. Incentivated. A moneysink is a deterrent. It basically breaks the purpose.

I'm tired, and very well could have missed something while reading your post (so please correct me if I missed it), but all I read was "you are wrong, and here is the correct system". That's bodacious, and doesn't benefit anyone. No one can properly respond to that statement without the info that is apparently tucked away on your private site.
In this case it's like that. I DID explain how to fix the item decay problem. That was complete. At this point you added another layer and told me that the PvP problem is unaddressed. I dismissed that saying that it should be fixed on its own and I wrote about it elsewhere.

Now I don't expect peoples to believe me. But at least give me the benefit of the doubt. I may have fixed or not the PvP using just the PvP. If someone is interesed, at this point, I could summarize that part or link it.

So, I pointed out three issues in the previous page and explained why they are broken. The first is the experience nerf and there isn't much to discuss. It's a hit for solo players, mostly. The second is the PvE item decay, that I suggested to refine and balance (explained above) and the third is the PvP item decay.

This one is already patched on the servers. It means that Blizzard shared my ideas and fixed it as fast as they were able to (hotfix). I still criticize them because you cannot let escape a so glaring problem.

On the other side I also believe that Blizzard never intended it to solve the problem Fury pointed. In fact now we are back as before and I agree that the problem still exists.

I wrote a lot about it and I have plenty of links to my site if someone is interested. I also wrote them on the beta forums and suggested them in the game.

This isn't WoW's problem. I wrote a lot about it because the issue is an old DAoC issue. My way to fix it works the same both for DAoC and WoW. While these games have only tried to fix it with timesinks and res sicknesses. I believe there are better ways. If someone is interested I'll provide links where I wrote my idea.

And I also have posted those ideas on this board in the past.

[Gourmand]

as Jafd said the moneysink is an incentive: for the winner.

And honor points are later going to incentivate the system (as has been pointed out elsewhere).

Blizzard posting a hotfix does not equate to them agreeing with you directly. They might be waiting until the other incentives are fully integrated to reimplement the feature. They've publicly stated on the beta boards that they like to wait a couple of days sans patch to reevaluate issues and get player feedback and change the system. That logic isn't consistent with hotfixing an issue like that.

Golly, and I thought I might have been going over the top. Guess not, huh?

Yeah. I actually feel like a dick for criticizing Hrose to the extent that I have already. I'm total catass. I'm done with all the argueing and rebutting now though. Not enough energy to continue endless back and forth bickering.

[Kunikos]

I didn't know the rez thing was 30 minutes. Only thing I can think of is Blizzard is trying to make the instances more difficult, since those are the places where players use rez the most. A lot of the changes seem designed to make the instances more difficult, and as I noted there's more pressure to do the instances now. I don't know why they've taken this tack.

I don't know what the current implementation is but you used to (during the first stress test) be able to just run back as a ghost to your corpse inside the instance and respawn without xp hit and no worries about wandering mobs that respawn inside the instance. I haven't tried an instance since then because I think they take far too long...

[HRose]

Blizzard posting a hotfix does not equate to them agreeing with you directly. They might be waiting until the other incentives are fully integrated to reimplement the feature. They've publicly stated on the beta boards that they like to wait a couple of days sans patch to reevaluate issues and get player feedback and change the system. That logic isn't consistent with hotfixing an issue like that.
Are you really convinced of what you write or are you just arguing for the sake of it?

Because it's obvious that I cannot demonstrate anything, aside the fact that the time will prove me right. At least about this.

With the hotfix they also patched the taunt skill because it was broken. They'll break it again in a few days?

What is sure is that "in a few days" they won't implement the honor system.

[Mark Asher]

I didn't know the rez thing was 30 minutes. Only thing I can think of is Blizzard is trying to make the instances more difficult, since those are the places where players use rez the most. A lot of the changes seem designed to make the instances more difficult, and as I noted there's more pressure to do the instances now. I don't know why they've taken this tack.

I don't know what the current implementation is but you used to (during the first stress test) be able to just run back as a ghost to your corpse inside the instance and respawn without xp hit and no worries about wandering mobs that respawn inside the instance. I haven't tried an instance since then because I think they take far too long...

It's still like this. The spirit rez thing is an improvement. Players misunderstood and went a bit nuts on the message boards.

[SlyFrog]

In reading all of the posts, I would simply note again that a lot of the arguments appear to be complaints that Blizzard is not simply letting you stay in the field forever, clicking from monster to monster like Diablo. "Oh no, I have to return to base once every 5 hours to repair. Oh no, if I die, it now involves more than a 30 second run to my body."

Again, you may not agree with the decision, but it is a fully valid decision to make the game take a different pace, and to cause decisions (that lead to death) to have greater impact. I for one am happy that the drooling level mashers have at least a bit of an obstacle in the way of their sick obsession with clicking monster after monster to level as fast as humanly possible.

[Gourmand]

Blizzard posting a hotfix does not equate to them agreeing with you directly. They might be waiting until the other incentives are fully integrated to reimplement the feature. They've publicly stated on the beta boards that they like to wait a couple of days sans patch to reevaluate issues and get player feedback and change the system. That logic isn't consistent with hotfixing an issue like that.
Are you really convinced of what you write or are you just arguing for the sake of it?

Because it's obvious that I cannot demonstrate anything, aside the fact that the time will prove me right. At least about this.

With the hotfix they also patched the taunt skill because it was broken. They'll break it again in a few days?

What is sure is that "in a few days" they won't implement the honor system.

I'm not trying to be pedantic, Hrose. I really think you have no idea what Blizzard is thinking or implementing just off of their actions in one patch. If I heard word on the forums this is what they're doing then I'll believe (and then see them actually do it at a later time). Until then, all you're doing is guessing wildly, but you're stating that guess has a hard fact. Looking at just what they say, or just what they do is dumb. Comparing and contrasting both and extracting a conclusion is smart.

Blizzard has stated they aren't finished with most of their systems yet and these changes are part of a larger overhaul of which we have yet to see. I've observed only part of the overhaul myself, and it's too early for me to say either way how good or bad it is.

I'm done argueing it. I don't agree with your posting style. Now I'm moving along.

[HRose]

Blizzard has stated they aren't finished with most of their systems yet and these changes are part of a larger overhaul of which we have yet to see.
Oh, do you believe in "the magic patch to fix everything one day before release"?
And Santa Claus?

[Gourmand]

Blizzard has stated they aren't finished with most of their systems yet and these changes are part of a larger overhaul of which we have yet to see.
Oh, do you believe in "the magic patch to fix everything one day before release"?
And Santa Claus?

It's beta, and thus presumabley in a high state of change right now. Most MMO's even radically change somtimes post release. You should look at the game once the changes have slowed down, IMO. You're only seeing parts of the system not the whole thing. Or rather: Not near a good enough approximation of the whole system.

You're painting as black and white Hrose.

I need to stop responding like I said I would!

<--- lacks self control :)

[McBain]

From what I've seen in my limited time with the game, it looks like Blizzard has abandoned the casual gamer and is going for the catasses with their recent changes.

They should have taken a look at AC2. In AC2, I could actually progress my character at a reasonable rate playing only about 2 hours every other night. Sure, the game was incomplete, had no content, and sucked, but Darktide was kind of fun considering that I actually made it past level 20 just playing about 1 hour a day for a couple of months.

In terms of sheer subscription time, I think I subscribed to AC2 longer than any game other than UO. And in UO I could build up characters by running EZ Macros while I was at school. Blizzard apparently does not realize that with shifting demographics in the game-playing public, there are more people like me who would subscribe to their game than there are EQ obsessed fanatics who are already tied up in a timesink-style game.

[malphigian]

What changes are you talking about specifically?

They haven't touched the leveling speed in a while (except for over 30 in last patch to compensate for additional experience from instances, or so they said). The game is exceedingly solo friendly, which is great for casual gamers. There's also very little downtime between encounters, I spend very little time waiting for stuff. I just don't see a lot of time sinks, and I've been leveling pretty fast.

Judging by what the closed beta people say, a leisurely pace to cap would be around 12 days played. A gamer playing around 10 hours/week would hit that in 6 months or so. This isn't much different of a pace from your AC2 example.

[stusser]

Actually, it's even easier than that. If you only play 10 hours a week and log out in an inn the rest of the time, you'll have 20 bubbles of rest (double xp from killing mobs) per week also. So basically, cut that time by like 40%.

[HRose]

Cosmik commented this in the best way possible:
"HEY, EVERQUEST 2 ISN'T THE ONLY GAME THAT CAN MAKE STUPID CHANGES BEFORE A LAUNCH. DON'T FORGET TO BUY OUR GAME." (http://n3rfed.blogs.com/n3rfed/2004/11/hey_everquest_2.html)

[Mark Asher]

Actually, it's even easier than that. If you only play 10 hours a week and log out in an inn the rest of the time, you'll have 20 bubbles of rest (double xp from killing mobs) per week also. So basically, cut that time by like 40%.

Yes, it's still solo friendly, fast leveling, and it's easy to play an hour or two feel like you accomplished something by doing quests. It's not a catass game by any stretch.

[Mark Asher]

Cosmik commented this in the best way possible:
"HEY, EVERQUEST 2 ISN'T THE ONLY GAME THAT CAN MAKE STUPID CHANGES BEFORE A LAUNCH. DON'T FORGET TO BUY OUR GAME." (http://n3rfed.blogs.com/n3rfed/2004/11/hey_everquest_2.html)

Some of that is wrong:

When players die they are now faced with a 10% item durability loss, and if resurrected are faced with a 30 minute sickness. Essentially, a heavy double-barrelled money and time sink kick to the pants. Bad enough on PvE servers, this'll prove to be a real sore point on the PvP servers when players are likely to die repeatedly during a major raid.

First, player rezzes don't give you the extended sickness. That's only if you choose to rez at the spirit healer. Second, the time scales. I tried it at level 20 and the rez sickness only lasted 11 minutes. It's only at level 60 that you get 30 minutes of rez sickness if you use the spirit healer.

Not all spells need reagents. Some players are acting like this is the case. Playing a rogue, I've been buying reagents all the time (flash powder and poison reagents) so I don't see this as a big deal. You just make sure to load up in town. Once you get used to it, it's nothing. And yes, I routinely spend a gold or two every time I buy stuff to make poison.

The warrior taunt thing I don't know much about, not having played a warrior. The general movement I see from Blizzard is to make the instances harder, and this fits with that.

[stusser]

At low levels it's not, no... I've been in beta for months and my highest level character is 39. (I don't play much.) These games drastically change at higher levels.

[TheWombat]

From what I've seen in my limited time with the game, it looks like Blizzard has abandoned the casual gamer and is going for the catasses with their recent changes.

They should have taken a look at AC2. In AC2, I could actually progress my character at a reasonable rate playing only about 2 hours every other night. Sure, the game was incomplete, had no content, and sucked, but Darktide was kind of fun considering that I actually made it past level 20 just playing about 1 hour a day for a couple of months.

I'm not that sure this is the case; as others have noted this is still the most solo-friendly MMORPG out there, and it's also probably the fastest low level leveling game. As for AC2, no one played it, not in numbers that Blizzard/Vivendi or SOE would consider meaningful.

The truth may well be that the only way to make money off of MMOs is to appeal to the hardcore. Until someone makes a truly casual-friendly game that makes money this will be the case. WoW still seems to be the closest to that ideal.

Not all spells need reagents. Some players are acting like this is the case. Playing a rogue, I've been buying reagents all the time (flash powder and poison reagents) so I don't see this as a big deal. You just make sure to load up in town. Once you get used to it, it's nothing. And yes, I routinely spend a gold or two every time I buy stuff to make poison.


True to an extent, but it gets very expensive. At 51 I spend maybe 4-6 gold per time I go on a serious (instance or heavy questing) foray, mostly on poisons. Not a deal breaker by any means but annoying, considering the abilities you buy at even levels are also not cheap. The problem with reagents for buffs is not so much that the idea is totally wrong (though it's not one I like; I used to have rummaging for bat wings in EQ for Levitate) but that is changes the way people in the beta have been used to playing. Drive by buffing, constant maintenance of all buffs even when not in combat, etc. Of course none of that is material to the masses who will be playing for the first time--they'll just accept it as normal. So yeah, it's not a huge problem.

[Gourmand]

What changes are you talking about specifically?


I was talking about the PvP and major talent changes that are going on right now. The dust hasn't settled yet, and I don't have a clear view of what their goal is.

I can guess off of what they're saying, but I'll wait until I see the changes from battlegrounds, Honor system, and overall moneysinks before I go calling the designers at blizzard faggots.

It's not all going to get implemented in a single patch, and becuase of that chastising them for "breaking the fun" on a patch by patch basis when it's still in a state of being molded is silly to me.

Maybe I'm crazy. I really don't know. Just my opinion.

[Mark Asher]

At 51 I spend maybe 4-6 gold per time I go on a serious (instance or heavy questing) foray, mostly on poisons. Not a deal breaker by any means but annoying, considering the abilities you buy at even levels are also not cheap.

I was low on cash most of the time until I hit 60. That's just the way the game works if you level and don't farm for cash.

[HRose]

I was low on cash most of the time until I hit 60. That's just the way the game works if you level and don't farm for cash.
So you were low on cash before this patch. I suspect you felt the game balanced?

But hey, now you are 60 and have tons of money. So the game needs more moneysinks? No. Because they affect everyone.

If at a point the game becomes insanely inflated and the level 60 gather millions of gold, it's still stupid to set increased moneysinks to everyone. These moneysinks will have a small impact on the uber guilds, while a newbie joining the game will have to buy a level 2 skill for 10 gold. Why? Because the level 60 has too much money.

This isn't a fix to inflation, this is an incentive. After a bit you'll be forced to beg for money because the game is balanced for powerplayers. They have tons of gold, and so even a newbie is supposed to have tons of gold.

The system works when, as a player, you don't feel the pressure of needing more money. Because it's not the money the reason why you are meant to play, do a quest or join the PvP, okay? On the same level the powerplayers shouldn't have the possibility to destroy the experience for other players by powerlevelling them or twinking them.

The only way to achieve this (if we agree that it's the goal) is about adding controls to the system. Like PvE vendors with fixed price to mantain the economy between set low/max values. And level requirements on items to forbit the possibility to buy at level 1 the sword of "Own You All".

This is why I said that an economy cannot work on PvE. Because the multiplayer aspect basically destroy the experience. An economy means that I can give to a level 1 the equipment I use at level 60. The game isn't anymore about "adventuring", "exploring" or even roleplay. The game becomes money itself. Twinking for the win.

The richer wins.

He'll have uber equipment and all his guildies and alts will have again uber equipment to own everyone and everything. And only them will be able to own everything on PvP and PvE while having the possibility to mantain the moneysinks.

And he'll be able to pay every moneysink the devs push in the game to desperately try to balance it. While a poor guy will see the requirements of the game climb out of scale and out of reach.

What happens? It happens that the game becomes "corporative", like EQ. Or you join a guild/corporation and are able to access equipment and content, or you are set out killing rats for the rest of your life because the rest of the game has been balanced on an inflated level that keeps being pushed further.

You know what, I just realized I'm being far too compromising and reasonable. Screw this durability crap and this reagent crap; I'm a casual player and I don't give a shit whether no death penalty if a corpse is recovered means some battles will simply be rushes until one side gets tired and goes to bed. I don't care what your overarching PvP structure is, I just want a goddamn mechanic where I can participate in it and not have to worry about how much PvP I can afford based on my virtual bankroll. I don't care if it's 'soft' or if it causes 'mudflation', I'm sick of it, I just want a goddamn game I can play.

[McBain]

It's not a catass game by any stretch.

Alright, I'll grant you that. But it's not quite a casual game, either.

Any game with time/money sinks that involve mind-numbing tedium can't be considered casual in my book.

[Mark Asher]

What happens? It happens that the game becomes "corporative", like EQ. Or you join a guild/corporation and are able to access equipment and content, or you are set out killing rats for the rest of your life because the rest of the game has been balanced on an inflated level that keeps being pushed further.

Oh c'mon. You know it's not hard to level to 60 in WoW. You don't need to join a guild to level and you will get good gear. You may not get the best gear if you don't do instances, but you'll still get some nice quest rewards and drops.

Most of the time I've done instances I've been in pickup groups, too. My being in a guild had nothing to do with doing instances usually.

Finally, if you don't want to join a guild and you are afraid this will shut you out of content, play a healer. Or a tank. Or even a mage. They are always wanted in groups. Add shaman to that list too.

You are making this out to be a much bigger issue than it really is. DAoC had item decay since day one and no one really found it oppressive. WoW's is a much friendlier item decay system too.

[HRose]

I'm not talking of the experience, I'm talking of the economy.

If they keep adding timesinks and tune them on powerplayers, who a powerplayer is not will be completely overwhelmed.

I just mean that the more they go on with this approach, the more they'll hit casual players while the powerplayers will be left basically unaffected.

Each moneysink they are adding is a burden exactly for the casual players and NOT for the powerplayers that already have tons of money.

The rich will be richer and the poor poorer. We should understand this since our real world works exactly this way.

[McBain]

You point out that "no one found it oppressive." I would suggest that you amend that to "nobody that stuck around to play the game after their trial period found it oppressive."

I played DAoC for about a month, didn't play past my 30 day freebie. Typical gameplay session for my Warden:

-Spend time looking for group for myself + friends.
-Join group (I was in a guild so this usually didn't take long).
-Meet up with group.
-Go to hunting spot.
-Rest until combat.
-Hit the "fend" hotkey repeatedly until combat ends.
-Repeat until I get bored of talking with people in my group.
-Leave group, return to town, repair equipment/handle bullshit MMORPG tasks, log off.

It should be obvious why I only played the game for a couple of weeks. The PvP was decent at first, too. Unfortunately, I soon found that the game quickly degenerated into a competition to see which PvP team could field more (or higher-level) players. Also, the way melee was implemented made PvP just kind of suck once you started dealing with the inevitable "guy with 350ms who runs in circles" types.

The only fun I had was shooting the breeze with a couple of buddies who were also playing the game. Once we realized that the game really sucked, we went back to playing Warcraft, Q3, etc.

Will the designers of WoW dare to make a game that can be fun for casual players just wanting to mess around while they make fun of other people, lament the Dolphins' disastrous season, and engage in the occasional lame-brain PvP?

Apparently not.

[TheWombat]

I was low on cash most of the time until I hit 60. That's just the way the game works if you level and don't farm for cash.

That's the problem, though. You and I and other non-uberl337 players are low on cash. These games are balanced and built on the guys who aren't low on cash, who do farm for loot, etc and thus they introduce money sinks. The sinks affect the hardcore not one whit. They affect us majorly. I never did get enough money for a mount (100gp including the training); luckily my guildies gave me the dough so I could keep up with them :).

[mouselock]

At 51 I spend maybe 4-6 gold per time I go on a serious (instance or heavy questing) foray, mostly on poisons. Not a deal breaker by any means but annoying, considering the abilities you buy at even levels are also not cheap.

I was low on cash most of the time until I hit 60. That's just the way the game works if you level and don't farm for cash.

Yeah, god forbid you should be able to level and at the same time accumulate enough cash to not have to worry about it all the time.

I think from what I'm reading (since I'm not high enough level in the open beta to experience it) the game changes are probably favorable in terms of long-term draw. But I'll be damned if I can't help but point at these last minute changes and snicker at all the utter pompous ex-EQ player assholes who work on this game, as they implement the same type of stuff that they used to bitch about in EQ.

WoW is EQ with some of the evolutionary bits other games have come up with since. I'm sure that's not a bad business position to be, but damn does it feel familiar for anyone who managed to play and enjoy EQ for more than 3-5 months. It's real hard to be excited about knowing that they're pushing more and more, rather than less and less, toward the EQ model. Wonder how long it will be until glaring deficiencies are exposed in the classes a la EQ too. :/

[Mark Asher]

In my opinion it's virtually impossible to nail class balance in these games until after they are released and the masses pound on them for awhile. Even then it's hard to get it right.

I think it's safe to say that WoW follows the model set by both EQ and DAoC and does some things differently as well. That's fine.

[SlyFrog]

I like feeling the need to save money and scrap a little bit. It makes me feel like I am playing a game and trying to succeed, as opposed to clicking my way through pretty pictures.

[Jackstar]

I don't get the disconnect here. A mount costs 1000 gold or whatever, at least. So the hardcore people get their 1000 gold via working whatever scheme they have, and buy it.

The casual players... what, they should get a mount in the same amount of time by doing less work? Like you could have the game ask you to fill out a questionnaire saying, "Are you a casual player (Y/N)?" and have the price scale accordingly?

Or perhaps the amount of time you've spent logged in should cause the price of the mount to scale accordingly? What?

If you want a mount, work for it. End of discussion. If you don't want to put in the time and effort required to get a mount (or any other highly prized item), then live without it. What's wrong with that concept?

You could say "make the mounts cheaper so everyone can afford them almost immediately" but then what is the point of even having mounts? Just up everyone's running speed and be done with it.

Reference was made above to "mind-numbing tedium." I submit that if you are playing WoW and and your mind is numb, then you are simply playing it wrong. You are either not using your time effectively (it's easy to waste time in WoW, that's for sure), or you are failing to prioritize your resources effectively (which is the same thing of course), or you are playing a game that you simply have no business playing.

MMOGs are less "game" and more "world simulator." Since these games are modeled on what the mass of humanity perceive to be how the world works (i.e., scarcity, supply and demand, the Haves and the Have Nots, et cetera), naturally these things are going to present themselves in the game world. They're supposed to. It's by design.

If one does not want to experience a "world" in which progress is determined by effort, then one should simply never, ever, play any MMOG, ever. Because that is what they are for. The reason why WoW has previously been hailed as the Holy Grail of Casual Gaming is because they started out by eliminating broad swaths of tedium that many such games not only include, but embrace (I'm sneering at you, EQ). But timesinks and moneysinks are not "tedium" in and of themselves. They are challenges.

Think about it. You could say that a monster you have to kill to get a quest is a "timesink," it takes time to kill it. You could say that the gear you have to get is a "moneysink" because it requires cash to buy or repair the gear, or in the case of drops, you're sinking your money into gear by using it instead of selling it to someone. I've been playing with the new death penalty for the last few days, and my conclusion is that it is effectively meaningless. At level 25, a CR run costs me about 7 sp in repair costs (plus the running time if I'm an asocial prick who doesn't want to group with a rez-capable player, or if we are all so incompetent/careless/unfortunate that everyone died). Who cares? It stings a bit, but it is trivial. And if I get to a high enough level where the cost has scaled enough that the price is no longer trivial, that simply means that it I have leveled past my ability to support myself monetarily -- kind of like buying a high performance car and not being able to afford the insurance, I suppose. So what? That was my choice to make if that happens, I would have made it by prioritizing leveling over income. Some may say this is a tragic flaw of the game; I say it is one of its greatest strengths.

What WoW does, on the whole, is to make as much of the world experience as fun as possible, through a variety of methods. What it does not do, and/or should not do, is tilt so far in the direction of "fun" that the "challenge" becomes meaningless.

I find the vast majority of criticisms contained in this thread to be utterly baseless and entirely without merit. What I am hearing is that "it sucks that you need (X) amount of money to get The Shiney I want" and that "it sucks that it takes (Y) amount of time to level to the level I want." This is all bullshit. If you had (X) money, you'd get your Shiney and then immediately want (X+Z) money to get The Shinier that you want. It doesn't matter if it takes two days or two weeks to get from level 20 to level 30, as long as the jouney on the whole is fun. Because the point of the game is not the arrival, the point is the journey. If you just want to get to the destination so the "real fun" can start, you are playing games in the wrong genre. Go away.

One thing that I definitely do acknowledge is that if you repeatedly make poor decisions, WoW will punish you by "forcing" you to endure "tedium." Good. How else do people learn? Evolve, suck it up, or quit. Choose any two.

I suspect that most of you people that classify yourselves as "casual gamers" are simply nothing of the kind.

[SlyFrog]

I don't get the disconnect here. A mount costs 1000 gold or whatever, at least. So the hardcore people get their 1000 gold via working whatever scheme they have, and buy it.

The casual players... what, they should get a mount in the same amount of time by doing less work? Like you could have the game ask you to fill out a questionnaire saying, "Are you a casual player (Y/N)?" and have the price scale accordingly?

Or perhaps the amount of time you've spent logged in should cause the price of the mount to scale accordingly? What?

If you want a mount, work for it. End of discussion. If you don't want to put in the time and effort required to get a mount (or any other highly prized item), then live without it. What's wrong with that concept?

You could say "make the mounts cheaper so everyone can afford them almost immediately" but then what is the point of even having mounts? Just up everyone's running speed and be done with it.

Reference was made above to "mind-numbing tedium." I submit that if you are playing WoW and and your mind is numb, then you are simply playing it wrong. You are either not using your time effectively (it's easy to waste time in WoW, that's for sure), or you are failing to prioritize your resources effectively (which is the same thing of course), or you are playing a game that you simply have no business playing.

MMOGs are less "game" and more "world simulator." Since these games are modeled on what the mass of humanity perceive to be how the world works (i.e., scarcity, supply and demand, the Haves and the Have Nots, et cetera), naturally these things are going to present themselves in the game world. They're supposed to. It's by design.

If one does not want to experience a "world" in which progress is determined by effort, then one should simply never, ever, play any MMOG, ever. Because that is what they are for. The reason why WoW has previously been hailed as the Holy Grail of Casual Gaming is because they started out by eliminating broad swaths of tedium that many such games not only include, but embrace (I'm sneering at you, EQ). But timesinks and moneysinks are not "tedium" in and of themselves. They are challenges.

Think about it. You could say that a monster you have to kill to get a quest is a "timesink," it takes time to kill it. You could say that the gear you have to get is a "moneysink" because it requires cash to buy or repair the gear, or in the case of drops, you're sinking your money into gear by using it instead of selling it to someone. I've been playing with the new death penalty for the last few days, and my conclusion is that it is effectively meaningless. At level 25, a CR run costs me about 7 sp in repair costs (plus the running time if I'm an asocial prick who doesn't want to group with a rez-capable player, or if we are all so incompetent/careless/unfortunate that everyone died). Who cares? It stings a bit, but it is trivial. And if I get to a high enough level where the cost has scaled enough that the price is no longer trivial, that simply means that it I have leveled past my ability to support myself monetarily -- kind of like buying a high performance car and not being able to afford the insurance, I suppose. So what? That was my choice to make if that happens, I would have made it by prioritizing leveling over income. Some may say this is a tragic flaw of the game; I say it is one of its greatest strengths.

What WoW does, on the whole, is to make as much of the world experience as fun as possible, through a variety of methods. What it does not do, and/or should not do, is tilt so far in the direction of "fun" that the "challenge" becomes meaningless.

I find the vast majority of criticisms contained in this thread to be utterly baseless and entirely without merit. What I am hearing is that "it sucks that you need (X) amount of money to get The Shiney I want" and that "it sucks that it takes (Y) amount of time to level to the level I want." This is all bullshit. If you had (X) money, you'd get your Shiney and then immediately want (X+Z) money to get The Shinier that you want. It doesn't matter if it takes two days or two weeks to get from level 20 to level 30, as long as the jouney on the whole is fun. Because the point of the game is not the arrival, the point is the journey. If you just want to get to the destination so the "real fun" can start, you are playing games in the wrong genre. Go away.

One thing that I definitely do acknowledge is that if you repeatedly make poor decisions, WoW will punish you by "forcing" you to endure "tedium." Good. How else do people learn? Evolve, suck it up, or quit. Choose any two.

I suspect that most of you people that classify yourselves as "casual gamers" are simply nothing of the kind.

That was beautiful (and spot on). The only proviso I would add is that it would ruin the game if only people who put in 40 hours per week could do anything fun.

I've been playing the game in 2 or 3 hour stretches. I can tell you that it is not the case that it is not fun if you don't put in 40 hours.

Strangely I have yet to hear many, if any, people say that it sucks that Blizzard did X because now they can't afford the repair/reagent/whatever. Instead it is always, "Waah, I don't want to pay for it; I'd much rather have every click I make give me immediate gratification and bonuses."

But really, that would be stupid, and not much fun in the end.

[Andrew Mayer]

Kvetching is a huge part of the fun for some folks I guess.

Most of the general chat on the Beta was about what had been "nerfed" etc. The irony is that change is what the beta is for.

Guess I'll just ignore it and decide if I'm having fun.

[TheWombat]

I don't get the disconnect here. A mount costs 1000 gold or whatever, at least. So the hardcore people get their 1000 gold via working whatever scheme they have, and buy it.

Mounts are 100gp, actually, but that doesn't affect your point. Elite mounts are 1000gp.

You make a good point, and really, I don't think most are complaining that there's effort involved. There's debate over the extent and type of time and money sinks, sure, but I think most players understand the need to balance reward/effort.

The argument against reagents that I'd make, if I felt like making it, would be that the idea itself doesn't add anything to the game. It was a chore in EQ and UO and it will (probably) be a chore in WoW. Not something that's unfair, economically, and not something that is horrendous in terms of difficulty, but something that is akin to busy work. It's simply not fun to have to stockpile reagents for relatively common spells like buffs. But it's livable; it will simply mean that "old hands" from the beta will have to adjust their style of play. New players will of course grow up with it.

Mounts...well, mounts are certainly luxury items in one sense, and obviously should be hard enough to obtain that you know, when you see someone on a mount, that they've paid their dues. But they also become very important in group play, in that once you hit 40 and don't have a mount, your chance of getting good non-instance groups tends to nosedive, and your survivability in PvP tends to nosedive as well (based on experience from the beta, might be different in release of course). Even getting instance invites can be affected if it takes you forever to get to, say, Scarlet Monastery from Southshore on foot. But all in all, yeah, you can't just give 'em away. That'd be lame.

The broader point, that people who put more effort in deserve more rewards, is I think impossible to argue with. The place for debate though is over just what level should be considered baseline. WoW so far does a great job at rewarding the more casual (I still don't think that by non-MMO standards there are any "casual" gamers in this genre, really) player. Goodness knows I've had fun playing a little here, a little there, as well as some marathon sessions. And certainly, you can't blame the game for folks who will play 24 hour stretches. Hell, if they do that they do deserve to level faster and make more gold than me. It's all a matter of priorities, of course.

[HRose]

If you want a mount, work for it. End of discussion. If you don't want to put in the time and effort required to get a mount (or any other highly prized item), then live without it. What's wrong with that concept?
That the game sucks? We hare here to play, not for work to buy a horse. That's real life.
You could say "make the mounts cheaper so everyone can afford them almost immediately" but then what is the point of even having mounts? Just up everyone's running speed and be done with it.
Because it's different if you get a mount after having spent a few days grinding monsters? From my perspective it's the same stuff without "the suck".

If "catass" is something to be proud about why not selling signboards with "I'm a catass! Bow before me!" at 1000000000 Gold?

The point is: if a mount is a reward what are we rewarding?

If it's all about a grind nothing changes. "Grind+reward" is the same or just "reward". Because the grind by definition is about a missing part of the gameplay that has been replaced by a timesink. To fake that there's something in there.

I find the vast majority of criticisms contained in this thread to be utterly baseless and entirely without merit. What I am hearing is that "it sucks that you need (X) amount of money to get The Shiney I want" and that "it sucks that it takes (Y) amount of time to level to the level I want." This is all bullshit. If you had (X) money, you'd get your Shiney and then immediately want (X+Z) money to get The Shinier that you want. It doesn't matter if it takes two days or two weeks to get from level 20 to level 30, as long as the jouney on the whole is fun. Because the point of the game is not the arrival, the point is the journey. If you just want to get to the destination so the "real fun" can start, you are playing games in the wrong genre. Go away.
You lack logic.

If the journey is the meaning why you describe and excuses the grind needed to get a mount since you directly assume it's a *burden* to suffer so you reach the bait?

Or you support the first version and the game is about making the journey fun.
Or you support the second and the game is about an infinite number of baits to reach.

Or the purpose is the journey, or the purpose is the bait. Not both.
At least try to decide if you are for the first or for the second because you mix those constantly trying to prove your point.

[mouselock]

If you want a mount, work for it. End of discussion. If you don't want to put in the time and effort required to get a mount (or any other highly prized item), then live without it. What's wrong with that concept?

You could say "make the mounts cheaper so everyone can afford them almost immediately" but then what is the point of even having mounts? Just up everyone's running speed and be done with it.


Here's the disconnect:

I don't want to "work" for anything in a game. I want to enjoy the process. Ideally, what should happen is I should be able to log in (as a representative Joe Normal Player" and have fun. About the time I quit having fun, I should magically have acquired enough gold/uberness/+3mithrilvorpalswordofkickassedness to do something substantially enough different that I'm magically having fun again.

If I'm the type of player who obsessively min-maxes, guess what? My fun will last for far fewer hours.

The problem is this is fine in single player games because of the revenue model, but in MMOs Time=Money for the company, so they don't want this. They don't want people hurrying up. So the model instead becomes "Can we find the balance of non-fun and potentially nearby reward that keeps people playing the longest."

The crux of the issue is at the Time==Money==Advancement core. If any MMO gave me other things to do with my time, things that were enjoyable, they could have my money no matter where they placed that breakpoint.

Now, the reason people are upset is because, in general, games tend to go "all inclusive" on that breakpoint. Keep the hardcore players playing, and everyone else will follow. This is why the casual players get burned out and quit. Because the bars are set for the hardcore.

I think the consternation over WoW specifically is that the bars were set lower and have (seemingly) been ratcheted up three notches over the last few patches to appease the "Oh shit, we have to make everything we have now last how long for our players?" sentiment from on high.

I think people who demand that the bars just summarily be lowered have a point. I think the people who say that doing so just burns out everyone faster also have a point. I think the solution is to practice orthogonal game design, so there are multiple games within the purvue of a single MMO, so that you can burn out on an activity without burning out on a game. The problem is that the consumer is going to demand that any overlapping activities be as good as games dedicated to that specific game type alone. (Vis SWG:Jump to Lightspeed better be as good as XvT or else I'll just play it.)

Ultimately, I think a lot of the people who want things to be easier do so because they're not convinced the "In-game uberness == fun" model is proper. And some don't like the "Time==in-game uberness" idea, too. I think it's a catch-22, because nobody's come up with (or actually tried to implement) an idea which breaks either of those particular paradigms. WoW has, for a while, seemed like it might, but as it gets arbitrarily closer to release it seems to be snapping back more and more into the "tried and true" mold. EQ without some of the frustrations is, at its base, still EQ, no?

[Jackstar]

The argument against reagents that I'd make, if I felt like making it, would be that the idea itself doesn't add anything to the game. It was a chore in EQ and UO and it will (probably) be a chore in WoW.
Quite the contrary I think. Having played EQ and UO and remembering well the situation there, WoW's auction house renders the problem moot. Additionally, the ease with which low-level players will be able to harvest and sell sought after components to higher level players will give them something fun and profitable to do with their time if they so choose. To say nothing of the possibility that some may have to buy up all the elite components and set the price on them at an exorbitant height. Fun!

It sucked ass teleporting into Kelethin and spamming /trade with "BUYING STACKS OF BATWINGS 1 PLAT EACH" or walking to one of the two vendors on three continents that sold them. Even when the Bazzar was implemented it still sucked for a numerous reasons. In WoW, who cares, you don't even have to go to the auction house. Park a mule there and mail the money and the reagents back and forth. Getting to any mailbox to restock sounds like a completely reasonable expenditure of time to me.

But they also become very important in group play, in that once you hit 40 and don't have a mount, your chance of getting good non-instance groups tends to nosedive
Good grief, it's even more of a non-issue than I thought. If someone is level 40 and can't scrape up a measly 100gp, I don't want to party with them ever because they obviously suck or have their priorities severely out of whack.

Goodness knows I've had fun playing a little here, a little there, as well as some marathon sessions.
I don't think I've actually heard anyone say "these changes have changed the game right now into something unfun." It seems like it's all been "in the future, the game will not be fun!" Have I missed any such posts?

[SlyFrog]

Here's the disconnect:

I don't want to "work" for anything in a game. I want to enjoy the process. Ideally, what should happen is I should be able to log in (as a representative Joe Normal Player" and have fun. About the time I quit having fun, I should magically have acquired enough gold/uberness/+3mithrilvorpalswordofkickassedness to do something substantially enough different that I'm magically having fun again.

All you are doing is mixing one person's definition of "work" with "fun". You are using "work" in a day laboreror sense, as something unpleasant. That is not what is intended.

Your "the process" is what others talk about when they say you should have to "work" for something. There is no way around this; otherwise, I'd ask you why you can't just log in and start with "enough gold/uberness/+3mithrilvorpalswordofkickassedness." Why should you have to play at all to get to that point? If you really don't want to "work" at all, you should just be given all of those tools at the start, along with infinite hitpoints and monsters with .1 hitpoints each.

Whether you like to admit it or not, the point of these games is the struggle, it is the work. A fair question is whether the work is fun or tedious, but there must be some grind/effort involved to advance or else it is pointless.

[HRose]

But the point here is the retarded mistake between content and grind.

If you build a game that doesn't suck it means that first you build up the content to offer, like a bunch of quests. THEN you count the quests you have and say: "Now, with these quests, how much levels we can support?" The answer will be 20, 40 or perhaps 100.

Okay, that's the number of levels the game will have because we have the content to fill the space.

About the mounts. Are they a reward? Okay! So build a number of consequential epic quests so that the players can go through them and have the mount as a reward at the end. This is acceptable and I encourage it.

There's content and there's a reward at the end. Both the journey and the bait have a value.

But you CANNOT tell me that the mount is a reward for me killing a mob 3000000 times so I can gather enough money to spend.

This is the difference between "content" and an empty space also known as "grind" or "timesink".

When you want a reward into the game you also need an excuse for that reward. You cannot assume that the reward exists on its owen without being the result of a process.

Like an egg without an hen.
You want an egg? Ok, you need an hen.

[TheWombat]

Good grief, it's even more of a non-issue than I thought. If someone is level 40 and can't scrape up a measly 100gp, I don't want to party with them ever because they obviously suck or have their priorities severely out of whack.


That's ignorance speaking I'm afraid. It's very easy to play to 40 and not have much gold. If you play casually, especially so. Your abilities/spells at even levels start to cost a fortune. Consumables--poisons, reagents, crafting items, etc.--cost a lot. At least in beta, the auctions were a very very unreliable source of income for most RoG stuff, which was not very saleable.

Sure, there is some degree of planning and skill involved in budgeting your efforts and money to have the price of a mount. No argument there. But to say everyone who hits 40 without a mount is a sucky player is just plain silly and wrong. In fact most folks don't get mounts at 40 but sometime thereafter, as often they spend their money on spells/abilities to get to 40 so they can farm some better instances, etc.

As for reagents, reasonable folks can disagree on how much fun they add, or don't add. Whether you buy them at the auction house or find them, having to mess with them isn't something I really enjoy. I didn't enjoy that in D&D either back when DMs would require you to actually have bat guano to throw a fireball...but YMMV.

And if you think that a system that requires you have a mule is reasonable, I'd say you were working for a MMO company :D . DAOC is built like that, with mules and bots nearly required and encouraged. Not very casual friendly at all.

[mouselock]

Whether you like to admit it or not, the point of these games is the struggle, it is the work. A fair question is whether the work is fun or tedious, but there must be some grind/effort involved to advance or else it is pointless.

I don't think I disagreed. The point is where do you set the bar for "enough"? We've got plenty of games (all of them) which set the bar so that it keeps the hardcore grinding away for some reasonable amount of time and everyone follows. What I take exception to is using that as your baseline. Fuck the catassers, they're going to be faster anyway, who cares? Why not set it somewhere else for a change? Ostensibly that's exactly what WoW had done, then suddenly there appear all these extraneous "sinks" designed to slow stuff down. Yay.

Is it a matter of "I want to be catered to instead of the catassers?" You betcha. What's wrong with that? I assume there's more of "me" than catassers, really. (Mind you, I'm talking mainly in the abstract; my problem with WoW is that it's every other MMO out there, just really polished shiny. As someone pointed out somewhere, eventually all the polish wears off. I simply might be distracted longer if I felt it was more likely that I'd see a new coat of lacquer before I'd rubbed all the polish off of the previous one.)

[Dirt]

It's pretty humorous, a friend of mine asked to check this game out tonight being a fan of warcraft in the past, he was very curious through namebrand only(the guy is completely ignorant to the whole MMO structure and design stuff)

Even knowing this wasn't an RTS, he assumed it would still feature the typical trappings of the older games. When I began discussing my character, he immediately querried if it was possible to just be an actual peon grunt, ya know...fortifying castles, building personalized forts, repairing the damage from major sieges and such, all the while dishing snarky remarks in between.

I -actually- paused for a second completely stunned and thought it would have been a really fucking cool idea. So much that I felt a wave of discouragement come over me as I had to begin lecturing about level grinding, spawn zones, mob agro, fed-ex tasks, etc...

The dissent grew when he asked to see what a normal mission entails...flipping through my little black log of outstanding quests revealed a whole lot of 'kill x goons and report back to y' stuff that would in no way be interesting to a spectactor. The instance zones are multi-hour jaunts that are unfeasible to just tour(as cool as they are), and boy did I feel petty and shameful when I jokingly avoided the quest routine by showing off how pretty those griffon taxi rides are...

I do really love the game, but man it can be a hard sell even without PVP issues.
"It's not about baking bread..."

[mouselock]

But the point here is the retarded mistake between content and grind.

...



My god, armageddon is upon us. I agree 100% with HRose!

Seriously, if at any point the majority of players looks up and says "Oh fuck, I have to whack another damn set of bears before I can go do this thing which sounds like fun." then you've misbalanced the grind with the fun. It's all about the impression of progress. That is, of course, a tricky beast to master, but I can assure you that setting hurdles designed to keep those at the top of the bear whacking curve sufficiently challenged inevitably bleeds down and overwhelms other folks. If it didn't the simplest thing in the world would be the following:

Level 1 takes 1 day played.

Level 2 takes 2 days played.

Level N takes 2^(N-1) days played.

Cap it at level 100 and your "game" lasts forever.

So the $64k question is: How long is bear whacking fun?

I would tend to argue that the answer to that question is a function of the amount of time since the first MMO came out and the amount of non-bear-whacking stuff of interest in one's game. WoW seems pretty bear-whackey to me, and we're going on 6+ years since the first (really big, mass market) MMO. It strikes me as odd that Blizzard has decided to push the estimate of that function up, rather than down, as a result.

[SlyFrog]

Whether you like to admit it or not, the point of these games is the struggle, it is the work. A fair question is whether the work is fun or tedious, but there must be some grind/effort involved to advance or else it is pointless.

I don't think I disagreed. The point is where do you set the bar for "enough"? We've got plenty of games (all of them) which set the bar so that it keeps the hardcore grinding away for some reasonable amount of time and everyone follows. What I take exception to is using that as your baseline. Fuck the catassers, they're going to be faster anyway, who cares? Why not set it somewhere else for a change? Ostensibly that's exactly what WoW had done, then suddenly there appear all these extraneous "sinks" designed to slow stuff down. Yay.

Is it a matter of "I want to be catered to instead of the catassers?" You betcha. What's wrong with that? I assume there's more of "me" than catassers, really. (Mind you, I'm talking mainly in the abstract; my problem with WoW is that it's every other MMO out there, just really polished shiny. As someone pointed out somewhere, eventually all the polish wears off. I simply might be distracted longer if I felt it was more likely that I'd see a new coat of lacquer before I'd rubbed all the polish off of the previous one.)

Okay, so it's a question of amount of effort versus reward. I get you now, and I don't disagree. I would say that so far with WoW, I'm not at the stage where I feel it is coming too slowly, but that's just a fair difference of opinion, as opposed to a fundamental difference on structure. And I may well end up with you as to whether it is a grind, I'm just not there yet.

Of course it helps that this is my first MMORPG, and a lot of the stuff that feels like a "grind" to everyone else is still pretty cool to me.

[mouselock]

Of course it helps that this is my first MMORPG, and a lot of the stuff that feels like a "grind" to everyone else is still pretty cool to me.

Yeah. I wish I could get my head to quit seeing exp points where bears are and the like, but I can't, because I know that's the fundamental way the game works. I think WoW is probably a great MMO for someone's first. I just don't know about how it's going to do recapturing people who've burned out on previous ones.

I'd really love to see someone try something more along the lines of hybridizing an MMO at this point. I can think of all sorts of ways for weaving the mechanics of a Civ/MoM type strategy game in amongst an MMO. Throw in a touch or two of Daggerfall and you'd actually have a MM Online Roleplaying game. Probably economically impossible though. :/

[Jackstar]

That's ignorance speaking I'm afraid. It's very easy to play to 40 and not have much gold. If you play casually, especially so. Your abilities/spells at even levels start to cost a fortune. Consumables--poisons, reagents, crafting items, etc.--cost a lot.
I agree. But looking at parts of the game individually doesn't lead to success as a whole. If someone knows that mounts exist, and doesn't prioritize their money to reach their goals, it's not a big leap to say that they're not likely to be the kind of player who is going to, for example, prioritize their mana use to help keep their party alive.

You're right, I spoke too broadly. Obviously there will be people who choose not to buy a mount because running speed isn't that important to them - if they can articulate that position intelligently, I'd have no problem grouping with them on that basis. But if someone says, basically, "lollers I have no money I'm constantly broke but I've managed to cheese my way into enough groups that I'm level 40, hey can I party with u?", I don't think it is unreasonable to say that they suck.

At least in beta, the auctions were a very very unreliable source of income for most RoG stuff, which was not very saleable.
I've only been in the stress tests, and auction is working pretty well for me. I dump everything remotely desirable there, 24 hours later my mailbox is full of cash. I have little doubt that it will be greatly utilized after launch. There will be substantial amounts of gp to be made by buying low and selling high for the people who are into that sort of thing. The convenience is simply exceptional.

But to say everyone who hits 40 without a mount is a sucky player is just plain silly and wrong.
To clarify: if they want a mount and don't have one, they suck. Or lack foresight, which may well be the same thing in most cases. However, I concur, if a "casual" player who just plays the game, doesn't die excessively and doesn't fritter away their money can't readily afford 100gp at level 40 by making some reasonable sacrifices, the economy needs tuning.

As for reagents, reasonable folks can disagree on how much fun they add, or don't add.
Well, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to insist that you agree that the existence of reagents to some degree is mandatory. I mean, ore mining produces necessary reagents. Cooking food, making bandages or clothing, creating armor, all the stuff that magic users can do with their magic, costs "physical" resources, so why should casters get a free pass? There has to be a counterbalance to the fact that a naked Warrior is helpless and a naked Mage can kill you, especially considering the durability hit on death. (Which I was dubious about initially, but have now come to embrace.) A skilled warrior takes tremendous amounts of damage when tanking, a skilled caster takes virtually none.

It is my hope that reagents for spells will only be required for elite versions of baseline spells, and if someone is out of reagents they can still play effectively, albeit at reduced efficiency. If not, I'll be highly disappointed, but not very surprised. Consider: money itself is a reagent, if buying stuff is compared to magic. I don't have a problem with some spells requiring an ongoing cash outlay; hell, compare that to Rogues who burn through poison.

Additionally, it's a flavor issue. What is magic without eye of newt? Nothing, that's what.

Whether you buy them at the auction house or find them, having to mess with them isn't something I really enjoy. I didn't enjoy that in D&D either back when DMs would require you to actually have bat guano to throw a fireball...but YMMV.
I invite you to propose an alternate system of caster vs. melee balance that addresses the points I've made above. Playing as a Warrior, having to constantly lay out cash to acquire and repair my gear on an ongoing basis isn't something I really enjoy, and I'm buying skills as well. At level sixty, that cost doesn't go away, but a caster doesn't have to buy new skills, so even making spells cost large amounts doesn't fully cover the issue.

And if you think that a system that requires you have a mule is reasonable, I'd say you were working for a MMO company :D .
I didn't say it is required, it's just a simple and workable option that could virtually eliminate the "tedium" of gathering components. Obviously most players won't ever feel the need to go that far, when they can just stop off at the auction house and bid or buyout at whatever the market sets the price at.

I'm curious, why is managing reagents unfun for you? Is it also unfun for you to manage healing potions? How about managing ammunition for your ranged weapon? If you're all about "dealing with reagents for magic has always sucked for me so I assume it always will" then I can see your point, but if you're some kind of mage purist who wishes to do nothing but regenerate mana and set things on fire while everyone else has to deal with mundane supply issues, well... why are you playing a MMOG?

DAOC is built like that, with mules and bots nearly required and encouraged. Not very casual friendly at all.
I never played DAOC so I can't speak to that. But in no way am I suggesting that muling is required at all. I guess it is required if one never wants to go to the auction house; they can just buy 29 days of reagents all at once, mail them to themselves, and pick them up at any mailbox at their own convenience. At any rate, compared to all the other classes, in my opinion casters are getting off pretty light if they just have to carry around a sackful of stackable icons and only think about it in terms of filling up a gas tank from time to time.

Also, I just thought about this, what if there's some ubergood spell that requires a reagent that can only be gathered in a contested territory that the Horde and Alliance can fight over? Who wouldn't want that? Socialist tree-hugging hippies, that's who. I mean, come on: it's called Warcraft.

[Jackstar]

You lack logic.
You've won the debate. We can all go home now.

[TheWombat]

Reagents as cost equalizers between casters and melee, that's something I had not thought of. In that context it makes some sense, though more so in WoW than in, say, DAOC, where the trade off is casters can't melee and can't cast in melee, essentially, so they die more often. In WoW, where casters are far more durable, I can see the need (with durability) to make them pay an equivalent "fee" for daily operations to what melee types have to pay.

My play style objections to reagents for spells--and mind you I in no terms think reagents are a deal breaker--revolve around 1) the space they take up in WoW's limited backpack/bag space; 2) the administrative overhead of having to prep for each outing, and 3) the intrusion of what seems like another layer of admin BS that's not in the slightest "heroic" or epic. Admittedly these are not big time hassles (and as a rogue you put up with similar things already). And I generally don't play casters that much anyhow. But I'm willing to grant that if it makes the overall game work better it's worthwhile.

[Jackstar]

Here's the disconnect:

I don't want to "work" for anything in a game. I want to enjoy the process. Ideally, what should happen is I should be able to log in (as a representative Joe Normal Player" and have fun. About the time I quit having fun, I should magically have acquired enough gold/uberness/+3mithrilvorpalswordofkickassedness to do something substantially enough different that I'm magically having fun again.
The problem with what you have stated is that in a world simulation, you have many, many choices to make as you progress.

You can spend all your money on a profession. You can spend all your money on gear that becomes Soulbound once you use it, and thus lose the majority of it since you can't do anything with it other than sell it to an NPC once you get an upgrade to it. You can spend a crapton of money by dying over and over and over again. You can decide to sell all your valuable loot to people for way under its market value. You can repeatedly go out into the field without the foresight to have enough bag space so you're constantly throwing money away because you can't carry everything you're finding. You can, you can, you can.

When you say "I should magically have acquired uberness," you're completely ignoring the fact that the entire world is raining money. It's a question of what you do with what opportunities you are presented with, and the opportunities you make for yourself. If you squander the former and pay no heed to the latter, well, duh, you're going to have less money than you "should."

The solution to this is not to have the game just hand wealth to you on a silver platter just because you've spent X amount of time doing stuff. Your time is multiplied by your effort, and if you're making poor choices, you're going to end up with less. Again: the game is designed this way. Not only does the world give you endless opportunities to advance, it also provides you with endless opportunities to fuck yourself up.

I don't want to "work" for anything in a game. I want to enjoy the process.
Are you saying that if you enjoy it, it isn't work?

[HRose]

You lack logic.
You've won the debate. We can all go home now.
Who cares? I'm not here to win debates. I wrote a long review about World of Warcraft in March. Explaining that for the first time I was having fun right when logging into the game. Caring zero about my level and about the speed of the treadmill. I was doing quests, experiencing the world at my pace and only secondarily and as a "side-effect" I was also progressing and levelling.

Then I saw the game continuously adjusted. And it's where I started to say (and wrote many, long articles about this) that what should have been done was about considering the content and THEN see if the experience needs to be slowed down or sped up.

I don't care if they make the levelling process slower, but I require that if so they choose, they also offer more content and more quests to fill the *gap* they created. This while the boards were filled with complaints about running out of quests exactly because they stretched the treadmill without filling the new space with more stuff to do.

This scenario has been repeated various times. Diluting content. Adding more and more time and money sinks.

Is it still the game that I enjoyed and played in March?

[McBain]

jafd, can I offer a suggestion?

Get a job.

[Enidigm]

Some thoughts:

Its my first MMORPG, and i'm not terribly impressed but not actually dissapointed either :).

Gameplay is monotonous but the nice graphics keep me happy. I've reached level 7 and seem to be progressing at a nice clip. I feel like i'm blowing through the game's content pretty fast, and have this feeling that there isn't much here to do. Maybe i'm just still in the newbie areas.

There is hardly any room for customization so far. Attributes are autocalculated. Maybe at some point you can create a more unique class, but right now every Druid is exactly the same as another. There are suprisingly few items compared to Diablo 2, and those you receive on a quest seem always to be far superior to those you either buy or find.

I wish there were more Professions.

Do the maps ever open up into wide spaces you can explore at your leisure? Sort Morrowind esque? Right now everything seems narrow and compartmentalized.

Quests are just placeholders for grind so far. Instead of killing stupid squirrels until you find a rusty knife on your own initiative, the quests order you to go kill squirrels until you find a rusty knife.

Morrowind was definately an inspiration for their art design, at least in the open areas of the Night Elves.

A sense of lonliness abounds. Because of the Quest system everyone runs around solo at first. This is fine since id solo anyway, but i can't help feeling that the MMO part of the game is a bit lacking. Sure i'm running around with 30 other 'real' players but i may as well be offline playing single player for the amount of interacting i've done so far.

Very little "roleplaying". My Shadow Bolt does 15 damage; you Wrath does 15 damage. There doesn't seem to be any difference between how classes play other than how you end up running around killing squirrels. I do like the pet system, and everything seems well done. I think CoH had more variability in combat.

I think it would be fun as kind of Diablo 3, sort of a light and colorful way to just zone out and beat up squirrels for awhile to find that rusty knife. I don't know if it, or for that matter ANY, MMORPG, is worth 10-15$ a month for what amounts to MMO-Diablo.

[mouselock]

When you say "I should magically have acquired uberness," you're completely ignoring the fact that the entire world is raining money. It's a question of what you do with what opportunities you are presented with, and the opportunities you make for yourself.

If there was any real game to this stuff you're talking about, it might be different. If there was the opportunity to develop and refine strategies, to play them out against each other, in fact to do anything other than choose when I want the game to suck more than it has to, because what you're telling me is it's got to suck sometime, and all I get to choose is when, I might be inclined to agree with you.

It boils down to this: If I found some type of reward in the status of having the cool shiznit in game, I'd see things your way. But I don't. I don't want to have a mount because it makes me more effective and I've maximized my effectiveness by making sure I can afford one ASAP. I don't want to learn how to maximize my damage output per damage input so I can minimize my costs. I don't want to determine what the optimal upgrade path for weapons, including available quests is, so that I can make sure to burn as little cash as possible. I don't want to stick to only the provably safe areas so that I risk death less, and minimize money loss that way.

What I want to do is inhabit the virtual body of a dwarf and roam around having fun. I want to get into situations that are over my head and sometimes make it out by the skin of my teeth and other times lose. When I lose, I don't mind it stinging a bit to repair my gear; after all, I bit off more than I can chew. However, I don't want to feel like my future fun has been absolutely slaughtered by my attempt to have fun. Basically, I don't want to pit my ability to do stuff and explore the world (which is all any of these games have going for it) vs. the need to walk the straight and narrow min/max path in order to be able to experience it without undue frustration.

I don't think, from the way you're talking, you'll understand that. For you it's all about being as effective as possible. Fine. But you could do that in my game model too. The only problem is you wouldn't have the world exclusive trophies that you and people who plan as tightly as you are privvy to, and the rest of us who don't ride the crest of the min/max curve struggle to attain. If you want goldplated armor that lets you trumpet your status, I'm all for it. But set the bar somewhere so that I can get the ugly-ass bronze-plated armor that otherwise does most of the same things and can still play the game. I don't want to play your game; it bores me. Maybe if there was an in-game model for that type of resource management that was enticing as a game in itself, it'd be different. But making sure to take all the meat and skins off everything to maximize my profit isn't exactly my idea of high adventure, y'know?

[Lum]

In MMO-related threads, if anyone (and I mean anyone) says something to the effect of "Clearly, if you've read my posts/writings/blog in the past, you would know XXX", you know it is safely time to nod out of the discussion.

Kind of like Nazis. I really should write it up as a snappy law.

[TheWombat]

A sense of lonliness abounds. Because of the Quest system everyone runs around solo at first. This is fine since id solo anyway, but i can't help feeling that the MMO part of the game is a bit lacking. Sure i'm running around with 30 other 'real' players but i may as well be offline playing single player for the amount of interacting i've done so far.

That's one thing I've noticed since day one, too. It's counterproductive to group for many quests. Grouping is generally pickup, short-term: we need to kill Foozle, let's group, then disband. Kill tasks are good for grouping, but generally not for group dynamics as there's rarely a need for more than just warm bodies and dps at the low levels.

I'm in a large, active guild so there's always socialization going on but often it's a matter of twenty people on simultaneously...all soloing.

[Jackstar]

Who cares?Indeed!
Is it still the game that I enjoyed and played in March?
Judging from what you have stated that you value in a MMOG, I can only desperately hope not.


jafd, can I offer a suggestion?

Get a job.
Am I to be insulted that you didn't suggest I start my own business, or for some other reason?


I've reached level 7 [...] Maybe i'm just still in the newbie areas.
No question about it.

There is hardly any room for customization so far. Attributes are autocalculated. Maybe at some point you can create a more unique class, but right now every Druid is exactly the same as another.
The abilities of the classes seem to be designed around making the skill of the player matter far more than attributes or gear. I assure you that there are bad Druids and good Druids, as with any class, and the variety is mainly determined by the skill of the player. I think this is a very good thing.

Talents play a key role in customizing characters at higher levels. I had a dozen points to play around with before they started charging to respecialize, and I was able to significantly enhance and alter my play style by allocating them.

those you receive on a quest seem always to be far superior to those you either buy or find.
Gear you can find in instances is routinely quite good and often exceptional.

I wish there were more Professions.
Allegedly there are/will be.

Do the maps ever open up into wide spaces you can explore at your leisure? Sort Morrowind esque? Right now everything seems narrow and compartmentalized.
I can't really say yet. I took a peek at Arathi Highlands and it seemed a bit like a wide open plain, but I didn't go very far. I know that Wetlands is pretty open, if by "open" you mean "big, flat, and filled with things that want to eat you."

In my experience in the Alliance lands, I've seen a steady progression in the variety of the lands that become available to you at higher levels and I would assume that continues. I don't know about Horde, I'm saving that for launch.

A sense of lonliness abounds. Because of the Quest system everyone runs around solo at first. This is fine since id solo anyway, but i can't help feeling that the MMO part of the game is a bit lacking.
This will change significantly around level 18-22. Soloing is still possible, but the game shifts towards "grouping is more efficient" from "soloing is more efficient."

There doesn't seem to be any difference between how classes play other than how you end up running around killing squirrels.
There are absolutely vast differences. This will become profoundly apparent once you've leveled more than one class up past 25 or spent a lot of time in a coherent group.

I don't know if it, or for that matter ANY, MMORPG, is worth 10-15$ a month for what amounts to MMO-Diablo.
I don't think it is worth $15 a month either, however, that is what the market will bear.

[TheWombat]

For wide open spaces try the Barrens or Mulgore on Horde, early on, for instance. Later places like Desolace, Tanaris, and Feralas are pretty wild. There's a lot of zones and a lot of variety.

[Rollory]

I'm staying out of most of this discussion, but this jumped out at me:


There are absolutely vast differences. This will become profoundly apparent once you've leveled more than one class up past 25 or spent a lot of time in a coherent group.

That is the problem with MMOGs. Why the fuck do we have to wait until sometime after level 25 to see things play differently? Why not play differently at level 1? It's the same idea as the "you have to kill rats as a newbie" meme - it's done that way because that's how it's done. And because it means the designers don't have to actually, you know, design anything in terms of game systems - they just copy stuff that's been in MUDs since forever and tweak it a little.

As long as this isn't resolved, MMOGs will continue to suck.

[Mark Asher]

You lack logic.
You've won the debate. We can all go home now.
Who cares? I'm not here to win debates. I wrote a long review about World of Warcraft in March. Explaining that for the first time I was having fun right when logging into the game. Caring zero about my level and about the speed of the treadmill. I was doing quests, experiencing the world at my pace and only secondarily and as a "side-effect" I was also progressing and levelling.

Then I saw the game continuously adjusted. And it's where I started to say (and wrote many, long articles about this) that what should have been done was about considering the content and THEN see if the experience needs to be slowed down or sped up.

I don't care if they make the levelling process slower, but I require that if so they choose, they also offer more content and more quests to fill the *gap* they created. This while the boards were filled with complaints about running out of quests exactly because they stretched the treadmill without filling the new space with more stuff to do.

This scenario has been repeated various times. Diluting content. Adding more and more time and money sinks.

Is it still the game that I enjoyed and played in March?

I have never been without quests to complete. By your logic, the content in WoW is fine then. I don't understand how anyone can run out of quests. I can't do them all. If, through some perverse way you have of playing the game you manage to continually find yourself without quests to do, then the game isn't designed for your playstyle.

The most common complaint about the number of quests is that the questlog can only hold 20 and that players often level so quickly that some quests go gray before they can get to them.

As to the mounts costing money, so what? The mounts are a symbol of achievement. As such, they require effort to get. Take away the effort and there is no sense of achievement. I didn't mind amassing 1000 gold for my epic mount because I enjoyed the process of getting the loot. I enjoyed killing undead in the Plaguelands and getting the rare drop now and then. I enjoyed working the auction house and selling my drops for a nice profit as well as selling all the odds and ends for money too. I sold a set of Hydralisk plate for 94 gold. Woot! That felt good! And finally, I enjoyed achieving my goal. I got a bony pony!

I hate item decay but I recognize that with unlimited money coming into the game economy Blizzard has to find ways to suck some money out, including some methods that are forced upon the players. Blizzard's item decay is about as benign as you can get -- items are fully effective until they reach zero durability and they can never break.

[Jackstar]

If there was any real game to this stuff you're talking about, it might be different. If there was the opportunity to develop and refine strategies, to play them out against each other,
There totally is the opportunity to do that. That is the game. Taking your character and molding it into what you want, or what you allow, or what it happens to end up being is the whole point. The experiences that you have along the way are manifestations of those choices.

in fact to do anything other than choose when I want the game to suck more than it has to, because what you're telling me is it's got to suck sometime, and all I get to choose is when, I might be inclined to agree with you.
I don't know if I would put it that way. I suppose that yes, if one makes the "right" decision at every possible time, the game will never "suck," but of course that isn't feasible.

Something "bad" will always happen at some point. As you point out, it's fun to get out of a bad situation, whether one has brought it upon one's self or not. I would say that a game "sucks" if bad situations happen regularly, and the game doesn't provide the tools to surmount them. I don't see that as being the case with WoW. It's fairly forgiving, moreso than any other MMOG I've tried.

So yes, the game has got to suck from time to time, because otherwise there's nothing to make the fun parts fun. If it's just non-stop fun wall-to-wall... what's the draw? How is the game going to be able to support enough subscriptions in order to cover the gargantuan costs of development? You may well be a person who is happy just having nothing but fun constantly over and over and over again and would be willing to pay for it forever, but if so, I assure you that you are in the minority.

What I want to do is inhabit the virtual body of a dwarf and roam around having fun. I want to get into situations that are over my head and sometimes make it out by the skin of my teeth and other times lose. When I lose, I don't mind it stinging a bit to repair my gear; after all, I bit off more than I can chew.
You can. What's stopping you? I don't see your point here.

However, I don't want to feel like my future fun has been absolutely slaughtered by my attempt to have fun. Basically, I don't want to pit my ability to do stuff and explore the world (which is all any of these games have going for it) vs. the need to walk the straight and narrow min/max path in order to be able to experience it without undue frustration.
It's up to you to determine what your frustration threshold is, and walk that line. You're still min/maxing, it's just a different context from someone who obsesses over every gold piece. If you want to run around and make decisions on the fly and surmount whatever challenges come... there's nothing stopping you. Go for it. Have fun. I don't doubt you would, sounds like the perfect Dwarf to me. ("Instead of fixing my armor, I blow the entire reward on ale and whores.")

I'm trying to figure out a scenario in which you could play for a long time, having fun the whole time, and get to some future point where you weren't having fun anymore, and feel like you're unduly frustrated. Let's say you got to a point where you didn't have enough money. Well, you've successfully roleplayed an irresponsible wayfarer. Wasn't that the point? It sounds to me like you're saying, "I want to spend the first thirty years of my life frittering away my time on wine, women, and loose living, and then end up with a nice house with a two-car garage!" It doesn't compute.

Even in some circumstance I can't conceive of, where you've completely shafted your character to the point where you simply cannot play anymore... you could just start another Dwarf. Why not? It was fun the first time, wasn't it? If you can't imagine revisting content that you've already seen, I could understand that, but if you're just gallavanting across the countryside in search of adventure, it's virtually certain that you'd find things that you didn't find the first time.

And if you simply put the game down and never play it again at that point, well, so what? You had fun. Time spent in enjoyment is never wasted.

I don't think, from the way you're talking, you'll understand that.
Actually I'm curious as to what I've said that has lead you to think that, because I almost completely agree with what you're saying here.

For you it's all about being as effective as possible.
I absolutely do not prize efficiency over fun. I do find wasting time to be un-fun though. Doesn't everyone?

The only problem is you wouldn't have the world exclusive trophies that you and people who plan as tightly as you are privvy to, and the rest of us who don't ride the crest of the min/max curve struggle to attain.
But there will always be trophies. Even if you had a world in which every item were identical in every way other than their color, some of the colors would be prized and some would not be. This appears to be simple human nature.

You seem to be saying that people who "tightly plan" (and I'm not saying that tight planning is mandatory, just... planning, period) aren't struggling while everyone else is. That certainly isn't the case. The difference between "struggling" and "not struggling" is wholly a matter of personal attitude.

If you want goldplated armor that lets you trumpet your status, I'm all for it. But set the bar somewhere so that I can get the ugly-ass bronze-plated armor that otherwise does most of the same things and can still play the game.
Yes, I totally agree with this, and I thought I was being clear on that point. Perhaps not.

But making sure to take all the meat and skins off everything to maximize my profit isn't exactly my idea of high adventure, y'know?
Well, sure! There's no reason why that should be. If people cannot play the game the way they want and have fun, then the game is a failure. But it's inevitable that the people who value achievement over exploration will have more "achievements" than someone who feels the other way. How could it be any other way?

It seems to me that you're saying that you want to just go where the wind takes you for forty levels, and then suddenly find yourself in the same place where people who have spent those forty levels working towards a specific goal are. That doesn't make sense to me at all.

If you don't look where you're going, you'll end up there. But I don't see how that affects your goal of having fun. If you had fun getting there, what difference does it make where you end up? At that point, keep going, start over, or quit entirely. If you had fun, you've won the game.

[HRose]

I have never been without quests to complete. By your logic, the content in WoW is fine then. I don't understand how anyone can run out of quests. I can't do them all. If, through some perverse way you have of playing the game you manage to continually find yourself without quests to do, then the game isn't designed for your playstyle.
Oh, I don't know the current status of the game but with this new 20-30% increase of exp requirements I'm starting to have doubts. I also think that I shouldn't be forced to check every single NPC in every corner of the world. There should be a threshold. So that I can create a new character and still have something new to do here and there.

I pointed that to explain my point of view on the time/moneysinks like the mounts. The same mechanic of the levels applies to the mounts: if there's content to support them, ok. If there's not the content or you give them for free or you create such content.

Money and moster grind != content.

As to the mounts costing money, so what? The mounts are a symbol of achievement.
Yes, achievement of grind. This is why I believe there's nothing to reward.

If what you say works, even the old EQ model works (and we negate WoW value). Put in 100 levels and only allow a player to reach the last when they killed a rat 1000000000000 times.

Is this good design?
Imho not. Your opinion may vary but it's exactly how mounts work. And exactly the opposite of what this game was last I played.

[Jackstar]

There are absolutely vast differences. This will become profoundly apparent once you've leveled more than one class up past 25 or spent a lot of time in a coherent group.
That is the problem with MMOGs. Why the fuck do we have to wait until sometime after level 25 to see things play differently? Why not play differently at level 1?
Well I was speaking to someone who is level 7 and has never played a MMOG before. There are absolutely differences at level 1 in how the classes play, they're just not "profoundly apparent."

The reason why most MMOGs gradually scale up the differences in classes in the beginning is to ease people into the experience. If you throw a whole bunch of wildly different options at people at level 1, they're going to largely get bewildered, frustrated, and disinterested. People fear change.

Another reason is that the kinds of mobiles that are arrayed against the player in the early levels don't offer much sophistication at first; again, it would kind of suck if you walked your level one ass out into the field against a group of two melees, a caster, and a healer. People would get fucking slaughtered over and over again, no matter how much variety you gave the player classes, because the average player has no clue whatsoever.

Just keep repeating to yourself, "mass market, mass market," and things will likely become clearer to you.

[Mark Asher]

I have never been without quests to complete. By your logic, the content in WoW is fine then. I don't understand how anyone can run out of quests. I can't do them all. If, through some perverse way you have of playing the game you manage to continually find yourself without quests to do, then the game isn't designed for your playstyle.
Oh, I don't know the current status of the game but with this new 20-30% increase of exp requirements I'm starting to have doubts. I also think that I shouldn't be forced to check every single NPC in every corner of the world. There should be a threshold. So that I can create a new character and still have something new to do here and there.

I pointed that to explain my point of view on the time/moneysinks like the mounts. The same mechanic of the levels applies to the mounts: if there's content to support them, ok. If there's not the content or you give them for free or you create such content.

Money and moster grind != content.

As to the mounts costing money, so what? The mounts are a symbol of achievement.
Yes, achievement of grind. This is why I believe there's nothing to reward.

If what you say works, even the old EQ model works (and we negate WoW value). Put in 100 levels and only allow a player to reach the last when they killed a rat 1000000000000 times.

Is this good design?
Imho not. Your opinion may vary but it's exactly how mounts work. And exactly the opposite of what this game was last I played.

Not every single thing in the game needs to come as the result of completing a quest, and that includes the horse. In fact, if you had to quest for everything, some players would consider that oppressive.

You do not have to quest in WoW. At times I'm sure it would be more efficient to find a good spot and simpy grind away. There are more than enough quests there if you do like to quest, however. And you don't have to lift every rock in the world to find quests. The quests are designed to lead you to one area or another.

And if you don't want to amass 1000 gold for an epic mount, then don't! It is not forced upon you. It is not a requirement. No one's going to say you can't group with them if you don't have an epic mount. I have never once heard of anyone being turned down for a group because they didn't have a mount, epic or otherwise.

So again, what's the problem? That the game isn't exactly how you want it to be? Hmmm....

[HRose]

Not every single thing in the game needs to come as the result of completing a quest, and that includes the horse. In fact, if you had to quest for everything, some players would consider that oppressive.
So base it on a mechanic different from questing, like accomplishing something special. I won't say PvP missions because it would anger PvE players but there's a bunch of mechanics you can use.

"Collecting money" isn't content, it's absence of content. Exactly why old DAoC players hated the PvE because it was a pointless grind of mobs.

And if you don't want to amass 1000 gold for an epic mount, then don't! It is not forced upon you.
This isn't a reason. Even in EQ you can stay level 10 forever and don't care about leveling up. We aren't discussing it.

We are discussing if achieving a mount is a valuable part of a game with something to offer. Or if this part could have been developed in a better way.

"Swallow it or don't play" isn't of any use.

[_Fury_]

Ok, you don't like it. We get it. We disagree. Can you let the rest of the big kids have a discussion here?

[Talisker]

Money and moster grind != content.
So.... what does make for good content, then?

[mouselock]

It seems to me that you're saying that you want to just go where the wind takes you for forty levels, and then suddenly find yourself in the same place where people who have spent those forty levels working towards a specific goal are. That doesn't make sense to me at all.

If you don't look where you're going, you'll end up there. But I don't see how that affects your goal of having fun. If you had fun getting there, what difference does it make where you end up? At that point, keep going, start over, or quit entirely. If you had fun, you've won the game.

Actually, I think we mainly agree. I think you have to make some considered choices (or more accurately, you have to set a bar somewhere in making one of these games between success==making every choice perfectly and success==automatic). I'm just not happy at all with what I'm hearing as to where that set point is right now. I should be able, playing reasonably laccadaisically, to afford a mount somewhere between 41-43. If I scrimp and optimize, I should be able to afford one at level 40, and it should be better than normal in some (non-game affecting preferably) manner. (For comparison, EQ had horses which had two functions - fast travel and quicker mana regen. All had the same mana regen, but the speed was per cost. I have no problem with the optimal players having the convenience of faster travel. I do have a problem with them having better mana regen.) Theoretically, if having a mount is inherently important for the game, all but the most laid back players should have an opportunity to procure one without having to play outside their normal manner by the time it's necessary to do so. Being excluded from the uber-elite groups because your mount (or armor or weapon or whatever) isn't good enough is okay. Being excluded from the actual content is not. This, IMO, is the trap that EQ fell into, especially with PoP and GoD. I would hate to see WoW go that way, but if the numbers I'm hearing (people doing the instances, which are apparently the WoW treasure troves, spending 90+% of the income they get in those things simply keeping their equipment intact), they are.

At any rate, I don't have enough experience with the game to argue based on much more than theory. I'm going to stick with the fact that WoW is basically EQ+ and I'm not impressed that way, but they have roughly 2 weeks of free play to change my mind. (And they have the strong impetus of me wanting to like it since my friends are going to be playing it too.)

[mouselock]

Money and moster grind != content.
So.... what does make for good content, then?

Money and monster grind alone isn't content. I'd also like to be able to set up a trade empire, exporting rare northern dwarven resources to southern climes and importing the other way around. And I'd like to do it in a methodical, game supported manner, not in a "player run economy" only manner.

While we're at it, it'd be kind of cool if I could coordinate hiring out people who have the mining skill to generate quarried resources for me, which I then send off as a supplier to far away kingdoms who are beset by the horde in order to reinforce their ramparts. If they don't get the supplies, they get overrun, and more adventuresome types of players end up tasked with the necessity of going there and cleaning them out. On the flip side, if their supply masters don't keep them supplied, they can't mount an effective assault and get repulsed.

Maybe I could be a gnome alchemist and spend time finding locations of arcane significance. I could do research in lost and forgotten libraries (hiring mercenary groups to help me get there, providing a bit of assistance with spells and potions) in order to ascertain how best to extract energy, or find artifacts.

And I'd like it to actually matter. To be dynamic, not just running through a quest that will end up on a web page.

That would be content too, yes?

(I know, everyone wants that, and it's impossible. Except it's not impossible, just hard and different. Lord knows the technology exists out there for directed quest generation, warfront motion (including capture of contested cities) and the like. I can think of all sorts of ways to marry some interesting techniques from other games or even other fields with the staples of MMOs to make a far more interesting world, but I don't know how much money it would take. I do think there would be people willing to deal with a less "perfect" monster killing grind to have such breadth, however. Maybe one day...)

[Gourmand]

Based partially on this discussion here, and partially on the horrid overcrowding in newbie zones: I am going to see if I can just make a miner/blacksmith warrior and level up that-a-way.

I'm intrigued to see if it's even feasible to play without quests (well ... I intend to complete the quests most beneficial for me in the noobie zone <5). And also, if it works then I have an easy way to play at my speed while leveling up and still getting pretty spiffy equipment.

Idea: I enjoy exploring the map to begin with. This helps me enjoy the activity of wandering the lands and scouring mineral veigns. Naturally I'll be attacking what monsters may happen to be between me and my copper.

Probable downfall: There won't be enough veigns and it might just turn into a grind. (Plus I have to stop and do the quests required to earn different stances). Either way, I'm thinking it's worth at least trying. If it works, I know what I'll be doing to avoid the saturated questing grounds come release!

[mouselock]

Probable downfall: There won't be enough veigns and it might just turn into a grind. (Plus I have to stop and do the quests required to earn different stances). Either way, I'm thinking it's worth at least trying. If it works, I know what I'll be doing to avoid the saturated questing grounds come release!

One of the threads I read on the forums indicated that max skill in tradeskills was also linked to level. Don't know if that has an effect on your plan or not, but seems like it'd be possible to outpace your levelling with the mining pretty easily and get "stuck".

[MikeSofaer]

Mining isn't as heavily capped as some other trade skills, and it's got a soft cap on it, you stop getting skill from copper and you have to level just to be able to mine tin and silver, so it doesn't matter.

Engineering, though, I did manage to outpace to journeyman, and probably will to expert. To get artisan you need level 30, but I have no idea how hard it is to get 225 skill before you hit 30. I bet you could do it, though, without much trouble.

[Mark Asher]

The problem with trying to level most tradeskills without leveling your character is that the raw goods tend to be placed in higher level zones for the higher level recipes. It will not be easy to mine mithril if you're level 15. Too many things will attack and kill you in the zones that have mithril.

[Gourmand]

The problem with trying to level most tradeskills without leveling your character is that the raw goods tend to be placed in higher level zones for the higher level recipes. It will not be easy to mine mithril if you're level 15. Too many things will attack and kill you in the zones that have mithril.

Just an FYI, I stated that I fully intend on killing monsters on my way around looking for deposits of copper. I will be leveling (How fast?! I don't know yet). The mining/blacksmithing is to replace the goods I'd most likely get from questing and supplant the missing money I'd be acrue'ing there too.

Either way, dunno if it will work. I'm interested enough to give it a shot, and see how much fun I can have without quests. Right now the quests have been good to me becausae they make me focus on something other than my experience bar, which often makes the "whoosh" and pillar of light a surprise more than an expectation. If that's replaced will I still have fun? I'll find out.

[Mark Asher]

Your idea would normally work Oinkfs. Mining especially is a good cash cow. The only problem is that the economy is really immature now since everyone just started playing in the last week.

[TheWombat]

And the economy is going to go through another upheaval when they wipe beta stuff and start anew in a couple of weeks, so practice now but don't get too hooked on anything :)

[SlyFrog]

And the economy is going to go through another upheaval when they wipe beta stuff and start anew in a couple of weeks, so practice now but don't get too hooked on anything :)

Did Blizzard come out with a final decision stating they were going to wipe the old characters?

[MikeSofaer]

Money and moster grind != content.
So.... what does make for good content, then?

Money and monster grind alone isn't content. I'd also like to be able to set up a trade empire, exporting rare northern dwarven resources to southern climes and importing the other way around. And I'd like to do it in a methodical, game supported manner, not in a "player run economy" only manner.

(I know, everyone wants that, and it's impossible. Except it's not impossible, just hard and different. Lord knows the technology exists out there for directed quest generation, warfront motion (including capture of contested cities) and the like. I can think of all sorts of ways to marry some interesting techniques from other games or even other fields with the staples of MMOs to make a far more interesting world, but I don't know how much money it would take. I do think there would be people willing to deal with a less "perfect" monster killing grind to have such breadth, however. Maybe one day...)

I've been dreaming about a game like this for years. My brother decided to start work on it for his CS project at NYU. :) It's a scary scary industry, so who knows if we'll get anything built that works, but we've started, so other people probably have, too, and you haven't got too long to wait, whether we get it right or (more likely) someone else does.

[mouselock]

I've been dreaming about a game like this for years. My brother decided to start work on it for his CS project at NYU. :) It's a scary scary industry, so who knows if we'll get anything built that works, but we've started, so other people probably have, too, and you haven't got too long to wait, whether we get it right or (more likely) someone else does.

The thing that disturbs me is that none of this is particularly an earth-shattering idea. None of the tech is new. So that implies that people have tried this and found it impossible to integrate (likely, except for the fact that you hear about MMOs so early that I think we would've seen one of these attempts blow up), or people simply haven't tried this at all, because they're too focused on getting the monster whacking "right" which takes an inordinate amount of time (likely, except surely someone out there has thought "Gee, there ought to be more to a game than this..").

I use SWG as an example.. they almost got it right. The crafting stuff in SWG is a lot of fun, right up until you have to level through it. Because at it's base there's no game for the crafting portion, nothing to keep you interested between making landspeeder 1 (which is cool) and making landspeeder 500 (which is just boring). If you want to do something where you're engaged during the process, you have to pick up a combat profession.

How damn hard is it to build the other game types out there, apart from basic 3D Action-RPG, into one of these things? It's not as if the MMO combat model compares favorably to single player 3D Action RPGs, but we're okay with that. Are people just more discerning about basic resource management games, or basic strategy games, or basic puzzle games? Why do we only see the 3D Action-RPG model imported into MMOs for the most part?

[TheWombat]

Did Blizzard come out with a final decision stating they were going to wipe the old characters?

Nope. And I suppose it's still possible that they will do something odd, but I can't really imagine them not wiping the characters. The logistical and customer relations issues inherent in letting folks from the beta(s) carry their characters over to retail servers would seem to be insurmountable.

Many would be upset that some folks start out at high levels; this would be particularly true if they allowd closed beta characters to migrate. But more significantly I think it'd be a nightmare of logistics. Which servers do they go to? How do you choose? What happens if some servers have no carry over toons and others are filled with them? That sort of thing. So I'm thinking that it's a good bet that there will be a wipe.

I do not know of any other mainstream MMO that allowed carry over (did Lineage II?). Slightly possible IMO would be carry over from open beta which won't go on long enough to generate slews of high levels, but the admin/logistics issues remain.

But until Blizzard pronounces from on high I suppose it's technically up in the air.

[Marcin]

Yeah, I just wanted to be a dwarven low-level armor maker. Go out, harvest some leather, make some armor, sell a few pieces at my (built) store on that path to Loch Modan, maybe work on my own recipe instead of using game-made ones, ok, game session over for the day.

But no. I can only kill kill kill. Yay.

When I first heard of MMOs and "crafting", this is what I invisioned. Silly me.

[MikeSofaer]

Yeah, I envision something along those lones with the crafting, but probably no custom recipies, that seems like it'd be hard to implement.

As far as the action/RPG MMO model, take a look at ATITD for something different. I played that quite a bit a year ago, and there are quite a few lessons that game has to teach about an economy in an MMO.

I don't want to build a "social experiment" game, but the economy was great.

[mouselock]

Yeah, I envision something along those lones with the crafting, but probably no custom recipies, that seems like it'd be hard to implement.


I can think of a number of algorithmic methods of implementing "custom" recipes (assuming you're okay with the idea of custom recipes shaping stat bonuses on an item, but then, what else would you need them to do) that would, I think, be workable. They have to do with establishing a mechanism for actual experimentation within the crafting game model, and shifting, pseudo-random mappings between static sub-components and effects.

As a quick "example" one can look at Diablo's random item generation system and see that it's possible to generate directedly random attributes, effects, etc. which are both balanced and of interest. It just takes more effort than has been devoted (assumably because too much time is spent in the development of bear whackery).

[MikeSofaer]

Yeah, I envision something along those lones with the crafting, but probably no custom recipies, that seems like it'd be hard to implement.


I They have to do with establishing a mechanism for actual experimentation within the crafting game model, and shifting, pseudo-random mappings between static sub-components and effects.


If you're talking about something along the line of giving a crafter "crafting points" for an item, and having him choose how those points improve the item, that's not so hard, but to me that's not really "custom." Cooler than what most games have, although SWG had something like it with the different plastics/metals, etc.

If you want to talk about algorithms, I'm interested. The cookie-cutter aspect of crafting is a problem with MMOs that I'd like to solve, it just seems like it could get really nasty. (SWG's caused them all sorts of databse issues. Granted they had screwy crafting XP stuff going, but even so.)

[steve]

I do not know of any other mainstream MMO that allowed carry over (did Lineage II?).
The Sims Online, though that was a unique situation because it relied 100% on player-create content. If they didn't let the beta testers stay there, there would have been nothing for new players to see.

(Insert joke about there still being nothing to see.)

[TheWombat]

The Sims Online, though that was a unique situation because it relied 100% on player-create content. If they didn't let the beta testers stay there, there would have been nothing for new players to see.


Cool. Steve. Thanks, I didn't know that. But it makes sense in that context as it's not really the sort of "I'm level 60 and uber and I can whip your ass" sort of environment, is it? I've never actually played Sims Online.

[mouselock]

If you want to talk about algorithms, I'm interested. The cookie-cutter aspect of crafting is a problem with MMOs that I'd like to solve, it just seems like it could get really nasty. (SWG's caused them all sorts of databse issues. Granted they had screwy crafting XP stuff going, but even so.)

Just a quick tossing out of the idea since I'm a bit rushed today. Let's use tailoring as an example:

The player (perhaps as a function of skill) gets an NxN grid to work with. The player can populate that grid with different materials (threads in this case), to make panels. Panels are combined into clothing.

The trick is that not just what you populate the grid with, but how you do so is important. Imagine something similar to Cellular Automata fitness functions to determine success. Don't put water thread next to fire, they cancel out, but fire next to rock might reinforce. A good selection of rules (including non-local effects) can be used to keep the power in check. Additionally, simple pattern recognition (circles, triangles, etc..) within the square could have additional benefits.

Finally, link the patterns, effects, et. al. to slowly varying game factors (phase of the moon, arcane alignments) with hints as to what does what now placed in game (libraries). Some off-game work beforehand to automatically look for unwanted global maxima in patterns can solve the major complaint of min/maxing. As well, if you link the factors (or better yet, only some of the factors) to individual players (the moons affect elves differently than orcs, or perhaps affect the town of Thistletwiddle differently than the town of Orkruump), you can avoid a lot of the "this is the best recipe for this cycle, come see where I've posted it" stuff, which serves to reinforce the rewarding of individual players for figuring things out.

Similar systems can be envisioned for other systems. (Potions where the effect depends not only on what you mix in, but how and in what quantities per step; armor where you can determine the type of protection based on how you build separate layers in; weapons where you do small, pre-computed finite element models on a grid-based sword to determine how your "metals" alloy and derive the properties from that.)

There are all sorts of methods which can be abstracted down for game systems used to solve problems in the real world. They're just not. I assume it's because getting people with these skills to work on computer games is a challenging problem. But there's plenty of complexity and tools out there to build far deeper systems without making them so arcane that a player can't appreciate them. After all, the idea of "oooh, if I stitch five stars into this panel with fire channeling thread, it will help my arcane fire magic" isn't beyond what players experience in normal RPGs.

[/depart soapbox]

[steve]

But it makes sense in that context as it's not really the sort of "I'm level 60 and uber and I can whip your ass" sort of environment, is it? I've never actually played Sims Online.
They had no choice. In typical MMO fashion, you needed to do certain things in order to able to afford, er, things. But those "things" required someone to have purchased them and put them into their house. So if everyone started with nothing one day 1, there'd be no way for anyone to really make money because there'd be no locations TO make money.

They needed to keep the beta people, and there enormous houses with moneymaking objects, around in order to give new players places to go.

Note: relying 100% on player-created content isn't the greatest idea in the world.

[mystery]

The trick is that not just what you populate the grid with, but how you do so is important. Imagine something similar to Cellular Automata fitness functions to determine success. Don't put water thread next to fire, they cancel out, but fire next to rock might reinforce. A good selection of rules (including non-local effects) can be used to keep the power in check. Additionally, simple pattern recognition (circles, triangles, etc..) within the square could have additional benefits.


I'm reminded of Yohoho Puzzle Pirates (http://www.puzzlepirates.com) in your description, as it seems like just the kind of game where a system like that would have been implemented. I haven't played it too much beyond the point where I make the pretty blocks line up and crush my opponent with my swinging swords, so I can't speak reasonably about their crafting system.

So many mainstream MMOs could learn so much about economics and "fun" by digging deep into the ideas and concepts behind YPP and ATITD. I wonder why they don't?

[zabuni]

The kicker would be to balance something like that. Given such a system, minmaxing would flourish. And while the developers might be short on time, MMOG players often have that in utter excess. The optimal pattern would be found, even if they had to create programs to run experimental models to find it out. And once that was found, people wouldn't want anything else.

What would be neat would be to give someone an incentive to keep that a secret. Allow weavers to create patterns that could be used to make garments like that a certain number of times. It would not allow the user to see what the exact pattern was however.

[MikeSofaer]

If you don't release your equations, and mix up the variables enough that linear regions are small, there's no way you could computer model something like that. You'd need lots of people trying specific techniques in an organized way in-game, which is kind of cool in itself.

[Gourmand]

IMO, I don't really see a great need to change the way items are made. I'm perfectly satisfied with the items currently in the game and not exploring all the different combinations. Although, that gameplay method does sound enticing.

Instead, I'd just like something to do while I'm crafting instead of watching a bar skip along it's way to progress. Crafting in most MMO's is dull, and the real fun is in acquiring the wealth.

I think, (or hope), what mouselock is saying is that we don't want to watch these bars forever. There's no reason for that. Let me play a game of tetris instead of watch the bar. I don't care if it has a meaningful effect on the game. EQ2's system of "click every bar that pops up real fast!" sounds lame. That's not a game either. Itt's just a countermeasure to macros, I'm thinking at least. And honestly, if your idea of fun is clicking spam boxes then you can do that easily without a monthly fee. Run internet explorer without spam blockers.

As far as I'm concerned, keep all the items the same, but give me something to do instead of twiddle my thumbs. I need to be engaged damnit! So, I think Mouselock has a good idea, but I don't like his particular implementation. IMO, it's still just watching bars slide across your screen. In that system your four year old could be trying to cram circles, stars, and triangles into a hollowed cube ... and you could be doing the same thing on the computer. Not enticing, for me at least.

On that note: someone hire PopCap to do this in a creative way that can get integrated into the game. Not just "would you like to make a leather vest? BLOCKS ARE FALLING! TETRIS TIME!"

[mouselock]

The kicker would be to balance something like that. Given such a system, minmaxing would flourish. And while the developers might be short on time, MMOG players often have that in utter excess. The optimal pattern would be found, even if they had to create programs to run experimental models to find it out. And once that was found, people wouldn't want anything else.

What would be neat would be to give someone an incentive to keep that a secret. Allow weavers to create patterns that could be used to make garments like that a certain number of times. It would not allow the user to see what the exact pattern was however.

It's not that hard to balance, if you're willing to do the work up front. It's a small sample space. You literally just run optimization simulations on it to figure out what the optimum is. Though I suppose ensuring that there's a decent curve of values between the optimum so that you don't have bottom heavy weighting.

And yeah, you would actually need to reduce the thing down by the time it became an object for all sorts of reasons. Also the idea of shifting the relative power around is to give the players incentives to continue playing; you can't just find a great pattern and keep it forever, because the forces change. (In the same way that the fighting types can't just keep beating on the same creatures forever, because eventually they get too easy.)

[mouselock]

If you don't release your equations, and mix up the variables enough that linear regions are small, there's no way you could computer model something like that. You'd need lots of people trying specific techniques in an organized way in-game, which is kind of cool in itself.

It could be modelled, but most people wouldn't have the skill to do so. I'm imagining something complex enough that the developers on their end would need to run simulated annealing or genetic algorithms in order to find a max, and that's with full equation information. A couple of good non-local cells and the ability to deduce models from the obvious places (pattern matching of the AB=X ABA=Y BAB=Z type) falls to rock bottom. That's the joy of chaos theory. ;)



I think, (or hope), what mouselock is saying is that we don't want to watch these bars forever. There's no reason for that. Let me play a game of tetris instead of watch the bar. I don't care if it has a meaningful effect on the game. EQ2's system of "click every bar that pops up real fast!" sounds lame. That's not a game either.


That's essentially what I'm saying, except that I'd like to see different parts of the game cater to completely different gameplay types. I'm talking about an MMO where people pick a role based on what they like to play. If you like the above type of challenge, then you'll want to be a crafter. Not all adventurers would, so not all adventurers would craft.

Additionally as I mentioned above, I'd love to see the ability to rise in political power by helping defend the kingdom. You manage supply trains, you send troop reinforcements. The random element comes in not only from dice rolls, but also from random PC's wandering by and deciding to help one side or another. PvP in a very different way.

I'm just tired of the bear whackery paradigm. There's more room in "virtual worlds" for gameplay other than bear whackery. Give me a game with 5 different adaptations of a game type that are well done, and you've got my money until you shut it down, because no matter what gaming mood I'm in, it's all right there for me in a way that keeps me connected with my friends. I just have thought more about the crafting because that's the one that's already been "tried" in current games as an alternative to bear whackery.

[MikeSofaer]

ATITD had an extremely slow tech curve that was essentially communal. What I want to do is make the curve a little faster, and less communal (but still very communal)

So you spend x hours figuring out how to make Purple Glowing Nylon Antennae. You can now teach people how to make it in much less time. They can try to reverse engineer your antennae if they can find some, etc. As the information diffuses people build on it and make better stuff. The baseline quality of items rises steadily, but slowly enough to keep the designers ahead of the curve.

[mouselock]

ATITD had an extremely slow tech curve that was essentially communal. What I want to do is make the curve a little faster, and less communal (but still very communal)

So you spend x hours figuring out how to make Purple Glowing Nylon Antennae. You can now teach people how to make it in much less time. They can try to reverse engineer your antennae if they can find some, etc. As the information diffuses people build on it and make better stuff. The baseline quality of items rises steadily, but slowly enough to keep the designers ahead of the curve.

I think the problem there is that it's not self-contained. Any time you get to build on the last generation's stuff, you have to keep creating content. I think any game where you have to keep creating content is doomed to fail eventually, far more quickly if you have to create X times the content.

That's why I specifically mentioned randomizing the mappings (slowly). Your old patterns no longer work, you need to find out new ones, but this time you know where to look for the info better and have a better idea of how to get there. Of course, this type of closed loop may be boring, but you could still muck about with it by (slowly) introducing new building blocks. Or you could go the route of changing the resources I guess.

A lot of it has to do if you expect players to enjoy the process, or to be more end-goal oriented. If the latter, reshuffling their basis on them will just piss them off. If the former, they're going to get bored as you tack 5% new content onto 95% old content and they voraciously consume it with their finely honed skill.

Razor edge balance there I think.

[Gourmand]

I think those are all things that a lot of players and developers are looking for Mouselock.

I'm just waiting for a developer to say "resources". At which point I'll nod my head and move along.

Good ideas, now if you could just figure out a way to spend time designing more efficiently, you might actually have a shot at convincing someone to sink some money into ot. And honestly, I'm not trying to discourage you or be a dick here. I'm really interested if you have any ideas on how to expediate the time consuming processes in game design.

I know nothing about that field, so I really have nothing to add. But, if you as a programmer, have incite then shoot. I'm definitely eager to read it. It's the unpassable mountain chain that you've got to carve a route through to reach the land of fun.

EDIT: I also have no experience with game design what-so-ever. All of my comments are merely "I wish" and "I think" strictly from a player perspective. Also, I think you alluded to this before in one of your earlier posts. I just think, since you've mentioned you have some proficiency as a programmer, in your brainstorming time you might have a lot of better ideas in that field.

[mouselock]

Good ideas, now if you could just figure out a way to spend time designing more efficiently, you might actually have a shot at convincing someone to sink some money into ot. And honestly, I'm not trying to discourage you or be a dick here. I'm really interested if you have any ideas on how to expediate the time consuming processes in game design.


Yeah, I think there are a lot of people looking for continual growth. But I know there are some like me who actually like the process too. I think you could balance that as an end-around (maybe a few tradeskills like mine which are random, others which are cumulative).

As for content design, I think it's possible to automate a lot of it. There are a lot of nice things out there representing ecosystems, for instance. They have believable behavior (in that they do a mappable simulation of real life). I don't see why they couldn't be adapted to fantasy worlds as well. I envision an MMO with large amounts of space, and unlike SWG where you have random spots with random spawns and you go kill them, this MMO has a modelled ecosystem. It's updated once every Nth day/week/month. You choose locations where populations are in flux and place static camps there. The world changes, but not in a continuous (hard to do) manner.

Example: Far enough away from civilization there is a cave system. That cave system is inhabited by kobolds. Some adventurers over the course of a few (RL) weeks, stumble across the kobolds, find that they give good exp, and proceed to slaughter them. The net kobolds killed in that area is tracked, compared to a (simple number from a model) net kobolds born for the last few weeks. If the threshold is low enough, new monsters take up part of the cave system. Maybe they're antagonistic, maybe they're not. More adventurers come, and kill everything, lots. The caves are barren for the next section. After that, if nothing moves in, they begin to decay. Nasty things live in old decayed warrens. Big things. Evil things.

The location has just dynamically upgraded itself from a lowbie area to a highbie area because the lowbies were effectively flushed out. However, not many kobolds want to live near a big evil nasty vile monster, and a big evil nasty vile monster doesn't live so long without food. Predator->Prey relationships, with real NPCs pushing the boundaries around. It's doable simulation wise. I believe it's doable to map the (mathematical) results onto the game world. But it's tricky, and, well, why do the tricky when the mundan (popping spawn points, repetitive critters, etc) works as well?

I think if you build enough algorithmic complexity into the game and inject a decent amount of fixed-point character (dungeons that are always the same, quests that are always the same, etc..) it's possible to mitigate the soulless feeling. Again, I point to Diablo 2 as a great example of lots of algorithmic finesse leading to a generally transcendant game.

The real difficulty is that Diablo II took a hell of a lot of skill and effort, and can you convince anyone to risk 1-1.5x what a current MMO costs in order to attempt a Diablo II of MMOs. If you get it right, you're set, but if you get it wrong you've pissed away boatloads of money. And there's more of a chance of getting it wrong than in the normal MMO design.

I've actually been meaning to post on Mud-Dev for a while now and ask why simulation isn't used more often in MMOs. It would seem that for helping flesh out a vibrant world it would be a godsend. I suspect it's because it's hard, and people who really understand it have other things to do with their time than make games.

[HRose]

I've actually been meaning to post on Mud-Dev for a while now and ask why simulation isn't used more often in MMOs. It would seem that for helping flesh out a vibrant world it would be a godsend. I suspect it's because it's hard, and people who really understand it have other things to do with their time than make games.
Ryzom tried that. The players decided that it brought anything relevant to the game.

[mouselock]

I've actually been meaning to post on Mud-Dev for a while now and ask why simulation isn't used more often in MMOs. It would seem that for helping flesh out a vibrant world it would be a godsend. I suspect it's because it's hard, and people who really understand it have other things to do with their time than make games.
Ryzom tried that. The players decided that it brought anything relevant to the game.

Do you have more information?

[MikeSofaer]

That's pretty close to the basic world design I'm pursuing with my brother. We're hoping to set up a world and model some players and see if we can make something dynamic work. Still in its infant stages, but it's interesting stuff to talk about in theory, at least.

[TheWombat]

They had no choice. In typical MMO fashion, you needed to do certain things in order to able to afford, er, things. But those "things" required someone to have purchased them and put them into their house. So if everyone started with nothing one day 1, there'd be no way for anyone to really make money because there'd be no locations TO make money.

They needed to keep the beta people, and there enormous houses with moneymaking objects, around in order to give new players places to go.

Note: relying 100% on player-created content isn't the greatest idea in the world.

That's fascinating, actually. I remember the Sims Online being all about user created stuff, from an interview I did with Will Wright before the game came out, but I had no idea it was that limiting. Weird stuff. Thanks.

[TheWombat]

From Blizzard on the WoW boards; seems those on Olympus do listen sometimes to the peons (zug zug!).

Hi all,

First of all we would like to thank everyone participating in the Open Beta. The development team has been able to gather valuable in-game data over the past few days. Based on this data and your feedback on the forums, we will be making a few changes in the next patch:

- Players will only receive a 25% durability loss instead of 100% when using a Spirit Healer to resurrect

- Players will now only incur a maximum 10 minutes of resurrection sickness instead of 30 minutes when using a Spirit Healer to resurrect

- Some key buff spells will have their reagent requirements removed

- Changes to Warrior’s Defensive Stance that will improve their ability to hold aggro

We are hoping to get the next patch out early next week.

[Mark Asher]

I just don't get the spirit rezzer problem. Who uses it anyway? I almost never used it while leveling. It made more sense to run back to the corpse.

[agriffith]

I just don't get the spirit rezzer problem. Who uses it anyway? I almost never used it while leveling. It made more sense to run back to the corpse.

It was great at level 60. XP hits at 60 don't matter since you're capped, and it kept you from going into a potential corpse camping situation. Also, why run back to the instance as a cropse when you can res and ride your horse. I almost always ressed at the spirit healer once I got 60.

[Enidigm]

I always thought someone should try and make Populus, the MMORPG. ^^

Having fun with War3, er, i mean WoW somewhat more. I like the game and wish it wasn't expensive to play online, as i won't ever have the time to see most of the classes. I like in Blizzard games how i never feel terribly bored or somehow constrained by bad design. There have been times when i had to wait for a respawn but these times were few and only for a minute, so i can handle that.

I think i prefer the hybrid classes the most, although the Warrior can use a bow, which makes me happy. Been having fun with my Druid.

Still think there should be more ways to differentiate players than just Talents and Professions however. Items are important but seem utterly generic. In Diablo 2, there was always a chance, at whatever level you were playing at, to find some rare, cool, item with stacks of mods that gave you an advantage or some difference compared to the rest of the crowd. Items seem to have little value so far in the game; i mean there are some obviously better, but everyone has access, so its just a matter of time before everyone has one.

[Gourmand]

I agree, D2's magical lottery was fun. You never knew when you were getting a spiffy surprise is. I think what you have to avoid is making items so powerful drop, that it demolishes everything else ever seen before: Much less on a random drop.

One item to rule them all. One item to find them. One item to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

I'm totally with you that it's a much better loot mechanism for the player, but implementing that into an MMO could be disastrous. D2 doesn't really have an economy to speak of, and I think that gives it liberty.