Would EQ be more fun if they made it hard again?

[Duik]

Womp womp

[Cecily]

Originally Posted by Sadre Spinegnawer [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

No one knows sit aggro sorrow like an enchanter. You can be not doing a thing. No malice in your heart. Don't matter. You're an enchanter and you're sitting.

Enchanters are the RL equivalent to psych pop narcissists. Everyone in Norrath should hate them. It's the most evil class in the game and should be openly KoS to everyone.

[Cecily]

As to the thread topic. I think EQ was fun because it was novel and it did something new on a scale that we had never seen before. It's addictive and I think that gets confused with fun often. There's a million micro goals to get constant dopamine hits and as I've preached before, this game is a gambling sim with social elements to reinforce the addictiveness. If you feel like you have a community, it's hard to leave the behavior you associate with that community behind. Like you have to drop your friend group if you wanna get off drugs. Game was made by a guy with addiction problems and if the current year you're reading this is any indication, he did a pretty good job channeling that experience into his game.

[Ekco]

Originally Posted by Cecily [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

There's a million micro goals to get constant dopamine hits and as I've preached before, this game is a gambling sim

by the end i ran out of goals, last thing i did was camp the WR bag in kedge.

[Ekco]

i don't think the addiction part was intentional though, the old greybeard DnD players working on it quite literally thought nobody would sit and camp rare items, most player behavior was emergent, same way the meta on classes developed. bard wasn't designed to be played the way it was..etc..etc

[Cecily]

That's fair. EQ did have a sandbox element to it and that's the purest form of fun you'll get from video games, literal play. I wonder what happens when I do this. The core game loop does however focus on acquiring items and progressing via number go up on dubious statistics, and that relies heavily on a gambling mechanic gated by time. 60% to get common thing, 40% to get rare thing. 1 chance per 45 mins.

[Cecily]

Or in your case, like 2% chance every 90 mins or so for that treasure chest? Lol I had 2 of them on blue I got without really trying, just derping around on my ranger.

[Ekco]

Originally Posted by Cecily [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The core game loop does however focus on acquiring items and progressing via number go up

yeah, but in classic eq the game more closely mimicked Dungeons & Dragons concepts regarding item acquisition. For example, obtaining a magical +1 sword is a big fucking deal in a properly run DnD campaign. The gameplay loop in EQ that mimicked this was seeing willow-wisps since level 1 and then finally grinding enough plat to invest into a combined long sword.

you can see the ghosts of this objectively correct take on Everquest all over classic, the scarabs in Rathe Mountains being apart of Brad's original idea of a epic quest involving puzzles and having to talk to NPCs all over the world to Kedge Keep's dungeon design and loot tables of the common drop being wands with charges.

the game is suppose to have permadeath and you die on your first vox/naggy raid then reroll or play something else.

[zelld52]

EQ would be more fun if there weren’t players continuously doing the same stale content for 5-10 years and getting sweaty as hell over it

[bcbrown]

Originally Posted by Cecily [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

That's fair. EQ did have a sandbox element to it and that's the purest form of fun you'll get from video games, literal play. I wonder what happens when I do this. The core game loop does however focus on acquiring items and progressing via number go up on dubious statistics, and that relies heavily on a gambling mechanic gated by time. 60% to get common thing, 40% to get rare thing. 1 chance per 45 mins.

This reminds me of an interesting essay I read about EQ: http://www.nickyee.com/eqt/skinner.html