MMOs: Past, Present, and Future

[Lhancelot]

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

As EQ matured more casual gamers began to demand quicker rewards, less downtime etc.

Welcome to the change in people as a whole on planet earth. Everything is instant gratification now thanks to the too-fast evolution of technology in the last 30 years.

We the sheeple have fallen hook line and sinker head first into the technological aftermath and are doomed thanks to it.

Also, games suck now more than ever.

[shokar]

Originally Posted by Spyder73 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

at the 12 month mark Pantheon will start hitting the "oh sh!t button" and by 18 months it will be free to play 100%

If people want to PVP each other there are way better games than mideval elf sim. Mideval elf sim is for slaying dragons and people need to stick to the script

hope this guy never gets his shitty surname back

[username17]

I enjoyed LoTRO. There were paywalls but you generally earned enough in game currency to pay for them by the time you hit them. I guess it depends on playstyle. I played LoTRO like a completionist so I never had issues with having the currency to buy from the store.

[Evia]

Originally Posted by username17 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I enjoyed LoTRO. There were paywalls but you generally earned enough in game currency to pay for them by the time you hit them. I guess it depends on playstyle. I played LoTRO like a completionist so I never had issues with having the currency to buy from the store.

I also enjoyed lotro although I feel spurned by them. I paid for two lifetime sub accounts roughly 3 months before it become free to play. :/

[Lhancelot]

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

hope this guy never gets his shitty surname back

Prometheus was punished by the gods for being rebellious and not following the laws that they laid down.

His punishment was to be chained to Mount Olympus for all of eternity. Not only that, but he was granted unnatural regeneration. They did this not to help poor Prometheus, but instead to make him suffer more.

Every day, a great and powerful griffon flew to Mount Olympus with the sole intention of ripping open Prometheus's guts to feast upon his innards as he was chained and unable to escape or hide.

After the traumatic attack, once the griffon had it's fill of Prometheus's innards it flew away, it's hunger satiated. Prometheus then would painfully regenerate all of his organs and flesh that was eaten off his body, all the while still chained to the side of the great mountain Olympus.

A day later the griffon would return to continue it's daily feast on poor Prometheus. This was to last all of eternity.

Spyder is Prometheus.

He will forever be chained to p99, unable to escape the torture that the p99 admin have bestowed upon him. He will NEVER wear the surname "Wu'Tang" above any of his alts for all of eternity, and he will forever bear this cross for the rest of his life.

It's quite poetic actually.

[Mblake1981]

The gamer label came after my time that ended about the time this happened.

[fadetree]

The biggest problem is gear. We are all so locked into the idea of ascending power in gear that it shapes the entire experience. The developers like it because it gives them a simple way to dangle a carrot to keep people playing. We like the achievement dopamine hits of leveling and scaling up our gear.
Unfortunately, the continual ascension of power produces trivialized content which produces the need to constantly release 'expansion' content of increasing difficulty. Things get complicated and hard to tune, and trying to balance out huge amounts of itemizations and skill trees is extremely difficult. You wind up with a bunch of god-like characters standing around bitching about being bored.
I'd like to try something without the gear mechanic, and maybe even the whole idea of character 'stats' and 'levels'. The game would have char stats at some level of course, but they wouldn't ever be visible and they wouldn't ever change. Gear would not affect your char stats. Armor and weapons would not magically enhance your survivability, although armors would protect you some and good weapons would help your damage some. Armor and weapons would not 'drop' from kills unless the mob was wearing/using them, and everything else would have to be made by players. Everything would break/rust/wear out unless maintained. All abilities would be skill based, with skill ups available via repetition and/or 'lessons' from higher skilled players. Magic would exist but be skill based as above. Magical items would be very very rare and they would also break/rust/wear out. No character stats at all would be visible, not HP, not attributes, not AC or ATK or anything like that. Everything would have to be built/made - clothes, houses, carts, castles. Basically, it would be a medieval life simulator with some magic thrown in. Most of your characters would turn out to be peasants and you have to do peasant-y stuff like mine for filth or be oppressed. Only a few characters would get to do any real pillaging and they would either get syphilis or be killed in battle after a few hours.
OK, so I got pulled into a monty python movie there for a sec - but I actually do think that the gear and levels mechanic needs to be rethought. It pulls the game to the same place every time.

[Baler]

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

The biggest problem is gear. We are all so locked into the idea of ascending power in gear that it shapes the entire experience. The developers like it because it gives them a simple way to dangle a carrot to keep people playing. We like the achievement dopamine hits of leveling and scaling up our gear.
Unfortunately, the continual ascension of power produces trivialized content which produces the need to constantly release 'expansion' content of increasing difficulty. Things get complicated and hard to tune, and trying to balance out huge amounts of itemizations and skill trees is extremely difficult. You wind up with a bunch of god-like characters standing around bitching about being bored.
I'd like to try something without the gear mechanic, and maybe even the whole idea of character 'stats' and 'levels'. The game would have char stats at some level of course, but they wouldn't ever be visible and they wouldn't ever change. Gear would not affect your char stats. Armor and weapons would not magically enhance your survivability, although armors would protect you some and good weapons would help your damage some. Armor and weapons would not 'drop' from kills unless the mob was wearing/using them, and everything else would have to be made by players. Everything would break/rust/wear out unless maintained. All abilities would be skill based, with skill ups available via repetition and/or 'lessons' from higher skilled players. Magic would exist but be skill based as above. Magical items would be very very rare and they would also break/rust/wear out. No character stats at all would be visible, not HP, not attributes, not AC or ATK or anything like that. Everything would have to be built/made - clothes, houses, carts, castles. Basically, it would be a medieval life simulator with some magic thrown in. Most of your characters would turn out to be peasants and you have to do peasant-y stuff like mine for filth or be oppressed. Only a few characters would get to do any real pillaging and they would either get syphilis or be killed in battle after a few hours.
OK, so I got pulled into a monty python movie there for a sec - but I actually do think that the gear and levels mechanic needs to be rethought. It pulls the game to the same place every time.

Power creep is the best way to explain what you said. And it's a problem that plagues mmo's now-a-days. It would be nice if they could release expansions without making old content useless/trivializing it I agree. I think many theme park mmos like WoW don't even care at this point. They just keep climbing the ladder of power ignoring everything left behind.

[Lhancelot]

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

Power creep is the best way to explain what you said. And it's a problem that plagues mmo's now-a-days. It would be nice if they could release expansions without making old content useless/trivializing it I agree. I think many theme park mmos like WoW don't even care at this point. They just keep climbing the ladder of power ignoring everything left behind.

They could fix this by instead of creating bigger stats on items which ends up trivializing old items by instead creating new weapons and abilities that work with future content.

Meaning, in the first expansion make it so mobs take damage from frost and swords more than other types of damage. In the next expansion, create a world where mobs are more susceptible to other forms of damage. This is just a simplified example but you get the idea.

They could create new abilities that allowed players to conquer the newer content easier instead of constantly raising the stat bar of the characters and their items. This would allow for older content to still remain relevant as well as giving old weapons and skills/abilities a place to still be useful.

[Necrostoner]

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

They could fix this by instead of creating bigger stats on items which ends up trivializing old items by instead creating new weapons and abilities that work with future content.

Meaning, in the first expansion make it so mobs take damage from frost and swords more than other types of damage. In the next expansion, create a world where mobs are more susceptible to other forms of damage. This is just a simplified example but you get the idea.

They could create new abilities that allowed players to conquer the newer content easier instead of constantly raising the stat bar of the characters and their items. This would allow for older content to still remain relevant as well as giving old weapons and skills/abilities a place to still be useful.

Then you just have the same content and items that just have different resistances. Nothing like doing the same thing over and over. *Cough Everquest cough*