Everquest vs Modernity an Adventure through Adversity

[magnetaress]

Originally Posted by Mblake81 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Meridian 59 - High fantasy world, first 3D mmorpg
Ultima Online -the fully online multiplayer version of Ultima mmorpg
Everquest - MUDS & D&D mmorpg
DAoC - King Arthur realms pvp type mmo with less focus on environment.
Shadowbane - Fully pvp, guild vs. guild mmo with less focus on environment.
Starwars Galaxies - star wars franchise theme skill based mmorpg.
Dungeons and Dragons online - forgettable D&D mmo. Little to any RP in my experience there.
WoW - Themepark video game with a focus on quality of life and hiring celebrities to do PC game commercials.

*The first three in the list have the themes I like and that sense of wonder the early game engines can provide, the monsters and the environments.
The same thing holds true for me with the first two Thief 1 & 2. I am not taken by modern game engines with their shiny plastic and clutter for the sake of ultra realism.

Yeah.

This is so hard to communicate to contemporary gamers and developers.

I kinda prefer the wierdness and customness of my own 2cnd edition dnd, i feel like 3rd was good, but it lost touch with something when they went 3r, i havent tried 5e

there are a lot of '2e' style spin offs from other developers that are pretty good so i hear but i never made the friends to play them in real life

I love how Ultima simulated bread making in their single player game, and made it a tedious chore, but it was so rewarding when I started churning out the bread dough.

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Last night in Everquest I did a lot of 'work' for the Coalition of Tradesfolk 'Illicit' it was hours of courier duty, running back and forth, and ensuring the operation ran smoothly. I was richly rewarded by getting to know every player in Freeport and they welcomed me into the fold. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[magnetaress]

I am enjoying how my spiderling silk doesnt stack on green, can we leave it this way?

It is clever to carry around a small sewing kit.

[magnetaress]

So I thot I would test drive EQ2 for a bit between med cycles to see what the city of neriak would look like in the year 2048.

Here are some of my thoughts.

• To much automation
• Everything is a tooltip, you can't figure out how to play without a tooltip telling u how u should play
• To much information on screen
• Glowy shit everywhere with no real in game graphics? Can't disable it? Switch to a low fy dirt pile look?
• Overlysimplification of 'primary stats'
• Bloat of secondary stats
• Lack of realism in game interaction with NPCs and world
• Cartoony feel (yes I know EQ1 is terrible too, but not this bad)
• Inventory bloat... It is quite obvious the inventory was designed for 'later expansion' and purchases...
• A lot of cut and pasted replicated gimmicks in the visual world... the 'rifts' and 'logs' everywhere...

Now some pros

• SOME (definately not all) of the art is definately $$$ worthy and the artists should be rich motherfuckers
• The dialog is a bit more fluffy, better then the wierd [nerdspeech] monologues & paragraphs old NPCquests like EQ and even ultima and BG and planescape torment tended to engage in.
  
• Those elf statues crawling out of the walls of neriak.

[magnetaress]

Later thots as no game has gotten this right...

*Slow down your animation cycles on like everything, hotbars shouldnt flash at 170hz.. try 5hz... make that lil sword icon spin a lil slower and smoother
*pace npcs a bit, sometimes stuff feels a bit rushed, sped up, hyper, make them breath slower, make them take a bit longer to stand up... randomize some of this with several different kinds of animations...

(in otherwords programmers all design stuff that looks like it is overdosing on meth? Coincidence?)

[magnetaress]

*players need to be able to get lost and confused in the world don't hand them stuff on a silver platter it is hard to fall in love with waypoints and 'tubes'
***it is easy to fall in love with neriak and its dark corners once you've spent a day wandering around it, add some nice details to discover and it becomes even more charming and homey
*get rid of in game maps, players should be making their own real tangible maps and notebooks

[magnetaress]

I feel like EQ2 has a lot of the EQ1 engine elements, but it was upgraded with some of 'second lifes' QoL ideas, I feel like the designers probably drew inspiration from one or the other, but didn't think about how this would emotionally impact the players.

Convenience is the bane of life, once everything becomes easy, it all blurrs together and then you are just a skeleton sitting in front of a computer for archaeologists to find.

[Rick Sanchez]

OP has wayyy to much time on his hands.

[magnetaress]

A prime example of how modern convenience and quality of life disrupts immersion and connection towards the world and ones character and characters profession.

In EQ2 a ranger goes out to harvest some wood to craft some arrows... immediately they click on a glowing log on the ground and the wood chips get automatically sorted into their 'wood carrying bag' the ranger doesn't have an axe, the character 'magically animates with one'.

The proper way to do this is to make the character fumble around in the dark in the newbie city, perhaps even going through several areas and find the smith or lumberjacks or a npc or even player lumberjack and discover they need to purchase an axe to chop wood. The wood goes into their bag but takes up space, and needs to be sorted around once they find a way to harvest it from something, or they kill treants or whatever that drop wood.

Now, there are a few ways this can be enhanced, a fletcher who is a blacksmith can create an iron axe which, maybe harvests 5% faster, but there is no tooltip that says this, the axe just feels better and maybe a smart player can count down how long it takes to get some wood. Even better maybe there is some slight randomness in this and a player can craft an exceptionally nice iron axe that chops at like 8% speed, yes this is minecraft without the tooltips and voxels now. Now later on more complicated processes can exist for 'steel axes' and players can trade for these on the player run market, npcs shouldn't be handing these out for free or quest rewards or 2cp. Players should be a better source for this stuff then the NPCs and at best npcs should hand out maybe the most basic equipment.

[magnetaress]

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

OP has wayyy to much time on his hands.

Perhaps but at least I am not spending it thinking of pornstar character names.

[magnetaress]

This thread is my new manifesto, maybe one day I will be 80 yrs old and ascend to Brads heavenly realm and this will bear fruit and multiply.