I forgot how mudflated live eq was

[Swish]

keyboard tourettes is a thing

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

Probably a game theorist could calculate how long a mmo, following the usual gear vs encounter progressions, can last before it turns into "looking for ways to milk some more out of this gameworld" mode. I thought Luclin and Pop were fine content (encounter) wise, but the AA system (gear) was weak and clearly was nerfing the game.

It is like a vicious cycle. People want new content, which means new challenges. But they also want char progression, which means more power. Add those two vectors together, you get a spiral of silly encounter mechanics and op'd chars.

mmo game design and players need to make a choice. Do we want new challenges, or new powers?

Luclin and Pop w/o aa's and lvl increases would have been awesome. Probably unbeatable. Therefore unprofitable. But I'd play it.

A note to the p99 devs.....

[Xaanka]

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

i thought WoW was great in TBC until the activision merger, shortly afterward they began adding things like daily quests, tons of badge of justice purchasable items that were better than entry level raid gear, removing and/or dumbing down attunement for raid dungeons, etc.

vanilla had its charm for certain things like the pvp honor system, but a lot of it was really, really poorly designed and i think TBC is when they finally started to figure it all out

never really liked the whole "give anyone with a pulse epics that are 90% as good as end game raid gear" thing either. the 10 man raids were cool tho. wotlk was just too easy, by the time that came out i had every class except shaman full bis or maybe a trinket off from full bis and it was just too easy. ulduar was cool when it first came out, but they were already nerfing it day 1 because people were whining that it was too hard to get a 25 man raid to pass a ~5k dps gear check fight in naxx loot (lol) and it soon became another snoozefest.

[rayeatts]

In my opinion, the worst thing a game creator can do is make the game too easy. If there's no challenge, there's no sense of accomplishment and it's not fun to play.

The second worse thing they can do is introduce real money purchases into the game. This is a no brainer bc all sense of accomplishment goes straight out the window.


I think "maintaining a strong sense of accomplishment" should be a primary goal of any new mmorpg coming out.

[Swish]

^ agree, but they're all at it...gotta keep those profit margins up.

[rayeatts]

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

^ agree, but they're all at it...gotta keep those profit margins up.

Thank god p99 has no profit margins.

[B4EQWASCOOL]

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

never really liked the whole "give anyone with a pulse epics that are 90% as good as end game raid gear" thing either. the 10 man raids were cool tho. wotlk was just too easy, by the time that came out i had every class except shaman full bis or maybe a trinket off from full bis and it was just too easy. ulduar was cool when it first came out, but they were already nerfing it day 1 because people were whining that it was too hard to get a 25 man raid to pass a ~5k dps gear check fight in naxx loot (lol) and it soon became another snoozefest.

Burning crusade heroics were sooooo fun and hard. Good xpac, imo.

[Xaanka]

one of the most challenging moments i've had in any mmo was xfering one of my characters to the lowest pop pvp server at the time in wow & forming a pick up group to kill kael'thas. on a server where he had only been killed once, by a guild who xfered on and had left long ago. everybody in that raid hated each other and nobody on that entire server thought it could be done. there were some really good players hidden on there because the server was empty + on a good battlegroup, but that was about it at the time. no real pve progress on the whole server. they did it on the 2nd attempt after i booted some noob hunter who sent his pet in on astromancer.

[Izmael]

SOE made the mistake of upgrading gear too quickly with new expansions, starting with Kunark (epics).

Instead of making end-of-expansion gear like 200% or 300% better than the end-of-previous-expansion gear, they should have made it maybe 10% or 20% better.

People would still play because we are all EQ crackheads.

Velious and the insane NToV loot is where it started getting completely out of hand.

But there's hope. P99 leaders said they might make custom content (not on red/blue, supposedly on a new server), and hopefully that new custom content/expansion would address these mudflation issues, by making obtainable gear only marginally better than what is obtainable now.

Everyone would still eagerly play the new content I'm sure.

[Jimjam]

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

True. And this is one area where i'd say EQ out did even current MMOs. When Kunark and Velious came out, they added a whole new set of leveling zones to compliment the already existing ones in the old world. (I can't speak on current EQ expansions, but I know the expansion that had the Drakkin race had some new lower level zones to exp in.) Yes, said leveling zones in Kunark/Velious were of a higher difficulty/mobs had higher hp/dps, but that was due to McQuaid being butthurt over his content being cleared too quickly.

That's something we don't even really see in current MMOs. Every WoW expansion is simply new content for going from the previous level cap to the next. Same thing for FFXIV, and almost every other MMO out there.

I rerolled in eq live about 5 years ago with another old EQer friend. We both started Drakkin and followed the level progression in that expansion. Obviously it wasn't the EQ we had known, but it was still really fun, loads of quests, lots of different theme zones and content. Interestingly, using level appropriate gear, we dominated content with our double wizards! Was rather fun AOEing huge swarms of bixies down [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.].

Really the Drakkin expansion and up could have almost been released as a separate sequel to EQ instead.


One thing EQ did experiment with, that somewhat mitigated mudflation, is having areas that focused on different equipment sets. Perhaps one expansion has mobs with low AC so you don't need as much attack to do damage, or even more specific perhaps itemisation for an expansion could include a lot of 'Bane [creature] DMG' or even 'Bane [creature] AC' items, which are useful for that expansion, but of diminished use in other expansions where the [creature] isn't so common.

This allows people to keep playing a character, progress it for that expansion, but also means much of the power gained in that expansion won't follow through to other areas of the game.