RPG Progress Report

[Ack]

What you call boring, I call hitting things with a weapon until they're a quivering pile of mush that I can then stomp on as desired while laughing gleefully.

I like party tank for a reason.

[Exhuminator]

I like party tank for a reason.

I'm well aware of your impetus. You'd be my first pick for a front line marauder.

[TheSSNintendo]

Made it to Bowser's Castle last night in Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Moving really slowly in Mother as I've been busy. Just arriving at the zoo. Party consists solely of Ness oops I mean Ninten.

I remember beating this game many years ago and my sis-in-law saying "Hey that's the guy from Smash Bros.!"

[BogusMeatFactory]

I've been playing some vanilla everquest. Spent a good 15 to 20 hours and got to level 12 with my bard. I have been hunting in qeynos hills for a while and am ready to move on into more difficult territory but hit a snag as my gear is not up to snuff. I spent this evening hunting rabid wolves and bears for the clerics of qeynos, turning their pelts in for platinum to save up for a set of banded crafted gear. I just saved up enough and put a call out to the guild I belong to for help in making it.

Speaking of which, the guild I am with is a diehard group of traditionalists. Most folks powerlevel their characters to at least 30 and platinum and overpowered gear is thrown around like candy, making a huge swathe of the world untraversed because of this cornucopia of free stuff. This guild however believes in experiencing the full content of the game as it was intended.

Players can only trade within the guild in their own closed economy, not giving in to these bloated prices. Also, gear has to be earned, meaning anything purchased must fit within the level range of your character's and grouping must be with others within a level range as well.

This makes the game much more interesting as you have to actually work for your equipment and that requires exploring so much of the world that people ignore in favor of raid-only content. I am getting the full experience which is exactly what I am looking for.

[MrPopo]

This makes the game much more interesting as you have to actually work for your equipment and that requires exploring so much of the world that people ignore in favor of raid-only content. I am getting the full experience which is exactly what I am looking for.

It's not the full Everquest experience until the phone tree wakes you up at 3am so you can beat another guild to the world spawn and then not have it drop the item you're looking for.

[BogusMeatFactory]

This makes the game much more interesting as you have to actually work for your equipment and that requires exploring so much of the world that people ignore in favor of raid-only content. I am getting the full experience which is exactly what I am looking for.

It's not the full Everquest experience until the phone tree wakes you up at 3am so you can beat another guild to the world spawn and then not have it drop the item you're looking for.

Not taking part in that nonsense. There are 4 guilds that care about that in vanilla everquest and this is not one of them thankfully.

[isiolia]

Speaking of which, the guild I am with is a diehard group of traditionalists. Most folks powerlevel their characters to at least 30 and platinum and overpowered gear is thrown around like candy, making a huge swathe of the world untraversed because of this cornucopia of free stuff. This guild however believes in experiencing the full content of the game as it was intended.

To me, a caveat to part of that (for MMOs in general, I haven't played EQ specifically) is that the designs tend to have ulterior motives. Or, at least, were influenced by the state of the game when implemented. That's why they get streamlined later, so that new or returning players don't need to grind for months or years to get to remotely current content (or even see the stuff in between). I'm not usually sold on the "as intended" thing, since a lot of the intent in the original design was to keep players busy and paying a subscription fee between content additions.

[BogusMeatFactory]

Speaking of which, the guild I am with is a diehard group of traditionalists. Most folks powerlevel their characters to at least 30 and platinum and overpowered gear is thrown around like candy, making a huge swathe of the world untraversed because of this cornucopia of free stuff. This guild however believes in experiencing the full content of the game as it was intended.

To me, a caveat to part of that (for MMOs in general, I haven't played EQ specifically) is that the designs tend to have ulterior motives. Or, at least, were influenced by the state of the game when implemented. That's why they get streamlined later, so that new or returning players don't need to grind for months or years to get to remotely current content (or even see the stuff in between). I'm not usually sold on the "as intended" thing, since a lot of the intent in the original design was to keep players busy and paying a subscription fee between content additions.

You bring up an interesting point and I personally feel that that is a huge misnomer about the genre. In just 2 weeks time, I've been able to get my character to level 12 with zero assistance. I've also been able to afford gear that will last me until around level 25. Although leveling takes time and genuine effort in everquest, I never felt that it was implemented in a way to milk money from players. The game is really a huge amount of content that was always changing and growing rapidly because of the subscription base.

Modern MMOs have zero challenge to them. Enemies and areas are built so that the challenge is always baseline. Fighting a level 1 enemy at level 1 feels the same as fighting a level 20 enemy at level 20. Raid content changes that up, but the pve elements are severely lacking in the genre.

In Everquest, that experience is constantly changing. As I progress, you feel a distinct change in challenge and approach. Some enemies use status effects that can severely hinder you. Enemies can blind you making your screen go dark, cause you to run in fear and so much more.

Also as you level, new spells ability and gear completely change how you play. You feel discernable tiers of difficulty that you surmount when you learn a new spell that it is relieving.

Modern MMOs use social quality of life mechanics that do hurt the social experience. Linear zone progression is horrible for me. I hate being in a zone knowing that everything there I can kill if I am that level range. In everquest, some zones have enemies ranging from 1-50 and force you to be aware of your surroundings.

Having cities spread out in a natural world building style also encourages players to play a variety of races. Now instead of there being a good and bad race zone progression, each individual race has their own unique areas to progress from level 1 to 30.

I rant, I know, but let me talk about the most thrilling thing for me. When you start, your first task is finding your class training hall. Most classes are easy to find, but if you are a rogue, it is a puzzle in and of itself.

In qeynos, to find your rogue guild hall, you need to go to a run down bar, find a secret passage and avoid traps to get there. To me that is brilliant.

You can be an evil race/class and be in these good cities by sneaking through sewers where evil trainers and guilds hide out and they are part of an overarching story. They have context and aren't just places randomly because players need trainers.

The bard guild hall in qeynos has a stage and npcs talking about refining their craft. performing songs and dancing jigs and being the eyes and ears for the city.

I could go on forever about it, but the fact of the matter is, a lot of quality of life features in an mmo dilute the experience and streamline it, sure, but at the cost of fun and exploration.

[isiolia]

There are things about post-WoW MMO design that fail to hook me for the long term as well, though I don't tend to dislike the basic PVE. From what I've played of some of them, there are still the huge game worlds with a ton of detail and fun things to find. That's kind of a whole different can of worms though.

The vast majority of my playtime is in FFXI, which is EQ derived. It doesn't have the same PVP type elements, because Japan, but it's got plenty of similarly obtuse quests and mechanics, and delights in explaining practically nothing. By design. To foster community. Initial leveling and exploring, for me, was pretty slow. Over time, a lot of that got eased, with similar "handouts" these days.

I see it less as exploiting players at any particular time, and more balancing for total content available. Expecting new players to spend the same years raising up their characters that older player have is unreasonable. There's a lot of ground to make up to be able to get into newer content, which might be what they haven't seen yet, or simply where most of the playerbase is.
I don't know how your EQ leveling would compare, but given that the game is 18 years old with something like 20 expansions to it...I'd assume it'd take quite a while to get through it at your current pace.

The slower, earlier iterations might be what people get nostalgic for though. I know that's kind of the direction a lot of FFXI private servers have gone. I just don't tend to agree with any particular version being what it was "intended" as necessarily. As you mentioned, the genre adapts over time, and that unfortunately does tend to result in older areas/content getting glossed over.
If the alternative is an expectation that any newer character is going to take years to build up though, then I think it's a reasonable tradeoff.