So we lost track of this one..

Hypothesis:

The timing of expansion release has been coordinated around the premiere gamers ability to move through content.

Supporting arguments!

Um..since Velious the "next" expansion has coincided closely with most servers having 1 or 2 guilds beat the current expansion

Sony DOESN'T make the majority(margin) of their money through expansions, they make them through subscriptions. Subscriptions dont have a development cost, low maintence cost etc..

It was cancelled subscriptions that pushed the release of the next expansion. That affirms the above theory.

It's a common mis-step of corporations to listen to the squeaky wheels. The premier gamers are the squeakiest of EQ's squeekies. Thus sony would be highly aware of the squeekers progress through their games AND most fearful of losing them from a subscription perspective.

It wasn't poor sales of GoD or even Loy that cuased Sony to re-evaluate their expansion release plans it was the loss of subscriptions. (to which we should thank the premieres)



Conclusion

Premier gamers obsessive desire to burn thorugh content forces Sony through their own incompetence and mismanagement to push unfinished product through the door. Premiere gamers used to be willing to test this product for sony so Sony rightfully , took adavantage of this.

discuss

oh yeah. reminding us over and over again you retired is still lame.

Mobflation, mudflation, zoneflation killed the game.

You cry of mismanagement. I think the opposite.

Those things are inevitable for games such as these. And they were able to manage them for 4+ years for me, 5+ for others.

If you asked me 5 years ago, if I would play a video game for 6 months(let alone 4 years), I would have laughed at you(probably would have poured my beer on your head too).

The PoP expansion was a singular deathknell to the game. Forged by the destruction of casual/family style guilds in favor of flagging(prior to PoP even casual guilds were raiding guilds) guilds. But it was but a bump in the road of inevitability.

In a perfect game a singular guild device would be obsolete. For in RL I belong to many different groups, with different agendas. Why the forced limitation of one guild membership? If tonight I am content with playing with this group of friends, and tomorrow night another, why not? Channels eventually made that possible, but was always kludgy at best.

"The timing of expansion release has been coordinated around the premiere gamers"

Why would this be an issue? Your so-called premiere gamers are usually the most passionate, and they certainly have player clout. They are an aspect of game development that can not be ignored, regardless the game.

well mudflation techincally allows those casual people the ability to continue through what at one point is zone for the elite only. OS io dont know if i totally buy that. And mudflation does nothing for the premies ability in the current expansion.

I agree as mudflation has ruined much of the flavor of the game for me personally but i dont think it can be attributed to what you say as far as being the demise of the casual guild.

Again, this is more about GoD and the ramifications of putting GoD out when they did. They released PoP and Luclin with the same timing.

Thjink of it differently as well..If Quarm was still undefeated. Would there be a need for GoD.

LDoN iis sort of a different animal so i dont iunclude it in the picture.

Your realization that SOE tunes and developed the game for the group of people who consumed content the fastest may be news to you.

But I realized that as I hit level 20 on my first char.

I don't really think that it is news to all that many people here, at least.

I don't really think that it was/is a bad thing to do for the long term success of the game either.

I think, to paraphrase my previous post, that the longer that they(any game developer) can mitigate the inevitability of the 3 major ills of any game like this, the longer the game will last.

And, balancing the consumption of content from the so-called premiere players is a part of that. The reason why I mentioned PoP specifically, because in my judgement it was very bad balancing.

It should also be noted that for the last few expansions, guilds were starting to complete the expansion only when Sony let them (by retuning encounters to make them possible, fixing bugs, etc.) Release dates weren't set in direct response to natural completion of expansions; instead the timing of content fixing/retuning led guilds to complete an expansion shortly before the release of the next one.

Powergamers ruined EQ...... Powergamers helped EQ more then they ruined it. Countless fixes and stuff you use right now was the brain child of these powergamers.

And to echo Palarran, yep SoE let these people beat a area when SoE was ready for it. Many encounters was unkillable, till SoE wanted them dead. And they still do it to this day.

The only thing that ruined EQ in my mind is SoE. They turned EQ into dollar signs, and forgot what mattered. SoE cut the CS staff. SoE cut the GM staff. SoE didn't test products before they released them.

While yes, your post has some truth in it. Powergamers are hard to keep up with. However to blame them for a ****ty product is just out there. Powergamers want to enjoy the content just like everyone else. How many powerguilds out there still enjoy the content? The list grows smaller everyday. Afterlife, one of the well know powergamers/guilds left. Why? Sick of crappy content.

y EQ fix? Move EQ 1 toons to EQ2, after a certain quest in EQ1 is completed. Design EQ2 to handle this. You move naked, just level. Yes you lose everything AA wise you earned in EQ1. Big deal, all games die someday. I know afew games who have does this and guess what....It worked.

Eveyrone bitchs about mudflation, but its inevitable, and i've yet to see agood idea to replace it, slow it down possibly, but really not that much could happen, progression has to go on or people quit, and progression has to be signicent enough to make it worthwhile, there are only so many ways to advance characters that are somewhat meaningful w/o making class balance worse, or further blend the class's.

oh ya re powergamers ruining eq because they release next expack after people beat the previous?

Errm, people were in VT for how many months befor pop came out? Time was what 6+ months for some guilds before GOD?

The fault is partly with the uberguilds and partly with the game designers for pandering to them. If people are playing for 6 hours a day for 7 days a week, specifically trying to exhaust content, then it's an unenviable task to design content that satisifies both them and the casual player. You only need to see the criticism about GoD and LDoN from the two ends of the spectrum. Sony should really have let the top 2% just get bored and designed for the 98%.

All the stuff about uberguilds finding the bugs first and helping game design is really a load of hogswash. Someone sometime would have found the bugs and the result would have been much the same, uber guild player or not.

hmmm "power gamers" are to blame for wanting challenging bug free content ?

So what your basicaly implying is that non high end content raiding people have the right to play the game as they see fit but we don't ?

If someone wants to race through content let them, if someone doesn't that's fine.

But I fail to see why SoEs reaction to the player base progression is the fault of any section of the player base.

Well... I think its more like SOE's response to power gamers that ruined the game. They could have choosen to respond otherwise and taken a different strategy to develope the game. But they didn't and so here you are. I railed against it for quite awhile, finally accept it as fait accomplish and quit. I don't think SOE is going to change anything.

What Rahjeir said. All of it. =)

I don't think mudflation is innevitable. The issue is one of goal setting. The players' goals should not remain the same throughout the life of a game. Initial goals should be advancement through equipment and leveling. There have to be other avenues for advancement once the initial goals are completed. Tradeskills are an attempt at this. I think it would be interesting to see EQ with some remort system that adds utility but not necessarily increased power (access to a wider array of skills/abilities, not more powerful skills/abilities). Guild competition, much maligned in this thread, is another avenue for max-level/max-eq players to take. Instead of adding bigger mobs/better drops, though, they should just be adding strategical challenges.

When the main goals of a game remain leveling and acquisition of "better" equipment, as they do in EQ, continued interest demands continued inflation.

I think it would be interesting to see EQ with some remort system

Very much agree, and I personally believe that this is the only resolution. I've been waiting for a remort system to get implemented since I left the MuD I was playing on over at Abandoned Fate. It just makes sense to me. You keep people on the virtual treadmill all the while giving them more of what they like, same exact thing that kept them in the game the first time around. Alts are nice and all, but I'd like to have a remort character.

If, like me, you weren't sure what a remort system is: check this out (http://www.mud.co.uk/dvw/whatisremort.html)

Some games remort into other basic classes to form multi-class characters. You retain your skills/spells, but they are still restricted to whatever level is the lowest of your current classes. For example, you remort a level 65 Pal as a multi-class Pal/Cle, you would still have all your Pal spells in your book, but they would be restricted from memorization until you reach the lowest level the spell could be memmed between Pal and Cle. Additionally, some games allow continued remorting until you're multi-classed in every class. So you could potentially have access to every skill/spell/ability/AA in the game. None of them would be more powerful than they normally are, but you'd be able to sub for any base class equally (Tank when needed, CH when needed, port when needed...etc).

Another way some games handle it is basically a prestige class system. You remort into a completely different class that is "better" than any base class. Many times the results for this system are identical to the one described above, since the prestige classes are generally combinations of base class skills/spells/abilities...etc. However, this system is a bit harder to balance since the players tend to demand more powerful spells/abilities in a class that is supposed to be "better".

Yet another way to handle remorting is to start a player over but give them a stat bonus per level (increased hp, increased mana...etc) so that they are more powerful than a non-remort version of their class by default. This usually completely unbalances the game as content must be constantly increased to pose a challenge to the remorts, and older content has to be protected from abuse by the remorted.

I personally prefer the first system. It's easier for balance for the developers, since each skill/spell/ability has already been balanced for it's respective class. It's also easy to understand from a player's perspective what they're getting when they choose how to remort. I think it would be best done with an increasing experience penalty per additional class so that it becomes progressively harder to reach max level as you remort each time.

Sony DOESN'T make the majority(margin) of their money through expansions, they make them through subscriptions. Subscriptions dont have a development cost, low maintence cost etc..
No, expansions aren't the major revenue, but two expansions in 5 months... perhaps a third in December... $30.00 a pop... that's roughly an additional 1/2 year's revenue if you also include the year's first time game purchases. (and let's not forget that virtual windfall of transferring characters and buying name changes as revenue sources as well, but that's a different issue)
Um..since Velious the "next" expansion has coincided closely with most servers having 1 or 2 guilds beat the current expansionUm.... let's be more honest about this one. The ubers were breathing down SOE's neck in the original game with Vox and Naggy, in Kunark with VP, in Velious with ST, in Luclin it was VT, in PoP it was Time... How many of these actually were finished AFTER the uberguilds started ranting about unfinished expansions? The "coinciding" was not with the ubers' ability to defeat, but more coinciding with the expansion being closer to completion sometimes many months after it's release. If expansion releases were a direct result of uber abilities, there would be a good 5 or 6 more expansion releases between the start and now.

The timing of major revenue releases is planned by companies like SOE at least a year in advance. Some discussion about it has probably taken place even two to five years prior, but the number of expansions starts to take shape about 1/2 of the way through a fiscal year and is usually finalized in the form of a board approved budget by the last quarter of a fiscal year. Yes the number is based around the speed of content consumption, but should be planned around the company's ability to MEET the goals they set for themselves.

Companies as large as SOE can't turn on a dime because of all the red tape that they have to go through to make any change at all (meetings, "selling" ideas to upper management, gearing up for change, etc). It's amazing to me that SOE was able to plan and execute "the summit" as fast as they did. It leads me to think that they had a "contingency plan" worked out long ago. Delaying a planned release as Smedley did is something that often results in a manager being fired. It's quite possible that he has the latitude to do "knee jerk" reactions as long as he can rally the numbers to be on plan by the budget year's end. (Hmm... what was that most recent game entry poll again??)

It's not uber guilds or players that set the company's financial goals, however the goals logically would be set around the group that offers the most to the company if they are retained as customers... "more bang for the buck" so to speak. Uber players help SOE "tweak" content to make it more playable for all who follow. Who wins if ubers don't say a thing about game issues and simply stop playing? No one! They whine, complain, analyze and fight with the devs so that others don't have to. They serve to help SOE "dangle the carrot"... to publish all the uber item links that make other players drool. They work out strats that get passed down making encounters more doable by the other players. How interested in PoTime would anyone have been if it hadn't been found? Or Vex Thal? What incentive would the average player have to play the game if he didn't know that anything special lay ahead of him?

It's not perfect, but it isn't that different from real life. "Winning" for many means the most money, fastest cars... the best of everything that one can have. Many who aren't "winners" WANT to be and that gives them drive to find ways to make more money. Others couldn't care less about material items and work for the more spiritual rewards. Regardless, the "goal setters" in our world are those who have something the rest of us want, be it the best "stuff" or the greatest spiritual reward.

I believe expansions and "box sales" are a major source of income for SOE. I don't know if its more than the monthly charges or not.

As far as whether or not SOE designed the game around ubers because it made financial sense... I dunno. Companies don't always do things that make sense, financial or otherwise. Maybe they looked to the ones on the bleeding edge of the game, not necessarily that they're the majority of the players but because they were more organized and easier to figure out what they wanted. Or maybe the game direction was lead by the developers who were uber game players. Whatever, they decided to go in the direction of long, large raids and change the focus of the game from what it started out as.

aybe their counting on mudflation to help the casual players advance in the game, albeit many expansions behind the more uber counterparts.

Whatever it was, I personally didn't like the result. I felt like I was buying 1/4 of an expansion most of the time.

What I would actually like to see is a mixed remort system. This would involve the introduction of archetypes, which are already in place. It would require earning a certain level and completing an epic type quest. Once remorted you have the chance of choosing another class in your archetype, or possible in your armor type. There would be a significant exp penalty and once you complete the max level in the remort you become a new class entirely, with certain benefits, AA, etc. I really don't see why it hasn't been done yet as it would pretty much restart the game for most of us and open up a whole new outlook on playstyles, strategy etc.

Expansions were inevitable as players reached the limits of the game. Kunark was needed when servers had to set up waiting lists and rotations for dragons. The problem was the Mob/Mud/etc-flation. Instead of increasing levels, mob levels, quadupleing the drops etc. An expansion could have expanded upon current content. Instead of Kunark they could have just as easily opened up Surefall, Pineal, Warrens, etc of content up to lv 50. We are now up to lv 65 (soon 70) and all of that real estate is now swampland instead of prime real estate.

I've always supported a 'remort' idea without knowing what it was. I'd go even further and suggest that when experienced players restart they should find actually the game harder and play weaker characters which can eventually become more powerful after developing properly. This puts challenge back into the game which is something all players look forward too, I hope.

I don't think mudflation is innevitable.

There are only a few ways to prevent it.

1) Item decay or unrenewable charges
2) Upkeep costs which will scale throughout the life of the game
3) or All items are no-drop

Players have consistantly rejected those options. If you can think of another one that works let me know. If you can convince 500 thousand players to eat one of them, you should be on the dev team of that next new game.

Whenever you have a game with persistant characters, whose players wish to advance and develop those characters, you will have this. I don't know how it can ever be escaped.

As I've already stated, alternative advancement is the key to stopping mudflation. If you're restricting your statement to the monetary system (which is only one part of what we're talking about when we say 'mudflation'), there are other ways to combat it. One that has had success in the text-based world is a hard-limit to the economy with the amount available based on player base and with taxation scaled upward based on a players current net worth. Taxes would then be reinjected into the economy via mob drops. The total amount of money in existance would never change, thus, no inflation.

Remember old DnD?

You could not just walk into Town and buy a +10 Longsword of dingo death.

You had to go find it in a treasuer hoard. And you COULD buy potions and Rezes and stuff like that but it got DAM expensive at later lvls and you had to buy them from a Temple.

I dont see what the problem with this would be. Sure you can buy normal stuff at stores in the town , food, clothing, regular armor etc..

but the really GOOD stuff should all be No Drop. At least IMHO

Mudflation is the deflation of the value of goods. The economy, and the negative way that it runs in a closed system.

Say the first pair of Split Paw Gloves sell for 200 plat. 1 year later, because of saturation and progression, you can not give them away.



obflation is the overall trend of monsters becoming stronger, and thus players becoming stronger. Trivializing encounters. Immortal or superhero players, god mobs.

That one is less inevitable than mudflation. Because all it would mean to solve it would be good AI. Or possibly human control, randomly, of boss mobs(take AI completely out of the loop).

If your monsters fought smarter, they would not have to hit harder. But in the polls I have posted in the past, most players do not like that idea, not one bit. If I were a monster, the first thing I would do is knock the **** out of your clerics, then your casters. Kill them all, mop up the tanks in the end. Would you want a mob to run at 95%? Cast spells with the same rules that players do. Mobs that rez other mobs. Mobs that raid players. Just like players do. Do you want that discrimination with the AI of your mobs? Most players, in the past, have rejected this proposal.

Well, I disagree on the definition of mudflation. When you say 'mud' anything, you refer to the entire game. If not, there would be no reason to invent another word, since inflation already means, at least in common usage, what you stated as the definition for mudflation. In my definition, mudflation encompasses mobflation and inflation.

"but the really GOOD stuff should all be No Drop."

1) You totally destroy ANY semblance of player economy when you do that.
You end up like we did with players having million plat bank accounts and nothing to buy.

2) It is a hack, just like Trivial Loot Code is a hack
It is unrealistic. In DND we had cursed item(that you could not drop), but if I want to set my +9 Ogre Slaying Knife on the table, why shouldn't I be able to? I know it is a fantasy setting, but if you want immersion; well, it is just a hack.

"mudflation encompasses mobflation and inflation"

I understand now. That you combine the two. Fair enough, they are obviously directly linked.

But it is deflation not inflation which occurs.

If the price of a house goes from 100k to 200k, that is inflation.
If the price of bread goes from 1 buck to 2, that is inflation.
Price of gas, goes from 75 cents to 2.25, that is inflation.

When it drops in price, that is deflation. That is what occurs in a closed economic system. One of the reasons I use the term like I do, denotes the negative aspect of economy. For as some will note, it can be considered GOOD by some, that my first pair of Split Paw Gloves were just given to them for free. But for the overall health of a persistant game, it is not.

This thread is useless as the other one :p

I don't think so. I learned what remort is.

I think it's a stupid idea, but I learned something.

I just think it's funny that because it's a game, people can't see it as a business. It's voodoo magic or "power" players who are to blame.

Personally I blame the "casual" gamers. If they weren't around everything could simply be tuned to the upper levels. :D

Yeah... you'd have to pay 150 a month to play though. =)

Yeah... you'd have to pay 150 a month to play though. =)Problem solved! No one would play, no complaints, no balancing, no mean CS reps.

The down side...
9 months later 50k** babies are born!

**edited from 1 million given the newest figures. Sorry Gneaus but now you'll have time to smoke a few cigarettes in between!

If your monsters fought smarter, they would not have to hit harder. But in the polls I have posted in the past, most players do not like that idea, not one bit. If I were a monster, the first thing I would do is knock the **** out of your clerics, then your casters. Kill them all, mop up the tanks in the end. Would you want a mob to run at 95%? Cast spells with the same rules that players do. Mobs that rez other mobs. Mobs that raid players. Just like players do. Do you want that discrimination with the AI of your mobs? Most players, in the past, have rejected this proposal.

This is exactly what I want. In fact, I volunteer my services to SOE to help program the AI for this. It would be a blast :D

Vestix
63 programming druid of Tunare

I volunteer my services to SOE to help program the AI for this.


bah, rethink that. I volunteer my services to help make those 1 million babies that are going to be born when EQ ends.
:)

Hrm... Thanks for letting me know that EQ was ruined. Here I was having a good time playing and everything and never even realized that players and guilds like mine had ruined the game.

Sure, the game isn't perfect... Sure Sony (like every other company out there, surprise, surprise) is looking to make money. And I'll even go so far as to say that it was damn annoying to be unable to complete certain events in GoD because they were screwed up and being patched every couple of days.

But you know what? If you aren't a "premiere gamer" as you put it, why do you even care that the highest level events in the game are a little buggy. If you aren't the one "burning thru content" then you shouldn't even notice.

By the same token, maybe there is non-end game stuff that isn't working right that is bugging you that I don't know/care about. If SOE spends time fixing that should I come here and cry that casual gamers ruined EQ because SOE isn't spending all of their time catering the my guild's needs?

If you lothe the game and the company so much why do you insist on playing and giving them your money?

If you aren't a "premiere gamer" as you put it, why do you even care that the highest level events in the game are a little buggy.

We don't care about that at all, other than wanting good overall quality game design for players from Sony. We care that high end content is going to be designed to be so labourious that it takes a high end guilds months to complete. This means it's going to take a guild of casual gamers years to complete when we finally get there. You know that backflagging a guild of committed high attendance players is a massive pain in the neck. Imagine how bad is it for a guild a low attendance players who are loathe to share account details and multiple box characters?

If you lothe the game and the company so much why do you insist on playing and giving them your money?

Well a lot of players are cancelling accounts at the moment. A lot of them are posting on these boards too.

Sekira,

I too, don't buy the "we found the bugs for you" thing.

But, and many may disagree with me, what they do do is set up a "Hey, I want to do that too" environment. And that was very important for me, at least, as a player.

When Soandso first did the dino in OOT solo.
"Me too, I wanna do that"
When Soandso did the epic
"Me too, I wanna do that"
Soandso quadded specs or raptors
"Me too, I wanna do that"
Soandso got a Lightning Stick in Seb
"Me too, oh I need to farm for a key, um ok, I will do that"
Soandso got full SS
"I want that, oh I need hella faction, and key parts, um ok, I will do that"
Soandso goes to PoP
"I want to do that,,,,huh, I gotta get flagged first?, I don't wanna do that but I will". "What can I do with a flag?, I don't want a flag". "Ok, twist my arm, I will get the flags", "oh, I have to leave my existing guild and join one that can even get flags, this sucks".

Catering to the premiere player is not a bad thing.
How it happens can be, and was. For me.

Arbitrary and capricious timesinks, preventing me from content, are a bad thing. At least for holding player's, like me, attention.

I don't want to farm all day for 10 stupid and worthless shards to get to go somewhere and do something that I want to do. And I lost interest before the instanced content was playable.

The premiere players get to say(hopefully to themselves).
"Hey, I(we) was(were) first, cool"
The rest get to say
"Hey cool, me too."

And there is nothing wrong with that. In fact it is vital to the overall health of any game like this.

But Fyrr, I didn't want to camp 10 shards all day long either. And back when I was working on getting into VT, the zone was empty and the quest to get it didn't exist/didn't work.

There is content added to the game that both ends of the spectrum could claim is unusable by them because it doesn't mesh well with their playstyle. In GoD, Uqua, Qvic, and beyond are by design a currently raid-only guild realm (note the currently... the same thing was true of the Elemental planes in PoP now people are /lfg there fairly often). On the other hand, the very large number of changes for newly created characters and for lower level characters don't provide any value to the high-end raid crowd either.

It is a fact of live that high-end raiding guilds exist in EQ. If everything was made so that smaller guilds and casual players could complete the same events then *all* of the content in a new expansion would be burned thru by the top 3-4 guilds on each server the week the expansion came out. Not all content can be experienced by everyone. That is just something that people need to accept, and I don't find it to be unreasonable.

It is a fact of live that high-end raiding guilds exist in EQ. If everything was made so that smaller guilds and casual players could complete the same events then *all* of the content in a new expansion would be burned thru by the top 3-4 guilds on each server the week the expansion came out. Not all content can be experienced by everyone. That is just something that people need to accept, and I don't find it to be unreasonable.

Well, to be fair I think that all content can be experienced by most people, it's just a matter of when.

Not all content can be experienced by everyone when it is introduced in the game.
That is a better way to put it :)

Horizons has both multi class and prestige classes. I like the way paladins are, for instance, as they are a prestige class. The only thing that would make it better is if you had to do several quests to "prove" your paladinship.

Anyway, if done right, remorting seems to be popular.

It is a fact of live that high-end raiding guilds exist in EQ. If everything was made so that smaller guilds and casual players could complete the same events then *all* of the content in a new expansion would be burned thru by the top 3-4 guilds on each server the week the expansion came out. Not all content can be experienced by everyone. That is just something that people need to accept, and I don't find it to be unreasonable.

Ah, you have fallen victim to equating casual with lazy. Something that gets flames started.

I beleive all content is doable if given enough time and if done right. Raids in EQ are not done right. The non lazy casuals, or the better term, time restricted players, have all the capability of any raider but they don't have all the time. Therefore they reach a brick wall as content is constantly denied them because of long spawn times coupled with ease of killing the content by those who have gone before.

Powergamers didn't ruin Everquest, mudflation entails all aspects as I understand it, and if by remort you mean changing into a class already in game what's the point? Most people have already played a bunch of classes other than their primary.

The point is having multiple classes worth of skills/spells at a single character's disposal. It makes a huge difference in utility. It's also been hugely successful in other online games over the past decade. It's a proven way to keep people interested.

Ah, you have fallen victim to equating casual with lazy. Something that gets flames started.

No, I haven't. I didn't say that at all and if you need to imply that I have in order to make your argument work, then your argument is invalid. If you really want to flame me for something I didn't say, I guess there isn't much I can do about that :P

I beleive all content is doable if given enough time and if done right.

Keep this in mind, because you are about to contradict yourself. Also, just because you "believe" something should be a certain way doesn't mean everyone agrees with you or that it is the way things should be.

Raids in EQ are not done right.

Do you really mean that raids in EQ are not structured to support exactly your style of play while garnering the rewards gained by those who are able to exercise a different, more intensive, style of play? Obviously *some* people are raiding, so it isn't like they are not "done right" for everyone.

The non lazy casuals, or the better term, time restricted players, have all the capability of any raider but they don't have all the time.

And therein lies the problem. You state above that, given time, the "casual" player can do everything the raider can do, but that they don't have the time. I would think that would lead you down a very simple logic chain...

You also can't expect to equate the same number of hours spread out over a week or two to a single play session. Overhead, organization, and whatever else is going on all limit the effectiveness of short play sessions.

Nowhere am I saying that I don't want "time restricted" players to enjoy EQ. Far from it. All I am saying is that there are activities that "time restricted" players can enjoy and their are activities that people who play considerably more can enjoy and they CAN'T be the same things if they are going to provide any sort of challenge to the raid-type player. I would love to see solo-LDoN implemented... I'd utilize it myself when I had a little time to log on but not enough to get involved in somehing major.

Therefore they reach a brick wall as content is constantly denied them because of long spawn times coupled with ease of killing the content by those who have gone before.

The high-end raiding guilds that are now doing Inktu'ta (ok so I can't spell GoD zone names either) are, probably without exception, not the ones killing Veeshan's Peak, Vex Thall, Sleepers Tomb, Seru, SSra, most all of PoP (PoTime is semi-instanced so that isn't really an issue either), etc, etc, etc, etc. Trust me... Guilds HATE back flagging.

That's a real blurring of class lines though. Might as well not have any 'set' classes at that point. It would probably create a nightmare for balancing content/encounters also.

Actually, it doesn't present that much of a problem. You have a limited amount of mana and a limited way to use your skills. You can't tank and backstab, you can't chain nuke if you're chain CH'ing. You would be incrementally more powerful, yet it would only be a tiny fraction of the current difference between, for instance, ornate and elemental equipped characters. It would, in some instances, reduce requirements for encounters to lower numbers of players. It introduces a large amount of new strategy to be explored and makes it easier to play the game with reduced numbers of players (which is the present reality).

Nowhere am I saying that I don't want "time restricted" players to enjoy EQ. Far from it. All I am saying is that there are activities that "time restricted" players can enjoy and their are activities that people who play considerably more can enjoy and they CAN'T be the same things if they are going to provide any sort of challenge to the raid-type player.

Bull****. They can be the same things and still be challegning.

TIMESINKS != CHALLENGE (!= is "does not equal" for the non-coders)

TIMESINKS != CHALLENGE Repeated and bolded for emphasis. The length of time you have available to sit on your ass in front of a computer should never, ever, ever be the sole reason you get access to more difficult and more rewarding content. That reasoning is friggin' bull**** and elitist.

I have zero, zip, nada, zilch, no respect for all the lame uber goobers that claim they're so much better than me or people like me that can't or won't waste their time with the pathetic timesinks in the game. Get that... no respect whatsoever. People like you only earn my derision, Sekira.

Now if the challenge of the encounter was the only thing seperating me from you... then yes, I would have respect for the uber goobers that beat that encounter. Suffering through pathetic and lame timesinks will not earn my respect. Only my pity because you're so short sighted to see what a waste of time it is. Your greed for bigger numbers blinds you to what should be the real point of the game.

Pride. Enjoyment. A sense of accomplishment. I don't get those things from doing stupid quests for a silly key. I could design a much better quest for Vex Thal entry than the craptastic shard farming. I could design it so that you had to know what you were doing and be on the top of your game to gain entry. If all the "uber" zones like Vex Thal were accessible via challenging encounters and not stupid timesinks, than I might respect the ubers. It would depend on their attitutude about it.

Do you really mean that raids in EQ are not structured to support exactly your style of play while garnering the rewards gained by those who are able to exercise a different, more intensive, style of play?

Wow I finally see why the ubers enjoy their timesinks so much... they have no clue what intensive game play is. Sitting around farming shards for a stupid key is an intensive style of play? *laughs*

You want find out what intense game play is like... go play City of Heroes and enter an eight person team mission with 20-30 mobs in huge packs and no healer in the group. That group I was in kicked so much ass it was ridiculous. We didn't stop for anything. We didn't split/single pull. Just charge, hack, blast, slash, charge, hack, blast, boom. Even against several purple con bosses. As fast as I used my inspirations I was getting new ones from the villains we arrested.

That's what I really hate about EQ. It's just so damned boring. No one wants to take a risk anymore. They just want to play it safe and grind their precious AAXP. Cause after a certain point, that's the only thing time-restricted players can do. Grind AAXP and piddle along with AP from LDoN. I did the math once. It would take a time-restricted player, doing 2 normal adventures a night, well over a year... maybe two years to get a full set of LDoN armor and weapons fully augmented with the best purchaseable.

Two freaking years. That's ridiculous. An uber goober can be outfitted and ready to raid in a matter of months, if not weeks. It would take the time restricted gamer much less time to just farm platinum / twink items and sell them in the bazaar to buy a set of ornate. How much fun is that for the time restricted gamer? Ooo I get to sit around killing greenies or cyans for plat for months on end.

What is it that makes you think you're so much better than people like me that you deserve pretty much exclusive access to all the content? Because I sure as hell don't think you do. Not just because you can play a game like it's a second freaking job.

Wow, this thread must've 'blossomed' quickly.

Don't feel the trolls folks (don't ask me to follow my own advice either :))... it didn't take much to see that the initial post was a fairly well crafted troll with some cunningly used buzzwords to make it sound authentic (although 'squeekies' is pushing it a bit! :D)

(Server too busy? Did we get slashdotted or something?)

Don't feel the trolls folks

Feeling trolls gives you warts I heard. Sorta lika touching a toad. =)

Nowhere am I saying that I don't want "time restricted" players to enjoy EQ. Far from it. All I am saying is that there are activities that "time restricted" players can enjoy and their are activities that people who play considerably more can enjoy and they CAN'T be the same things if they are going to provide any sort of challenge to the raid-type player.

Deliberately not responding to Captain Rude from CoH above, but I just want to clarify that when I say "raid-type player" I am implicitly saying "raid-type player and his/her 50-70 friends who play the same way all the time as a guild"...

"Wow, this thread must've 'blossomed' quickly."

I lost a post earlier with a server busy error.

I am glad now that it became vapor.

bah, rethink that. I volunteer my services to help make those 1 million babies that are going to be born when EQ ends.
:)

Now there's a man with the right priorities!

Assuming you're a man, women don't generally volunteer to give birth to millions of babies. :p Me, I completely shirked my duty in that regard. At least, the giving birth part...

Now... how does this tie into the theory of everything? Well, CoH players have time for more sex. However, the tight spandex uniform cuts off blood flow so they're unable to actually have more sex.

I honestly do not see the reasoning behind your opinions Sekira. Just because you play more somehow means you deserve exclusive content? Why? You do not pay more to play the game than I did.

Raider plays for 50 hours in a month and gains X amount of gear.
Casual gamer plays for 50 hours over the course of four months and gains Z amount of gear that numbers fewer and is far inferior to the raiders gear.

How is that fair? I agree with many of Aly's statements in this post and in some of her previous posts. She does get a bit heated however, but I can understand where that anger comes from. Timesinks should never be what seperates the end game from the rest of the game. Skill should be the only true limit on a player. Anything should be able to be accomplished given time. Even in an online enviroment such as EverQuest. The current design scheme however runs concurrent to that idea. Now if you would, consider the Task Force missions in City of Heros and compare them to say a raid in EverQuest. Both require many hours to complete and the cooperation of several individuals. The key difference between them, is that the Task Force missions in CoH may be done over the course of several days and even weeks if need be. Very accomodating to the casual/time-limited gamer such as myself.

I do not hate EQ. I hate the way you are forced to play the game if you want to see the everything.

I honestly do not see the reasoning behind your opinions Sekira. Just because you play more somehow means you deserve exclusive content? Why? You do not pay more to play the game than I did.

And I honestly don't understand the attitude that additional effort should not garner additional rewards. I'm not criticizing the casual player in any way by that statement. People play at their own paces and have their own indivudual goals for how they want to play the game.

Raider plays for 50 hours in a month and gains X amount of gear.
Casual gamer plays for 50 hours over the course of four months and gains Z amount of gear that numbers fewer and is far inferior to the raiders gear.

It is a long-established principal called Economy of Scale. Nothing new here.

Timesinks should never be what seperates the end game from the rest of the game.

I don't like timesinks either. But it is really fair to call the need to kill the four elemental events to gain access to Plane of Time a timesink? Sure it *takes* time, effort, learning, coordination, etc, but what fun would it be if it wasn't a little hard to do?

Skill should be the only true limit on a player.

A guild of 6000 people that sit around /afk and don't pay any attention to what they are doing isn't going to advance either. Skill on and individual basis can take you a long way, and a smaller number of highly skilled players can outdo a larger number of people who don't know what they are doing.

Anything should be able to be accomplished given time.

Why? I thought "Skill" should be the only limit. Your arguments are circular. You want "Skill" to be all that matters. Spending time (ie timesinks suck) but you want "Time" (which you apparently don't want to spend) to be the great equalizer.

Now if you would, consider the Task Force missions in City of Heros and compare them to say a raid in EverQuest. Both require many hours to complete and the cooperation of several individuals. The key difference between them, is that the Task Force missions in CoH may be done over the course of several days and even weeks if need be. Very accomodating to the casual/time-limited gamer such as myself.

I play City of Heroes. I play it to play a much more casual type of game than I play EQ. When playing EQ, I am part of a large guild that is working it's way through GoD. We know that takes time, effort, coordination, etc, etc, etc. I can play CoH to relax and have a different kind of fun than when I play EQ. Haven't done a Task Force Mission at all yet (I have a couple of level 10-15 characters)

I do not hate EQ. I hate the way you are forced to play the game if you want to see the everything.

Umm...yeah? Every game in order to see everything you have to play it for X amount of time. Diablo - play to see the end/gear. Single player missions in any blizzard game - time to complete each. Any game I can really think of you need to play to see the end game. Hell, Mario Bros you had to play for days on end to see level 8-1! And dont even get me started on Metroid.

Skill should be the only true limit on a player.

Personally, I think skill is just as required to progress as anything else in EQ. If you suck, you arent going to get into a good guild, you certainly will get a rep keeping you from groups, and if you're a server with public raids - youll likely get booted from those eventually too. And I mention guilds/raids because they are needed for content and SHOULD be. EQ was never meant to be a "solo-ers dream"

Comparing other games to EQ is not a valid argument. If you like those games, play them instead. EQ != anything else.

People are seemingly spoiled nowadays with cheat codes. Instead of wanting to spend the time and work to accomplish something, theyd rather just type in "Zelda" and not care. Sad.

Finally. Timesinks. People take the wrong outlook on these. If you took it from a storyline progression then your goal when given a quest is to help against an evil force of something. Helping != killing on mob one time and running back to the quest giver saying "All is well!" You are hunting for an item that a certain race/deity/whatever may have. Killing those mobs over and over again is part of your quest job. You are there to rid an evil (usually). If you only have to kill one mob, wow you got lucky. But for story line sake you are doing your part till you "happen to stumble upon.." (common oldskool text for RPG type reads) what you were looking for. Now dont you feel better about it?

I hate timesinks too. But not because they exist. Rather I hate them because Id rather be doing X. Thats just me being selfish and not looking at the eventual reward.

y posts get too long...I should be working = /

If you suck, you arent going to get into a good guild, you certainly will get a rep keeping you from groups, and if you're a server with public raids - youll likely get booted from those eventually too.

Well, yeah, if you suck, you won't get into a guild. What about the people that don't suck, but just can't waste that much time on silly flags and craptastic timesinks? Hrm? Why should they be penalized for wanting to play a game and still take care of all their real life responsibilities? Why should I be penalized by an artificial limit? It's unreasonable that I should be forced to change my lifestyle just to play a damned game.

*snip* Now dont you feel better about it?

No I don't feel better for it. I feel like I wasted my time. I don't play D&D to wander around cleansing the streets of petty thieves and minor injustice. I want to be part of the epic storyline and grand adventures. I couldn't care less if 45,000 people have done it before me. The fact of the matter is I can do it to, given time. At my own pace. Stupid timesinks that force me to change my life to bypass them are ridiculous. No one should ever be forced to change their lifestyle just to play a game.

The game should change to allow players of any lifestyle to progress and advance through the game at their own pace. Skill is the best way of limiting and slowing down players, yet still allowing them to advance at their own pace.

Comparing other games to EQ is not a valid argument. If you like those games, play them instead. EQ != anything else.

We better damn well compare EQ to other games. Because that's EQ's competition. And EQ2's. If neither game adapts to the competition that's out there, they will falter and flop, dying and ignomious death.

I knew lots of sucky players in uber guilds. My servers uber guild had a fair share of them. They were the most horrible people to group with. They had no concept of what to do in a group. Maybe they did best with a guild leader or raid leader telling them exactly what to do.

I was in an uber guild group more than once that couldn't manage to do a normal LDoN adventure without wiping several times.

And I honestly don't understand the attitude that additional effort should not garner additional rewards. Except that the others put in just as much(if not more) effort (albeit over a longer peroid of time) for less reward. How is that fair?

And I mention guilds/raids because they are needed for content and SHOULD be. EQ was never meant to be a "solo-ers dream"It's not that most of us want to solo. We WOULD like a shot at some decent items single groupable though or at most 2 groupable.


knew lots of sucky players in uber guilds Same here. I was in what was considered an uber guild a while back(elemental before anyone entered time).

Was in a single group with some guildies I had only raided with before. They had ZERO knowledge of group mechanics. They knew "wait until the mt calls assist before attacking" and they knew "nuke at 80%."

ANY out of the ordinary situation and they were lost without someone telling them what to do. All they had ever done was get powerleveled to raid with friends.

Cloud. It was a legit post, not intended to flame the uber versus casual issue or feed trolls.

It was meant to get discussion around what i still see as a very valid theory that the most hard core players consumed content faster than Sony could reasonably put out content, and Sony made the mistake of pandering to the loudest minority of players, which in most corporations is a common mistake, ultimately delivering product that ultimately drove that loudest minority away.

I'll take your word for it :)

I agree in some ways. For example, I always felt that taking out the boats (oh wait, they're probably still being "fixed"), adding soulbinders etc, whilst wonderfully convenient for those just wanting to hurry up and get 65, watered down the game as a whole. I was among those complaining at having to sit on boats all the time, but in the end I feel the opposite. The reason is that those times - sat on boats for example - were when I made the most friends in EQ and had time to sit back and enjoy their company. Now it's all fast-paced, and aquaintences are only there to help each other level (until they don't need each other). Guess whilst a rushing young guy IRL, I'm a bit of an old fart in games :)

It's unreasonable that I should be forced to change my lifestyle just to play a damned game.

Well, technically, no one is forcing anyone from playing EQ. There are plenty of games out there with different play models. If there is a market for hard-core playstyles then there will be hard-core games. If there is a market for casual playstyles then there will be casual games.

EQ content is slanted towards harder core players. Maybe not XXX hardcore but certainly R. From what I've read, CoH content is slanted more towards casual players. Well there you go! If EQ isn't giving you that little something-something to keep you playing, play the other games!

Aly is by all means entitled to her opinions. But I happen to enjoy playing EQ the way it is. The changes that Aly would impose on EQ would ruin the game for me. Why should I be forced to play her games? Wouldn't it be better to just leave EQ the way it is and let the market decide if it's the right model? There's competition between the different games out right now. I'm afraid that if Aly were to get her way, all these different games would play the exact same way. No more competition of choices.

P.S.
Before Aly or anyone else yells at me for personal attacks, please understand that when I say Aly, I mean anyone who is opposed to diversity and choice in the online gaming landscape. While that may not be what Aly stands for, it is what I mean when I say "Aly" ^_^

I think what most of these complaints about EQ stem from, at least from older players, is that EQ wasn't always hardcore and was changed into that.

P.S.
Before Aly or anyone else yells at me for personal attacks, please understand that when I say Aly, I mean anyone who is opposed to diversity and choice in the online gaming landscape. While that may not be what Aly stands for, it is what I mean when I say "Aly" ^_^

Now I hear someone saying "that depends on your definition of the word IS".

EQ content is slanted towards harder core players.

But it hasn't always been like this. What frustrates me is how the game has evolved into this. I have been playing my main for close to 4 years. Many of the things I 'enjoyed' about the game back then have been changed dramatically. I constantly feel that SoE is 'pushing' me to play the game the way they want me to play it, not the way I want to play it.

While I agree that games should 'evolve' I don't think the should alienate. If there are a lot of players that want to be 'hardcore' raiders, fine. But let the rest of us have some fun too :)

The changes that Aly would impose on EQ would ruin the game for me.

I don't believe that for one second. EQ has not always been slanted towards the hardcore players. It used to be a great game for everyone. Even casual gamers could log on for a little bit and make some progress on their character without being forced to spend insane amounts of time camping idiotic quest drop or meandering about LFG for hours or sitting on your arse for two hours waiting for a raid to set up and find a target.

Instanced content, less timesinks, better combat AI, better combat gameplay overall would all increase the excitement and fun in EQ.

Why should I be forced to play her games?

You're not though. If the Quest for the Not-So-Holy Grail has seven steps (using instanced content) that take roughly two hours each to complete, a time-limited gamer can do these at their own leisure. It may take them a month do the seven steps, but they have the ability to do so, on their own terms.

The hardcore powergamer could burn through those seven steps on a weekend... maybe even in one day. Nothing about segmented questing would stop the powergamers from rushing through the content in their misguided notion to be on top. Why bother to try and slow down the powergamers is my question to the devs. It's pointless. The goobers are going to burn through the content anyway... the timesinks SOE imposes only serves to alienate customers like me.

Even casual gamers could log on for a little bit and make some progress on their character without being forced to spend insane amounts of time camping idiotic quest drop or meandering about LFG for hours or sitting on your arse for two hours waiting for a raid to set up and find a target.

I don't always agree with Aly, I don't think anyone does, but this hits the nail right on the head. I can plant a flag saying 'I was there'.

Thank you Anka. I know I'm a bit caustic at times. It's just the massive amounts of frustration I have concerning a game that I really used to enjoy playing before it evolved into what it is today.

Yup, that's a rant I've had a few times.

I don't like placing blame in anyones direction as it isn't right to make global statements, as they are invariablely inaccurate. I have been guilty of doing it before, so I try not to do it.

Some things which I htink can be stated factually.

#1 - The squeaky wheel gets the grease. We've seen this over and over in class and general game issues. I don't blame people for speaking out.

#2 - The squeakiest wheels are usally those who play the game the most, spend the most itme with it and thus spend alot of time online. Many of those are what we would call power gamers, but some are not.

Now that we have that out of the way, I'll give my opinion.

The squeakiest wheels are not guranteed to know what is best for the game, so if SOE listens to them, that does not mean what comes out will be what's best for the game as a whole.

I blame SOE for not doing a better job of reaching out to ALL of its community, but I do not blame them for listening to the squeakiest wheels. It just makes sense that they would listen to those who do the talking and seek out communication.

Unfortunately the first glance of the attendees of the Summit will not help to cure this problem. it was raiders, raiders, raiders, and a hand full of non-raiders. We'll see what the in game demographics of the attendees of Summit 2.0 look like to see whether SOE has learned from the "sins of their past".

I just don't see alot of value gained from reaching out to those who were already talking to you, and as has been said over and over, many non-raiders are not impressed with the first round of changes because it does not concern them.

I for one will "let time tell" the tale as I believe in giving people a chance. I have great respect for many of those that attended the Summit and they say "wait and See". I have not heard one person come back and say "They were just blowing smoke". So I for one, will give SOE a chance to prvoe to me they care about more than the squeakiest wheels.

I dunno... I'm pretty squeaky myself. A lone squeaky voice though. Also, I can't stand it when a spider crawls within smashing range. I squeak and smash 'em. ^.^

"Eeeek! *growls* ABSOR SMASH! *splatters spider into itty-bitty bits*"

I said that once in a D&D game. DM asked what my character was doing and 'Absor smash' was the first thing that came to mind. I'm just glad I wasn't the only EQ palyer at the table that evening. =)

Er um... /derail

But it hasn't always been like this. What frustrates me is how the game has evolved into this. I have been playing my main for close to 4 years. Many of the things I 'enjoyed' about the game back then have been changed dramatically. I constantly feel that SoE is 'pushing' me to play the game the way they want me to play it, not the way I want to play it.

While I agree that games should 'evolve' I don't think the should alienate. If there are a lot of players that want to be 'hardcore' raiders, fine. But let the rest of us have some fun too :)

Well, my take is any RPG-style game that doesnt have a "endgame" that is hard to attain inevitably flounders. EQ has stayed at the top for 5 years. At the start, it was ok not to have an endgame. Soon, they realized it might be good to have a more difficult objective to reach, one that was so difficult it required lots of folks. And guess what happened? EQ stayed at the top for 5 years. Unheard off. While games like DaoC and SWG faltered by lack of endgame.

EQ has evolved into that quite soon into it's life. I believe that anyone who thinks "oh EQ was SO much better in the old days" is not looking at things objectively. He is putting nostalgia glasses, and forgetting how things were. Not that EQ hasn't changed. Just not as radically as some make it sound.

I believe with no endgame, EQ would not have lasted. People would have moved on to other games, and we would not be having this thread, since EQ would not have so many people playing.

I believe that one of the most successfull parts of the playing model EQ proposed was making sure it would be hard to attain the very best zones and items. As with anything that is hard-earned, it made for a lot of satisfaction and involvement in your character. Would you really care about your Gaelin Woodland Tunic being lost if you could replace it in a couple hours of playing? Would you show it to your friends in pride? Granted, they went too far in some instances, as in sometimes it took too long for something too trivial and unworthy of your involvement. Still. The basic principle is successfull.

Does it have to be this way? No. But seriously, why would you change something that has had success and caused so many to enjoy the game? Don't like it? Enjoy the competition. EQ has proved beyond doubt that the model works. It has survived "supposed" EQ-killers before. Games with better graphics and supposedly more fun. I am sure it will inevitably flounder. It would however be a mistake for EQ to not stay true to itself.

So yes, endgame should be hard to attain in EQ. It should take time and dedication. I was gonna add skill, but it's definition varies so wildly that it would be meaningless to include it here. EQ being a cooperative and social game, it should take many people working together to reach it. Being a social game, if you want to raid, then guess what? As with any social event, you need to plan it. When you "plan" to go to a bridge tournament, you effectively schedule your life so that the tournament fits, don't you?

Don't agree? That's fine. No one is obligated to play any games.

Callahad

P.S. Anyone notice that even Diablo has applied the end-game principle? Look at the World-Event... They have also tuned levels to make it much much longer to reach 99. This is why I feel that Blizzard has a legitimate shot at no1 with WoW; there is a good chance they apply this end-game principle to WoW... And I am sure that if they do some will complain the same things that are complained about in this thread.