The McQuaid myth - Page 16

SssornBotS · 02-03-2004, 08:29 AM

Let's say you are a kid playing in a toddler football league with other 10 year olds. Challenging and fun. Now let's say you keep playing in that league for 10 more years, so you are 20 years old, playing with a bunch of 10 year olds. You weigh 3 times as much as any of them, and run 3 times faster than any of them, and you totally dominate the game. Any fun? No. You moan and groan about the old days when the game was fun for you because you weren't so powerful.

To a degree, this is EQ, and while the developers are partly to blame, the simple fact is the inertia of any game like this is also partly to blame. Every player tries to become more poweful in order to make certain challenges in the game easier. Over the years, risks that once were are no longer due to how powerful a player has become. Chores that once were, like running, are no longer because of new abilities and so forth.

Think about it. Your goal in EQ is essentially to become a demi-God is it not? To be as omnipotent as possible, and make everything easier for you. But doesn't that make the game more boring? Of course it does. What the fuck would a demi-God like you and your lvl 65 guy with 10,000 hp be doing running like a fool across the Karanas? See the point?

Part of the downfall of EQ has just been due to the natural progression of the game. However, I do agree that the developers could think of interesting ways to add new senses of immersion and panic like back in the old days. The player base would bitch and moan like babies, but it would make the game more fun again for the demi-Gods in uber guilds.

Random ideas like the ones proposed by Torrid, where no gating is allowed and you have to traverse an enormous zone for days, dealing with wandering mobs along the way, to get to a remote place, with no binding, no gates, and so forth.

As for reintroducing that bittersweet sense of panic we used to have back in the day at the thought of losing our corpses (which I never really had as a monk with FD), some thoughts. Losing a corpse with 50 days played was bad, but losing one with 500 days playes is a little too extreme by any standards. What was once panic at such loss would probably border on murderous rage these days, with folks at Sony getting death threats by players who just lost the product of 1,500 8 hour work days of their lives. Point is, the chance of losing a corpse these days is too much of a penalty by any stretch of the imagination, but what about losing a level? What about losing a random piece of equipment or two? Or three? I'd panic at the thought of losing my hard earned PoT BP wouldn't you?

Random gibberish.

feressa · 02-03-2004, 01:40 PM

Asheron's Call's method of corpse loss worked quite well: you would lose a few of the most valuable pieces of equipment you owned (based on vendor value, number of items varied with level), but could get them back if you travelled to your corpse and looted it. The trick was that there was no corpse summoning and not even corpse dragging, so die in a bad spot without backup and it was gone. Since one of the fun things to do was running at insane speed through huge clumps of mobs, I lost quite a few items this way, but there were ways to deal with that if you were smart and replacing stuff was not a huge massive issue.

(I'm talking about the original AC1 here, ie late beta and the first 8 months or so before some asshole wrecked the magic system secrets and the game got min-maxed to death).

02-03-2004, 08:29 AM	#226 (permalink)
SssornBotS Registered User Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 79 -1 Internets	Let's say you are a kid playing in a toddler football league with other 10 year olds. Challenging and fun. Now let's say you keep playing in that league for 10 more years, so you are 20 years old, playing with a bunch of 10 year olds. You weigh 3 times as much as any of them, and run 3 times faster than any of them, and you totally dominate the game. Any fun? No. You moan and groan about the old days when the game was fun for you because you weren't so powerful. To a degree, this is EQ, and while the developers are partly to blame, the simple fact is the inertia of any game like this is also partly to blame. Every player tries to become more poweful in order to make certain challenges in the game easier. Over the years, risks that once were are no longer due to how powerful a player has become. Chores that once were, like running, are no longer because of new abilities and so forth. Think about it. Your goal in EQ is essentially to become a demi-God is it not? To be as omnipotent as possible, and make everything easier for you. But doesn't that make the game more boring? Of course it does. What the fuck would a demi-God like you and your lvl 65 guy with 10,000 hp be doing running like a fool across the Karanas? See the point? Part of the downfall of EQ has just been due to the natural progression of the game. However, I do agree that the developers could think of interesting ways to add new senses of immersion and panic like back in the old days. The player base would bitch and moan like babies, but it would make the game more fun again for the demi-Gods in uber guilds. Random ideas like the ones proposed by Torrid, where no gating is allowed and you have to traverse an enormous zone for days, dealing with wandering mobs along the way, to get to a remote place, with no binding, no gates, and so forth. As for reintroducing that bittersweet sense of panic we used to have back in the day at the thought of losing our corpses (which I never really had as a monk with FD), some thoughts. Losing a corpse with 50 days played was bad, but losing one with 500 days playes is a little too extreme by any standards. What was once panic at such loss would probably border on murderous rage these days, with folks at Sony getting death threats by players who just lost the product of 1,500 8 hour work days of their lives. Point is, the chance of losing a corpse these days is too much of a penalty by any stretch of the imagination, but what about losing a level? What about losing a random piece of equipment or two? Or three? I'd panic at the thought of losing my hard earned PoT BP wouldn't you? Random gibberish. __________________ Scaled, for her pleasure Retired

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02-03-2004, 01:40 PM	#227 (permalink)
feressa Registered User Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 70 -1 Internets	Asheron's Call's method of corpse loss worked quite well: you would lose a few of the most valuable pieces of equipment you owned (based on vendor value, number of items varied with level), but could get them back if you travelled to your corpse and looted it. The trick was that there was no corpse summoning and not even corpse dragging, so die in a bad spot without backup and it was gone. Since one of the fun things to do was running at insane speed through huge clumps of mobs, I lost quite a few items this way, but there were ways to deal with that if you were smart and replacing stuff was not a huge massive issue. (I'm talking about the original AC1 here, ie late beta and the first 8 months or so before some asshole wrecked the magic system secrets and the game got min-maxed to death).