Raph Koster take on Leveling Services

[Aethn Anvel]

Originally Posted by Gnome Eater

You obviously never played on a PvP server then, since we had a shitload of server transfers who got their flags from outside the server, then came back, since their guilds would get destroyed whenever they tried to raid on a red server.

No, I dont waste my time on PVP servers, your right. But from the start, you could'nt move from a blue to a red server when they opened the character trasnfer service. But apparently now you can. I guess they will change any rule as long as it makes a buck.

[Quineloe]

Originally Posted by Deris

Players understand the "earning" part - you respect someone a little more if they have incredibly nice gear, or are max level, etc (usually.).

Raph is so out of touch with his player base that it scares me.

Who is "his" player base? What he is saying is hardly out of touch with me and many people I know.

Raph's right though, people shouldn't care, and most who do it don't, but what does it say about you as a person? Every guild leader in an end-game guild would NEVER take a person that plvled to 60 in ANY MMO because they lack the knowledge and experience for that environment.

And that is fucking bullshit, ebayed characters can and will end up in highend guilds if the person playing is capable.

[Big W Powah!]

Originally Posted by Zarcath

His Disneyland analogy is slightly flawed, mainly these rides require no skill to understand or complete. If "It's a Small World" teaches you patience in an encounter and Raph wants to skip that shit and go right for "Space Mountain" and would PAY someone so he can pretend like he got the experience?

Raph's right though, people shouldn't care, and most who do it don't, but what does it say about you as a person? Every guild leader in an end-game guild would NEVER take a person that plvled to 60 in ANY MMO because they lack the knowledge and experience for that environment.

Raph says he wants to play with his friends and experience the same content at the same time? Well pony up and do it. If you can't keep up with your friends maybe you need different ones? This is exactly how people like George Scotto (department head of CS?) fucking shows up to company raid nights on his rogue and is backstabbing mezzed mobs. Or fucking gets a group of us to do a PR group and we go to umbral plains to do some bosses and he pulls all kinds of roaming trash and wants to know why we wiped.

Sorry Raph, with that kind of attitude why do you even design (lol) games? Maybe next time you should just code in your own powerleveling service and reap the rewards.

And yes, I realize how ironic it is that an asian is preaching anti-plvl services. Please continue to support my country. FOR CHINA!

Yes and no. In EQ, I levelled my toon to 50, then 60, then 65, then quit. But, besides the ever re-introduced level treadmill, I didn't fuicking feel like doing levels 1-45 on every fucking character I've ever had. I can see where people wouldn't want to do levels 1-60, and just wnana have a fun luil alt to play in a group with friends on. I know I PL'd my bard, cleric, shadowknight, and enchanter all to level 45. Because below that tis a buncha bullshit, really. Only fun class woulda been the bard, and thats because he can solo pretty damn well.

[Deris]

"His" playerbase being anyone who plays videogames in general.

Levels/timesinks are an inherent concept within MMO's. Skill based, level based, doesn't matter. There will always be some type of grind associated with MMO's for the time being until someone thinks of a new system.

A Purely skillbased MMOFPS could happen, other genres would be a little rough to translate, but the netcode that is current avail just isn't good enough i'm afraid to do a proper mmofps where the players skill is all that matters, nothing else.

WoW's grind is damn near non-existant, to me I couldn't even call it a grind, its more like learning2play since they parcel out skills to you slowly and introduce new concepts every few levels for you to understand. Granted they could have cut alot of 1-60 out, and just let you play for ~20 levels then you're 60 playing with the big boys, but an MMO where johnny come lately can just jump in, play and be just as good as the best players within a few hours, then log off for another few months? Yeah we won't see that business model for a long, looonggg time.

[Quineloe]

So you're full of shit Deris, that's nothing new. Speak for yourself, but if you really think that he's out of touch with everyone because he's out of touch with you, that would be an attitude certainly fitting for 2/02 poster =)

as for WOW in particular, now with level 70 it's easily 250 hours to reach the cap. That's a lot of time for someone who can't play 8 hours a day.

And WoW teaching you ANYTHING but how to solo before level 60? Who do you think believes that bullshit?

[Deris]

Well I'm speaking for two halves - the Industry and for Players. Getting rid of levels sounds like a neat ass idea, i mean hey CoH/CoV did it basically see how far that got them?!?

[Stosh]

Originally Posted by Deris

but an MMO where johnny come lately can just jump in, play and be just as good as the best players within a few hours, then log off for another few months? Yeah we won't see that business model for a long, looonggg time.

Like three years ago.

Hello, Planetside. In fact, you described the game perfectly. Play for a few days, then logoff for a few months, then play for a few days again.

[TwiNCannoN]

Coming from an EQ player, I think the time forcibly invested in characters to get to the top predetermines an overall value of each character at the end - both to the person playing the character and to other people around you.

In early EQ, everyone was a commodity. It was also very easy to fuck your reputation up on a server. You had to actually, gasp, act like a human being. Up until the end (depending on where you define "the end"), ebay'ing was a fairly rare thing when you consider it as a percentage of all of the players on a server.

Now, in WoW? Any fucktard can get to the cap in weeks. It's so easy and short that the value of each character is ludicrously low, and except for tight-knit guilds that carried over from old games (or found each other in the sea of stupidity), basically all guilds are fucked for finding good upstanding members of a server's community. Every member is a dice toss. You don't look at someone leveling/gearing up and go "hey, I remember him from karnor's, he was a pretty good person to group with" etc.

In EQ, relationships were formed. In WoW, it's just a fucking business - and while I guess that's true of all games everywhere (especially so with ones that have ongoing fees), in this case it doesn't just break the community aspect - it shatters it.

[Heavens_Myst]

All I see here is a bunch of QQing from people who don't have the time to play games anymore.

[Sancus]

Originally Posted by Heavens_Myst

All I see here is a bunch of QQing from people who don't have the time to play games anymore.

See, back in realityland, devs are starting to realize that marketing to people who have little money and lots of time is marketing to the worst possible customers you could ever possibly have, so they're stopping that shit.

If you want to throw QQing around, all I see from the people who think Raph is crazy is a bunch of QQing from people who are so severely deranged that they actually believe that there's meaning and accomplishment to be found in MMOs, rather than, you know, entertainment. But characterizing people's arguments as QQing never gets you anywhere aside from ridiculed, one would hope.

[nosf]

Erm, wouldn't the ideal be to level to the endgame, which results in learning the skills you'll need at the endgame? Why would you even play, or pay someone to play for you?

Most people who would hire a levelling service should just save their cash and find a new hobby/source of entertainment. Once it gets to the point of paying someone to play a game for you, it's no longer worth it.

Raph is pretty big on talk, very small on actual details. How he's managed to stay in the industry is beyond me.

[Quineloe]

Most people who would hire a levelling service should just save their cash and find a new hobby/source of entertainment. Once it gets to the point of paying someone to play a game for you, it's no longer worth it.

and who are you to decide for someone else what is and what isn't worth it? Paying to have fun isn't exactly a new concept to humanity.

[Miele]

I quitted WoW because my 3 lvl 60 and my 7 level 45+ were stuck on a server where I had friends who quitted for other games.
I had the choice to either reroll on another server with some RL buddy, but I couldn't transfer because PvE to PvP is not allowed.
I said "fuck off" and moved to another game.

Levels are pointless except for introducing a skillset into the game few steps a time, at level 1 I have only "fireball", at level 60 I have a much more powerful fireball with a lot of other spells, so what?
I made it to 60 once, twice, three times, now gimme a break and let me pick a lvl 60 class from the start.

Regearing every 10 levels is another thing that sucks, because it's not fun spending an inane amount of time harvesting for rare materials, crafting my armor and toss it to my god's altar in 10 levels, yes I'm looking at you EQ2. Oh sure I could choose to not do that, yeah, right...

In short: I think levels are ok-ish if they are not a huge timesink, are to be used once per account life in order to learn game mechanics and do not take a fucking lifetime to max-out.

I still consider RMT a form of cheating, but the blame has to be put on developers, not on players here. Retarded things like 6000 gold for a mount are the IGE wet dream, so Blizzard, SoE, etc... wake up?

On the market now there are mostly level based games and more will come out soon, so I see no light at the end of the tunnel.

[bitch are your retarded?]

Originally Posted by Sancus

See, back in realityland, devs are starting to realize that marketing to people who have little money and lots of time is marketing to the worst possible customers you could ever possibly have, so they're stopping that shit.

So that's why there are so many crack dealers in white suburbia these days. Oh wait.

I didn't read the blog because honestly it's Raph Kosters, but from the excerpt here his conclusion isn't even derived from a business standpoint as they never are. He honestly thinks he has his finger on the pulse of the average gamer, and he's always off base and wrong.

Typically the walking that comes after crawling is more complex and difficult to master, his solution is that if you have your visa handy and think you will enjoy walking more, you're welcome to do it.

The obvious solution would clearly be make the crawling aspect fun, make it a valuable learning tool and a means for the game to present to the player its more intimate aspects. And with regards to his riding space mountain 5 times thing, does that mean the content is all identical (shitty game in the first place) or that the complaint is people don't want to repeat content to level their new characters after doing it all before. There are obvious solutions to both of those as well, so obvious I won't even deign to mention them.

Instead he talks about disney land or some shit because he's fucking retarded. I really wouldn't be surprised if these blog updates and the buzz being attempted to generate by them is his roundabout way of applying for the oportunity to horribly destroy another IP/MMO

[Composter]

I think this is a great topic, and should be the number 1 thing developers should look towards when thinking about next-gen MMORPGs.

Face it, the demographic for MMORPG players is shifting upwards as the hardcore first-gen players have gotten jobs and families and have less time but more money now. Further developement needs to look out for these players, because they are THE cash cow for the future. In 10-20 years, it's going to be these players AND their children who are going to be the primary capital source of the MMORPG industry.

That said, are they going to pay for another 1-60 grind that they won't have time to complete to get to the "good stuff" in the game?

Let's take a look at the most popular game right now: World of Warcraft. Basically, there's a light grind to the top level, then there's an instance progression factor, then true high-end raiding. The grind isn't bad for your first character, it teaches you some basic skills on how to handle a character solo. My opinion is that this introductory period is a little too long, especially for 2nd characters. I mean, by about level 40, you've learned pretty much everything you can about what your character can do solo...at this point you should be learning what they can do in a group. This is what I like about TBC, they add a group skill test into the equation with the addition of 5-man progression content. At the end game, you've got raids, which are the meat and potatoes of the game...where the true fun begins. You've got to learn patterns and have each member of the guild working towards a common goal. Fun, challenging stuff that is what most of the older gamers want to get to, because the interaction with others for a shared achievement was the most fun thing in previous games. Unfortunately, by having such a long-time spent in the 'you've got to solo your ass off before you can have fun with friends' it will prevent some of the older crowd of gamers from ever achieving what they wanted to in the first place.

In my opinion, there needs to be a way to teach people the skills to play the game to their desired path without creating a grind-mill. At a certain skill-check, add in another progression path. Okay, you've learned solo content, and group content, now let's go raid content. That way, you weed out the idiots and the people only playing for OMGWTFGEAR. Keep each play-style with a progression path (if you get rid of progression, you'll lose carrot), but allow people who want to group and raid an easier way of getting to that point. I mean, crazy power-gamer X wants the best possible gear, and has 1000 hours to spend getting it, but doesn't like interacting with other people. Give him a solo progression path to get the gear he wants. Casual family-man gamer Y wants to be able to group with his buddies for a couple of hours a week to get rid of the stress from his job. Give him the ability to have a challenging dungeon crawl without having to spend 200 hours of character build-up before hand. MBA collegiate gamer Z loves leading raids but is taking 20 hours a semester. Give him a raiding challenge that doesn't require everyone he's leading to have spent countless hours leveling/gearing.

Oh well, that's my rant. Take it for what it's worth.