WoW Going EQ in terms of loot

[Blackulaa]

Imo, you will never get a real answer to this question until you answer WHY people play the game. See sports gamers, for example, have separate gamers who want to stock their team with the best players, or give themselves all 99s and beat any one into the dirt , use exploits, and pull the plug when they might lose. Let's forget these cheesers for a second.

Then you have the realism gamers, try to play "realistic" simulation type games, even build leagues that cut out group one above. They also have people who will play their favorite team no matter how bad they are and try to bring them to glory. This is all built on an innate desire to be part of the team they cheer for irl, or just the sport they love. They have a connection with it, and any simulation that goes outside their perceived notion of realism becomes a game they won't play.


I say all that long windedness, to ask, because I have asked myself, how can I become attached to an MMO hero who has the same damn adventure or storyline as myself. In their own instance too. The only thing left is to have a bad ass storyline that changes monthly or better gear I guess.

See for $15 a month you better give me something...

As developers, should you make a game world that's intriguing, engrossing, changes fast, has uniques items, random story lines only a handful of people may have experienced, random dungeons with environments that change do to what we the players are doing, NPC's who rise to power based on what the players do who change the landscape from one server to the other, or just give us some new purple shit. I don't feel there's any way to be a "legend".

I have played over 1000 games of basketball with my online friends or friends who are visiting. Not one game has played the same. No matter how massively MMO's have become, every time I talk to my buddies on vent, we have done the exact same shit, and we reminisce on the same shit we did years ago in EQ. Not very heroic, imo, thus the leveling carrot, I guess.

[Salshun]

Originally Posted by Blackulaa

Stuff

I agree. Perhaps I'm just bitching to bitch, because I don't have the "fix". I just feel their has to be a better way. Hell, like I said even from a lore standpoint it's stupid: "Isn't it amazing, every 2 years like clockwork we find a new place where the gear is twice as good! I almost want to wait to upgrade!!". The other problem with this strategy is that it makes old world content a frigging ghost town. EVERY person I know hits Hellfire at 55 and just farms warthogs until 58 then accepts every quest. The lower level shit, like Blackfathom, WC, etc will always have people because it's the best gear for a while but the 50-60 old world content is a no-man's land. The other day out of boredom about 40 70's decided to do Molten Core. When we got there, MAYBE 5 people were attuned. Sad shit.

[Blackulaa]

Well maybe if they could find a way to play the game differently. For example, back to basketball. The stat ceiling of 100 for a stat has never changed. But they way that 100 was implemented, via animations, new categories, different rule changes, court changes (distance of the 3 point line for example), free throw mechanics, new controller layouts, better consoles, etc all made for a vastly different game.

Hell, maybe we need some virtual PC's so I can go LARP on that ass from my living room.


Perish the thought...

[Zehn - Vhex]

1) Real life analogies are stupid. I play basketball too. It's the same goddamn thing everytime. Take ball, throw ball in hoop. Whoopty shit. Not once has the ball turned into an eight legged demon from the depths of my nightmares come to devour the souls of mankind.

2) Only two non-cosmetic ways of making characters better. Make them more powerful (IE: stat increases) or make them more versatile (IE: add new types of stats). That's fucking it ladies and gentlemen. Don't give me this wishy-washy, "THERE HAS TO BE A BETTER WAY!" There is none.

Might as well have Dumar come in here and talk about how loot needs to be done right.

You know what? Fuck it. It would take me hours to keep debunking the rampant retardation in these threads. It's just not worth my time or effort anymore.

I propse a new rule, any thread that mentions both EverQuest and WoW within the first 10 posts should be rickshawed. Anybody that makes a thread with both in the fucking title gets banned.

[Salshun]

Alright, if that's the only way I'll shut up and deal. Thought it was worth posing a "Can it be done better?" question.

[dak]

As opposed to...

I liked the way they did AQ20 ability books except make them BoP and more diverse in how the new ranks function.

If you ask me there should be entire 25 mans which are itemized with nothing BUT upgraded ability books.

Changes to abilities about what you would expect from getting increased stats from gear instead. Tweak it a bit by giving things besides higher damage like faster cast time, reduced cooldown, lower mana cost, less threat, more threat ect, just for that rank. Maybe multiple tomes for the same ability that stack and increase attributes for the highest rank.

That way you have substantial upgrades to character power without huge increases in numbers and since the changes are just for that rank it isn't permanent and you still need better to progress once level cap is raised.

Getting EVERYTHING upgraded to the best sunwell loot from what I currently have i'll gain maybe 50-70 spell damage, a decent amount of haste and I'll lose a bunch of spell hit.

The changes from gear I'll receive could easily be accomplished by giving me:

Shadowbolt Rank 12 : Causing 581 to 643 Shadow damage. With 3 additional tome upgrades that stack giving me -.2 sec off cast time, 5% less threat, 30 less mana.

Once WoTLK comes out I'll be forced eventually move away from my buffed up Rank 12 shadow bolt in favor of Rank 13 or maybe if I was on the bleeding edge of content prior expansion Rank 14.

Automatically downrank them to trainable version for arena.

[Saban]

dak stop talking sense in this thread.

[Believe]

Originally Posted by Salshun

I mean even from a lore sense. In Burning Crusade you had Illidan as the last boss. IN WOTLK it will be Arthas/Lich King. Now, in the story, those two fought, and they seemed pretty evenly matched. They were rivals. Is Arthas going to be 10x more powerful than Illidan to adjust for expansion/inflation? Doubling mob hp and gear stats is NOT an upgrade.

Learn2Lore. Arthas didn't merge with the Lich King until AFTER he fought Illidan, so yeah, he is considerably stronger now.

[Blackulaa]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

1) Real life analogies are stupid. I play basketball too. It's the same goddamn thing everytime.

Wrong.

I could say the same thing. See mob kill mob.

Think outside your box.

[Sithro]

Originally Posted by dak

I liked the way they did AQ20 ability books except make them BoP and more diverse in how the new ranks function.

If you ask me there should be entire 25 mans which are itemized with nothing BUT upgraded ability books.

Changes to abilities about what you would expect from getting increased stats from gear instead. Tweak it a bit by giving things besides higher damage like faster cast time, reduced cooldown, lower mana cost, less threat, more threat ect, just for that rank. Maybe multiple tomes for the same ability that stack and increase attributes for the highest rank.

That way you have substantial upgrades to character power without huge increases in numbers and since the changes are just for that rank it isn't permanent and you still need better to progress once level cap is raised.

Getting EVERYTHING upgraded to the best sunwell loot from what I currently have i'll gain maybe 50-70 spell damage, a decent amount of haste and I'll lose a bunch of spell hit.

The changes from gear I'll receive could easily be accomplished by giving me:

Shadowbolt Rank 12 : Causing 581 to 643 Shadow damage. With 3 additional tome upgrades that stack giving me -.2 sec off cast time, 5% less threat, 30 less mana.

Once WoTLK comes out I'll be forced eventually move away from my buffed up Rank 12 shadow bolt in favor of Rank 13 or maybe if I was on the bleeding edge of content prior expansion Rank 14.

Automatically downrank them to trainable version for arena.

I think EverQuest II does this.

I like the idea, so long as people don't bitch about me not having rank 12 shadow bolt in a fucking dungeon.

[Zehn - Vhex]

I should know better then this.

I'd ask you to provide an example, but I already know what you'd say. You'd face a different composition of guys. Maybe shorty has a hurt foot this day so that variable has changed. People have gotten better with more practice, or worse as the case may be, etc...etc...etc...while in a video game the encounter is static. Illidan will always eyebeam along the edges of the grate instead of just wising up for a change and going straight down the middle, right?

What you're missing is that you're comparing apples to oranges. You can't comapare the dynamic elements of one game against the static elements of another and say, "SEE? DIFFERENT!"

In Basketball you have, a basketball, a hoop, and a court. That's it. The court doesn't just happen to one day turn into a giant vat of jello. The hoop doesn't just happen to one day be shaped like Elvis Costello's face.

Just like in video games he people are different. If encounters were as ridiculously static as everyone makes them out to be, we wouldn't have the occasional wipe on Illidan 8 months after beating the encounter due to one of our Paladins being as high as a kite. Want random? Month or so back our tank went offline at 10% and our FR tank managed to snag agro and go th distance despite no OT available to intercept shears and less then stellar tank stats.

Then you'll weakly give me some bullshit about how the spirit of competition and blah blah blah and I'll point out pvp, etc...etc...

Real life analogies are shit. End of fucking discussion.

[Salshun]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

1) Real life analogies are stupid. I play basketball too. It's the same goddamn thing everytime. Take ball, throw ball in hoop. Whoopty shit. Not once has the ball turned into an eight legged demon from the depths of my nightmares come to devour the souls of mankind.

Are you going to show up one day to play basketball and suddenly everyone is twice as good, has better shoes and shirts, and your opponents are twice as tough? I would say the analogy holds water.

I propse a new rule, any thread that mentions both EverQuest and WoW within the first 10 posts should be rickshawed. Anybody that makes a thread with both in the fucking title gets banned.

If only their was a website with a forum in which I could discuss MMORPG's! This is a video game forum. The two games you just mentioned are probably the 2 biggest monsters talked about on here. Comparing and contrasting of them is GOING to come up. Deal with it. It's like a car forum and you saying "Hey, no more evo vs. wrx threads!''. They're going to happen. And I believe it's possible to have them intelligently. I started this thread for very intelligent reasons. To pose the question "Is doubling gear stats and mob difficulty the only way to expand on an MMORPG" You seem to think the answer is yes. That's fine. I still want to hear other people list their ideas, and debate them with yours, listing the pros and cons of each. I've made my opinion known. I'm tired of the same old methodology, mainly because of it's effect on new players experiencing old world content. I don't think someone's first 10+ person raid should be Kael or Illidan. I do not want to see a day in which either of them is soloable because of the ridiculous loot coming out.

Wrath of the Lich King will have a starting area, say 68 to get in. And at 65 everyone will get there are farm yard trash until 68 when they can get quests. I can just see idiots getting excited to kill Ice Warthogs and getting greens that match their season 1/2 or Seth Hall gear. Then they'll be there until 70. The level 70-72 dungeons will be for new players, their first instance. The cycle will then repeat, just like BC. It's BC with ice instead of lava rocks. I just...fail to see the creativity. Don't get me wrong, I didn't see it in EQ either. The "we found a bunch of caves..UNDERGROUND!" angle was pretty pathetic. One thing that could be cool is a Ice Tower key quest that involves old dungeon drops.

[Suineg]

What does the stats on the gear have to do with whether or not they are going to revamp dungeons from the past? And basketball? Wow you are retarded.

You have to have stat progression. You have to have stat progression. Seriously you have to have stat progression. The direct result from this is more power/survivability/etc and this will make earlier stuff trivial. This is not a design flaw. I hate how much mudflation is tossed around poorly. Read the article on wikipedia that is in reference to it that has some insightful information. By no means is this the 100% best description of the word but I think it captures it correctly and should be accepted as the definition. Mudflation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I have a spreadsheet for my class and there are a bunch for other classes that define all the stats for raiding for the best 30 items for every slot. Frequently there are Tier 4 and 5 and some Tier 0 items right up there in the top 5. You realize we are in Tier 6 and 7 right? According to mudflation those Tiers should decimate the previous Tiers. Sure this isn't an expansion but we aren't there yet. Most of the items are sidegrades that just depend on what you are looking for in your personal build. Some people like to have a decent HP pool since they have a ton of mana/+heal/+dmg/etc so they stack a little differently from what the top is etc.

Salshun get some thicker skin. Your post was retarded and unnecessary and Vhex brought that up. You can post what you want but expect it to get deleted/rickshawed when you put as little thought into it as you have. IBTR

[Vardisk]

The only people that really complain about mudflation are the poor suckers who think you can actually "beat" an MMO. They live in a fantasy world where they think they can get the perfect set of gear and then be set forever and never have to upgrade.

But then what happens? You get bored and quit. No competent company is going to let that happen, they have to keep that carrot dangling out in front of you, there must always be better and better gear. The only difference between games is managing mudflation in a coherent manner, and really WoW's rating system handles it a lot more sanely than most.

Oh, but what about alternate advancement points? What about story driven content? But it's the same thing. They will just keep stacking more and more AA points, more and more content on, so that you can NEVER "beat" the game and quit.

Most of us are fine with that, and we keep playing. If you REALLY had a problem with it, you'd play something else. If no one wanted to play these kinds of games, they wouldn't be made.

[Shabado]

With regards to lore, which was mentioned earlier, it's about suspending disbelief.

It's the same reason at level 25 I'm saving Darkshire from the worgen, the same worgen which almost drove the Burning Legion from Felwood (you know, the level 50 or so mobs in Felwood which are being held out of Ashenvale by level 30 night elves npcs?), or how a level 8 troll is the bane of the Darkspear tribe, or how I kill the leader of the Defias Brotherhood at level 18. Even things like the AQ event and the story behind that.

The level you can kill something has little to do with it's relative power in the game, it's about them wanting you to feel involved in the story regardless of level, they want you to feel like you can make a difference, that you do make a difference.

It would be no fun if every quest prior to 70 was "You need to level up to help, go fetch me some boar meat".

Illidan was defeat by Arthas prior to him becoming the Lich King anyway, wasn't he?
Not that it matters. You don't have levels in lore, you're just part of the Horde/Alliance army running around killing threats to your faction/planet/some pony some guy has.