Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
My quest for fixing gaming community
VekoKrava
Member
People cannot find wisdom in games because they do not search for it.
Games are hard to master because of their purpose.
People need to change their ways and become more acceptable of change.
More and more teenagers are becoming toxic and impatient (especially in MMOs because of their progression design element).
If you search for end results you will never find peace which means you will become impatient and not be available for peace.
Don't become average WoW player, embrace hard ''design'' in MMOs. Hard things do really teach players patience and stability.
Games are hard to master because of their purpose.
People need to change their ways and become more acceptable of change.
More and more teenagers are becoming toxic and impatient (especially in MMOs because of their progression design element).
If you search for end results you will never find peace which means you will become impatient and not be available for peace.
Don't become average WoW player, embrace hard ''design'' in MMOs. Hard things do really teach players patience and stability.
1
Comments
I'm not sure this is true.
Normally people who don't change when faced by hard design in games, just leave (which gives the impression that people change because it raises the chances of meeting someone who changed a little).
Maybe a few change, but a company 'throwing away millions of dollars' to change a few hundred people?
Seems like there might be some better ways to pursue that.
You don't?
(Also if this was a pun setup it was great. Kudos to you)
Some people prefer to play at that pace, or are playing in a way that they want. I see you seem to want to play to be relaxed and enjoy the experience. Not everyone will digest and enjoy the game the same as you and I think that takes some understanding but I tend to not find too many people that overtly ruin my fun with their own experience.
Enjoy the game at your pace and bring the peace you want to see in the game.
I do try really hard to do that, I still have some compulsions because I was in WoW community for over 15 years. WoW community changed a lot since 2008, the first few years were great because no one had any idea what they were doing, we were exploring, doing stuff the way we wanted, we did not even raid because we didnt know about raids. There were hard core fans that were on forums and they started embracing change for Blizzard and their way of designing an MMO, many other MMOs followed blizzard's steps, but we all see how MMOs look today. Old school mmos teach players patience. Just look at 99' EQ combat and compare it with any modern MMO where it gives you chance to rush and players take that chance.
Same thing goes for my idea of having preparation to do in games, why people don't want that? because it is grindy and it does not give them instant content, players may gank you in open world and that is another case of being spoiled and impatient.
Some don't really have time, but did everyone have time when they were playing WoW? What about people in older age, there were many like that. That had jobs, kids etc... and they played at their own pace. They did not care if they didnt manage to get lvl this day or the next day, they all logged to explore and have fun. Today people rush to their goals and that is problem of this genre, while other genres have problems such as toxicity because how competitive their design is. But that's peoples problem, because they do not want to find wisdom. I don't get offended by these toxic people, I use their actions as my progress and I understand them. All kind of forces play a role in a teenagers life and why they are more toxic then average grown up.
Everquest ha sno indication of which NPC has a quest.
Upon finding a quest, you really had no choice but to read, to get the context clues of what the quest entails.
Quest Log would only state you have accepted "NPC NAME" quest.
Now, the players who skipped has no info on what needs to be done. They are gonna need to go back to the NPC and READ if they wish to know what needs to be killed or retrieved.
Same applies, remembering npc name to location, to return to, or remember the name given to whom you must return to and find in the world.
The Quest Log shouldn't give a TL:DR - Kill 10 wolves and return to me.
Who said so?
None of that are uncontested truths.
You really think MMOs are not having bad impact on person's spiritual life? I think you live in delusion. Every man is being tested equally, some have stable ground and they go through these things as if it is nothing, others that are little impatient will get more impatient or even those that can't handle emotions will get even more toxic. It's all about what have you built previously.
I disagree for this reason:
It's not the games that are doing that, the players who are carebears demand tha every company make games that have some crazy META PvE where they farm and hoard items non stop for years and years
This is what we call in the gank community as "bot aspirancy" and I say "bot aspirant hoarding drone ant behaviour"
These people were like this since always and they force the companies to bend the knee to them
It's not any game's fault
Hopefully in AoC we will have systems that are well balanced
Of course everyone is responsible for their behavior, but games (especially MMOs) are designed to serve their purpose therefore they have an impact on people. If book writer is responsible for their ideas put into book, game developers should be responsible for their game design and philosophy. This is core reason why community of MMO players are divided and why so many won't enjoy AoC gameplay.
My ideology of world is to bring everyone to heightened spiritual life, whether it is politics, economy or gaming. There are ways to do that even in gaming, but people are not focused on this. I wish if we can have an impact on this in future, maybe if someone understood me and is content creator, speak about this. Every change started from minority.
Not everyone is impatient and compulsively competitive, but there are many that are under that impact of gaming. Just look how people perceive gaming, they take it too seriously even though they are not playing on high level or professional. Whenever I watch fresh release of MMO games on twitch, people skip quests, rush toward objectives and do not even toggle PVP on because they want to rush to end game. If there are 2 people that means there are even more people like that. I was once like that until I played vanilla in 2019 classic official servers, that ''table top RPG'' combat made me think about game design today and why people play like I did and they still play like that. Some big companies should do polls to see how people play games today, I believe that community is split 50/50 in that matter. Not everyone is playing to relax and enjoy lore, but then you might ask yourself why do they play MMORPG? It is surely not genre to just play end game as people play today. Everyone is speaking of this, there are many topics about how MMORPG was different back in 2000-2008 when people did not know a thing about this genre, everyone was relaxed and at peace exploring world without rushing to end game... You might say I am wrong because not everyone is like that, but I never had that in mind to generalize people, I am saying if I was under that impact, there surely are many more still unaware of that.
Personally, I do my best to focus on the things I have control over, rather than a desire to control what others do. I like to take a slow approach to enjoy games. I take my time and I savor the experience. This is how I enjoy games. However, not everybody is like me and not everybody will do this. With that said, it doesn't mean that I can't still enjoy a quest, for example, even if my progress is slower than others
One simple solution to those speed-runners would be side quests similar to Skyrim, without quest pointers above npc's head. Make sure that quest is hidden behind some dialog and make sure to have multiple dialog options out there, considering that you design quest hidden behind one of 3-4 dialog. That will teach them a lesson how to play RPGs, its not all about end game content, they should learn to enjoy process or look even dumber if they go speed running through dialog.
Main story should have pointers and devs should make sure that it does not level you to end, we need lore from side quests and lore that is important, not just on main quest. Maybe have side lore from NPCs with multiple quest chains.
Also if you click on dialog 1 and there is a hidden quest behind dialog 1 on one npc, make sure it is not behind first dialog always, but maybe put quest on last or close to last dialog option from dialog 1.
This is one way of making fix on community, other way would be combat, similar to vanilla wow, where you had to do it patiently, so you don't die vs mob. No AOE pulls and no way to rush even 1v1 combat because you are not able to. Not everyone likes slow tab target combat, I understand, so devs should design combat similar to AoC, but I just hope to see 1v1 pulls, if you pull 2 mobs you could die easily, that would be my aim for combat, doesnt need to be extra slow, just cautious.
Next would be: Don't allow every quest to be soloable, make social group quests, even on main story.
No dungeon finders like in wow where you sit in que and instantly teleport to dungeon, make it so it is like a small adventure to go into dungeon, no summons as well. Before dungeon make sure you put elite mobs, so group has to wait for everyone and clear it to enter dungeon, same like Vanilla WoW.
PvP in open world, no more theme-park design MMOs should market them self as MMORPG, we need to put our voice in internet and be heard, divide theme-park (retail WoW) and RPG (classic WoW), gacha games are more similar to theme-park mmos then pure RPG mmos like AoC.
Core reason is to divide genre more, to keep tradition of RPG games, or else we won't be able to see RPG MMOs anymore, we will see it rarely, in fact, when was last time that you saw something as big as AoC? Everyone is making MMOs like retail WOW or guild wars 2, those smaller studios do not want to make pure RPG because no one will play it. It has to have some kind of sandbox design as core element for it to work as a traditional RPG, all those ideas are more like sandbox because sandbox is hidden in those smaller ''harder'' things, sandbox are not convenience as theme park is.
why do you want to force players to play how you want? if they don't wanna read the dialogs, don't force them. there is nothing wrong with trying to level as fast as you can. also, removing the indicators above npc head to prevent "speed runners" to progress fast is silly. you can just simply learn the quests during alpha or beta, and there will be guides on what quests to take and which one to ignore /facepalm
also, what is wrong with aoe combat? its more fun and riskier than killing mobs one by one.
This will create tighter community and everyone will feel accepted. MMOs strive on community, if they go semi sandbox semi theme park, what will happen is WoW 2 scenario, where people srgue with each other and where people dont like game as they would. What this all means is that we as a community should do our duty to separate theme park and traditional rpgs, then everyone gets to play what they want to play,no more crossing over and fake marketing happening. New era of MMOs will begin when that happens.
One way to address this is to have a great story that your actually enjoying so you want to read the dialog. Say for example FF7 storyline. We could have the main quest easy to complete each time with a interesting task and a great story and I suppose we could have more difficult side quests so you have the option of either an easy or hard quest line or something in between.
This doesn’t mean the actual quest needs to be easy just knowing what you have to do next is the easy part. I hope this makes sense.
No no, main quest should have pointers and full info about how to do it, even pointers on map. But these side quests should not have npc pointers at all and should be doable without too much braining effort. Depending how map is made I am not sure about that, for example in Vanilla WoW map was quite small for each zone, therefore quest would say to you go north-east in this and this camp (name) and kill x10 harpies, then you would roam this area until you find this camp, when you find it it will be written on map this and that name of camp and you know you have to go there.
This is how skyrim does side quests, they even can have map pointers but not NPC quest pointers above their heads, just to make players roam around city exploring every npc and looking at dialog, these npcs should always have something to say and to point out lore of that city in every possible expression. I already mentioned in Skyrim if you get to city far away from civilization all the people would seem bored and they would tell you that, it gives this idea of this city being boring and having to do repetitive tasks every day, it gives vibe of city and it feels different then having npcs without dialog or similar approach where npcs dont talk about anything lore wise.
I think a common trend on your posts, is that you feel very strongly about how great Vanilla WoW is and that you believe we should return to easier times. So much so that you think this is the only way to do things or the best way to do things. This is just not true, while Vanilla WoW was historically an incredible game and kicked off the monolith that is WoWs "arc", your opinions are not fact and for you the idea to make this game a Vanilla wow clone might seem like the best idea but there are many here that do not want that.
Just my 2c.
so you are telling me that if I stop and read every line of text, and leveling up takes me 1000 hours instead of 300, somehow this will magically create a tighter community? so if I rush to max level and spend time farming money until everybody else catches up I wont be able to party and play with other people who also reach max level?
whaaatt?
So help me understand… your thesis is that division is the key to building community? 🧐
So, a few thoughts...
You can either have 'pure reason' OR you can have relative reason ("reason can vary from person to person"), but they are mutually exclusive - that's just reasonable.
Also, if your aim is to successfully complete your 'quest to fix the gaming community,' I don't think that standing on a pedestal of your own making and casting aspersions on others' experience, knowledge, or ability to 'understand you' is going to help. The gaming community has ample divisions already with a populace conditioned to hurl judgements at the drop of a hat; I don't see how adding more judgement is either wise or productive.
As a suggestion - what do you think about starting by asking more open ended questions and fewer rhetorical questions?
1- there is more than just a story in an RPG, some people wanna do other stuff too.
2- maybe I played alpha, leveled every single class and every single race multiple times, and read every single line of text and memorized it. why would I do it again on release?_?