New Video Games

[uebermann]

[Spider]

Mostly what I've seen on EQN is the Landmark thing they've got going on, and a few tech demos. Which is definitely still early alpha by the looks of it. I truly love the aesthetic they're building with the voxels, and that whole multiple levels in the world is an amazing idea.

Combining minecraft with a legit MMO...could be amazing, could be a total disaster. Long ways off.

[Spider]

[uebermann]

[Spider]

I'd be shocked at a 2014 release. Never know though. I think the key lesson to be learned from watching everyone else flounder is the endgame content. Needs to be quality and there needs to be a lot of it and it needs to keep coming.

[uebermann]

[Spider]

Well, a bottoming out of WoW subscribers is 7 million as opposed to 12 million. Other games bottom out at hugely lower troughs and go into panic mode/free to play. The interesting thing is going to be seeing how long it takes before ESO goes f2p.

Its been argued that the lack of endgame is what did TOR in. I kinda agree. They were trying to do KOTOR production values, and there just isn't time to do that and roll it out fast enough to keep people paying. In early WoW people would raid molten core and UBRS over and over again, trying to piece together complete sets and such. For some reason other games aren't driving that same behavior, at least not to the sustainable degree WoW did. I stopped playing shortly after the first expansion ( got married, didn't have time anymore), but at least back then it felt like the game only really opened up once you hit 60. Once you hit endgame, then you could do something fun, as opposed to grinding levels. WoW has since become a lot more casual. I don't think they even do 40 man raids anymore.

If EQN can strike that balance where the real fun happens later in the game, and the investment you put into it pays off, they might stick the landing. End of the day these games are about progression. There has to be a balance between that progression and constantly keeping the top end difficult to achieve for most players. I think they fall into the trap of making things too easy in order to appeal to casuals. People need a challenge, otherwise there is no accomplishment and satisfaction.

It also can't be too streamlined and simple. ESO was designed from the ground up to be run without a keyboard. So really...I'm betting on some seriously dumbed down/slowed down mechanics for the console kiddies. I speculate that this will handicap the game from the very beginning, to say nothing of requiring a simplified endgame that will satisfy only the casuals.

[uebermann]

Well there's no actual player levels in EQN. My understanding of the game so far is that progression is based on unlocking class skills and weapon skills. So it could be that raiding is in the game and provides new skills and such. I would assume gear has a role to play too but I haven't seen that mentioned yet so it may not.

[uebermann]

Sorry working on stuff so my posts may be a bit broken up.

Mudflation is another huge problem in MMOs. I mean take WoW. I left during the TBC and came back to the game just before Cata. TBC people had like 20k hps max. And I think that is even still probably really high. I remember my warrior having like 12k maybe? To go from that to over 100k hps in 2 expansions is just nuts.

Thats something WoW didn't learn from Everquest. Essentially, old WoW raids were utterly useless once an expansion hit. If you were level 70, that lvl 60 gear is of absolutely no appeal because the stats are so far off. But in EQ1, even up through the 4th expansion, people were still doing all tiers of raids. In part because of no instancing (and rooster blocking) but also in part because the mudflation of gear hadn't really taken off all that bad. You could still progress and get better gear from doing raids at higher levels and the gear was still very good. Typically raid gear was much, much better than stuff found randomly in the world due to no drop flags, which again helped with inflation.

So you spend all those resources on building raids for people to use, only to have them last about a year at most before people never, ever see them again. As in never even step foot in there again except maybe just for kicks. But even then, not really.

So this progression thing may be a huge plus, depending on how it plays out. Being able to jump into a game and not immediately be years behind (even if the game is years old) is a nice idea.

[The Comrade]

me and a friend bought the game space engineers last night and it is absolutely amazing. so much potential. i can't recommend it enough.