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From the book of Densetsu, chapter 3, verse 16:
I would just like to put this out on the table.
When did tedium and monotony become synonymous with hard?
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Malbi had this to say about John Romero:
I Dislike the thought I might have to have something along these lines. as in oh you don't ahve AA number 1347 tough luck your outa the raid
-H Hellbender fucked around with this message on 01-11-2006 at 11:54 PM.
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Mr. Parcelan stopped staring at Deedlit long enough to write:
When did tedium and monotony become synonymous with hard?
Chores are hard because I dislike work. 
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When the babel fish was in place, it was apparent Malbi said:
Thats my issue unless the achievmentts are total fluff,(aka players will hate it) then you will be required to work on them, which makes me think of my complaint about the subjob system of FFXI.
God forbid you have to do a little extra work to raid End Game content. 
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Pesco stopped lurking long enough to say:
God forbid you have to do a little extra work to raid End Game content.
You shouldn't have to do any "work", ever.
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Blindy. had this to say about John Romero:
You shouldn't have to do any "work", ever.
Only if you are a hippie.
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Hellbender had this to say about the Spice Girls:
Before I quit EQ, I was in a Time capable guild that was moving forward in GoD and OoW progression and only had 30 something AA's (pathetic compared to the rest of the guild). I was never forced away from a raid if I had access to the zone and/or could be pushed in. I don't think the issue is as bad as you make it out to be.-H
You say you were in a Time capable guild, so does that also mean you were Time-equipped or you just went on raids there and never got the equipment from there?
Gear is a big factor in EQ1 as well as AAs. It can't make up for it all, but when you have neither gear (because you don't raid) or AAs (because you don't grind all the time) then yes, the situation does arise of being turned away.
I rebelled against getting TD3 with Melisande simply because all the GoD groups wanted me to have it for Vxed and Tipt to charm the pooka, even though I was looking forward to the AA. I did eventually get it, but I thought the whole idea of *having* to have certain AAs or not being able to function was stupid.
When GoD came out, it just made it all come to a head. I remember Deth, me and a 62 paladin friend went to Natimbi the first day we got our asses handed to us by the 20+ level green tureptas. That place the first few weeks was designed using Time-equipped, 300 or 400+ AA players as the baseline, so it would be a challenge to them and keep them from chewing through the content. It was a nightmare for someone who didn't raid and who didn't spend every waking moment grinding AAs.
There have been a lot of threads about this popping up on the SoE boards and I really hope we don't have a repeat of that, given the way the high end game of EQ2 is starting to go in the same direction, toward raid-only.
Lyinar Ka`Bael, Piney Fresh Druidess - Luclin
There is just as much 1-2 group content for a 60s as there is raid x3/x4 content. I would know I have to farm the damn instances for raid components. Hell, you don't even have to raid to get Fabled gear there are plenty of group mobs that drop the stuff. Is it better then raid-dropped Fabled? No, but that is how it should be. Risk vs. Reward.
The group content is near laughable in terms of difficulty. I wish they would make the stuff harder. I'm not even talking about laughable for Fabled equiped people. I'm talking about your every day joe on the street breezing through. There are absolutely NO group instances that require you to have fabled gear. There is absolutely NO group content in overland zones that require you to have fabled gear. You don't even really need legendary gear, but since the stuff is basically candy now it doesn't really matter.
The con system was designed from the ground up to prevent this thing you fear so much. It makes content stupidly easy for anyone that has good gear though. As far as I can figure, you are just more paranoid then anything.
AAs aren't going to hurt anything, they are just going to give you more to do once you have reached the level cap.
Raid only indeed. Pesco fucked around with this message on 01-12-2006 at 04:58 PM.
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Pesco had this to say about (_|_):
Only if you are a hippie.
His notion is more that work doesn't belong in a game.
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Blindy. had this to say about Reading Rainbow:
You shouldn't have to do any "work", ever.
Are you saying that to play games at a higher level, no work should be involved?
Do you think people who play games in the Olympics aren't busting their asses to get to that point?
When I used to play sports in highschool there was a lot of extra "work" put into them, so that I could play the game at a better level then other people.
To say that a game should contain no work to reach a higher level is just silly.
There is no pay, no respect, no stardom for being an EverQuest high level.
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Mr. Parcelan stopped beating up furries long enough to write:
His notion is more that work doesn't belong in a game.
Should I rephrase it to say "game hippie"?
I don't find having to deal with things like AAs and levels "work" in the same sense as others may. I understand that I will need to do things I don't really want to do so that I can do the things I want to do. It is especially important to understand this in games you share with others, such as MMOs. Nothing is more annoying then people that want things handed to them without putting in the same effort as others. Which is one the basic definitions of a hippie. But I deal with it because I know that it is how they want to play their game. And it normally doesn't matter because when that time comes I've moved on. Thing is when casuals start effecting what happens in the current End Game, which they do not participate in, we have issues.
The arguement that "work" shouldn't exist in a game is weak at best. Everyone does "work" it is just some people like different forms of it. Saying "You can't/shouldn't have this because I don't want to have to do it" is nothing more then selfish whining.
As stated previously, the main issue that people are fighting against is addressed by a system already in place. The very distinct seperation of solo, group and raid content even down to the specific number of people that are in attendance. This allows them to balance according to the needs of the target audience. And as far as I've seen the EQ2 team is actually doing a pretty good job at keeping them apart. Pesco fucked around with this message on 01-12-2006 at 07:21 PM.
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Mr. Parcelan spewed forth this undeniable truth:
Being an olympian is a career.There is no pay, no respect, no stardom for being an EverQuest high level.
So what is the NCAA then? It's a game league where no one gets pay, it is done as a 100% extra circular activity. Well over 90% of those atheletes haven't a chance in hell of going pro, but they do it anyways. Because it is fun, but it is still hard work.
To assert that just because something is a game, there should be no effort involved to achive a higher gaming experience than everyone else is just silly.
Just like everything else in real life, if you want to get ahead, you're going to have to work for it.
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Mr. Parcelan was naked while typing this:
Weak? I don't know, but I play games for fun. When a game stops being play, it turns into work, which is not fun.
In addition to what Reynar examplified, my point is what I consider fun someone else might consider work. And telling me I can't do what I consider fun because you don't is nothing more then a selfish act. It is even worse when someone says I can't have it when they don't even remotely participate in what I'm doing to begin with.
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Mr. Parcelan impressed everyone with:
Weak? I don't know, but I play games for fun. When a game stops being play, it turns into work, which is not fun.
Everyone's definition of fun is different, don't forget. I didn't find running Molten Core over and over again until we got each encounter down very fun. It was funny for a while (OMG THE HOUNDS, THEY HUNGER) then it just got boring.
Then again, DoTD didn't do very good raid wise while I was in it.
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At least I'm not Pesco
In addition to what Reynar examplified, my point is what I consider fun someone else might consider work. And telling me I can't do what I consider fun because you don't is nothing more then a selfish act. It is even worse when someone says I can't have it when they don't even remotely participate in what I'm doing to begin with.
Wow...you somehow managed to turn my argument of grinding into attempting to oppress you.
Maybe it's time for you to step back a bit.
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Mr. Parcelan had this to say about Duck Tales:
Wow...you somehow managed to turn my argument of grinding into attempting to oppress you.Maybe it's time for you to step back a bit.
Actually my comments weren't directed at you but the current state of the EQ2 gaming community on what to do with End Game content, which is why I was asked to begin posting in this thread in the first place.
You just happened to spark the debate of work vs. fun in gaming. 
Lyinar Ka`Bael, Piney Fresh Druidess - Luclin
From what I have gathered, the adv packs will suppliment the lower level content without flooding it while all out expansions are extending the game beyond its current scope.
As for the end game being skewed towards raiding, I still disagree. Again, there is a number of instances that casual players can do with 1 group and get end game loot. If you count in the quests that are completable with 2 groups ( Ring of Fate being one of them ) there is even more content. Pesco fucked around with this message on 01-12-2006 at 10:13 PM.
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Pesco Model 2000 was programmed to say:
Well, EQ2 has a progression for players. The idea is that they run through the content provided. SoE *wants* you to go Newbie Island -> City Zones -> CL / Ant -> Nek / TS -> EL / Zek -> Ferr / EF / LS -> DoF -> KoS. Thus solving the issue introduced in EQLive of older content becoming useless and reducing mudflation in the lower levels.From what I have gathered, the adv packs will suppliment the lower level content without flooding it while all out expansions are extending the game beyond its current scope.
As for the end game being skewed towards raiding, I still disagree. Again, there is a number of instances that casual players can do with 1 group and get end game loot. If you count in the quests that are completable with 2 groups ( Ring of Fate being one of them ) there is even more content.
Sounds to me like there isn't enough high end content. Another place to hunt besides Deserts of Ro at 51-60 prz.
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Willias wrote this stupid crap:
Sounds to me like there isn't enough high end content. Another place to hunt besides Deserts of Ro at 51-60 prz.
Actually, DoF is pretty big.
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Pesco's account was hax0red to write:
Actually, DoF is pretty big.
Like, bigger than Commonlands/Antonica big?
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x--WilliasO-('-'Q) :
1 to 59 is pretty easy though.In EQ2, it ain't.
I think what you meant to say is that 1 to 59 is extremely tedious in EQ2, and in WoW it isn't.
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Maradon! had this to say about John Romero:
I think what you meant to say is that 1 to 59 is extremely tedious in EQ2, and in WoW it isn't.
1 to 59 in EQ1 was tedious. 1 to 59 in EQ2 is not that hard at all.
Lyinar Ka`Bael, Piney Fresh Druidess - Luclin
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Maradon! painfully thought these words up:
I think what you meant to say is that 1 to 59 is extremely tedious in EQ2, and in WoW it isn't.
Oh hay, that's pretty funny.
Honestly here, I'm trying hard to not bash WoW 'cause I actually do like the game (it's hard to not look like you're bashing one or the other when comparing the two, they are very similar at some points, and very different on others), but the amount of EQ2 bashing is pretty pathetic.
Interesting fact: Whenever someone bashes WoW in EQ2, generally they say (1) that the game is too easy, which is somewhat true, the game isn't really hard at all until you get into the high end instances. (2) They say the game is too cartoony, and therefore is for little kids, which is laughable, since EQ2's graphics aren't aimed at any more mature an audience than WoW (Hi, Teen rating!). (3) Finally, they say that Blizzard doesn't release enough content fast enough, which I can also somewhat agree with. The flip side is that what Blizzard releases is generally finished, but might not be bugged free. Apparently there's some stuff in EQ2's first expansion that isn't done yet, and KoS is coming out real soon.
I like both EQ2 and WoW, they're both good games, and each has their own problems. This rampant bashing of EQ2 is pretty stupid, in my opinion (note, I have no problem with SOE bashing, the company as a whole deserves it, but EQ2's dev team does seem to be trying to make the game better).
Willias fucked around with this message on 01-12-2006 at 11:47 PM.
Note: If there are parts in this post that don't make sense or I overused a word in a sentence, it's getting late at night and I tend to think too much on using decent grammar. D:
Lyinar Ka`Bael, Piney Fresh Druidess - Luclin
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Mod attempted to be funny by writing:
Tedious does not equal hard. Killing bears in WoW is easy. It would be easy for 40 hours, 70 hours or 300 hours, the actual difficulty of doing it is the same. Killing bears in EQ1 is just as easy, only that it lasts twice as long and instead of 40 people soloing you have five six-man groups camping.
And what did that have to do with anything? 
I think we can all agree on the fact that EQ1 was pretty lame on the over-grind department. EQ2 isn't NEARLY as bad as EQ1 level up wise.
Look, when I say EQ2 is difficult, I mean a heroic mob (with 3 up arrows, you'd see '^^^' above the mob's name in game) can stomp your face into the ground with no problem. Bring a group, and the fight changes drastically, as long as you can keep the mob on a tank, have plenty of DPS to kill the thing, and a healer to keep the tank alive.
In WoW, you can generally run around and not worry about getting crushed unless you're running around in an area where you KNOW stuff can kick your ass (an area full of elites for example), in EQ2, sometimes rare heroic mobs can spawn in the area you're in, and you have to be careful or die real quick-like. Not just that, but some classes can solo certain heroics (the up arrows over the mob's name serve as difficulty multipliers kinda, one up arrow is tougher than normal, two is much tougher, three is super mob/boss mob) and it gets interesting as luck and some skill can help you get much better exp.
Willias fucked around with this message on 01-13-2006 at 12:50 AM.
The only time I remember any WoW elite completely obliterating me was some of the stuff in UBRS and definately Molten Core. In EQ2, you can find stuff that will own your ass starting at 6 if you find a rare spawn mob, usually about 12 or 13 if you don't.
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Willias stopped beating up furries long enough to write:
And what did that have to do with anything?I think we can all agree on the fact that EQ1 was pretty lame on the over-grind department. EQ2 isn't NEARLY as bad as EQ1 level up wise.
People are equating hard with tedious, in this discussion too often. MMOGs usually offer a 90% challenge-free way to level because that's apparently what people want.
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So quoth Pesco:
From what I have gathered, the adv packs will suppliment the lower level content without flooding it while all out expansions are extending the game beyond its current scope.
Except Im of the opinion they might have abandoned the adventure pack concept they haven't done one since well before DOF, which was Splitpaw saga in early summer. Now we have another expansion coming out with no adventure pack between them....
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Willias's little brother wrote this stupid shit:
(2) They say the game is too cartoony, and therefore is for little kids, which is laughable, since EQ2's graphics aren't aimed at any more mature an audience than WoW (Hi, Teen rating!).
I think they use things like this as an argument for cartoony. Also: Find Azuregos' quest text for the arcanite bouy. Yeah. 
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Delphi Aegis spewed forth this undeniable truth:
I think they use things like this as an argument for cartoony.
Cartoony? Hell naw. That's badass.
It's not something people hear about.
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Sean had this to say about Reading Rainbow:
Cartoony? Hell naw. That's badass.
Yeah. Our guildleader (who finished the carapace fragments last monday) was reading Azuregos' quest text into TS. I didn't stop laughing for 20 minutes. 
"Maybe I should strip naked and do it during a full lunar eclipse?"
"If I didn't know better mortal, I'd think you were mocking me. You can keep your clothes on, however."
"Also, there's a chance you might anger the waterlord Neptulon. I'd say it's about 50/50."
But I was speaking more of the rampant humour in quests and stuff. Dr. Weevil? Hehehhehe.
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Delphi Aegis had this to say about the Spice Girls:
But I was speaking more of the rampant humour in quests and stuff. Dr. Weevil? Hehehhehe.
To be fair WoW does overdo it in places. The whole goblin teleporter redshirt thing in Booty Bay is a good example, they might as well have named an npc "Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise". References work much better if they're subtle. Mod fucked around with this message on 01-13-2006 at 02:28 PM.
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ACES! Another post by Delphi Aegis:
I think they use things like this as an argument for cartoony. Also: Find Azuregos' quest text for the arcanite bouy. Yeah.
No, actually, it's the graphics in general that they make fun of. But enough of that.
EQ2 is going to get more badass with the next update. On test, right now, the newbie islands have been completely revamped (not graphicly, but content-wise). There are no more tutorials to bother you while you are on the newbie isle as well. There is no more Citizenship task bullshit either, when you get into Freeport or Qeynos, you're already a citizen, and already have low level versions of what would now be considered the key spells of each subclass. Example, Wizards get a super type of nuke that does high damage and stuns the target. They also get a damage DoT, a DoT with a resistance lowering debuff, a main nuke, and a root and snare spell. This is all of the very key abilities of the Wizard class, except for AoEs and such. I also know that Necromancers and Conjurors get their first pets at level 1 on Test as well (for Necros it's a bat, for Conjurors I think it's a beetle).
Also, of note, to replace the citizenship quest, there are now racial quest chains. These take place in the revamped newbie districts of the main cities, and in the revamped newbie areas which are connected the to main city. For example, The Sprawl is currently a zone full of thugs and small gangs that you kill for quests. Now, one of the gangs has been replace by Dervs, one is now considered a friendly faction (I think), and the other is a neutral faction that runs around beating the shit out of the other two all across the zone.
Finally, the enemies in the game are much more difficult. All the mobs in the game now recieve subclass abilities instead of archetype/class/whatever abilities. So now everything has a wider range of abilities, and stronger abilties to boot.
Live update 19 is going to own.
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The logic train ran off the tracks when Hellbender said:
Before I quit EQ, I was in a Time capable guild that was moving forward in GoD and OoW progression and only had 30 something AA's (pathetic compared to the rest of the guild). I was never forced away from a raid if I had access to the zone and/or could be pushed in. I don't think the issue is as bad as you make it out to be.-H
Were you in under a grandfather clause of some sort? Quite honestly I can't imagine T1 guilds recruiting people without at least a few class AA post-PoP. Even T2 and T3 guilds would want 100+ during late PoP.
On the issue of 'work' in games, there's good 'work' and bad 'work'. No one is complaining about work in the amateur basketball sense, you practice to improve your skills at basketball, you research plays, teams, traning regimes, nutritional plans, etc, all of which are aimed at allowing you to play basketball better. That's good 'work' within a game and is actually enjoyable to many who also enjoy the game it accompanies. The main point here is that this work is not an end in itself but a way to improve your mastery of whatever game you play, it is not required of you beyond what you will want to do in order to be competitive. If you're the second coming of Michael Jordan and can out-play someone who trains six hours per day against your twelve hours per week, no one will stop you.
In the context of basketball grinding guk for ninety hours to get level fifty would be writing the word 'basketball' onto sheets of paper 8 000 times before you were allowed to play. It's simply an artificial roadblock meant to inflict discomfort onto you before you can play the game. You won't become any better at Everquest after camping the chef room for sixty hours in than you were at five hours in, you might just have become a bit better at camping the chef room just like the basketball player may have improved his writing of the letter 'b' slightly after writing the word basketball over and over again. The requirement is completely arbitrary and simply a way to keep people paying for longer periods of time.
Oh and the really shitty thing about AA points was that there was no end to them. They constantly pushed out more and more, so even the maniacs who managed to max them all out for an expansion didn't get more than a few weeks to enjoy the game before they were thrown into the grind again. Mod fucked around with this message on 01-13-2006 at 02:50 PM.
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Mod had this to say about (_|_):
Oh and the really shitty thing about AA points was that there was no end to them. They constantly pushed out more and more, so even the maniacs who managed to max them all out for an expansion didn't get more than a few weeks to enjoy the game before they were thrown into the grind again.[/QB]
That isn't shitty, that was the point to have them in the first place. They always gave you something you could work on. You weren't supposed to max out AAs, a lot of them weren't really much more then fluff. Casuals just had issues with a few super AAs that became class defining. Which isn't much different then getting a class defining skill or spell at a certain level, just a different means to get it.
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Pesco had this to say about Tron:
That isn't shitty, that was the point to have them in the first place. They always gave you something you could work on. You weren't supposed to max out AAs, a lot of them weren't really much more then fluff. Casuals just had issues with a few super AAs that became class defining. Which isn't much different then getting a class defining skill or spell at a certain level, just a different means to get it.
The problem is that with a fixed level cap, there is a limit on how much you can improve your raidforce by killing frogloks. While +20 to stats, +30hp +15 to resits and whatever may seem trivial, averaged out over a raid it can make a noticable difference. It shifts competition over from who can kill the mob most effectively to who can sit on their ass in sebilis more.
