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  1. #61
    Quote Originally Posted by Advent View Post
    Oh yeah, clearly it's laziness. >_>

    Let's paint a picture. Say you created an MMO story that branched out in 5 ways. Now there are several other factors to consider: Does this branching effect cover dungeon and raid bosses? What happens when we add content updates, likely they now have to have several concurrent storylines going on at one time. Lastly, what happens if it DOES affect raid and dungeon bosses? What happens when people want to play together, are they separated based on story line? If so, what do you do with the people who have chosen the less popular story path and thus have fewer people running around in their world to play with? The tech would have to phase you to really "immerse" the player in the experience of an ever-changing world, so what do you do with the people who killed potential dungeon boss A that want to play with a friend who didn't kill potential dungeon boss A and now he has a totally different experience? Because that is the fundamental, core idea of branching story paths: Everyone Has A Different Experience.

    What do you do? Is it even worth it to constantly have several concurrent story lines ongoing that you always have to pay off? Which story suffers? Which one gets the spotlight this patch? What happens when your players become angry that you couldn't offer them enough story per patch because your writers were bogged down by having 12 different stories to write all at once?
    The trick is to not make linear story-driven content as your primary content. Because while railroaded story-driven content is great for the narrative it's horrible for replayability and gets boring very quickly.

    For example, imagine World Quests were available at level 100 as soon as you entered the Broken Isles. They could tell you the general theme and lore of a zone without putting you on railroads. Tell the main story with something like Class Campaigns instead that send you out into the world to explore, kill and retrieve certain stuff while doing other content (open world, dungeons, raids) unlocking further content.
    Last edited by chooi; 2017-07-14 at 01:33 PM.
    #MakeBlizzardGreatAgain

  2. #62
    Vin was a bit to long, TBC had it just right I believe,

    The problem we've had since Wrath is that each time a new expansion comes out, the amount of experience needed to level is reduced, top that with heirlooms and it's a problem.

    Take me for example, when I first hit Hellfire in TBC, I did all the quests, all the dungeons (bar shattered halls ofc) and I went from level 60 to 61, about 1/2 into 61 before progressing through to zangermarsh. Now, I can go to Hellfire at 58, do each dungeon once (bar shattered halls), do all the quests and I'll walk out of there level 63/64. Can't remember which it is, but I did it during MoP or WoD, it's a complete joke.

    Without heirlooms it's still insanely fast,

    Personally, I think new players should have to get the required experience like we did at x point, let them actually experience each zone, know the story. Actually work to hit max level, not only is it a better overall experience but they will learn their class and role better. Then once they hit 110 (or what ever the max is at that point) then let them have access to heirlooms and current experience levels.

  3. #63
    Quote Originally Posted by Kazela View Post
    This will venture perhaps too close to game vs. game...but I believe GW2 was kinda going in the right direction in that you have 5 different areas you can start in; had they stuck with the idea of level-less player classes (which was stated to be the case at one point in that game's development), you could have a world where all the outdoor areas are somewhat relevant. That's one thing I believe that game does a fairly decent job at.

    Course, my ideal "leveling" system would be something more akin to what we had in pre-CU/NGE Star Wars Galaxies, but perhaps that, too, is a relic of MMO eras past, never to be seen again.
    Sadly the no levels, open class system that really was one of the best things in SWG Pre-Cu, is like several of the other good systems in that game, they seem to have been scrapped by the industry once SWG failed.

    People can say what they want about it but every planet would have been dangerous without the crazy doc buffs, even with the best gear.

    Crafting was another of those that got dumped to, and here we are about 15 years later and no has dared make a system as intricate or good as it was.

  4. #64
    Quote Originally Posted by Domoda View Post
    Don't want to turn this into a vanilla vs current discussion but I just want to say the absolute best thing about vanilla wasn't the endgame, it was the leveling experience. My first level 60 took 23 Days /played to ding max level and my only alt took about 11 Days. According to people on private servers the current average is 8-10 Days I Believe.

    The journey was Amazing and for a casual, imagine playing for months and months Before even reaching max level! Unheard of by todays standards where everyone is max level within a week of the xpack release. It seems like such untapped potential, instead of having a final raid tier last for >1 year why not have the leveling experience in the beginning be an Epic 2 month journey or so? Remove the stress and hype to get to endgame and start raiding, let the first raid tier last a long time so people can enjoy just leveling and exploring.

    They would need to change their zone and quest design though, because the last 2 expansions have been very claustrophobic in their design cramping quests and mobs in every nook and cranny in every zone and having Everything on rails.

    I say build a huuuge new continent first, then populate with quest givers etc much like the original 2 continents in vanilla and don't design the maps around hubs and how to level most efficiently.

    Anyone agree or am I just a ftard who should suicide?
    A big part of this is simply low exp reward, classes with basically no mobility, no mounts or only the shitty one, hearthstone 1 hour cooldown, the map was gigantic which is necessary for the core of the game but actually an annoyance for an xpack, levels of the zones did not match the surrounding zone we had to waste a lt of time WALKING to another zone on another continent cuz there was no other way to reach it.

    All these things were only fun once. On the second toon every single one of these things were extremely annoying, even by 2004 standards. The only thing that kept us going is discovering a new class and probably new zones cuz there was more than 1 option per lvl range, which was nice and the only real use of having lots of content cuz otherwise if someone leveled only 1 toon there are huge chances that he wont see every zones.

    The leveling experience in most xpacks is actually fine and to be honest, far better designed than vanilla was. But at this point in time, for most old WoW players, nostalgia beats design and it seems most people enjoy crying more than realizing they should move on.

    I highly doubt people would really enjoy having massive continents to walk through again, it would look awesome if blizzard reveals that, but the moment we get in there and realize the only goal of huge continent is to make us walk and walk and walk, in a game where all we wanna do is go fast. I mean look at highmountain, would you want to run around fucking rocks and mountains for 10-15 minutes straight, getting aggro'd by shit, dazed, forced to fight useless mobs just to reach point B? No doubt you'll see people in chat complaining about how long it takes to reach their destination and finish a quest in a reasonable amount of time. The times of old are gone, and through vanilla and TBC we tasted the fun of having quick and efficient quests that didn't require a stupid travelling time investment. It's in our nature to look for the best and improve on every aspect, so it feels weird to spend extra time on a quest when the quest right next to it takes half the time for the same reward.

    The concept of time wasting in vanilla felt fine to us cuz we didn't have anything else to compare with, but today it wouldn't work at all, that's just not the spirit of the game anymore.

  5. #65
    @Swalload

    MMORPGs are about exploration, adventure, undiscovered mysteries, hidden treasures, etc. I dont see how current story telling questing experience can ever give you that. WoW and most other MMORPGs are now few hours long e-books you're required to read through before you enter the gaming mode, which in many cases is kind of PvE version of LoL.

    I guess the problem is most of us can't see the forest for the trees. These games are boring and tedious not because of long or inconvenient leveling experience, but because of bad and lazy game design, which has made 90% of content completely pointless and irrelevant. You could be playing Candy Crush or Tic-Tac-Toe for a few days or watch 10 seasons of Friends, then have your access granted for those instanced raids you're supposed to run for months and months. Or even worse - pay a considerable sum of money for a right to skip the nonsense altogether.

  6. #66
    Having to level 60 levels was more time consuming than leveling 10 levels. Going from level 1 to level 10 in vanilla took less time than going from 100-110, but going from 50-60 might have taken the same amount of time. Having 5 zones or so for 10 levels ain't that bad. And I think that having to get the five items from the five zones in Legion was a great idea as well as scaling within the zones based on one's level. I don't care if I'm in the minority with that opinion.

  7. #67
    Quote Originally Posted by Swalload View Post
    A big part of this is simply low exp reward, classes with basically no mobility, no mounts or only the shitty one, hearthstone 1 hour cooldown, the map was gigantic which is necessary for the core of the game but actually an annoyance for an xpack, levels of the zones did not match the surrounding zone we had to waste a lt of time WALKING to another zone on another continent cuz there was no other way to reach it.

    All these things were only fun once. On the second toon every single one of these things were extremely annoying, even by 2004 standards. The only thing that kept us going is discovering a new class and probably new zones cuz there was more than 1 option per lvl range, which was nice and the only real use of having lots of content cuz otherwise if someone leveled only 1 toon there are huge chances that he wont see every zones.
    Well, no, that's your opinion. To discover everything Classic WoW had in it, well hidden most of the times, took me more than a single levelling experience and I enjoyed all of them (I play to enjoy games after all). I don't pretend to get a vanilla server, I can play on private ones and enjoy the good old gameplay there, in the same way I'm enjoying the new content, but it's not the same game, it just looks similar.
    Classic WoW was a world, not terribly unfriendly like the Everquest one, but it still felt like a world, now it's a quick action game like there are tons on the market, because the concept of old school MMO has been abandoned in favor of these new instant action, quick gratification models that are enjoyable by every kind of player.

    Maybe it's been a good thing, maybe not, we will never know. What we know for sure is that WoW has been for about 10 years the trend setter, everyone was copying WoW, so the chances for experiencing a different game were slim. GW2 was a nice exception to the wow clone army that infested us all for several years, but mostly the MMOs were all been done wow-like: dungeon finders, quick travels, teleports in every corner, 60 levels, gear replaced every few minutes or hours, vertical progression based on gear, etc.


    The concept of time wasting in vanilla felt fine to us cuz we didn't have anything else to compare with, but today it wouldn't work at all, that's just not the spirit of the game anymore.
    Here I'd like to correct you, previous games had immensely larger time wasting activities and time sinks, from MuDs to the first 3D MMO, aka Everquest, which I played for more hours than I like to admit. For that generation of players, classic WoW time sinks were a quick joke. A dozen hours grinding a faction? A 10 minutes run to get to another zone? Seriously. In retrospect some forms of time sinks being gone is a blessing, I didn't like much to camp rare spawns to get an item for a quest for instance. I remember doing a 60 hours long camp, straight without breaks to get an item for an epic quest in EQ, which I swore I'd have never done again in my life.

    TL;DR: modern WoW is a totally different game with a few names and themes in common with classic, I like them both, I prefer the old school for nostalgic reasons and because I was younger back then and it sucks getting old.

  8. #68
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Kyranna View Post
    TL;DR: modern WoW is a totally different game with a few names and themes in common with classic, I like them both, I prefer the old school for nostalgic reasons and because I was younger back then and it sucks getting old.
    U da trv MVP.
    Always good to read some "Vanilla kids" with reasonable posts.

  9. #69
    Quote Originally Posted by Armourboy View Post
    Sadly the no levels, open class system that really was one of the best things in SWG Pre-Cu, is like several of the other good systems in that game, they seem to have been scrapped by the industry once SWG failed.

    People can say what they want about it but every planet would have been dangerous without the crazy doc buffs, even with the best gear.

    Crafting was another of those that got dumped to, and here we are about 15 years later and no has dared make a system as intricate or good as it was.
    Lol, doctor buffs were just batshit insanely OP. I recall one time joining a rancor hunting group as the only person with buffs; upon finding our first rancor, I was the only person left standing after about 30 seconds of combat, and I was able to basically kite it long enough for others to res and return.

    As much flak as that game got (and there were valid reasons for various bits of flak), there's a lot of (imo) really good design decisions to work with from that game. The crafting, as you noted, would be one such example.

  10. #70
    Quote Originally Posted by deniter View Post
    @Swalload

    MMORPGs are about exploration, adventure, undiscovered mysteries, hidden treasures, etc. I dont see how current story telling questing experience can ever give you that. WoW and most other MMORPGs are now few hours long e-books you're required to read through before you enter the gaming mode, which in many cases is kind of PvE version of LoL.

    I guess the problem is most of us can't see the forest for the trees. These games are boring and tedious not because of long or inconvenient leveling experience, but because of bad and lazy game design, which has made 90% of content completely pointless and irrelevant. You could be playing Candy Crush or Tic-Tac-Toe for a few days or watch 10 seasons of Friends, then have your access granted for those instanced raids you're supposed to run for months and months. Or even worse - pay a considerable sum of money for a right to skip the nonsense altogether.
    That's right, nothing was really made the right way to begin with, it was fun to discover at first but then we just got used to ignoring the kinda botched settings just to get to the end. It's like a natural selection that made us do that, made blizzard realize what we do and not put effort on things we were already trying to run over asap.

    I don't think doing a 180 on that is gonna help WoW. The current lvling experience in xpacks have been fine IMO, specially WoD, as bad as the endgame was, the lvling was good with a nie amount of story telling across the progression without being too much or too cringy like pandaria. Legion was okay but being allowed to do any map in any order kinda took away from the narrative a little. It made everything more episodic instead of one long story.

  11. #71
    Quote Originally Posted by Kazela View Post
    Lol, doctor buffs were just batshit insanely OP. I recall one time joining a rancor hunting group as the only person with buffs; upon finding our first rancor, I was the only person left standing after about 30 seconds of combat, and I was able to basically kite it long enough for others to res and return.

    As much flak as that game got (and there were valid reasons for various bits of flak), there's a lot of (imo) really good design decisions to work with from that game. The crafting, as you noted, would be one such example.
    Wait you needed a group to do that? Heck I was soloing everything Pre-CU as a TKM ( or Jedi whichever I was on) with no real effort at all.

    The Devs in that game still make my blood boil, especially when I found out what the original CU was supposed to be ( my wife was a profession rep who was in early discussion with them about the changes). Instead they tried two different times to be a WoW clone.

  12. #72
    I REALLY miss longer and more challenging (i.e. more tedious levelling).

    Even in WoTLK reaching level 80 was a feat (excluding heirlooms and the RDF patches). I hope they bring it somewhat back... levelling has always been a core part of the game, and should be. You get to talk with people when it's slower, run more dungeons, explore the zones more and do more quests etc. and also learn how to master your class better. No reason why they shouldn't bring this older system back again!
    "There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning." by Jiddu Krishnamurti, Philosopher and Educator

  13. #73
    Brewmaster Deztru's Avatar
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    Sadly leveling can't be a main focus point since it's only 5 or 10 levels each time.

    Perhaps if they added a whole new continent (south seas wink wink) and another 60 levels to make it worth the development time.

  14. #74
    Quote Originally Posted by urieliszcze View Post
    U da trv MVP.
    Always good to read some "Vanilla kids" with reasonable posts.
    This kid was 30 during vanilla

  15. #75
    Quote Originally Posted by Armourboy View Post
    Wait you needed a group to do that? Heck I was soloing everything Pre-CU as a TKM ( or Jedi whichever I was on) with no real effort at all.

    The Devs in that game still make my blood boil, especially when I found out what the original CU was supposed to be ( my wife was a profession rep who was in early discussion with them about the changes). Instead they tried two different times to be a WoW clone.
    Probably could; it was my first MMO, and I only played for 3ish months (dropped it when the patch that had player bounties hit because it was...surprise, broken!). You could combine TKM with Doc, or at least enough of both of those to completely destroy anything you could get in melee range of, lol. It's weird how those 3 months or so playing that have had an impact to this day.

  16. #76
    Deleted
    The best thing blizzard could do in my opinion is to make all the zones pre-legion scale 1-100. This way new people can still play through an entire zone without outleveling it and if they see something from the other expansions that they want to explore they can just go there and continue leveling. The only problem with this might be either how to find how to go to these zones easily or the big amount of clutter in the adventure journal.

    And they should always scale it up, so in 8.0 all the zones will scale 1-110 and the newest expansion zones would be 110-120.

  17. #77
    Levelling was awesome the last 3 expacs

  18. #78
    Deleted
    I'm loving leveling contrary to the last expansions.

    The last expansion I did enjoy leveling was WOTLK. I'm really diging te theme & quest design even thou there are some hiccups here and there.

    I'm more excited about leveling and doing world quests than raiding tbh.

    Raiding is always the same thing and I've grown tired of having to attend 3 and 4 days of raiding, I rather just do 5 man content

  19. #79
    The Lightbringer Nurvus's Avatar
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    Making leveling better has nothing to do with how long it takes.

    The issue is that every single mechanic in the game encourages you to rush to max level.
    1 - There is no point keeping professions updated while leveling, since it's way faster to just get to max level, and then level your profession.
    2 - You do not gain any "end game" currencies until you reach end game.
    3 - Lots of time gated power in end game.
    4 - Lots of stuff gated behind levels.

    Take Order Halls, for example:
    - Level requirements on quests
    - Level requirements on Order Hall Upgrades
    - You can only begin your AK research at 110
    - AP treasures in the world scale with your AK, so you might as well ignore them until you reach max level and a decent amount of AK.

    Blizzard needs to make you feel like you are contributing towards end game at any level.
    Gaining Nethershards while leveling, for example.
    Able to start AK research the moment the order is created.
    Making Questing and other leveling activities give you bonuses to Profession Skill point gains, and vice-versa.
    Making idle time (not doing quests, etc) stack bonus to XP, so that doing "unproductive" stuff like exploring isn't a waste of time.
    Last edited by Nurvus; 2017-07-17 at 04:18 PM.
    Why did you create a new thread? Use the search function and post in existing threads!
    Why did you necro a thread?

  20. #80
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Nurvus View Post
    Making leveling better has nothing to do with how long it takes.

    The issue is that every single mechanic in the game encourages you to rush to max level.
    1 - There is no point keeping professions updated while leveling, since it's way faster to just get to max level, and then level your profession.
    2 - You do not gain any "end game" currencies until you reach end game.
    3 - Lots of time gated power in end game.
    4 - Lots of stuff gated behind levels.

    Take Order Halls, for example:
    - Level requirements on quests
    - Level requirements on Order Hall Upgrades
    - You can only begin your AK research at 110
    - AP treasures in the world scale with your AK, so you might as well ignore them until you reach max level and a decent amount of AK.

    Blizzard needs to make you feel like you are contributing towards end game at any level.
    Gaining Nethershards while leveling, for example.
    Able to start AK research the moment the order is created.
    Making Questing and other leveling activities give you bonuses to Profession Skill point gains, and vice-versa.
    Making idle time (not doing quests, etc) stack bonus to XP, so that doing "unproductive" stuff like exploring isn't a waste of time.
    I completely agree.

    I just came back and playing a new toon and oh god everything in Legion screams rushing even thou leveling is fun again.

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