tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post5997333763448340371..comments2024-03-28T10:18:05.213+00:00Comments on Inventory Full: Plus SupportBhagpusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-998211855062941372022-05-26T12:15:29.789+01:002022-05-26T12:15:29.789+01:00I think that, over the years, its become a lot mor...I think that, over the years, its become a lot more commonplace for players to treat their characters as tools in a toolkit, partly because of the way many mmorpgs now treat the account as the primary unit of gameplay but as Jeromai's comments on the MUD days suggest, there have always been players who saw things that way. Personally, one of the key reasons I can never fully engage with FFXIV is the way one character can do absolutely everything. I find that quite demoralizing. Other epeople seem to relish it.<br /><br />I also agree that reducing the time it takes to level erodes any sense of connection between the player and the character, the extreme example being the introduction of instant boosts to max level. I don't believe it mitigates entirely against bonding with the character - I have some boosted characters who've gone on to become significant actors in the cast of their given games - but skipping the leveling process does tend to make them seem "thinner" until you spend an equivalent amount of time playing them.Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-30646067038764423992022-05-24T22:13:16.400+01:002022-05-24T22:13:16.400+01:00I've got a feeling that part of the change in ...I've got a feeling that part of the change in approach to characters goes hand in hand with how MMOs have moved from being "virtual worlds" to more game-like experiences. In a virtual world your character was your avatar in the world, with which you identified and which people identified as you. When things are more gamified, your character is your tool set for playing the game - and it becomes natural to reach for the right tool for the job. That leads players to having multiple characters with different classes or skill sets, which in turn led to the streamlined levelling experience because ain't nobody got the time to go through the original EQ or DAoC level grind for one of every class. Which paradoxically contributes to the linear levelling experience, because if players are going to blast through the low levels fast it doesn't matter so much if they're repeating the same zones each time, they'll be out of there before they can blink and all the effort goes into the "endgame" where they'll presumably stay.<br /><br />Some games do buck that trend even now, though. I understand LotRO recently added a new low level zone to give players an alternate levelling path, and New World is very much about having a single avatar rather than alts (and the nature of the game's crafting, gathering and PvP keeps high level characters active in zones of all levels).Tremaynehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04410660872706894525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-3379278252564877942022-05-24T12:22:19.132+01:002022-05-24T12:22:19.132+01:00TorilMUD was definitely the template for EQ. Wilhe...TorilMUD was definitely the template for EQ. Wilhelm has written about it quite a bit and there's a reddit post about it with a lot of background detail (I never knew DIKU in DikuMUD stood for Datalogisk Institut Københavns Universitet, the institution in Copenhagen where the first "easily adaptable MUD codebase" was written, for example. I could get into all of that because Ifind it fascinating but a comment's not the place for it.<br /><br />Raiding as we know it today didn't exist in early EQ either. "Raids" there were pretty much like you describe - you'd "raid" a zone, or sometimes even a racial starting area. Raiding Neriak, the Dark Elf starting city was a popular, if inevitably suicidal, event in the first year or two I played. I believe that carried over into WoW, with raids on the Alliance and Horde capitals being a thing. I even saw it once in the Dwarf city as late as WotLK, and that on a PvE server, too. Maybe it still happens for all I know.<br /><br />Your last point is crucial, though. I hadn't really thought of it in those terms before but yes, inevitably the teams that end up designing most of the content in mmorpgs are, almost by definition, "dedicated" to the content. Artists and narrative writers don't need to be wedded to the gameplay but content designers are almost sure to be. Otherwise, as you say, why would they choose that line of work. It explains much!Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-59402659105038240012022-05-24T02:34:25.710+01:002022-05-24T02:34:25.710+01:00I feel like this is not a new thing. Way back when...I feel like this is not a new thing. Way back when, in certain MUDS, we already had traditions of endgame raids - usually called 'runs' back in the day, where a group of players wandered into a high level zone to take down a boss mob with valued loot.<br /><br />I played Realms of Despair, and heard on the grapevine that one of our immortals (sorta volunteer player game developers) went on to be a GM in Everquest. TorilMUD was apparently another MUD with high-level-zone/bosses endgame-like content that apparently inspired other Everquest developers who played it heavily to copy similar structures for their MMO.<br /><br />You can bet that once you're at that point in the game, you'll maintain a stable of alts, because most players treat 'em like tools in a toolbox at that point. Which class has better skills for X content? For Y content, use Z class instead, unsoweiter. I started as a warrior and mained a cleric, but eventually neither class was really good at runs, so I had to max a thief and later a mage, if I wanted to take down certain bosses.<br /><br />Eventually, I had about 10-15 max levels in active play usually. We were allowed to log on a max of 5 characters simultaneously (used to be no limit for a glorious month when I started, before they instituted the limit.)<br /><br />Possibly, what's really new when MMOs came onto the scene is linear storytelling sequences in chapters and episodes. MUD game structure, being mostly a maze of rooms linked in cardinal directions, don't really lend itself to that format. Separate NPC quests are about the limit. That's probably more inspired by singleplayer games.<br /><br />I think also that what tends to be more alarming is that many MMO developers trend on the more dedicated side of the spectrum - I suppose they would be, if they wanted to make a career out of it. So there might be a tendency to not realize that not every player reaches their hoped-for 'endgame' as designed. <br /><br />And that there are naturally a -lot- more players who don't, and find other endgames that amuse them, be it just the story, fashion wars, socializing, repeatedly leveling, etc. Not recognizing that these alternative style players exist tends to be annoyingly alienating and lose portions of their audience whenever they make a change that is catered for the top level dedicated 'as per intended design' endgame players.Jeromaihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02206083433625986970noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-59295869254801737722022-05-23T22:33:31.981+01:002022-05-23T22:33:31.981+01:00I have a pretty vague memory of the stories in SW:...I have a pretty vague memory of the stories in SW:tOR from the time I played but I do seem to remember enjoying the planetary story the most. I also remember getting a fair bit of advice on which class story to try next but sadly I never even got to the end of the one I started. I do keep thinking of going back. Maybe if I do I should just start another character and try a different class instead of picking up where I left off.Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-57835337384398842412022-05-23T22:28:53.012+01:002022-05-23T22:28:53.012+01:00I also had a sense of deja vu as I was writing it,...I also had a sense of deja vu as I was writing it, although we all cover the same topics so many times that's hardly an unusual sensation. I was thinking I might have written about it a couple of years ago, though, not a couple of months! Skimming that post from March, it's quite disturbing how similar it is, not just in the way it also arose in response to a post of yours or in the subject matter, but even the way I unwittingly re-used some whole phrases, even sentences in today's post, all without once remembering I'd been over the same ground so recently.<br /><br />There's no excuse for getting the release order of SW:tOR and GW2 the wrong way round, either. I wasn't 100% certain which came first but I opted not to look it up, which was lazy. I can't remember the discussions at the time around the provenance of the Personal Story. It seems too central to the original game to have been tacked on later. I agree it doesn't really fit the manifesto but it turned out to be one of the most popular parts of the game - indeed it was pretty much the lifebelt a lot of people clung on to when the rest of the content became to confusing to cope with.<br /><br />The picture of the iksar necromancer (That's what she is.) was actually not going to be in the post at all but the five shots I was planning on using didn't quite sill the space so I added her at the last moment. I also used the row of characters from GW2 in that post, which are in this post at the top. I'm increasingly aware that I unconsciously re-use pictures. I seem to be very consistent in the way I think, usually making the same choices even though it;s unintentional.<br /><br />The key difference in this post form the one on Mains and Alts is the minor epiphany I had while commenting on your post about the pivotal role F2P played in my change of behavior. That certainly never occured to me until today. <br /><br />Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-92207541193262925242022-05-23T22:06:41.001+01:002022-05-23T22:06:41.001+01:00Thanks for the shout-out, as usual! I'll just ...Thanks for the shout-out, as usual! I'll just point out that SWTOR came out eight months before GW2 - I was always under the impression that the latter tacked its personal story on as a bit of an afterthought in response to all the talk about the importance of narrative that was going on in the genre at the time, considering that it didn't really fit into the rest of the game's manifesto. How times have changed!<br /><br />This post also gave me a bit of a sense of deja vu, and in some aspects it does cover similar topics as <a href="http://bhagpuss.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-main-idea.html" rel="nofollow">this one from March</a>. You even used a picture of the same reptile person (?) in a green dress! I feel like a veritable scholar in the writings of Bhagpuss.Shintarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-80154936571156318612022-05-23T21:49:18.437+01:002022-05-23T21:49:18.437+01:00another blogger bemoaning the sorry state of World...<i>another blogger bemoaning the sorry state of World of Warcraft's storyline</i><br /><br />/raises hand<br /><br />Guilty as charged!!<br /><br />But seriously, I realize I'm in the definite minority because a lot of WoW players couldn't give two shakes about story; it seems that for the longest time the WoW devs agreed, since they put so much time into crafting raids while story frequently got the short shrift: a few stereotypical questlines involving a few central players that end in a certain way, pushing you into the raid for resolution. (Nothing interesting to see here! Move along! Have a raid!)<br /><br />I also do feel that the implementation of the story is at least as important as the story itself. In the case of SWTOR, there's the class story, the planetary stories, and the zone stories within each planet. There's also a separate overarching storyline for the Republic and Sith Empire as a whole, but that's of tertiary concern when compared to the planetary and class stories. The class story drives you from one planet to the next, and it also has certain stops along the way within the planets, but once you're on a planet itself the planetary story takes center stage. You could ignore the planetary stories entirely and just do the class story, or vice versa. Without the phasing present in WoW, that's easily achievable. <br /><br />So while you <i>can</i> ignore the class storylines, it doesn't mean that you <i>ought to</i>. In that respect I prefer to enjoy the whole thing, but I've never leveled 40+ alts either, so I'm not typically tired of seeing the storylines again and again.Redbeardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05306063084983025771noreply@blogger.com