Are ther any mmmorpgs lef tthat have....Follow

I think there's a middle ground.

EVE is a very static sandbox from the developmental side of things. Players can do interesting things like build bases, camp gates, etc. But enemies don't. The PVE side of things remains fairly unchanged over time, because they use the same design ideas as traditional MMOs.

The hope is that devs will start building systems that allow the PVE world to actually change as well, to allow spawn locations and such to move to new geographic locations, change level ranges, expand, shrink, and allow for weaker/stronger unit types depending on what inputs affect them over time. Or, alternatively, devs need to take a REALLY active role in keeping the world fluid (which probably isn't feasible).

But you need to apply that philosophy to the PVE content as well. Technology has been a limiting factor for a long time, but things like procedurally generated dungeons shouldn't be impossible now. That alleviates a lot of design stress with regards to content production, because small changes have big effects.

That lets you implement a PVE content system that's just as accessible as WoW's is without sucking up the level of development resources that WoW's raiding takes, to actually allow for development time for other sandbox content.

This is some what false now. CCP adjusted AI mechanics "recently" and Pirate Factions are more active on gates and in belts. Before you could sit there and they wouldn't shoot you for a while, now they will start shooting right away, so if you are not paying attention you will be killed. Also they added incursions, which lock down entire systems, with Pirate Gate camps and cyno jammers. you need to clear the incursion to lift the siege. and the gate camping rats have warp disruptors so if you jump in and can't kill the gate camp you will die.

The AI change was a year or two ago, and was designed to help "train" people to survive more PVPish type encounters. For missions for example I can park my ship and pretty much AFK. For incursions, I need more of a PVP fit, and have to fill a combat role actively, because the "smart AI" acts more like a PVP encounter, they will clear tackle ships, logistics ships, switch targets if they can't break tanks, pretty much all the stuff a PVP fleet would do, in a PVE setting. They are pretty neat.

And there needs to be some PVE done in the game, certain BPO's are only available through doing PVE related things, certain mods only drop from PVE related content. So there is a need for PVE stuff, it just takes a backseat to the player driven stuff centered around PVP.





Edited, Apr 12th 2014 1:55pm by rdmcandie

Honestly, MUDs are a "pretty easy" thing for low-level programmers to get into. But like MMOs, RPing during combat is pretty much impossible unless it happens to be turn-based instead of active. They're also fairly bot-vulnerable with how certain clients out there can respond specifically to certain text strings, create macros, and so on.

Anyway, I'm generally on the fence about there only being one way to do a certain thing, like pick up a class or just generally progress. It's why stuff like faction divides bore me, because it typically arbitrarily rules out things like traitors or general espionage resulting in the creation of alternative sources of classes or whatever. So, in that vein, encouraging guilds and such is nice to do, but really shouldn't be the only way to do something. Too many people get hung up on the fact that playing an MMO means you absolutely must play directly with others 24/7. That's simply not true and even a soloist can affect a world.

It may well be now. It was considerably less so back when all transactions were done face to face by living people at their keyboards with no automated trading houses, auction houses, etc. Shoot, there weren't even global channels back then -- you had to actually be in the commonly accepted "market zone" to hear the sellers /shouting "WTS BANDED ARMOR 1PP PER AC!!"

Edited, Apr 15th 2014 11:25pm by Jophiel

in this case it did no such thing... one time I created an occultist, was part of their guild etc, then roleplayed having a conversion to the "lawful good" city - by stealing the orphans the occultists were using in their magical rites and running them to the lawful good city. They eventually captured and tortured me but they couldn't remove my class or anything, just access to the guild etc.

As I said, the game eventually loosened up in terms of progression in a class being based in a guild - but still liked that institutions were controlled by humans rather than NPCs. I'd love to see an MMO where that was more the case - and not in terms of the way it is now with player controlled institutions working around the mechanical systems of the game, but where players could be a the helm of them.

Again, know it has limitations etc... but I think it would go a long way towards creating immersive worlds, and I'd love to see it done in the future in a real MMO.

You all are taking taking this thread way too seriously. OP is clearly delusional.

it still is... if youre female.

I remember seeing an image floating around involving a Merchant and not so pleasant run in with a Nightmare... (Though, by what was shown, I don't think it counted as a mare...)

I reached god (well immortal) status in a MUD before... took years though lol infact just did it back in maybe 2008-2009 and I had been playin since 1997 or 2000. I also played one where you could pick a class but you didnt have access to ALL abilities that class offered if you didnt join a guild, sooo while you could play without being in a guild, youd never reach your full power/potential without being in one, and to get abilities you had to rank up in the guild, so everytime you ranked up in the guild an ability/abilities were unlocked, and to rank up you had to pass tests which we given to you by higher ranking guild members (as opposed to an automated or npc given tests) so other players controlled whether or not you progressed, the test (in my case sense I was in a thieves guild) ranged from:

1. Assassination

2. Seeing if i could sucessfully steal from another guild member or equal or higher talent than me (it was part of the test so they got their stuff back lol)

3. seeing if i could beat a guild member in the PVP arena

4. See if could successfully resist another guild members hypnosis (we were of serpent class and thats how we stole, he used hypnosis to get people to give us there stuff "willingly" as opposed to physically taking it ourselves. But with the right triggers or macros hypnosis can be avoided, or the right items or abilities for example an item that makes it impossible to see what Im carrying.. if my attacker doesnt know what Im carrying he/she doesnt know what to steal from me and thus cant though of course there are ways around THAT too.

5. finding the guild hall, thats right even after joining the guild you couldnt even enter the guild hall until you first figured out WHERE it was, and then figured out how to get in it ONCE you found it, and that was also a requirement for ranking up lol.


also yes roleplaying in there was also strictly enforced.


Another one i played was mostly PVE it was all quest based, no fetch quest all quest required HEAVY puzzle solving and you were only given extremely vague hints and other players couldnt physically come and team up with you and help with teh quests (even if you were both new and stumbled upon it together yo couldnt do/complete it together), if you died you lost experience points and could level down, also you had to avoid instant death traps, instant death rooms (i.e walking into the room was immediate death) and EVERYTHING you carried is dropped where you died, which means youd have to go back to that place and pick them back up (assuming some other player didnt find them first), however if you died in an instant death room then your items were lost because no one (except an immortal.. which i eventually became) could enter those rooms, but immortals werent allowed to interfere, so those items were lost until the servers were reset and everything is returned to its original locations, which the only way to reset was ask an immortal to do it, but all the other players in the game had to agree (as resetting would disrupt their play/progression) or if no immortals were online there was a reset room that you could reset in manually but ALL players had to be in that room for it to work.

the way to become an immortal was make it to a certain level then have some prerequisite quests completed. i just completed ALL quests on the list so i would have knowledge of them all (it also shocked me that even to this day you cant find cheat guide on the internet that shows the solutions to all those quests).


As for super vague quest hints that were allowed, theres on quest with this hard to navigate forest maze (i used to do the mazes by simply wandering around aimlessly until I got out but that maze was so elaborate that "brute forcing" it was practically impossible) there was also a maze that had a room that turned into an instant loop with no exit so while you didnt die the only way to get out was to teleport back to your homepoint which would require dropping all your stuff, so with all youre stuff stuck in that loot room, you didnt lose exp (because no death) but all those items and armor you worked so hard for are again lost until next reset. speaking of which armor and weapons were limited and thus you couldnt keep them after you logged off, so every reset (if there was a lot of ppl playing) was a race of seeing who could get quests done or get to certain areas first/fastest to decently gear up their character for harder stuff, since everyone starts off naked when they log in or reset.

But back to the hints for that super maze... the only hint I could be given was "follow the flowers" and i noticed in the forest you seen areas with flowers of different colors so I tried everything from following blue flower trails, to red flower trails to trying things like taking paths that started with 1 flower, then had 2 flowers, then the path that had 3 flowers hoping hat an increase of flowers by 1 on each path meant the right way, then when that didnt work i tried following paths that only had one flower, or paths that only had 2, or paths that only had 3 etc etc.

Nothing worked, then I remembered a flour mill near the forest and a note i picked up at one point during the quest that mentioned someone who works at the mill cheats on his wife with a woman who lives in a cabin in that forest (the very same cabin that my locator spell showed that the item i was looking for was located in), I also noticed an npc in the mill that was on an endless loop of walking into the mill picking up a bag of flour and walking out. so thats when I connected the dots, pulled out my sword and cut a small hole in one of the bags of flour, the npc immediately came in picked up that bag and walked out, will I left the mill there was a trail of flour going wherever the npc went, which lead to (and through) the forest and to the cabin.


so "follow the flowers" hint. was a play on words for flour and the flowers in the forest were there as a red herring to distract people who got that hint.

Now THAT what i call a developer putting thought into making a quest and something that keeps the player engaged and mentally stimulated (cause i definitely had to use my brain MUCH more than my brawn for ALL of those quests, some i didnt solve for years)

All the kinda stuff i listed above keeps the world much more immerse, and draws you in.. not to mention stuff like those quests would change any educated persons mind about "video games being for brainless people or rots the brain... those quests did the complete opposite or rot my brain.. if anything it forced me to push it close to its limits lol). Moreso than anything Ive ever done in school... especially since school is mostly lecture then memorization, whereas this was no lecture, teaching or memorization it was more of a "throw them into the deep end of the pool and hope they figure out how to swim before they drown" which is just the way i like it.

But... but... Merchant Class!!!

There is no direct progression no, its not like WOW where they release the Lich King expansion and you know ultimately your goal is to kill the Lich King. But there is loads of progression of your own choosing. This is why I don't think EVE is a good game for people who need to be held by the hand and guided through content, because linear progression is non-existent in EVE, progression is what you want it to be, and many people can clear the mental hurdle of "I have to make my own goals to realize".

One of my goals was to reach proper -10. The profile will display -10 to others, but personal standings will show -9.9***. to you. I had to play the game in order to realize my goal of perfect -10.0000. This meant undocking and shooting as many targets as I could, without killing any NPC "Pirate" ships. The problem with the later is that if I was in space and any of my friends shot the "rats" in belts or on gates while I was in space, I would gain standings, instead of lose them. It took me 4 years (of off and on play) to realize my goal. In order to progress I had to literally PVP every single day, it was the only way to achieve my goal. It wasn't a waiting game, the speed at which I reached my goal depended entirely on my own actions.



Yes getting better modules will allow you to clear harder content, and do it faster, T1 Mods > T2 Mods > Faction Mods. granted the "newest content" doesn't always kick out previous contents stuff. Its not like Tournament Grounds making Ulduar Obsolete. Everything is relevant. Sometimes its better to equip a d T1 mod than a faction mod, it may have better fitting, it may offer more defense or offense, and it may be cost effective. Remember in WoW when BC came out and everyones stuff was obsolete within the first dozen quests? Hell half of Final Fantasy left when Abyssea came in because it made everything people spent years getting was pretty much instantly made useless. Frankly I always thought FFXI did a good job keeping old content relevant, it was neat that my Sky gear could work in Salavage, and that my Dynamis gear was useful in Einherjar. Then SE torpedoed that and many many people quit. Including me. (granted I liked Abyssea.)

To me the lack of a linear gear progression is great in EVE. My sh*tty little frigate is just as useful 4 years from the day I first logged in with the skill already trained for me. I don't need to fly a Battleship all the time just because its the biggest or has the most DPS, because a gang of 10 2 week old newbies in T1 frigates can kill my battleship, with 0 loses if they do it right. Without nonlinear character progression EVE eliminates the "time" factor. If Progression was linear, like other games and based on playing the game you would end up with 2 things.

1) People with a vast majority of time would be heads and shoulders above any competition. In a PVP game this is terrible, you would litterally NEVER be able to catch up, and once that group got to endgame ships, you would never be able to beat them as a casual player, or a new player, or even a hardcore player that happens to have a job.

2) People who have been playing longer will have an unfair edge over new people to the game. With a linear progression ultimately you would hit the point where new players simply could not stack up. A group of guys 2014 would be stuck in a frig unable to fight against a guy from 2003 sitting in a Carrier. Thus granting people and unfair edge simply by picking the game up a decade before.

But thankfully EVE isn't linear, so the group of 2013 newbies who can fly some Battle Cruisers, Cruisers and Frigs are able to compete with the group of 2006 bittervets who can all fly battleships and capitals.

This is why EVE continues to grow while other MMO's are in recession. While you don't have as much control over the speed of your progression as say in WoW, it ensures that just because you started a game late, or have to leave the game for a bit, that the rest of the community will still be relatively equal in terms of power projection. Making the games longevity strong. Otherwise you would end up with people who join, get stomped all over the place by bitter vets just quit. EVE is a PVP game, its core element is Corporation/Alliance fleet combat and as such is balanced around keeping everything relevant and as equal as possible in terms of "Age" and "Skill Points.". Its PVE element is largely sh*t, although Incurssions to offer some semblance of "progression" based PVE. Although ive never done one so I am not sure of all the details, I know that they range in difficulty from small gang to full fleet, and offer unique drops and components as well as ships.





Combat is kind of lame, but did you ever do PVP? I still get a rush every time I engage an enemy fleet. Its awesome that after 4 years I still get a thrill of fleet combat. Shooting little red crosses in a mission can't give you that. Something about fitting a ship, and then putting it on the line against another person who has done the exact same thing. My design vs theirs. Its something awesome, even better with friends. The pure satisfaction you hear from everyone after a victory is pretty intoxicating, and the awkward silence after a defeat is deafening. Its an entirely different element to the game when you are actually playing it and not asking the game what you should be doing.

EVE is what you make it, no one is ever really any more effective at anything than you are, and the goals are what you want them to be. Like I said some people just can't make the mental jump and prefer to have the game dictate what progression is.


Edited, May 3rd 2014 2:38pm by rdmcandie

Edited, May 3rd 2014 2:38pm by rdmcandie

Edited, May 3rd 2014 2:39pm by rdmcandie

Except this isn't entirely true. Someone with six years of training will be much more effective than someone who just started playing. The same disparity that exists between newbies and veterans in WoW exists in EVE Online. The only difference is that the disparity in WoW is caused by gear while the disparity in EVE is caused by skill training.

I wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of killing a veteran player in EVE Online. I've been ganked enough times in high-sec to realize this. And I've been training skills on/off for the last four or five years.

A frigate pilot with six years of constant training will perform better than a frigate player with two days of training. I know EVE Online isn't linear in its progressions, and I know that bigger isn't necessarily better, but a player with six years of skill training will be able to fit much better items than someone who just started.

You even said it yourself: