Ooh dear ...

A lot of dev teams seem to think that part of the fix for players chewing through content is player made content. Yes, I agree, but most of the solutions seem to boil down to players killing each other instead of the dev team putting a lot of effort into designing problems for players to face and defeat. One of the reasons I was interested in Next/Landmark was the potential of players learning to design a lot of the content for each other to solve and defeat without it simply boiling down to PvP.

One of the reasons I like games along the lines of ESO and GW2, or older games like CoH is that the content never has to go obsolete. You can group with or help people of different levels or places in their progression and everyone can get something out of it.

IMO, In some ways games like NWN have more long term potential than a game like EQ2 even if it were still well staffed and managed simply because of core design decisions.

Hopefully there will be enough interest and resources in the future for the genre to keep learning how to evolve and do it better.

 

So what you're saying is, players play games and some of them are pretty good at it?

This isn't a problem, it's a fact of gaming life today. When you take a mature population where many have been playing since the earliest MMO's were released, a significant sub-population of whom experienced table-top RPGs for years before / during then, of course they will rip through content quickly. This is because the basic mechanics for content tend to be re-used (much as in other programming environments) in the name of speed and simplicity.
In the case of younger players who may not have that knowledge base, add the Internet's quick information dispersal characteristics, and you have strat guides and walk-throughs within days if not hours of a new release. And even without guides, streamers provide content tips that players can leverage to speed through content.
That means devs are behind the 8-ball from the start because even if they work for an org that supports their design ideas 100%, each new design/idea is only good once before it's published and easily available. Gaming today is as much about the ability to leverage search engine queries and mastering encounter theories before even reaching it, than having the skills to play your character.

For this to change will require a significant investment and a willingness to probably fail a number of times by a studio. The studio that plunges into using machine learning and AI techniques to develop a dynamic system, capable of reactive & robust autonomous changes on the fly to encounters, quest-related goals, and other game elements. There's a reason so many AI researchers value game theory - and until studios try and push the envelope again, the lag between design time and player content devouring will only grow larger.

Whatever company / studio makes that sort of jump forward work first, will own the gaming sphere until others figure out how to catch up. Or until they successfully design quantum game engines.

 

I'd be kind of surprised if we ever see something like this in an MMO (at least as we think of them), given the large investment already required to make them (**** ton of art asset generation in particular). New MMOs are already kind of dying off aside from your dime-a-dozen Asian grinders that keep popping up.

There's also the question of how receptive players would be to it. If you've never played Rift, it has these things called invasions which are semi-dynamic events where mobs come in from another plane and attack various areas. In the alpha, they were pretty strong, and were also allowed to kill quest givers in towns and eventually overrun the towns, which made the invasions themselves kind of interesting and worth pursuing. Turns out a lot of players hated not being able to progress their quests though so the invasions got neutered.

Certainly there will be people who enjoy having that kind of dynamic world. But there's also going to be people who just want to look at the Wiki and know exactly how something is going to play out when they do it. Not to mention making the dynamic content fun. Think about an MMO encounter: tank grabs hate on mob, mob blindly attacks tank until dead while DPS kicks it in the ass and healer keeps everyone alive while you do a script. Maybe there's some RNG elements but it's a largely predictable affair. Making the mob smart and killing the healer or roll over the DPS would be easy, but is it fun? No. Can you make an encounter using the typical MMO trinity "smart" in a way that's still fun and beatable? Maybe. Did the rewards justify the challenge of the encounter? Should you get rid of the trinity (hello Guild Wars 2)? But then you'll always have people who like to be one of the typical tank/DPS/healer archetypes, etc. etc.

Plus, as you noted, players are smart and resourceful, so you'll have to worry about them finding ways to game the AI to cheese encounters/get better rewards.

It feels more fitting for something like Left 4 Dead, which already used a director kind of system to adjust encounters based on how players were performing. Warhammer Vermintide 2 also does something similar. I think it's a lot easier to have dynamic content in a smaller scale game where there aren't a bunch of other dependent systems that might fall apart as a result.

 

The best end-game content spread I've ever enjoyed was from EQOA, because they didn't feel the need to raise the level cap every single time new content came out. Plane of Disease (abilities and weapons), Plane of War (abilities and armor), Plane of Sky (armor and Bul/Tal gear), Solusek's Eye (jewelry), Geomancer's Citadel (proc breastplates), Cazic Thule (raid piece) and tons of other areas were all meant for level 60s and all provided some form of viable, useful gear. Most of the high-end raids didn't give entire sets of equipment, but instead, a single piece for each class that was particularly good and meant to be meshed with gear from other areas.

Too many new MMORPGs just want to raise the level cap, shovel everyone into one new area, and provide a new set of "best gear" for everyone to grind for. It's not a tradeoff between procs/damage shields and stats, or unique bonuses vs resists -- just an inarguably better set to slap on with next to no creativity in how to earn or wear it. In a lot of games, that "living, breathing world" feeling was sucked out in exchange for a theme park that's designed to slow down player progression, and there's nothing less fun in my fantasy game than being told what I can/can't do and how often. I'd rather spend as much time as I want grinding for an item with a 1% drop rate than come back every Tuesday for a single, disappointing chance at a drop.

I don't even understand the point of "preventing" players from burning through content in a day and age where everything's already spent the previous two months on a PTR being datamined. People know what they are/aren't going to do long before the patch even hits, and the people who play for 18 hours a day are still going to play for 18 hours a day, well-prepared to complain about having nothing to do on either their single character or their spread of 25 alts after the first week. Timers serve no purpose beyond ensuring that now, no one is having fun, because no one enjoys staring at a clock.

 

FFXI was the same way; level cap was 75 for a long time, and there was a variety of end game areas that all had useful equipment. ****, FFXI was like EQ1 where there was rare items from level 30 that were still good at 75. Even with the variety of viable end game content you'd still get bored after a while, so I had to take breaks, but it wasn't until they finally raised the level cap many years later and invalidated all of the old equipment that I quit for good (I did go back once but quit again after a couple of months).

I'm not sure how much that would fly in today's environment though. Back then there was still a novelty factor to MMOs and playing with other people online that simple doesn't exist anymore. Also there is just so much entertainment available now, gaming or otherwise. I could grind the same ol' content in an MMO, or I could go play one of the hundreds of games I have available through my cheaply acquired Steam collection, my Xbox Game Pass subscription, etc. Then there's Netflix and other stuff too. It's why you see the production of FFXIV say he's okay with people just playing through the content in a patch and quitting until the next major patch 3.5 months later. It doesn't make too much sense to try to design around the narrow subset of people that want to make a single game their lifestyle.

 

It's tough to say. There was a ton of hype around classic WoW solely because of the fact that it was a return to that single game mindset. That being said, I can't say how well the actual numbers have held up in comparison to the intense hype it had. I estimated a few months of intense activity before a sharp drop. Unfortunately I can't check activity due to the fact that I (voluntarily) had my WoW account deleted. Then, there's something like Pantheon and I don't see that game gaining much of any traction beyond the people who've already formed a cult around it. MMORPGs will never be able to put out enough good, quality content -- fast enough -- to compete with the other dopamine-shot games like Fortnite, shooters, etc. They'll never win over that audience.

Personally, I strongly prefer the idea of one good game to a myriad amount of other mediocre activities. I can't even bring to mind a AAA game that I've found memorable (in a positive way) in the past few years, and I've been burned by Actiblizzard enough times to swear off anything they put out. Oddly enough, while I used to dislike most of the games that came out of Japan for their cliché characters and turn-based combat, I've come to really enjoy a lot of their modern stuff. Dark Souls, newer Final Fantasy entries and their remakes, Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, and Yakuza make up a big chunk of my current playlist.

 

Except it's not even that this expac... it's stats are crap. MC gear only takes the standard 2 rares, but is garbage compared to quested gear. MC Fabled, which takes a bazillion rares and being blessed with the obsenely rare recipes was, in beta, an extremely marginal upgrade over quested gear. Then Caith lowered it's resolve for release to make sure it was inferior to quested gear.

 

I'm not convinced that isn't actually their plan, given various comments made by Kander and Caith about 'crafters having it easy' and 'itemizing crafted gear being a pain'.

 

I thought the mastercrafted gear in Skyshrine was great, especially considering raiding took a part in obtaining it.

Fabled Deathtoll was the same way, it was the only time I ever used experimentation ever in eq2; mostly because I had to.

 

The changes to MC gear will be part of the crafting update /revamp in the upcoming expansion.

 

It still sounds like an excuse to make MC gear continue to be not worth making, while pretending they're not doing just that.

 

Imo MC gear has plenty of options;

1) It could be set up to be very good gear for Solo zones, to give those who dont do heroics some incentives.
How do you do that? Put 0 resolve on it. Then you can add as much stats to it as you want, while making it useless for heroic+.
Have components be harvested only.

2) Create survivability/resolve sets - Lots of resolve/HP, not much Potency etc. Add in set bonuses to enrage TLE players.
Have components drop from solos.

3) Create Risk vs Reward sets - Remember the 0 Sta gear that had auto attack + Potency stats? Great gear.
Have components drop from Heroics.

4) Raid MC Items - See Skyshrine stuff.

Doing something like this allows MC gear to be useful in many areas, as well as keep crafting relevant through multiple tiers of progression.

Do I expect it to happen? No, but we can dream.

 

To me there should be some deal where you go from "vendor gear" to basic crafted to Treasured to MC to Legendary to Experimented & Adorned MC to Fabled. Mostly the progression should be fairly logical with certain "rules". Then you have HQ gear, which "breaks the rules" for its given tier (Legendary/Fabled) but requires unusual effort to achieve. Just ditch this "Mythical" crap altogether.

Just a quick spitball solution there, I'm sure it would need endless refining but it's more vision than Fippy's F***ups show any capability for.

 

Not really, as without resolve that gear would be useless for heroics.

You could make it as powerful as entry level heroic gear, without resolve. It'd help those who run solos only. It'd help those gearing up in solos with normal gear ready for heroics as they'd be able to run zones quicker/easier.

 

Polling and data aren't the end all be all though. That's how you end up with games focus tested to death like a lot of AAA stuff these days. Sometimes people aren't good at expressing why they don't like something, sometimes they like something that sounds bad on paper but the execution is awesome, etc. Part of being a good game designer is reading between the lines and coming up with interesting solutions rather than say... "People are having trouble getting started in in our expansions due to our mess of a Stat system, let's just throw a box of gear at them."

 

1, 2 and 3 would be mostly useless for most people.
1) So only people that never so anything besides solo content would bother with the gear. That's still useless to a large group of people.
2) Hitpoints and resolve without would mean that instead of baggage that dies a lot, those toons would be baggage that doesn't die. The toons in that gear would still contribute effectively nothing, at least if they continue the high potency requirements like those in the recent expacs. Adding the requirement for rare solo drops for gear that will just make them 'survivable baggage' would give this gear a veeeeery small window of usefulness.. even for those content to BE baggage.
3) Good god, no. As a healer I have no interest in dealing with DPS toons who think it's a great idea to make my life hell so they can look better on the parse. Either I have to babysit constantly so they don't die or they bitch because I refuse to babysit them and they do die.
4) That's MC fabled gear.. and MC fabled gear, until the BoL expac, has ALWAYS been about t1 raid gear level and required extra components. That's great for MC fabled gear, provided the don't make the components too rare. In recent expacs, most of the drop rates of those kinds of things have meant by the time people without mountains of plat and/or the personal blessings of Bristlebane get them, they're obsolete.

Seriously what's wrong with the 'old' tiering
Handcrafted, quested, solo, MC/t1 heroic, t2 heroic, MC fabled/t1 raid, t2 raid
Call me crazy, but that worked all the way through CD....

 

The old tiering? Basically nobody used it after level 82 MC'ed. Why? Because you were max level near instantly and it made no bonus. At least with 10 levels to grind, a set of MC'ed at 82 was useful up till 90.

The only time I've ever seen people making an effort to get MC'ed was in CD, because it was the Only real option.
PoP? Nobody bothered.
KA? Nobody bothered.
Whatever was before that? Nobody bothered.

Honestly, mastercrafted armour/weapons are an outdated concept now.

Why not do the following;
Armours - Make Armour adornments. (Permanent & Temp Adorns)
Jewelers - Make Jewelery adornments. (Permanent & Temp Adorns)
Weaponsmiths - Make Weaponsmith adornments. (Permanent & Temp Adorns)

Remove 'Adorning' as an overall concept, and restore it back into the actual tradeskill classes. At least these items would be useful more than once per expac as well.