Understanding Veteran Rank Complaints

Halorin

Hello,

I'm hoping to have an intelligent and hyperbole-free discussion about veteran ranks. I'd like to set aside the debate of difficulty, or at least not have it take the center stage of this thread. I'm curious to learn what people want in a Veteran Rank system, because I am genuinely confused by some people's statements. On MMORPG.com, a user commented this:

Yes because mindless grinding for the sake of grinding is both inspired and intelligent design that clearly makes you "hardcore" and therefor better than people who don't want to endlessly quest immediately after hitting max level.

Now I read through this statement and I take away points that I find to be highly contradictory.
-This person is against grinding
-This person is also against having so many quests to accomplish that they'd call them endless

To me, grinding is just mindlessly killing mobs for long durations of time to achieve a character or skill level. There's no story. There's just killing x amount of NPCs.

If someone finds doing quests to be a grind, then what alternative activity is there that would constitute something not being a grind?

I could see the argument that for someone who's gone through 1-50 in the other factions on other characters that going through the veteran ranks would be a grind if the content is not changed at all. But I don't think that's the majority of the complaint.

I get this ironic impression that people want to get to max level as quickly as possible, and that anything resembling a need for long time commitment and persistence will be seen as a grind. Like no matter what the activity is, anything short of near-immediate gratification is a boring venture.

What do these people want when they do reach max level? Would they then say they want more content? But wouldn't they just be back to where they were? Wanting to grind through content as quickly as possible?

I guess this is both a question and statement. The question being what do people want out of veteran content? The statement being that somewhere along the line, MMOs started becoming more about the destination than the journey, and maybe it shouldn't be that way.

DirtySouthWookie

Weird that they constantly nerf classes for PvP people that complain, then nerf all of PvE so those classes can function.

NorthernFury

It's like inception! A nerf inside a nerf....LOL

Halorin

I think you're in the wrong thread.

To add to the relevant topic, I would like for the Veteran Rank endgame to be something like this:

Dynamic content that sends players of one faction into parts of the others where they conduct raids and attacks against the other factions. These can and should be randomly generated with different degrees of difficulty and respective rewards. The further into enemy territory, the more difficult the assignment.

These can be simply killing a guy, or retrieving an item in a capture the flag sense with NPCs trying to stop you. There can be timers for failure as a variable, or any number of varying factors to add some difference to the experience and make it feel like it's an ongoing effort.

Rankings can be given for this in some way, much like how factions are given boosts in Cyrodiil.

New maps in the factions can be made specifically for this purpose. Existing maps can be modified to not be about quests for their respective factions but as enemy territory for more difficult missions, like King Emeric sending you to Valenwood to retrieve some ring.

Variants can be where you are assigned to go after Molag Bal's minions that pop up in random places.

Audigy

First of all, does someone else have issues with the forum currently? I cant flag, I cant quote, its weird!


@‌ Topic

I can not speak for others, but I see VR content as an additional but optional part to the game.
I see challenges in front of me, these reward me with a title, a new mount, a lot of gold for a house, maybe a nice painting of a wonderful Argoanian women laying in the sun ...

These challenges would not require that I join a guild, that I join a premade or that I participate in a time trial. No, these challenges would require my intelligence based on where I fight, how and whom. It doesn't not exclude that I friend a passer bye, but it wont be a relationship for life.

While doing those challenges I can improve my Character, for example I learn how to wield A Katana, how to block with two swords, how to see hidden treasures or how to improve my crafting skills due the knowledge that craftsmen gave me after I fulfilled a task for them.

I might also learn a new dye or how I can make my shoulder pads invisible, how to set up a campfire or gain other survival skills.


Its not based on the main story, as this must be accessible for all. Its a side story, that my char only has. Its not a pre written story, but one I write myself.

DeLindsay

Complaints in MMO's about difficulty or lack thereof will ALWAYS exist. There will ALWAYS be players that are better than others. There will ALWAYS be players who just don't want to deal with difficult content because they just want to have fun and to them that isn't fun. Unfortunately for game companies like ZoS it's a perpetual catch-22. If the nerf something one side complains, if they buff something the other side complains. Besides ZoS isn't remotely done with balancing VR content so all these threads are basically moot at this time.