The MMORPG F-word: Fairness

gard

I'll just comment on the concept of fairness and "balance" as it relates to pvp.

In pvp, absolute fairness (or balance, or whatever name you want to give it) is only possible if all players have all the same stats and skills available to pick from.

Otherwise, it's a unicorn. A beautiful idea, but never gonna happen.

Personally I'm willing to deal with occasional imbalance in order to have more variety. And because I get a sense of accomplishment when I beat the FOTM build with my gimp toon that I crafted myself.

--edit due to communication fail on my part

I'm talking about one race, once class, one set of skills. Otherwise, you will always have the "nerf nightblades/sorcerers/templars/dks" bs going on.

Seriously? If <insert class here> is inherently more powerful and that bothers you, then go *bleep*ing roll one!
ZOS did one thing right - all realms have exactly the same opportunities when it comes to creating a build.

Etaniel

Callous2208 wrote: »

Great read. From my perspective, having played in the genre for a while, the generation that has to have it now started a good deal of this madness. These same folks will throw a tantrum if someone is "better," than them for any reason, be it time invested or overall skill. It has become commonplace, perhaps due to our hectic lives, to read no dialogue, pay attention to no story, rush through every game then demand new content be available. It begs the question; why do you want new content when you skipped 90% of what was already there. Everything is competitive. PvP is the place to talk trash and wave your epeen around, not pve. PvE was supposed to be for teamwork, immersion, playing a role. There perhaps lies a problem in itself. Why have the majority of new players stopped role-playing in mmoRPg's. That's why we just say mmo now. We play but a shell of what once was a thriving world of making lifelong friends and sharing in adventure. It's all about the shiny lootz and who's name is on top of that leader board the fastest. Why play around with builds or use character skills based on what you like to do? Haven't you seen @GenericYouTubeGuys guide for playing that class the best way, the only way? It's just all so, unoriginal, non-personal and uninspiring these days.

this ^ x1000

Ffastyl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e31OSVZF77w

An ESO example: the original Impenetrable. It negated crit chance rather than lower crit damage. The largely dominant crit builds found themselves completely countered by all the players wearing Impenetrable gear. So, players shifted away from crit builds. As fewer and fewer crit builds were seen in PvP, the use of Impenetrable dropped in favor of more versatile traits (Infused, Reinforced, etc.). Without Impenetrable armor on everyone, experimenting players rediscovered the power of crit builds and spread the word. Repeat cycle.

ch.ris317b14_ESO

michaelb14a_ESO2 wrote: »

**Beware the wall of text - Part MMO game development theory, part insight, part history, and most importantly - Part opinion.** 

Over the week, we have all noticed an increase in passionate topics and heated debate around issues like:

• The Champion Point System
• Grinding (locations, nerfs, power-gapping)
• Progression Systems - In EVERY form lol,  Vertical, Horizontal, Missionary, on so on....
• Player segments and play styles.

 While divisive topics in themselves. I think we can agree they all are just discrete symptoms. The real subtext of all these posts, rants, flames, and ideas is:

Fairness The MMORPG F-word 
excerpt credit gamasutra.com

I honestly believe that there is no "version" of fairness, it's an idea, an expectation, not a mechanic. While people will differ (greatly) on their opinions as to any single certain mechanic being fair or not; this is simply their assessment as to its individual contribution to overall fairness.In order to better understand the dynamics of fairness in an MMORPG like ESOTU, let's just consider far simpler example of a single-player game. This I guarantee as gamers we are all intimately familiar. In a single-player game, everything about the game is exclusively in the domain of the developer's control. The dev makes all the rules: from whether where/when/if monster re-spawns, how much gold it has, how much inventory space you have, what items drop and when and where. All of these details are determined by the developer. In fact, all of these details are carefully crafted to produce the game experience.

"When you're creating a solo player game, whether you're talking about advancement in your character's attributes or advancements in their wealth and what they can buy with that wealth -- the next armor or equipment -- those are quite controllable, quite containable, we can very tightly constrain the ways that players have to earn money so by the time that they reach a certain point in the story we can know with pretty good authority what we call the relative scale of money they have in their pocket is. You can increase the scale of wealth and the scale of where they are in the story and you keep them in quite close lock-step."

- Richard Garriott, speaking on his work on the Ultima Series single player RPGs

 Avid RPG fans know that scaling is an important element for an RPG retaining it's sense of challenge. In an RPG, the challenge of an any encounter is directly proportional to the difference between your level and the level of your opponent. If your level 30 and your opponents are level 30, the difficulty may be normal; if you're level 33, the difficulty might be easy and if your level 27 the it may be hard. If your too low a level -- the challenge is too hard, and the usual RPG player response is to backtrack, and "level up" by completing easier challenges. This "grinding" is something many older players of Japanese RPGs from the '80s and '90s will be very familiar with. However, if your too high a level, and the challenge too easy, the game just feels badly designed. We as players think:

"Shouldn't the developer have expected me to be level 15 by this point in the game?"
- You

This brings us to one of the major changes in single-player RPG design, the somewhat controversial implementation of dynamic content scaling. Oblivion was famously criticized by a portion of "hardcore" gamers for scaling every encounter throughout the entire game to the player's current level. Every dungeon visited, even if previously done previously at lower level, would have monsters at the player's current level.You could never encounter a challenge that was too easy or too hard. That barrier to exploration, thats sense of, at some point, you'll be strong enough to go somewhere or do something, simply doesn't exist in Oblivion.

As many here know, Bethesda's follow-up RPG hit, Fallout 3, used the same scaling to set the initial level of encounters, but "locked" the level of monsters once the player visited an area, this avoided some of the annoyances many had with the complete world scaling found previously in Oblivion.

So what does this have to do with MMORPGs, and why is this important? Well, MMORPGs don't scale. They can't, really, because players of all different levels might wander into the same area at the same time. You wouldn't want a game that would spawn a level VR14 mob right next to a level 5 player just because a VR14 player rode by. Thus MMORPGs scale their content in the same way that classical Japanese RPGs did: Mobs of various difficulty levels are intentionally painted over the landscape. Here are just a few examples of this.

World of Warcraft:

Dark Ages of Camelot:

and of course, Elder Scrolls Online:

"So, WTF does this have to do with fairness?". The point is that the distinct geographical layout of mobs in, for example World of Warcraft, or EverQuest; meant that players could directly associate areas with accomplishment. When I first set foot inside Cazic-Thule -- when I finally joined the elite ranks of those who roamed Onyxia's Lair, and Molten Core -- that was an accomplishment. And any time there's a sense of accomplishment compared with others, there's also a sense of fairness.

Fairness is a very important concept in developing MMORPGs. This is because fairness doesn't exist in their single-player predecessors. "Cheating" and other forms of rule-changing in single-player games is not only acceptable, it's encouraged. Many games have difficulty settings or consoles, or built in cheat-codes that allow players to tailor the experience to suit their desires. Does it really matter that you beat the game on easy instead of hard? Only to you.

Fairness comes into play with multiplayer games as well. Cheating suddenly becomes frowned upon when in competition with other players. But only if some players don't agree with the cheating. If you think about it; when everyone agrees to a specific "cheat", it's not really cheating anymore, is it? It's changing the rules. Changing the rules is super common in multiplayer; creating game-mods, which are basically changes to game rules, are incredibly popular; things like FPS maps mods, MineCraft mods and RTS-mods gave birth to entire genres and franchises. But these rule changes intrinsically depend on the agreement of all participants. Everyone has to download the game-mod and choose to use it.

The problem is that there is no structure for change in MMORPGs. There are no cheat codes, no mods, no way to have a subset of people play by a different set of rules. There is one and only one set of rules and if anyone even slightly smudges the clear lines of those rules, all hell breaks loose about fairness. It's this sense of fairness affects everything from PvP class balance to PvE raid progression. And, of course, it affects the in-game economy.

Nowhere is this economic fairness more clear in MMORPGs than in the rate of progression. MMORPGs tend to be based on a very simple formula: time = progression. Most modern MMORPGs are not particularly challenging. They're just time-consuming.

The utter bottom line of ease of play in World of Warcraft gave birth to the term Faceroll. The sheer numbers in EVE Online gave birth to the Blob, and all of them have given birth to a multi-million dollar industry of gold farming and power leveling.

We know the math is simple. Time = progression. Time = money. So, logically, money = progression, right? Yes. Absolutely. Anyone who tries to rationalize otherwise is just plain wrong. So why the outcry about gold farming?

Well, a lot. But on a fundamental level, it points to a major flaw in the game design. If you're willing to pay someone to skip through a game for you, that's a good sign that you're not enjoying the game, and if you're not enjoying the game, then the game is bad. To a game's developer, buying gold or leveling is akin to telling them their game is so bad, you'll actually pay money to avoid having to play it.

"In almost all RPGs these days, that grind mechanic has been repeated in every facet of your virtual life to the point of, for at least me, distress. Slice the game any place you want and you'll find that exact same game mechanic used over and over again. What you're really doing is having people spend time. You're making them waste time in order to level up."

- Richard Garriott, AKA "Lord British"

So why do MMORPGs keep going back to the grind? Well, if you look at Ultima's in general -- not just Online but Ultima's in general -- Ultima's have very customized story-lines. A customized story-line is very expensive to build and takes a lot of time and effort. To kill 10 more, and 10 more, and 10 more, is something you can create algorithmically, and it works very well. So as much as hardcore 'role-playing' gamers in us might complain, the level grind works astonishingly well.

So the grind is inescapable in game design, and players will pay to skip past it, but where's the unfair bit? Is it really "unfair" that some people spend months getting to level 50 and others spend money? Is it unfair only because the game doesn't officially sell you the levels and some shady third party is doing it? Or is there some inherent sense of fairness in actually doing the grinding yourself?

It's useful to think of "pay for" not as a purely monetary exchange. Players who have limited time to devote to game-play -- begrudge being out progressed by players who do have a large amount of time to devote to game-play. Interestingly, in almost the identical way that those who devote large amounts of time to the game -- begrudge those that purchase progression. But why? Why are players so caught up, not only in the progression of others, but also the method in which they progress? The divide is deep, as a quick look into the forums reveals:

Players with limited time to devote to the game are:

 "the millennial entitlement generation that has pretty much destroyed the MMO genre" 

"cry about the Champion points because it mean they have to actually play the game to get them"

"Pay to win casuals"

Conversely, those that do devote significant time to the game are:

"no-life grinders that need their hard-coded power advantage... pathetic"

"need a power advantage to compensate for lack of skill , spending 12 hours a day in a game isn't skill!"

All hyperbole, and not particularly helpful considering we are all on the same side. However, it is useful to note that each groups comments about the other have to do with the legitimacy of the exact same thing. Achievement.

I think the actual sense of unfairness emanates from a much more fundamental issue: the game-play associated with progression in most MMORPGs isn't fun. It's tedious, it's repetitive, and it's time-consuming. The "leveling" part of most MMORPGs (ESO included) can best be described as an extremely long tutorial you're obliged to complete before you're allowed to start playing the real game. As long as no one can skip it, it's fair because everyone suffers equally, but if there are ways to pay (by either sinking time or money) to skip the level grind, it feels unfair primarily because of how unpleasant the leveling experience really is. People paying others to level their characters, are P2W. Grind spot locations are exploits. Interpretations abound, and shots are fired.

One big concern is that, if games do start to directly (or indirectly) sell levels or level progression, they also unfairly elongate the actual leveling process to encourage more people to pay their way to the top. Players have developed a strong sense of "unjust game development" due to free-to-play game designers who produce absolute barbaric "games" in the hopes that players will pay to avoid having to play them. If ZOS were to roll out a paid service for instant max level characters without shortening their leveling experience to less than a few hours, players would be waving their pitchforks in the air and faces would roll.

These fears are also based on a large number of Asian free-to-play games with extremely harsh "free" environments and a heavy emphasis on forcing players to buy power and progression from item stores. "Free-to-play", technically, but definitely "pay-to-win".

But it's important to note that the crucial difference between these systems and what I was previously describing is the difference between paying for an advantage that cannot be obtained without buying it from the item store and paying for progression that can be obtained by taking the time to do it yourself. Pay-to-win is not the same as pay-to-progress.

It seems recently that many have voiced approval for the implementations akin to WoW's season's and tiers as a possible solution to the divide. Lets look at that. When Blizzard introduced "tiers" of raiding content in World of Warcraft, especially in the Burning Crusade expansion, it dramatically changed the meaning of "gear" in MMORPGs. Weapons and armor used to be more than tokens compiled into a gear score; they used to embody the tales and accomplishments that went into obtaining them.

Everyone I know that played pre-WoW MMOs -- games like Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, EverQuest, and Dark Age of Camelot -- could spin a grand yarn of adventure about at least one piece of equipment they had. Many of those pieces of equipment weren't even the "best" of their type, but the rarity and surprise of getting anything special added a great deal of magic to that style of game.

With its refinement to raiding tiers, WoW introduced the concept of gear progression. Progression through raid content was heavily dependent on acquiring the previous tier's gear. You had to get everyone in Tier 1 gear to do Tier 2 raids, and then get everyone into Tier 2 gear to do Tier 3 raids, and so on and so forth. Gearing up became as trivial as leveling up. And, just like XP, all of this gear had to be obtained first-hand. It was all bind-on-pickup.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the same "Chinese gold farmers" who were selling leveling services quickly began to offer raiding services: they would take your character through a raid and get you all the raid gear. Once gearing up became mere progression, it became a time sink… or, optionally, a money sink.

What's ironic is that the whole reason the gear was bind-on-pickup was to ensure a sense of fairness to enforce those accomplishments. You had this epic gear because you raided, not because you bought it from someone else who raided. That sense of accomplishment was part of the rules and circumventing that accomplishment by paying someone to get you the gear was cheating.

The player outcry against "raid farming," however, was dwarfed by outcry against Blizzard's own actions. In Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard had the goal of making raiding more accessible to more players. One of the big difficulties, however, was in the nature of gear progression. If you needed Tier 2 gear to go on Tier 3 raids, but no one was doing Tier 2 raids anymore because they were all doing Tier 3, how could you get caught up? Blizzard added the ability to gather tokens from much easier 5-man dungeons -- trivially difficult challenges that merely required a whole lot of time spent farming tokens -- and added merchants that sold gear equivalent to the previous Tier of the current raid zone. See the problem coming?

When Tier 4 raids were introduced, Tier 3 gear showed up on merchants, and within days players who had never set foot in a raid instance were as well geared as those who had toiled for months facing the game's toughest challenges.

Players were justifiably upset: why raid at all if you can just wait for the next set of raids and buy your way through the previous tier of content? What did that accomplishment mean when Blizzard would hand it out to everyone a month or two later?

Blizzard faced a fairness dilemma: the new system wasn't fair to the raiders who worked hard on raiding, but the old system wasn't fair to the casual players who didn't or couldn't spend the time and effort raiding.

The problem was that the raid gear progression in WoW used to be skill-based, rather than time-based, progression. Having a full set of raid gear didn't just mean you had invested the time in raiding, it meant that you were good enough a player to overcome those raid bosses.

It was also a huge mark of social status: it meant you were a part of a group that was capable of working together to overcome those challenges. Throughout Vanilla WoW and, arguably, most of Burning Crusade, raid gear was a very impressive status symbol.

Status symbols are valuable specifically because they are difficult to obtain. If you could go online and buy a knighthood for $15, the title "Sir" would no longer be a status symbol.

Blizzard's error was thinking that fairnessmeant that everyone should have the opportunity to have this status symbol and thereby destroyed the very value the status symbol carried. It's basically the Queen going on TV and announcing "Knighthoods for everybody!"

Still, raid content was very expensive to produce, and arguably some of the most fun content in any MMORPG. It makes perfect sense for Blizzard to want more of their players to be able to enjoy raiding. Blizzard tried to retain the sense of status in a different way: instead of tying it to gear, they tied it to achievements. Blizzard added "normal" and "hard" modes to raid encounters and rewarded players who completed all the hard challenges with rare mounts, titles, and cosmetic achievements.

In "theory", it might appear that this should have worked. However, it didn't. I was certainly pleased with my Ironbound Proto-Drake. At the same time, I found myself extremely aggravated with "hard" modes after Ulduar, and quit WoW after beating the Lich King on normal. The fact was that I enjoyed playing role-playing games for the role-playing aspects, the excitement of adventure, not the convoluted and bizarre challenges contrived for "hard" modes of boss fights. Although the new achievement-based rewards and other later leased reward systems were "fair", they just weren't ones I was interested in achieving.

Itemization. WoW is just not a good example of what happens when rare goods can be traded, since everything of value in WoW is un-tradeable. Final Fantasy XI, can shed some insights on the fairness of trading.

Final Fantasy XI featured "notorious monsters" which rarely appeared in certain locations and had a slim chance of dropping some very rare and valuable gear or crafting material when they were slain.Similar to EverQuest.

Notably, gear in Final Fantasy XI did not "bind", so not only could it be traded, it could be used and traded many times, potentially used and reused by many players. EverQuest did introduce some BoP in expansions and in endgame raids. However, for the most part, if a player wanted one of these rare items, they basically had two options: they could kill the monster and get it themselves or they could save up enough money to buy it. The interesting thing is that, because there were so many possible valuable items for sale, money in FFXI and EQ was extremely valuable and meaningful.

Actually earning enough money to have bought one of these items was no trivial task; it might actually be more challenging than killing the monster and getting it yourself. So, no matter which route you took to obtain the item, it was an accomplishment. And both routes were inherently fair (disregarding the manipulation by RMT activities).

"Fairness" is best maintained in a "wide and flat" game design: allow players as wide as possible a set of challenges to tackle and keep each of these challenges as self-contained as possible. Allowing players to "trade" challenge accomplishment, through the exchange of rewards in an open market, is perfectly fair and acceptable so long as many challenges as possible are accessible to as many players as possible, ensuring that everyone has the chance to complete the ones they wish to complete and trade for the ones they don't want to do. The preference for one challenge or another, does not a good player make. It just make them different.

 - "Not that you care, but now you know"





edit: mah spelling, and some formatting

Levels simply need to die.

With todays computing there is no reason for levels.... there are innumerable ways to implement RPG systems and fully customize your character, without needing to have levels.

Just as FPS took the character customizarion of RPG and implemented it so much so that there is actually a great deal of complex RPG type systems in most shooters.... NOW RPG and their MMO versions need to take a hint from FPS... and realize, if you design incredibly fun combat and social sysyems... you don't need to create artificial time sinks....

If you completely standardized the base health of every player, gave all the racial passives from the beginning. Added a couple new class skill lines, made a few skill lines have epic continent spanning quests to achieve, put more skyshards and skill point rewards as quest rewards to compensate for the lack of levels....

Far more interesting, far more immersive... and doesnt waste the developers time thinking of ways to artificially gate content.... instead they focus on creating new ways to play and new stories to tell

P.S..... anybody ever see a sharp object fail to cut someone because he was too high a level?

NotSo

Woah, please don't quote the entire post!

tordr86b16_ESO

Levels simply need to die.

With todays computing there is no reason for levels.... there are innumerable ways to implement RPG systems and fully customize your character, without needing to have levels.

Just as FPS took the character customizarion of RPG and implemented it so much so that there is actually a great deal of complex RPG type systems in most shooters.... NOW RPG and their MMO versions need to take a hint from FPS... and realize, if you design incredibly fun combat and social sysyems... you don't need to create artificial time sinks....

If you completely standardized the base health of every player, gave all the racial passives from the beginning. Added a couple new class skill lines, made a few skill lines have epic continent spanning quests to achieve, put more skyshards and skill point rewards as quest rewards to compensate for the lack of levels....

Far more interesting, far more immersive... and doesnt waste the developers time thinking of ways to artificially gate content.... instead they focus on creating new ways to play and new stories to tell

P.S..... anybody ever see a sharp object fail to cut someone because he was too high a level?

The Secret World tried that and failed.

nimander99

I don't want to live in a world, or play a game, where no matter how much time I spend playing the game and honing my skill everyone gets to be just as good as me... that is what truly isn't fair.

Relothe42

Kova wrote: »

If I can kite and destroy 20 mobs that are 10 levels higher than me, why do I get diminished or no XP for doing so? My ability is there, but the experience is taken from me as if there is a leveling tax.

This is the thing that has kept me from getting truly immersed in most modern mmos. I want to be more rewarded when I perform great feats of heroism and daring.

tordr86b16_ESO

Relothe42 wrote: »

Kova wrote: »

If I can kite and destroy 20 mobs that are 10 levels higher than me, why do I get diminished or no XP for doing so? My ability is there, but the experience is taken from me as if there is a leveling tax.

This is the thing that has kept me from getting truly immersed in most modern mmos. I want to be more rewarded when I perform great feats of heroism and daring.

EVE Online - The greater the risk, higher the reward / fun / challenge.

Relothe42

tordr86b16_ESO wrote: »

EVE Online - The greater the risk, higher the reward / fun / challenge.

I tried it out, a long time ago and don't really remember anything about it. I might give it another go, but sci-fi usually just doesn't do it for me. Thanks for the recommendation though!

markt84

People that like being able to become OP are the problem with the game. You can't just be better, because everyone knows vets are more powerful than people that aren't, but that just isn't enough for you guys. Not sure if it's because you're so meaningless in real life, you want to feel like a big man in a video game, but it isn't good for the survival of the game. The game needs to be kinda even in PvP or no new players will play the game, and gamers with lives will get frustrated and leave the game. A game can't survive solely on the losers of the world, it needs the masses to enjoy the game to survive. Now if you can't understand that, you are the problem, and I hope the developers ignore your opinions. A vet 14 shouldnt be able to solo 10 guys that are high levels. A vet 14 should be able to kill 2-3 guys he targets before he dies, but killing 10 solo is nuts, and isn't good for the game.

Relothe42

A player shouldn't be able to kill 10 mobs that are twice his/her level, but if they somehow manage to pull it off by being a pure badass, I think more XP is in order. I'm just a bit bummed that I'm not leveling as fast as some of my guildmates, only because don't have the time to sink. I can keep up with them on beating content, but I get less XP because my level is lower. Thus, I now am solo grinding quests and exploration, which is so easy and boring that it's sad. I just want to play content that's my level, and be challenged.

Tonnopesce

Still a good wall.

nimander99

Bumpity bump bump, bumpity bump bump.

AnAngryGinger

I think the main reason people skip quest dialogue is because this time around it's completely soulless.

Like Kingdoms of Amalur I'm just running around doing *** and don't really care.

Ace_of_Destiny

Want to know what I think isn't "fair"?

Twitch-Gamers (The ones that keep saying CP isn't fair to players with "skill".) have EVERY other genre of game to play and make much use of those "twitch reflexes"...Racing, Fighting, First-Person-Shooters, even most RPGs now-a-days.

Can't we (The ones with more patience in our blood than twitch in our tendons.) have at least ONE genre?

That genre being MMORPGs.

NO Elder Scrolls Game has ever been about "twitch" reflexes...they are about leveling your skills, and knowing how to use them.
Why should the MMO version be "twitch"?

Okay...rant over.


Thank you...continue to flame, rant, and troll.

AnAngryGinger

Ace-2112 wrote: »

Want to know what I think isn't "fair"?

Twitch-Gamers (The ones that keep saying CP isn't fair to players with "skill".) have EVERY other genre of game to play and make much use of those "twitch reflexes"...Racing, Fighting, First-Person-Shooters, even most RPGs now-a-days.

Can't we (The ones with more patience in our blood than twitch in our tendons.) have at least ONE genre?

That genre being MMORPGs.

NO Elder Scrolls Game has ever been about "twitch" reflexes...they are about leveling your skills, and knowing how to use them.
Why should the MMO version be "twitch"?

Okay...rant over.


Thank you...continue to flame, rant, and troll.

Thank you. Now I have a word to describe these kinds of gamers. I usually have to deal with being called a casual like a dirty word. Or even worse, scrub.

michaelb14a_ESO2

AnAngryGinger wrote: »

I think the main reason people skip quest dialogue is because this time around it's completely soulless.

Like Kingdoms of Amalur I'm just running around doing *** and don't really care.

I was actually talking with a colleague of mine about this yesterday. Specifically it was regarding something that is known in the gaming industry as the voice acting paradox. It basically describes a dev phenomenon where the market has developed a huge expectation that modern games be almost entirely voice acted. The paradox; is that when looked at; an overwhelming large portion of gamers have simultaneously developed the habit of skipping over 50% of this dialog (some put it at 70-80%). Voice acting content is very time consuming and expensive; it's one of the many things attributed to the exponential increases seen in development costs for modern games.

You're absolutely right, quest (or mission) dialog is soulless these days; Attention was paid to dialog in games because it mattered in the context of gameplay and characters progression. The knowledge gained from "paying attention" was just as important --- and as useful; as your character's equipment, or skills, attributes and level. Story and dialog used to be part of the game meta.

Hypertionb14_ESO

i miss some aspects of FFXI... i had at least 4 pieces of gear that i spent alot of effort to get... and i wasnt even able to scratch that games endgame because of the difficulty in finding groups able to complete the quest requirements to unlock the later raid zones from the chains expansion... i started long after the inital launch of Rise and ended up quitting after two years only having managed to take part in only the origonal Dynamis raids... i had the same extreme issues making money in game as i do in ESO and have always vehemently despised RMT system. in the end i was hitting a wall of progression i couldnt get past and almost always solo in a game that practically punished solo gameplay at the time.

The NM system in that game was wonderful, Getting good gear while leveling was meaningful, gear from endgame was worth the effort, and some gear was so hard to obtain that it was pratically impossible for players like me and was a real goal and sense of achievement...

those relic weapons, even if you had the backing of a guild still required a entire half year to get through all the stages to get one... and in ESO we do a single 10 round fight to get so called "master weapons" which are functionally similar.\

ESO has almost nothing in it that really can be considered a goal anymore.. Rare BOP sets are limited in use and the Raid drops for completion are not even as good as some of the trash drops.

Meaningful progress is definitly ESOs biggest weakness and apart from a grind to get to the highest level, has nothing that really has any real purpose...

ahstin2001nub18_ESO

first, great post. one of the very few i bother reading through these days, and it was worth it.

my only commentary:

my old school circle don't worry about fairness when it comes to "pay for progression"- gear, levels, gold. its only about having what it takes to get things done (player skills). a lot of mechanics tends to be recycled through out a game and players need to know their role in the group/raid.

i agree about everquest everquest lol. it was all about grinding no doubt, but thats only with regards to mechanics. it always felt like 75% socialization, 25% grind. that socialization included raids, groups, spawn camps, camps/pull points, exploring places that would probably get you killed, trading/selling items (i laugh my ass off when people PC and someone with a mod tells the price).

i also remember gear when they were status symbols. i could NEVER figure out why people would get so uppity about other players inspecting their gear. i mean some of my gear i had to camp for a long ass time to get.... and i mean days, weeks, month. i was proud and excited when people checked out my gear. then again, now adays people over crunch numbers, and put too much emphasis on the right ones while neglecting the others, so i guess i would probably start joining that crowd.

the problem these days, most companies aim to please everyone... they need to stop. they need to say "this is the mission of the game, love it or leave it." pleasing casuals, upsets raiders; pleasing PVP, upsets PVE; pleasing questers, upsets grinders..... at some point designers should just say enough is enough and stick to a vision of the game.

xEcthelionx

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

The sad truth is a MMORPG is never 100% fair there are always gonna be those players who will do what ever it takes to have a unfair advantege over others be pay to wins (not saying ESO has any), endless grinding for higher levels, or doing the same dungeon over and over for gear that's just slightly better than craftable gear such as CoA helmet runs. But that is kinda the fun part to over come those players and show them that even if the are low life cowards who spend hours on hours exploiting and abusing mechanics that there still not gonna be "the best player" cause there is always one person who is better than you and they either better than you by being fair or being a low life abuser.

"They are low life cowards who spend hours on hours exploiting and abusing mechanics."

Is not an accurate description of players who farm CoA for BiS helm. It IS a description of the players who work hard after every patch to find the future version of camohunter+caltrops. There's a player that is in Azura's Star on PS4 that hit emperor by spamming camohunter and caltrops to gain AP faster than everyone else.

RedTalon

Fairness in a mmo terms is all in the eye of the beholder

Lowenhigh

I really enjoyed this post. +1 for insight