Why do MMOs still have you level up? Modern MMOs try to skip

If people don't need to level you can't sell xp boosts.

>>386962515
There would still be some kind of progression. It would very likely be something similar to leveling up. An RPG will always have something mechanically similar. It's just that your budget wouldn't be cut in half from it.

Probably just some kind of rank up. Dungeon licenses or whatever. Hell just gold works similar to endgame experience points in games without BoP gear.

MMOs are shit because they're no longer about the journey. It's nothing but addicts on an endless loot treadmill.

Levelling up always has a purpose in these sorts of games though, it's effectively a tutorial for your class.

You get more and more of your kit so that by the time you reach max level you know your class, or at least should.

>>386962096
>Get rid of leveling up

Nah, MMOs need to go the other direction and get rid of the end game based on the level cap. In lots of old MMOs even hitting the max level in the first place was a distant dream. There was content the whole way through the leveling spectrum that stayed relevant.

Whenever devs focus on the end game they inevitably end up releasing an expansion that bumps out the level cap and throws months/years worth of content and effort straight out the window. It's the shittiest thing for everybody involved but it's the most common because it sells.

Just face that "good" mmos and "popular" mmos are different beasts.

>>386962701
>Leveling up is a journey
>Advancing with loot isn't

I never understood this. I have so much fonder memories of raiding with friends or chatting while grinding out some endgame world loot than I do leveling up in any game. Both are progression mechanics, both are a journey.

>>386963165
At least those games make it to the point where they can release an expansion. Look at Tree of Savior if you want to see where that line of thinking gets you. This mindset that the shitty grindfest games of old are somehow better is so awful. Games need to stray away from the WoW formula but that doesn't mean regressing to killing slimes for 60 hours to get to level 23.

>>386963548
One is a journey through dozens of zones, dungeons story lines and what have you. The other is a journey through a handful of zones, dungeons and raids that you just do over and over again for months on end. A loot grind is just lazy mode bullshit for developers who want you to do the same shit over and over again for better numbers while they sit their shitting out garbage for the cash shop.

>>386963548
>world loot

Most people are referring to dungeons and raids. I was fine with that shit in Asheron's Call when running some maze like dungeon got you and your group guaranteed rewards and was mostly a side thing, but running "story" dungeons for a chance at a drop that you'll maybe win the roll for is really shit.

>>386963692
The problem is that ToS did it in an abysmally bad way.

If levelling is supposed to be part of the game then you need to have good party mechanics and gameplay, areas, and mobs that encourage working together with people.

>>386962856
>it's effectively a tutorial for your class.
That's good in theory but usually by the time you finish the "tutorial" you're only about 75% of the way to max level in my experience, and getting that last 25% takes so much longer than the first 75%.

The problem with focusing on the leveling part of the game is groups will get fractured.
If you start with a set group of people, you either all agree to only play when everyone's online or someone's gonna get ahead (or behind) and people either end up having to redo content they've already done or the group just splits up.

This is why it's easier to keep a group together to grind end-game content than to just do leveling with.

That said, some of the most fun I've ever had was leveling through GW2 with a friend, it was pretty great until we just kinda lost contact and I could never play GW2 again.

>>386963692

The fact that games like FFXI are still fucking running shows that there is still an audience for that kind of thing. Tree of Savior is a terrible example because it shat all over pretty much everything people liked about RO. It has a lot of problems past the level grind.

Also I've never once understood the point of expansions for MMOs. The monthly fee more than pays for developing additional content, and having to buy the expansions on top of the base game simply hurts those who join the game late. I'd love to get back into WoW or FFXIV but now only do I have to drop money on the monthly fee I basically have to buy them both again. It sucks.

>>386962096
Without character development all you have is a shitty action. There is also no reason to have a very large world since the world is mechanically justified by giving you character development.

>>386962682
Guild Wars 1 have you earning spells as rewards around the world, or kill a bosses around the world map and capture their elite skill like a Pokemon (and reserving a slot on your hot bar for your "ball")

Guild Wars 2 have you earning skill points around the world

Combine these two and you are able to do a mmo without levels, all the progression is just doing shit around the world. Complete whatever objective and get a reward for the player character instead of loot reward.

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Leveling up feels good. Big flashy lights and all that. Makes those one hundred spiders you killed temporarily seem like it was a good time investment. People like feeling good about the stuff they've done. People will pay money to feel good ~50 times.

>>386964184

Alternatively just throw in level sync mechanics. They worked fine for City of Heroes and FFXI. Asheron's Call also let you pass exp up to your patron, so higher level players went out of their way to help lower levels all the time.

>This is why it's easier to keep a group together to grind end-game content than to just do leveling with.

You still run into the same problem of someone being a tier or more above the others having to redo shit they have already done multiple times over already.

the genre is called MMORPG. Leveling is a core concept in RPG. Its just modern shit MMOs completely forgot about the second part.

>>386964543
>Alternatively just throw in level sync mechanics.
This leads to either lower members skipping content or higher members repeating content, doesn't really fix anything. Alternatively it leads to one person playing ahead so they can carry the group faster.

>You still run into the same problem of someone being a tier or more above the others having to redo shit they have already done multiple times over already.

Maybe if your group is bad at distributing loot and/or isn't running the latest tier anyway.

>>386964343
I remember the first time I leveled up in RIFT.
That game had a lot of good things going for it that they completely ruined after release, but the one thing they kept was turning "ding" into "KRRAKUUUM"

>>386963830
>Run through similar zones doing fetch 7 bore anus quests and delivering letters
>Fight bosses with mechanics and have fun with friends

Shitposting aside it can be both. Forgo leveling and instead put your work into not only endgame style dungeons but dungeon-style world zones that are focused on group play. The result is a mix of linear dungeons and non-linear zones that both require group play and aren't just a grindy-slog. Best of both worlds.

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>>386962096

>LEVEL UP!
>LEVEL UP!
>YEAH!!

>>386964871
>This leads to either lower members skipping content
>leads to one person playing ahead so they can carry the group faster.

Not really sure how locking your level to match the lowest one, and scaling your abilities down to match, does either of those things but OK. Neither one is much of an issue anyway and it's a vastly superior to having to make an alt and/or only playing on a strict schedule - both are still available options in games with level sync anyway.

>Maybe if your group is bad at distributing loot and/or isn't running the latest tier anyway.

So what, you just get together for the very fucking end of the game? Then you all just sit on your asses waiting for the next dungeon to release before you can play again? That's somehow better?

>>386963906
I agree with the drop mechanic thing. The RNG is annoying and the fact that they're usually on a week long timer means it's just putting you on the time out chair.
I think the group dungeon formula is great and that that type of progression is in most cases entirely superior to Maplestory/Ragnarok style level grinding. It just needs refinement. Lockout timers are bullshit and RNG needs to be minimalized.

One thing that SWtoR of all things did decently well was gear progression. At least on release. The armor itself came in two types, one normal type with stats associated with it and one that was entirely cosmetic. The cosmetic version had mod slots that you added actual stats to. Cosmetic armor came with mods already in it you could remove. So if you didn't get that piece of gear you wanted with the 3 great mods you could go somewhere else to get the piece of gear with 1 of those same mods and put it in the piece instead, repeat with 2 other similar pieces and you don't even need the 3 mod drop anymore. I really liked that system.

>>386965023
you just dont know what its like not playing raiding simulator
MMORPGs peaked in early 00s and have been in steady decline since

>>386965761
>Maplestory/Ragnarok style level grinding

Can't speak for Maple Story but RO added in cards, weapon upgrades and MVPs pretty early in. There was more than just straight exp grinding and the fact that pretty much all items could be traded helped the community and economy quite a bit.

>>386965140
Dude holy shit this fucking game
I don't even remember what is was called but I was so into it

>>386965469
So what, you just get together for the very fucking end of the game? Then you all just sit on your asses waiting for the next dungeon to release before you can play again? That's somehow better?

I'm not saying it's better, I'm just saying that's how it works. Raiding guilds won't even care about you if you're not max level. That's why you have leveling guilds and raiding guilds.

When WoW turned all MMOs into nothing but fetch-quest garbage factory clones it turned out that way. Leveling is not the problem - the player base the fact that everyone wants to be a one man army solo god tier rush to endgame to stand around in armor so I look cool to my mom bro is the problem. Devs are only doing what they know will make them the most money. Release a WoW clone theme park that people will play for a month or two, spend lots of $ on extra stupid shit they don't need for aesthetics or to "skip the boring shit" to make it to "end game" and then quit.

>>386966383

And how is that not "groups getting fractured"?

>>386966212

Read the filename

>>386966595
You all join the same leveling guild, then all jump to the same raiding guild.

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>>386963980
They did. After rank 7 released they went that direction. Guess what? Game is still awful. The community is now crying out for some kind of endgame or goals and IMC is seen as a joke.

Remember GW2? People complained about the trinity. That was the hot "issue" at the time. Oh boy the trinity is killing MMOs! Oh the trinity is the worst thing ever! With a little sprinkling of hating gear progression. GW2 then had some terrible combat because everyone just had to go with being a full zerker warrior since damage is all that mattered. The people that stuck with it had nothing to do with ERP because there was no progression after you immediately got BiS at max level since it was all "sidegrades". I played both these games for a very long time and have seen the failings of what people like you claim to be good. WoW isn't the only option, but it did revolutionize MMOs and refined them. Many systems it uses SHOULD be used by similar games.

>>386962856
>Tutorial that lasts 10-30 hours
>For abilities like "hit guy" and "hit guy with fire"

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There have been two type of leveling up system that I really enjoy in my time with any mmo. The first one is the low level cap. Games like Guild Wars 1 and Champions Online thrive in this since leveling up is suppose to be a tutorial for the end game. The second one are skill based mmo. Games like Runescape and SWG let you level up individual skills and in theory, let you enjoy the rest of the game since there is no "max" level.

>>386962701
And I hate that shit. For the most part, mmo was for you to play with dozens and dozens of players, interacting and questing. What pisses me off is that people insist that because Everquest and WoW keep adding more level caps and more gear grind, this is what mmo was meant to be, a fucking unneeded grind.

>>386964324
There you go. See that's the right line of thinking. That would allow them to focus on a smaller amount of very refined, very well funded zones that still give you that fun experience of adventuring that is the only advantage to leveling. GW2 had its problems but I do remember enjoying the skill point exploration a good amount. Also the jump quests were fantastic.

>>386963692
>release an expansion
How is this a positive thing? Weekly or even monthly updates are better than expansions.

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>>386965946
>Don't know what it's like

Holy shit I hate people like you. I disagree with your taste so of course I haven't played the same things. I promise I've played far more than just raiding games. There are a lot of great examples of what you're talking about working, to a degree, but they are mostly products of their time and wouldn't work today because the demographic is older and unfortunately have normie commitments.

Runescape is the best example. I will never understand why WoW became the mold while Runescape didn't get any clones. It's a great base formula to make that non-gear related progression. It's level dependent but not in the same way that a "You'r level 10 now so go to this zone and do quests, okay now you're 15 so go here" is. That's the direction MMOs always go now though and it's fucking stupid. It's just expected of them.

Raiding is popular and I do enjoy that sort of content, so let's talk about it in that context. Why the fuck did Wildstar have leveling? It was entirely focused on the endgame. Not a single part of the game had any relation to leveling once you finished it. I don't even think the story started until max level. That game would be a huge success if they put the funds and time they put into leveling toward refining their endgame. Wildstar died because despite it's incredibly good content it wasn't quite polished on release. Glitches and iffy numbers killed it. Guess what would have fixed that? Time and funds.

>>386966140
Did it? I admit I don't know too much about RO. It's one of the few from that era I barely touched.

>>386962096
Because without a skinner box devs would have to rely on making an actually good game to keep people interested.

The level system would have its uses if MMOs still bothered with actual character building, but that whole aspect has been dumbed down so hard in recent games that it might as well not even be there. Just like when themepark mmos try to do things like player housing, the leveling system is just a superfluous holdover from sandbox MMORPGS, only without the sandbox elements that actually made it function.

And I hope you like it because now every fucking game is getting a stupid lootbox progression system because ADD kids are loose with money

>>386968508
MVP system was in the beta for RO. I remember soloing Phreeoni as a broken ass level 40 THF wayyyyyyyyyy back in the day.

>>386962096
You need the level up process so people actually know how to play their characters. The free boost to 100 was the worst thing that blizzard did to WoW (in my opinion). You end up with a huge saturation of people at max level who have no idea what they're doing or how their class works and it just makes everyone else's experience shittier for having to play with these people.

>>386967868
Yes weekly and monthly updates are better. That doesn't mean expansions are always bad. Don't charge 60-80 bucks for it but I stand by the idea that buy to play with 20ish dollar expansions every now and then isn't a bad model.
Expansions don't always have to raise the level cap. A new class or subclass maybe, maybe 2 new dungeons instead of half a dungeon like a monthly update "may" add.
>We can charge them for this
Will always be better incentive to make a beefy content upgrade than
>Well they might tell their friends and we might get another customer for the base game
is. Business is fine, it's when they ruin the game for a quick buck that's the problem.

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>>386968338
>why the fuck did Wildstar have leveling? It was entirely focused on the endgame. Not a single part of the game had any relation to leveling once you finished it.
It nice to see someone else see the problem with leveling in Wildstar. For the most part, leveling in Wildstar is pretty horrible in mmo terms. The game keep shoving you shitty quests with your beeper popping on the corner of the screen, there a whole lots of kill X quest, and nobody does dungeon/pvp during level up. I find it bullshit that some of these fags try to defend the Wildstar leveling by saying LOL ITS AN MMO or DO MAIN STORY LINE ONLY, ignoring the fact that leveling in Wildstar is still terrible and the game WAS advertise for endgame. I wasn't surprise at all when the new area was added, it become a place to power level your character, or when they had that Max Level day where you can make one character to max level.

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>>386968573
That's what I'm saying though. I'm not arguing that leveling is bad I'm arguing that with how modern MMOs are designed it's an unnecessary and stupid waste of resources. I'm arguing all this in the context of an endgame focused WoW-style MMO. Leveling is like if every time you bought a new single player game you had to beat a random playstation 1 era game. The two things aren't even related.

>>386968871
WoW wasn't designed around it. You get into the first max level content and you need to use most of your abilities and know what they do. Design the content around it. You don't need 100 levels to learn that "hit guy and debuff defense" should come before "hit guy harder than usual".

>>386962856
Yeah, but doesn't that "tutorial" last for hundreds of hours and give you skills you won't use at the end of the game? Should a tutorial only be like 5 hours? Not hundreds?

>>386967162
The ToS community is just fucking stupid. Lots of them look at their end game and just go "nah I don't wanna do that make something else" and then log in every day to farm silver while waiting for the next patch. People were refusing to do Solmiki tower for example ever since rank 8 released because "that gear will be outdated soon" and here we are almost a full year later and it's still the best, and it's happening again with a set of new equipment that came out recently.

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>>386969104
The leveling quests were horrible, yes. The zones were pretty fun though. Remember that bee hive themed zone? I loved that area. Quests there were fuck awful but oh shit a honey river.

Why wasn't that a dungeon instead? Why not put the resources you used to make the shitty tundra level and the OTHER shitty tundra level into that bee area and make it another adventure? Or dungeon? Adventures were such a fucking great idea and should have replaced leveling entirely. The Oregan Trail themed one could have been the perfect way to naturally teach players to use their abilities. Minor tweaks to that content could have had you showing Stalkers to stealth past mobs to grab water, healers to get used to the weird healing by healing the convoy, tanks to keep aggro off the convoy. It would have been so fucking good.

Wildstar would have been such a huge name. It could have been great. I'm still so fucking angry. FUCK.

>>386968338
Richard Bartle said somewhere that mmo developers tend to design things into their games without thinking about the purpose of those things. Apparently, when he created MUD1, he decided leveling was the preferred method of player advancement in part because it a critique of british socioeconomics. He also said something else but I can't remember.

>>386969703
Wildstar is proof that what that one Blizz designer said about "you think you do but you don't" is true.

>>386969497
Anon, I don't blame those guys simply because they experience having their gear being outdated so many times that it will become a waste of time. They're probably adults by now and they can't really afford to waste their time on this retarded outdated gear nonsense. Shit like this annoys me to hell in any mmo and it should have been outlawed by now.

>>386968871
This is a valid point but instead of falling back to the concept of leveling, just create a new system entirely designed for onboarding.

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>>386967527
And people still fuck it up.

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>>386969890
Yes and no. The endgame content of Wildstar on release was (generally) outstanding. There were some issues that needed tweaking but the dungeons, most of the adventures, and the raid were some of the best group content I've ever played. I've also never subscribed to the red circle hate. I think it's a great way to do group content since it forces you to think about positioning and defensive/movement abilities on top of offense.
The leveling? Absolutely. Fuck the leveling, it killed the game. Wildstar could have been my favorite MMO, Wildstar could have been their cash cow and claim to fame.

People wanted the content. What they didn't want was the gates to that content. On release Wildstar had insane content gates. First you had to grind adventures until you basically had BiS gear, along with buying crafted gear (which most people skipped and dragged everyone else down). Then you needed to do the balls hard dungeons which dropped gear that wasn't even better than the adventure gear. You didn't just do that though, you needed to do them perfectly. You needed a gold medal in every dungeon which meant no one could die, every sub-goal had to be complete, and most importantly you had to complete it in an incredibly tight time limit. You had to do this for every dungeon. Most people couldn't do it for the easiest one. I think there was a single guild that got through this gate before they nerfed it.

Time and resources could have fixed it. Fuck leveling.

>>386970159
but then you just foster a hand-holding, walk-through culture and then your playerbase starts complaining about everything being "too hard" at max level or end game, then it gets nerfed into oblivion to the point of not even being fun anymore.

It was this casual mindset that ruined my favourite games

>>386969703
That what annoys me the most. I want to explore the game but the game keep shoving your million quests that is totally important and you have to do them mentality.

>Why wasn't that a dungeon instead?
Actually have a way for the players to do dungeon first because no body does it during level up

>>386969890
You're retarded. People wanted to do raid and endgame, which is what Wildstar was advertised. What they got is a terrible leveling system that gated this endgame that was advertise in the first place. I don't even want to begin talking about the Attunement that was release in the beginning of Wildstar's life and how they had to remove it because of it killing the playerbase.

>>386970034
The thing is ToS isn't actually like that, the gear that was the best in the game at launch was even buffed to try and entice more people to try to get it and people still don't want to do it. People want gear invalidation and beg for it because it means they can play again on the next patch and be right up to speed with everyone else, and then once they hit that end game grind wall they start complaining again; that's why every patch of FFXIV or WoW the new continent has white and blue swords on par with the legendary swords of the previous expansion.

>>386963548

Leveling up and exploring the game was part of the allure of MMOs. Image you just hit level 30 and a new dungeon became accessible.
In the current MMO market, it's a dungeon you might do once and finish in about 10 minutes. Nothing really memorable about it, except a few quotes here and there and some nice loot that you'll replace soon. It caters to old vets that are tired of running the same old shit thousands of times.
In the old market, dungeons were designed to be longer and were almost raid like (see: Maraudon). It was going to be a long grind of a dungeon, with some tough bosses along the way. They weren't mechanically difficult, but healing and tanking needed to be aware. Of course, this is a pain in the ass after the first few times but it added to a sense of exploration for new players./

>>386970521
Maybe I'm not understanding it correctly, but even without leveling, you still have to go through lowbie zones and lowbie dungeons and lowbie world bosses, while acquiring and hunting for lowbie-friendly skills and spells. The starter zones themselves are already onboarding new players and getting them used to the game and class mechanics.

>>386970424
That's the problem with modern MMOs. You saw those dungeon time trials as just an annoying road bump on your way to the "real" game when it sounds to me like those were some legitimately challenging dungeons that needed you to socialize and prepare for them, with the gear required to do so and its acquisition also being important.

>>386970698
It definitely could work, and I guess people will complain about that shit no matter what

>>386970769
No fuck you. I loved those dungeons. I can't tell you how many times I did those dungeons. It's not that I saw them as a road bump it's that I did them dozens, possibly over 100 times and I wanted more of the same. I ran adventures even after I didn't need anything from them because I enjoyed them. There's a difference between what you described and there being more of what I love behind a wall, and I'm ready to see what it's like.

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>>386970424
I downloaded Wildstar and got that starting housing pack. Do people still play it or would all the tedious grinding to get to endgame not be worth it? On top of that, does that shitty attunement system still exist where you need to run like 10 dungeons perfectly and kill 5 world bosses just to raid still exist?

>>386970986
I'm not familiar with Wildstar, did the game not let you go into the dungeon with an organized pre-set party? You should've been able to join a good guild or even just pick up some of the better players to gold star some of those dungeons couldn't you? Or can you only do it with pick up groups and pray?

>>386970424

Wildstar is an example of poor design for sure. However, I don't like to condemn leveling when it's done well. At it's best, leveling can teach you core mechanics of the game and guide you through an increasing difficulty curve. At worst, you are grinding mob after mob and dungeon after dungeon well after you've learned their lessons.

>>386970602
You're conflicting yourself. You say ". People were refusing to do Solmiki tower for example ever since rank 8 released because "that gear will be outdated soon" " but now you say they want gear invalidation and beg for it. Like I say before, I don't blame them since they know, or expect, it to happen since they got dick over by it many times in the past. That WoW and FF14 was bullshit example of what they suffer through.

>>386970673
The issue is the WoW formula isn't new anymore. When people got to 15 and saw they could do Deadmines they got excited. They didn't think
>Well is this the fastest way to level?
The first time you play a game like that you love the leveling, sure, but it's no ones first time anymore. Why not focus on those dungeons and make them a natural part of progression? I'm not even saying get rid of leveling entirely, just don't have grind quests or so many levels. Have some kind of bar that awards a skill point when it's filled up if you really want but don't have level 10 or 20 or 30. Have "Guy with 30 skill points but other than that he has similar stats to a guy with 300 skill points who has only spent 30", or something similar. Don't make me do Badlands or whatever, I'm not 14 anymore, I've done Badlands, I've done all this shit before. I bought your game for what it focuses on and if you made a WoW style MMO then you're probably focusing on the endgame.

>Mara
Okay I mean you're a cool guy though

>ctrl+f "secret world"
>0 results

smdh tbqh fampai. It still had a numeric level I think but it mattered for jack shit. What mattered were the skills you leveled and used plus how you built and equipped your character. It was one of the better leveling systems I've played in a shitty f2p MMO of all things. I haven't touched it since before the "revamped" the combat so for all I know they completely butchered it.

>>386971508
From what I heard the game was butchered, yeah. There's no customization anymore, you can't mix and match weapons like before.

>>386962096

The leveling up process can be very enjoyable and fun if the developer puts actual effort into it, a leveling process where it's all solo content with maybe some instanced group dungeons here and there is not an example of good design, it's lazy.

Back when I played Everquest 2 and Vanguard it took a lot of time to get to level cap, but the experience was enjoyable, the zones were large and had a mixing of quests, solo content, group content, and non-instanced dungeons. I met lots of new friends and people just from having to work with others to get things done, the dungeons themselves were interesting because they were non-instanced, you didn't level up too fast to where gear quickly became useless so doing dungeons for gear was a big deal. There was an emphasis on where the game didn't wait until endgame to truly begin, the leveling process itself was an experience that could be just as fun as the endgame, if not more at times.

Nowadays it feels like most MMOs put no effort into the leveling process and just make it a solo treadmill to endgame, it's a boring and lazy design.

>>386971092
Haven't played it in forever, wish I could tell you. I don't think attunement exists though. I heard they nerfed the dungeon difficulty so it might not be worth it. I'm sorry you missed out.

>>386971121
You can go in with an organized guild. Thing is the attunement bred a lot of "Submit an application and cover letter then you'll get a skype interview" type guilds, and I'm not joining that shit.
I joined the /vg/ guild. Jokes aside they were decent guys and some were good at the game. I ended up being the guild's main healer. Problem is they couldn't get it through their head that crafted gear was a fucking requirement no matter how many times I told them. We did eventually gold medal the first dungeon, can't remember what it was called. Silver medaled Skullcano but that's as far as we got. Tank was in greens by the end. Good guy but why the fuck didn't he buy some god damn crafted gear. I'm still so angry.

I make it sound like it was our fault but believe me those gold medals were insane. Not in a good way either, they got pretty no fun by the end. I think the attunement change made bronze medals required. Personally I think silver medals would have been good instead.

>>386971907

Yeah I played a bit of Wildstar, it was nice to have harder dungeons, but making the gold requirement so stringent and yet necessary resulted in too many groups just disbanding as soon as someone fucked up.

>>386971907
>nerfs
Damn, guess I'll just wait for the next FFXIV raid tier, Exdeath was fun even if the rest of the battles were piss easy and sadly I lack a group for Savage content

>>386972278
Keep in mind I'm mostly guessing. While I played they nerfed attunement then a little later they nerfed the content by a bit. Enough that people got pissed but not enough that it ruined everything. It's been a long time and it's f2p now so I think it's safe to assume it's nerfed more. Even if they didn't then the fact that people now have raid gear means everything prior to that was nerfed from players having bigger numbers.

Come to think of it the game might have been better if they skipped raids and just made more really fucking good dungeons. Too late now.

I just want to play with other people. Lately MMO's fall into 2 camps: instance whoring or nameless, faceless 'Event' grinding. With instances you pop into a party for a few minutes and then split up, never really having a conversation, and the content is so piss easy you never need to go over strategy or discuss who is doing what. And that's even when there isn't cross server group finders. Then it gets even worse. With modern event grinding you don't have to interact with any players, you just find a big circle on a map and click buttons while watching way too many special effects block you from seeing anything. MMO gameplay is slow, tedious garbage; always has been, always will be. The entire point is playing with other people, but modern mmo's just isolate the shit out of you.

I resubbed into FFXIV's new expac and the community is impenetrable. I have no real way and no real reason to meet or interact with anyone. The 'guilds' in the game at this point are just closed circle cliques that don't want anyone outside of the inner circle beyond one end game static with a few substitutes.

It's kinda depressing, and the worst part is there is no alternatives. All mmo's are the same bullshit now and those private servers of the old mmo's are invariably garbage.

>>386972791
Everyone just wants to progress as fast as they can. There will always be assholes that leave after a single wipe but I think the answer is to get rid of progression that makes you want to speed through it, or progression you necessarily can speed through.
I'd prefer MMO devs cut down significantly on graphics to cut costs then focus on difficulty, interesting encounters, and fun abilities and locations. Cut costs enough and the risk is worth it. I think that would breed more community, at least a little bit.

>>386962096
>You can click on the quest text to have your character auto-walk there half the time.
What the fuck? Is this seriously a thing?

>>386975006
Yep
Most recent example off the top of my head is Black Desert. When you get a quest you click on the progress count and your character will walk along a little dotted path that appears until you get to where you complete the quest. The first 40 minutes or so of the game consisted of clicking, waiting, killing 3 weasels, then auto walking some more. I uninstalled in disgust.

>>386972791
>>386973757
Super good point.

How do you encourage more social interaction during these gameplay types?

Some ideas:
>planning phase before the dungeon crawl to draw on the map and discuss strategies
>puzzles that require communication
>combat that requires communication
>some kind of game wide system for social points? i dunno

>>386975454

If you make the combat harder so it actually takes planning and coordination, you will have very few players who actually bother to do dungeons.

Same for puzzles. I watched a few pug groups trying to figure out the shitty little puzzle in that one legion dungeon, one of the groups even look up a fucking guide for it and couldn't do it. Literally hours spent mindlessly trying to do a shitty puzzle only for someone to ragequit or otherwise decide it wasn't worth their time.

Even if you have combat that actually required planning, what will end up happening is people will figure out the strategy, post it online, and from then on every party is going to be expected to know the strategy and any deviation will get you kicked out of the party. This also happens in legion.

Overall, the greatest problem with MMOs is the playerbase.

>>386975454
Competition

It would require a lot of randomization and a fitting setting to make sense but you'd have competitions that included teamwork. This could be a competition between your entire group and another group, or competitions between partnered up members in the same group. So a 2v2 competition.
It could be basic stuff like clearing fastest, doing most damage in a single hit, more healing, taking more damage, sub-objectives, etc. Weird stuff even like "Most different words used during the dungeon". Progress would be shown on your side and the opponent. Rewards would be somewhat minor but still nice like a small bit of currency or increased drop chance on a chosen item.
Some of these, like the word one, would be secret. Objective would just be seen as "???". There would need to be a lot of these so make it so they can't just make a macro with 1,000 words in it. For mystery objectives progress update would be a bit delayed. Again, all this is random and somewhat minor in significance.

Enter a dungeon, you (dps) are partnered with the healer against the other dps and tank. It's based on who can do the most damage. This creates a direct competition between the dps. It also makes the healer and tank want to do their job worse for the other team, but better for theirs. This would very likely breed communication. If you get, say, a time attack race between two groups it wouldn't breed communication but there would be an unspoken bond there if you're doing well.

>>386969865
Found it
https://mud.co.uk/richard/RAB GDC Online.pdf

"I swiftly recognised that MUD lacked an obvious sense of Purpose.
To remedy this, I resolved to implement what I would later call an achievement system.
I Deliberated between multiple competing prospects, including:
§ equipment;
§ skills;
§ levels (with experience points);
§ experience points (but no levels);
§ linked quests (“choose your own adventure”);
§ plus some more outréones such as democracy...

I eventually settled on Levels, which I had seen from D&D gave intermediate goals, were easy to understand, did not preclude rewards for varied activities, and gave players an immediate sense of their current place in the social order.

Yet surely others from the list could Also do that?
They could indeed! What tipped the balance in favour of levels was that final point about “current social order”. Mr Trubshaw and I Raged against the British class system; this was our response. MUD only had Ten levels, each of which had its own “personality”. Players spent enough time at each level to form an Impression of what being, say, level 9 (“legend”) meant.

Crucially, all that stopped you from rising levels was your own Ability and strength of Character(or lack thereof). It was essentially a Political statement.

The people who wrote the MUDs – and thence MMOs – that followed didn’t Know this.They employed a system that made sense in one context without appreciating Why it was there, nor Why it worked.They Liberally added many more levels, then employed other advancement mechanisms when the elder game hit. Did they have Any understanding of what they were doing?
Example: equipment (gear) is the preferred achievement system of the age once the level cap has been reached. As such, it waxes positively on the attractions of Consumerism. Fair enough – but if That’s what the designers want to say, why bother with the levelling game at all? Why not have the elder game as the game?"

>>386976021
>Even if you have combat that actually required planning...
This is called the Meta. I stay away games with meta like this, and I repeatedly chastise and harass players for abusing the meta. But I also don't play MMOs anymore. Even OSRS had a meta because they keep adding in new shit and once I found it, I said "Why the fuck would I ever bother to do anything else now, this is the best option" and I quit.

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>>386970424
Surprised the game is still alive though.
I mean at least the servers are up

>>386976973
I hate the idea of a best option. Case in point: Zulrah. Not sure where it's at now, but pre-nerf it was the top dog in terms of gp/h, making you millions per hour. Why do anything else to make money? Making money in any other way was 2 times slower, and thus it felt like a waste of time.
It seems like when I was a noob during the restricted trade era, gp/h rates between methods were quite comparable. Everything that I could do to make money seemed to be around 400k gp/h. Is my memory faulty or was it actually like that?

>>386976723
>why bother with the levelling game at all? Why not have the elder game as the game?

How can I buy this man lunch?

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>>386977835
He does have a book.

>>386978046
Well fuck alright. Time to read I guess.