Missing the good old days

SylenThunder - Sanctuary wrote: »

That is primarily because today's gaming culture is a bunch of impatient kids that can't handle a challenge. If it requires more thought than it takes to open a box of cereal, they're off doing something else.

It's because of the instant-gratification and this lack of being able to cope with something relatively difficult that potentially awesome games like Skyrim get dumbed down into a "you can't possibly fail" mode where no matter what you do, or how bad you **** up, you can still finish the game in a few hours of gameplay. (Luckily, that's easily fixed in Skyrim with just a few mods.)

Yes, I'm one of those old farts that remembers the days of actually having to work for something. It makes you appreciate it more. It's a hell of a lot more fun that playing around with a bunch of e-peen nabs that don't have a clue about game mechanics and think they're pro just because the hit 105 in a week and have gear that cost the same as a small compact car.

This is why I miss the way the game was a couple of years ago. People played smart. People in the high levels, actually had to work damn hard to get there, and their effort was greatly appreciated. If someone was 95, you knew that they knew what the hell they were doing, and you listened carefully because they would teach you things.

The game is reaching the end of it's life, mostly because the players have lost their intelligence. Thank you kids of today for not considering the value of working for something.

/rant

Not to add to any particular rant or anger, but you do possess a nice point about the 'insta-gratification' mode with the turn of gaming as of recent times. Especially in N.America. Where graphics, cinematics, and quick achievements are now the 'norm' for games, long banished have been the times of actual decent gameplay, strategic thought, and those memorable moments of frustrating grinding/puzzle solving only to finally achieve what was needed to pass to that next level/defeat that boss/meet that objective. Ask a lot of people why they like PWI:

- It looks pretty.
- The skills look good.
- The social aspect - good or bad.
- ETC.

But does anyone actually like the story? The work it takes to get the levels? The feeling of accomplishing personal goals set besides what one can charge. These people exist, but are shrouded by the overwhelming influence of other players who simply do not care for gameplay to that scale.

I'm one of the ones who, where I wasn't big on plot, appreciated the work it took to accomplish a specific goal - via a level or gear. I was that Veno spending hours in TT with other Venos who had hercs to raise up the money to get me one. I was that Veno that farmed my own gear with my coin-farmed, SoF-collected herc. I was that Veno who spent probably hundreds of thousands of coin on Justice Orders and those Scroll IIIs from the AH to get through my 60s. I was that Veno who joined every single FB offered in WC to get the rep and the exp to level and attempt Rank Gear. Everything I did was an accomplishment checked off of my list and enriched my personal gaming experience.

Do I understand that others wouldn't enjoy a game similar as the one I liked? Yes, I do. Time vs Money, patience of people, different varieties of what their goals are and what thy like to do.

Do I understand that new players should not be stripped of these experiences because 'the game is changing and people should adapt to it'? Of course I do.

I do not believe New players should suck it up and spam Jolly to afford enough coin for hypers and bought FC runs. I do not believe New players should not understand squad concept in dungeons/squad play [ FBs taught a lot of us how to play, don't even pretend it didn't teach you how to heal/lure/tank/control DD. ] I do not believe New players should get away with being told that at level 100 you can triple spark with your leet, charged gear and kill everything ever so skip all of the lower stuff because its completely useless anyway, don't even bother with leveling your skills or trying to buy any other gear outside of your end game gear. . .

A level cap on FC wouldn't be a bad idea, in my opinion, because of these beliefs. Players who have played the game before know now, more than ever, that it is ridiculously easy to quest now to 75. Seriously. The game holds your hand for exp now that if you're not hitting 75 within a couple of months of CASUAL questing, you're missing something. Lucids, Questmasters, and other things are throwing exp at you. Fantasy Fruits and Scarlet Fruits and Scrolls to bypass you through the lower levels so fast, you're finishing your 29 culti at level 40+, and then the Tellus/TB chain makes sure you don't even have to quest anywhere else until you're well in your 50/60s.

Cap it at 75 to enter. Thank you.

Wickedbrew - Raging Tide wrote: »

stuff

SylenThunder - Sanctuary wrote: »

Stuff

Malei - Sanctuary wrote: »

Stuff

There is no way that things could be said any better.
b:thanks

Any MMO new or old, that changes the structure of what it was based on, such as PWI, where the speed to the top is now the only quest, is facing a challenge of making the game profitable in the long run. Short term, sure, it puts money in their pockets, and with a portfolio of many games, most of which are building up to, or reached that premise, of endgame or no game, the core ideal seems to be milk the playerbase, let them spend money, get bored, and move on. When they in essence cut out 95% of the game, and give the players everything on a silver platter, how can the game feasibly remain enjoyable for years to come.

So often you hear high levels wanting a challenge because they are bored, have nothing to do, its the same thing over and over. Or PvP is knocking on deaths door, etc. Longevity, seems like a foreign concept. New players or players like myself are called idiots, fail, or noobs, because we don't live in FC as soon as our toons are born. And yes, the normal quests are boring when its hard to find a group to help with them around your level.

Lastly, so often I join a squad and the squad leader says they need a high level. No, actually you don't. For example, BH69 with a good squad, is easy with players in the 70 to 80 range that know what they are doing, know the distance to stand away from the bosses so they don't splat if they are squishy, know purify, heals, as a cleric, anticipation of aggro and keeping it for a.barb, or BM. But alas, its funny to watch a sin spark, get aggro, die, and complain because they want to be the hero with 3k hp, or a barb that can't keep aggro, and a host of other issues from people that really have not much of a clue. They can surely kill heads with the best of them though.

Yeah, the game has changed, and as I've said before, if I wanted to go hiking, I would rather hike the appalachian trail on foot rather than fly over it in a jet.

Wickedbrew - Raging Tide wrote: »

Any MMO new or old, that changes the structure of what it was based on, such as PWI, where the speed to the top is now the only quest, is facing a challenge of making the game profitable in the long run. Short term, sure, it puts money in their pockets, and with a portfolio of many games, most of which are building up to, or reached that premise, of endgame or no game, the core ideal seems to be milk the playerbase, let them spend money, get bored, and move on. When they in essence cut out 95% of the game, and give the players everything on a silver platter, how can the game feasibly remain enjoyable for years to come.

So often you hear high levels wanting a challenge because they are bored, have nothing to do, its the same thing over and over. Or PvP is knocking on deaths door, etc. Longevity, seems like a foreign concept. New players or players like myself are called idiots, fail, or noobs, because we don't live in FC as soon as our toons are born. And yes, the normal quests are boring when its hard to find a group to help with them around your level.

Lastly, so often I join a squad and the squad leader says they need a high level. No, actually you don't. For example, BH69 with a good squad, is easy with players in the 70 to 80 range that know what they are doing, know the distance to stand away from the bosses so they don't splat if they are squishy, know purify, heals, as a cleric, anticipation of aggro and keeping it for a.barb, or BM. But alas, its funny to watch a sin spark, get aggro, die, and complain because they want to be the hero with 3k hp, or a barb that can't keep aggro, and a host of other issues from people that really have not much of a clue. They can surely kill heads with the best of them though.

Yeah, the game has changed, and as I've said before, if I wanted to go hiking, I would rather hike the appalachian trail on foot rather than fly over it in a jet.

Sadly most of those people ask because low level barbs are kinda extinct, and take it from me, most seekers and bms cant tank 69 at that level.

I remember when I farmed my Beamhoof Slicer. I was about the happiest player there could ever be, tbh. I remember when I took the quest thinking that I'll never be able to make it because I'm a quitter and just won't be able to get the money or do CoA. But then, I actually did it and it felt SO great. It was the only thing I felt so good about because I did it from scratch; busting my behind doing cube, CoA with friends, and being a merchant trying to buy/sell things and buying certain badges (my worst skill, like the hardest part, tbh). CoA was one of my favourite instances ever.. but then I logged a couple of days ago after not playing for the longest while to see everyone is like r9rr +10 at least and it felt like might as well just NPC that Beamhoof, lmao. Idk, even though it's probably not OP anymore, it'll always be a reminder of the one thing I actually achieved through pure effort in this game back in the day. b:chuckle

SylenThunder - Sanctuary wrote: »

That is primarily because today's gaming culture is a bunch of impatient kids that can't handle a challenge. If it requires more thought than it takes to open a box of cereal, they're off doing something else.

It's because of the instant-gratification and this lack of being able to cope with something relatively difficult that potentially awesome games like Skyrim get dumbed down into a "you can't possibly fail" mode where no matter what you do, or how bad you **** up, you can still finish the game in a few hours of gameplay. (Luckily, that's easily fixed in Skyrim with just a few mods.)

Yes, I'm one of those old farts that remembers the days of actually having to work for something. It makes you appreciate it more. It's a hell of a lot more fun that playing around with a bunch of e-peen nabs that don't have a clue about game mechanics and think they're pro just because the hit 105 in a week and have gear that cost the same as a small compact car.

This is why I miss the way the game was a couple of years ago. People played smart. People in the high levels, actually had to work damn hard to get there, and their effort was greatly appreciated. If someone was 95, you knew that they knew what the hell they were doing, and you listened carefully because they would teach you things.

The game is reaching the end of it's life, mostly because the players have lost their intelligence. Thank you kids of today for not considering the value of working for something.

/rant

Grinding for 1% an hour isn't a challenge and it isn't difficult, it is annoying and unnecessary. If things were to go back to the way they were then the game would be totally dead and you would cease to play it.

bobyjoee wrote: »

Grinding for 1% an hour isn't a challenge and it isn't difficult, it is annoying and unnecessary. If things were to go back to the way they were then the game would be totally dead and you would cease to play it.

He wasn't referring to grinding mobs for 1% EXP for hours...I don't miss those times either.
I'm quite sure he meant various achievements and challenges in games.

SerenityMare - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Oh, definitely. I ain't getting rid of it, LOL. My hard work, omg. Besides, it's stashable so my cleric can use it. b:cool And I love how it looks a lot, one of the reasons I was encouraged to keep going if I felt like giving up (shallowness, ftw!). xD

TT is hell. I hated it so much and only went with friends so they can enjoy the DD'ing and I can just purge+amp and loldie. But nonetheless, they were great memories and fun times. I never had so much dying in a game, tbh.

I used to run TT with three other venos, with three of us spam healing one herc until all four of us were able to afford one. Ahh, the memories there. When the single herc died, we'd Bramble Hood and play tag with the boss with our other pets until the main veno could get herc back up to take it from us. It was so funny. But all profits were equally split and all of us were well geared for our goals. It also gave us memories and we became best friends. Hell, we did it so much, we farmed nixes for each other too. [ Though by that time we were all married and dragged our poor husbands in to TT with us haha. Cleric husbands to revive crazy venos ftw. ]

Those type of memories are so hard to create nowadays. It was fun like that which made me not care about the time and amount we took in TT to get the things we needed/wanted. I would get dragged into a two-three hour TT run just to make the money to get matching bikinis with my fellow venos. [ Back when the set was rare/expensive. ] And I wouldn't care or complain because it was 100% fun.

Its just an example of my "good ol' days" that I can no longer duplicate due to the state of the game as it is currently. Good players leave, new players don't want to bother with anything that takes more than 30 minutes, good gear is at our hands like -that-, and everyone wants to FC. It makes me sigh.

Ah, an ineffective stroll down memory lane where we paint our mediocre history with rainbows and unicorns. Most of us still left are 4+ year players and we've stuck around for one reason or another. We're just not unhappy enough with the game to leave. I still enjoy PWI.

I can think back to the pre-pack days, when BHs first came out, when genies were first released, when FCC was changed, when hypers were added, when tideborn arrived and Nirvana, when morai showed up... Some goods and some bads to each of them. The high levels back then in their OP gear excluded others from thei zhen parties and tt 2-x runs just as OP players still exclude lesser gear players. If anything, that has somewhat diminish since instances like Delta, AEU, and even Seat and Aba have mechanics in place that make it hard to solo (Seat boss is totally soloable, but heals as fast as you can kill sometimes and Aba Puppeteer will jail you if you try to solo). 10 person instances means once you have the basic 3 or 4 OP chars the rest can be any gear and any class.

OP is wrong and romanticizing the past. They can get all wishy washy about things they "remember" and in honesty it did have some posiive to it, but not everything was as great as they're remember and PWI has made some excellent improvements to the game since.

I think the biggest thing we all miss was just the sheer activity in PWI. That and the gear disparity. The difference between a tt70 +1 players and a tt90 with +7 (omg so OP!) wasnt nearly as big as the level 100s you have running around with tt90 +2 and no shards and the r9t3 +12 players now. But both of those factors have more to do with the player base and not the game itself. One major change was PWE changing from advertising PWI to advertising their other games and really neglecting their flagship game.

Walpurga - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Remember when barbs charged you to tank TT and still kept the golds?

Yea.

All the people that qq about aps and current mechanics, they can get their gear done with a fraction of the cost now b:chuckle

Fraction of the cost in time and money?

That defeats the purpose of playing MMORPGs in the first place,
If quickness of reaching endgame play is what you want why don't you go and play the correct style of game e.g. MOBA/FPS?

PWE has plenty of those style of games in its collection.
Why do you all insist that one of the few games a mature long term sophisticated player has left to play, must turn into a kiddies game I do not know.

As I tell my kids.
"I wish I was young enough still so I knew all the answers like I used too"

Don't get me wrong change is good.
But it pays to remember the old quote.

"Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is just plain stupid."

im honestly not sure i want to experience the grinding i did on my cleric, all over again. I was grinding 6hrs a day..... with that 2x exp scroll...took about half a year to get to 95+ and this was with extensive grinding, and 10+hr zhen squads =,=

i think what we need is a little more diverse content, say in terms of gears. More diverse gears we can aim for than everyone having to be R999 to compete.
More faction base content!

Sakubatou - Sanctuary wrote: »

I think the biggest thing we all miss was just the sheer activity in PWI. That and the gear disparity. The difference between a tt70 +1 players and a tt90 with +7 (omg so OP!) wasnt nearly as big as the level 100s you have running around with tt90 +2 and no shards and the r9t3 +12 players now. But both of those factors have more to do with the player base and not the game itself. One major change was PWE changing from advertising PWI to advertising their other games and really neglecting their flagship game.

I think it's interesting that you place the primary blame on the playerbase, here. It reminds me of a discussion we had awhile back on whether the players or the company (PWE) was at fault the most for everything. Kind of the age-old question isn't it? Personally, I think it's both.

But it makes me wonder: PWE and wanmei wouldn't have been quite so encouraged by the success of packs and rank sales if the players didn't keep buying them. That much is obvious. But how much of the player base do you think was legitimately caught up in all the power creep, to the point where they thought it was good for the game (or didn't know any better)? After so much time hearing people defend the game in one breath and complain about it in another, I've come to believe that a larger portion of the community just went along with it grudgingly. These are the types who, quite predictably, say "that's just how it is" and accuse anyone who pines for the old game of living in 2008. So maybe you're right about the fact that it's the playerbase... but the type of players who are at fault and what role they each played are quite varied.

Just wanted to pull out that interesting segment before I respond to you and Walpurga in a more general sense...

Walpurga - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Remember when barbs charged you to tank TT and still kept the golds?

Yea.

Sakubatou - Sanctuary wrote: »

Ah, an ineffective stroll down memory lane where we paint our mediocre history with rainbows and unicorns. Most of us still left are 4+ year players and we've stuck around for one reason or another. We're just not unhappy enough with the game to leave. I still enjoy PWI.

I can think back to the pre-pack days, when BHs first came out, when genies were first released, when FCC was changed, when hypers were added, when tideborn arrived and Nirvana, when morai showed up... Some goods and some bads to each of them. The high levels back then in their OP gear excluded others from thei zhen parties and tt 2-x runs just as OP players still exclude lesser gear players. If anything, that has somewhat diminish since instances like Delta, AEU, and even Seat and Aba have mechanics in place that make it hard to solo (Seat boss is totally soloable, but heals as fast as you can kill sometimes and Aba Puppeteer will jail you if you try to solo). 10 person instances means once you have the basic 3 or 4 OP chars the rest can be any gear and any class.

OP is wrong and romanticizing the past. They can get all wishy washy about things they "remember" and in honesty it did have some posiive to it, but not everything was as great as they're remember and PWI has made some excellent improvements to the game since.

Let me make a proposal to all the people who accuse others of being "stuck in 2008" or thereabouts: let's NOT presume that there are only only two options for PWI, either its current state or how it was in 2008. Can we do that, guys?

And by that I mean... I think there are very few people who legitimately want the game back the way it was in 2008, down to every detail. Of course I've been accused of that myself, as has anyone who seems to suggest the slightest hint of nostalgia around here. Sure, I've got the nostalgia as bad as anyone, but never have I said that PWI hasn't had good updates since 2008.

The pre-2009 Anniversary updates were all good. I can't imagine the game without Genies now. Nirvana had some real potential before it was aps-farmed the hell out of. The Tideborn would be great with a little rebalancing, and I can't complain about the Earthguard classes either. I love Morai. Even Nation Wars is pretty well-designed, despite a few glaring flaws. And although I don't use pack gear, I still use regular tokens just like anyone else. All of these would be welcome additions to any server, if handled properly.

So why is it that when anyone waxes nostalgic about how the game used to be more balanced, it's assumed that they want to be taken back to the days of grinding one hour for 1% exp? Really, all that has to change is for gear-based items (rep, +10 orbs, and maybe some pack balancing) to be removed from the CS, r9+ eliminated, and Frost entry restricted to 75+. That would solve, like 80% of the game's problems right there. And you don't have to **** off the current r9-wielding player base to do it, either, if you focus those restrictions on a new server, and leave the current ones untouched. If we had a server which started off that way, that server would be ten times more attractive and accessible to newbies than anything we have today.

Does that seem a little more reasonable to the naysayers? :P

I agree with alot in these posts. But I have to say, I actually feel like I like the way the game is now(for me personally anyway), I learned alot from playing back in 2009, and when I took that 2 year hiatus, I damn near had to call myself a new player because I didn't have a clue as to what PWI had done, and what they were in process of doing. I came back though, because the new stuff caught my interest, made a Mystic and still played the way I did back in 2009, quests, quests, quests and more quests. I didn't even touch fc until I was well into my 80's and I joined a faction who did the runs and bought me hypers. But you guys have to realize, PWI is an evolving game, and will continue to evolve. Things can't always just stay the same, especially with the MMO market evolving, it'll make it hard for PWI to keep up pace. While most of us would love to go back to those 2009 days, it's not going to happen, with a new generation of gamers ready to come in, things are going to make a change to satisfy the taste of new gamers, which in most cases, that taste is instant gratification. And if PWI wants to make money, they're going to feed into that, because that's how they market their product, by catering to the majority of their consumers. Us old schoolers are just going to have to accept that and either roll with the punches, or move on. b:surrender