Comment by abakker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by abakker | Hacker News Reader

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It's been years since I played any games really. I enjoyed D3 and really committed for a while to WoW. personally, I don't really like free to play as it distorts the gaming experience too much. Take WoW for example: when it started, it was legitimately slow and hard to get to level 20. Now that level 20 is the free to play cap, it only takes a few hours. All the fun that came from exploration and "play" of the game in that early level set is now gone, replaced by speed grinding, achievements, and constant rewards. I feel like leveling used to be a consequence of playing, now, since they've basically decided that there is no play until endgame, leveling is a chore that is meant to be rushed through. I mean, I get that endgame play is fun, and that the big raids are fun, but, they've so distorted the solo-questability that as a part time player there is virtually no point. There was a point in there where they could have focused on the long-term viability of the game and doubled down on mid-game content - better quests with complicated storylines, better low-level raids, better "role playing game" mechanics. Instead, they focused on endgame, where WoW and Fortnite start to look a lot more similar. One just takes a ton of work to be competitive and one is easy any free.

I guess if I had one point to make it would be that all the big titles focus a lot on endgame rather than making the mid-game deeper and more fun.

That has nothing to do with being free. For many expansions now,WoW has pushed players up to the latest content (usually last expansion content and 10 levels). They've been through 2 stat squishes and several expansions where you get a character boost when you buy the expansion. The MMO feel only happens when you're paying an MMO though so it makes sense to push the players into a smaller cross section of the game. They introduce what you call "mid-game content" every expansion. Its just in the last 10 levels.

They recently did a stat squish and made a large part of the old world autoscaling so you can take your time in an area and exhaust the quests there.

I have no idea what you mean when you say wow is like fortnite.

All this said, the quality of writing and attention to game design has suffered recently. I assume Blizzard has attention on other games.

But with MMOs, I didn't get in early or even recent, so its incredibly hard for me to get in on the action. I'd be relegated to begging and looking for groups.

Whereas games like fortnite are "download and play". Sure there's emotes and hats, but that's not gameplay. Its low barrier for me to start whenever. I'm not missing the last 10 expansions.

Like I said. This is why wow gives out character boosts for every expansion now. You can jump in pretty easily. You could drop in and be level into the end game gear loop in a couple weeks.

This is why Everquest was so great for me. Leveling took a long time and you really got to explore the world. It would take teaming up with people just to make perilous journeys - this is something I don't think exists anymore in games. Additionally, gear lasted much longer. You could be using the same piece of armor for months potentially as you leveled in EQ. It really felt like you were building your character. Now in MMOs, it often feels like you are just checking boxes to get best-in-slot items so you can be like every other high level $build $class character.

Some of my very favorite moments in videogaming ever occurred during the EverQuest closed beta. That game was so great. It would get dark at night, to the point where if you didn't have a torch (which cost money) you'd be bumping into the trees in Kelethin in pitch blackness, and shortly get taken down by monsters. I remember spending nearly half of my time playing that game just waiting around in the dark by the town torches of Felwithe or Kelethin, chatting with other players and waiting for the sun to rise again so I could go back out into the world. That game didn't even yet have a minimap, so when you got lost, you got LOST, and it was especially bad when the sun started going down and you still couldn't find a safe haven. The areas were big too, so you'd be playing for hours until you finally started learning how to navigate them. I remember downloading maps and printing them out, and referring to them when I got lost in game trying to figure out where I was.

The lack of a minimap is pretty awesome. There is a careful balance between preserving adventure vs making the game frustrating; between convenient and immersive.

I very much liked the early days of D2 when you had to legitimately watch out to always have scrolls of town portal. Or in D1 when your mana didn't auto-recharge and you had to meter out potions, trips to down for free heal/mana, and just getting in there and doing physical damage because you were out of mana and needed to wait for a potion to drop.

Convenient features always take me out of the world a bit, and stuff where you have to die, try something new, die again, etc to win always makes me feel like I'm actually learning to play better.

Yes! Felt like an actual adventure and less of a roller coaster on rails.

Exactly, I remember the feeling that you needed to have a certain level of situational awareness with what is going on around you.

I agree. In EQ things felt like an accomplishment. And having a significant penalty to death, I often experienced palpable fear in places that newer games haven’t been able to replicate. Those experiences cemented my best memories from EQ in my mind. Heck, I still have memorized the run from Freeport to Qeynos — which was quite perilous for a young level 12.

Speaking of gear, my fondest memory was a 9 hour camp for my toon’s Golden Efreeti boots. When they dropped I was so elated and so happy with all my friends who stayed that long to help me get them.

Played Doom (2016) the other weekend on the new gaming PC, first time I played a game for years and though "man! Old games where hard".

It's a game where destroy everything in sight is the correct strategy, you actually get annoyed when they keep coming and coming.

Engaging and fun.

No grind, microtransactions, idiots on multiplayer, just jump in and fuck shit up.

EQ definitely required a certain degree of situational awareness to it that I haven’t seen replicated to this day.

You may be talking about the "free sample of limited gameplay" or "free to play, pay to win" or "free to play, pay to not wait" models, to all of which I would deny the simple title of "free to play." A good example of actual-free-to-play is DoTA: You get access to the full game, all characters, all servers, etc. The only thing you pay for is cosmetics; you can't buy anything that gives an advantage in-game, and it's hugely popular as an esport and makes Valve tons of money. It's free-to-play done right imo.

I assume you're aware already, but if you are not, they are launching Classic this summer.

You also have private servers of all expansions.

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