The review touches upon the issue of the ridiculous number of daily quests required. I've been playing MoP myself and I can confirm that Blizzard have got something very, very badly wrong here. The daily quests are too numerous, too essential and far too boring. With a small number of exceptions, they all tend to be variations on the old "kill six snow moose" themes. Except this time it's panda-mooses. And you usually have to kill more than six of them.
It's worse still if you play as a tank or healer. DPS p
Doing them all everyday will make you get burned out of them, much like if you had the option to grind heroics to get Rep. Stop forcing yourself to eat the whole thing at once or you will get a belly ache.
Do dailies in a group. Three of us only do them together. Its done in less than an hour for Lotus, Shado, August.
The gear progression is what makes old content obselete. Plus who wants to do the same thing beyond 4-6 months.
> The gear progression is what makes old content obsolete. Plus who wants to do the same thing beyond 4-6 months.
That is true, however, you're talking to someone who has ~2000 hours of L4D playtime in. We don't do it for the gear (there is none!) -- we do it because the core game play is _fun_ with friends. If the old content is obsolete you need to ask WHY? Why aren't the old dungeons dynamically scalable? I'm not saying this is a trivial problem, or that only Blizzard doesn't get it -- the flaw is with the design decision of MMOs in general. Why would I waste time "grinding" for gear, when every expansion pack all your gear is immediately obsolete?
The fact that you have to queue up for dungeons and pvp tells me the developers don't respect my time, and are not interested in learning how to.
That is true, however, you're talking to someone who has ~2000 hours of L4D playtime in. We don't do it for the gear (there is none!) -- we do it because the core game play is _fun_ with friends. If the old content is obsolete you need to ask WHY? Why aren't the old dungeons dynamically scalable? I'm not saying this is a trivial problem, or that only Blizzard doesn't get it -- the flaw is with the design decision of MMOs in general. Why would I waste time "grinding" for gear, when every expansion pack all your gear is immediately obsolete?
It's funny that you'd say this. L4D itself is obsolete since the entire game has been ported to L4D2.
> L4D itself is obsolete since the entire game has been ported to L4D2.
While I agree the majority of the player base has moved onto L4D2 the hard-core fans still prefer L4D1 because it is better designed. i.e. http://www.gametracker.com/search/l4d/ [gametracker.com]
The queue system isnt that bad. The gear system is basically what makes or breaks an MMO.
Points grinding systems are garbage and always have been. Gated RNG bosses(and LOTS of them) as per Vanilla WoW and 3/4 of TBC are the BEST way to go. In fact there was no need for the burning crusade when it was released at all. They could have easily spent another year with minor updates to Vanilla. The biggest complaint I heard from most active guilds at the time was they were excited for the new content but they didn't really see the need.
It can get bothersome for the few hardcore players who are geared out the wazoo and need that one last piece of gear to complete thier epicness but it made the whole game feel more epic. Due to the RNG of it all etc seeing someone even in thier full Tier 1 set after tier 2.5 was released was pretty awesome. The old content got played and replayed and overgeared players could help newer players learn the content and essentially learn to raid at the same time. There is no learning curve now. Its gone. They've tried to replace it with bolted on and very frankly BAD systems that just don't work.
The raids are EPIC. They are what the designers spend a shitload of time on. The devs got pissed because at the end of Vanilla most people still hadn't even SEEN nefarian and they spent quite a lot of time designing BWL, not to mention AQ40 and harder content. The thing was I didn't see a lot of people complaining about that. All I saw was "Well my guild finally managed to down Ragnaros this week! On to Razorgore!!!!"
The move to 25 man raiding was also bad because it put too much emphasis on every single person in the raid performing at 100%. With 40 guys it was a bit easier to have someone not perform 100%, but at least play to the mechanics to make sure the raid didn't wipe. In fact many of the fights were doable with far less people than the maximum 40, which was entertaining in its own right.
Plus there are always those guys that are awesome and hilarious to have around that just aren't that good at playing. We carried at least two of these guys all the way through AQ40 purely for the entertainment value.
They've lost sight of it.
You may have someone in your L4D group thats bad but you like him IRL or something so he stays in because the other 3 of you can carry him. Same thing applies for MMOs.
Mists of Dailyquestia (Score:5, Interesting)
The review touches upon the issue of the ridiculous number of daily quests required. I've been playing MoP myself and I can confirm that Blizzard have got something very, very badly wrong here. The daily quests are too numerous, too essential and far too boring. With a small number of exceptions, they all tend to be variations on the old "kill six snow moose" themes. Except this time it's panda-mooses. And you usually have to kill more than six of them.
It's worse still if you play as a tank or healer. DPS p
Re: (Score:0)
Dailies are not required, they are optional.
Doing them all everyday will make you get burned out of them, much like if you had the option to grind heroics to get Rep. Stop forcing yourself to eat the whole thing at once or you will get a belly ache.
Do dailies in a group. Three of us only do them together. Its done in less than an hour for Lotus, Shado, August.
The gear progression is what makes old content obselete. Plus who wants to do the same thing beyond 4-6 months.
They tried Horizontal progression w
Re:Mists of Dailyquestia (Score:3)
> The gear progression is what makes old content obsolete. Plus who wants to do the same thing beyond 4-6 months.
That is true, however, you're talking to someone who has ~2000 hours of L4D playtime in. We don't do it for the gear (there is none!) -- we do it because the core game play is _fun_ with friends. If the old content is obsolete you need to ask WHY? Why aren't the old dungeons dynamically scalable? I'm not saying this is a trivial problem, or that only Blizzard doesn't get it -- the flaw is with the design decision of MMOs in general. Why would I waste time "grinding" for gear, when every expansion pack all your gear is immediately obsolete?
The fact that you have to queue up for dungeons and pvp tells me the developers don't respect my time, and are not interested in learning how to.
Re: (Score:2)
That is true, however, you're talking to someone who has ~2000 hours of L4D playtime in. We don't do it for the gear (there is none!) -- we do it because the core game play is _fun_ with friends. If the old content is obsolete you need to ask WHY? Why aren't the old dungeons dynamically scalable? I'm not saying this is a trivial problem, or that only Blizzard doesn't get it -- the flaw is with the design decision of MMOs in general. Why would I waste time "grinding" for gear, when every expansion pack all your gear is immediately obsolete?
It's funny that you'd say this. L4D itself is obsolete since the entire game has been ported to L4D2.
Re: (Score:2)
> L4D itself is obsolete since the entire game has been ported to L4D2.
While I agree the majority of the player base has moved onto L4D2 the hard-core fans still prefer L4D1 because it is better designed.
i.e.
http://www.gametracker.com/search/l4d/ [gametracker.com]
Re:Mists of Dailyquestia (Score:4, Insightful)
The queue system isnt that bad. The gear system is basically what makes or breaks an MMO.
Points grinding systems are garbage and always have been. Gated RNG bosses(and LOTS of them) as per Vanilla WoW and 3/4 of TBC are the BEST way to go. In fact there was no need for the burning crusade when it was released at all. They could have easily spent another year with minor updates to Vanilla. The biggest complaint I heard from most active guilds at the time was they were excited for the new content but they didn't really see the need.
It can get bothersome for the few hardcore players who are geared out the wazoo and need that one last piece of gear to complete thier epicness but it made the whole game feel more epic. Due to the RNG of it all etc seeing someone even in thier full Tier 1 set after tier 2.5 was released was pretty awesome. The old content got played and replayed and overgeared players could help newer players learn the content and essentially learn to raid at the same time. There is no learning curve now. Its gone. They've tried to replace it with bolted on and very frankly BAD systems that just don't work.
The raids are EPIC. They are what the designers spend a shitload of time on. The devs got pissed because at the end of Vanilla most people still hadn't even SEEN nefarian and they spent quite a lot of time designing BWL, not to mention AQ40 and harder content. The thing was I didn't see a lot of people complaining about that. All I saw was "Well my guild finally managed to down Ragnaros this week! On to Razorgore!!!!"
The move to 25 man raiding was also bad because it put too much emphasis on every single person in the raid performing at 100%. With 40 guys it was a bit easier to have someone not perform 100%, but at least play to the mechanics to make sure the raid didn't wipe. In fact many of the fights were doable with far less people than the maximum 40, which was entertaining in its own right.
Plus there are always those guys that are awesome and hilarious to have around that just aren't that good at playing. We carried at least two of these guys all the way through AQ40 purely for the entertainment value.
They've lost sight of it.
You may have someone in your L4D group thats bad but you like him IRL or something so he stays in because the other 3 of you can carry him. Same thing applies for MMOs.