Linear PvE

PvE Done WrongMy return to Dark Age of Camelot was extremely short lived. After talking it over with Bartlebe we both decided that it was because of the PvE that we just could not continue playing. I really hadn’t noticed how big of a change PvE has gone through over the past few years until I saw what it used to be like. In DAoC, especially this time around, I always had that feeling of “where do I go next?” and I always felt like I was working at it just a little too hard. I have come to the realization that I enjoy linear PvE.

When I’m questing or hunting in an area, I like to know that the game will naturally lead me to the next best location when I’m ready to progress. I don’t like the feeling of dread that comes over me as I approach the last level of an area because I truly have no clue where to go next. I don’t want to feel like I’m being handed everything on a silver platter, but at the same time I don’t want to feel lost or have to figure it out on my own. In my recent playing of DAoC it felt like I was really working hard at making the next level. The entire purpose of my leveling was to reach the RvR and perhaps that was one of the problems. PvE should not feel like it is in the way.

Let the quests and experience flow! Give me something to do at all times. There should always be a quest to complete, a place to go next, or an objective for me to achieve in PvE. That’s the only way PvE is going to win me over. The leveling experience should be dynamic and I should be able to immediately pick up on a sense of purpose in what I’m doing. If PvE takes upon itself the same ideals that make RvR so great for me, then it will be a winner.

PvE should not be a hurdle or set of obstacles one has to traverse before achieving the goal. At the very most, PvE should be well beaten path with dynamic adventures and rewards.

*Update*  I’m adding a bit of clarification to help those reading this for the first time understand where I’m trying to come from when I say I want linear pve.

There are two layers to this post.

Layer 1: Linear PvE
Layer 2: Quality and Polish

I really made an error here by not clarifying what I meant when I said linear. I’m not saying that the game has to be on rails or funnel you perfectly in one direction or another. What I meant to convey is, I like games that are the opposite of that “where do I go now?” feeling. I hate that feeling. Not knowing where to go or what to do is horrible! Feeling like the game drops off suddenly every few levels with steep leveling curves that require you to “push” through… I’m tired of playing that way. I like games with a direction!

I want the PvE, regardless of whether or not I’m racing through it, to feel effortless. Then, and only then, will I feel immersed in the adventure. When those feelings of work and chore subside, they make room for the feelings of fun to take over. One way to get that feeling is to have the game provide for you. If the game provides for me by leading me to the next location, giving me decent gear and engaging quests, then all is good. I could have 20 choices and be happy, as long as I knew what they were and that they would be fun.

I hope that clears things up a bit.

  • This is the most distressing post I have ever seen from you.

    Before WoW, you had the community to lead you through the game — friends would point out the best spots or invite you to places you hadn’t seen.

    Now you post that you prefer the kind of gameplay with no community and no need for other people?

    I dunno… the mind boggles.

    What’s even weirder is that I and Einhorn were trading stories of our times when we didn’t know what we were doing in EQ1 and how well it worked out (very well, actually).

    Your first time through DAoC — you didn’t notice all this because you had made a commitment to the game and you relied on friends or helpful strangers to give you options at every stage.

    I swear. WoW is turning a generation of people autistic.

  • Harsh words Tipa. Calling people autistic for not enjoying the drawn out and poorly polished gameplay of old… perhaps you meant that differently that it appears. That was done in poor taste. 🙁

    You’re assuming I like WoW’s system, which I really don’t. WoW lacked the purpose and achievement in the leveling game of PvE for me. It lacked the ideals of dynamic and unexpected play. If you could point out where in my post that I hinted PvE should be like WoW or even as you say “gameplay with no community” then I would really appreciate it. There can be a community with polished and linear PvE… to assume otherwise is nearsighted.

    DAoC’s PvE is what it has always been. It’s always been that way regardless of having a community to get you through it. I think it’s a downright excuse to say that before WoW “you had the community to lead you through the game”. Come on, that’s masking poor design.

    You’re reading way too far into this.

  • Im not totally sure that’s what he meant Tipa.

    Having friends in a game is great. Having a community will certainly help make a game more enjoyable but what Keen is saying is, that if a game has bad PvE and questing, its just that, BAD.

    DAoC has a great community and great end game. This is established. DAoC also has vague quests, uninspiring mob placements and PvE that isn’t engaging.

    I’m not sure if this will make sense for you, but try to stick with me, champ.

    Having a group of people or a community WILL NOT make these things go away. It will help you ignore them though. I could stand in a small camp of mobs all day, killing mobs with my friends and leveling up because thats what you have to do. This DOES NOT make what i’m doing fun or well designed.

    DAoc is a landmark MMO that certainly set the standard in a lot of ways but in this age of MMO’s, designing a game that is going to feel like you must WORK to level up, isn’t going to cut it. Games are supposed to be FUN and part of having fun is feeling like you’re not working. If you’re so hellbent on working, fighting your way to the top of an unpleasant game and calling that fun…I think I can help you.

    http://www.maplestory.com

    Knock yourself out.

  • It doesn’t take anything more than a final quest from an area that says “hey, take this thing over to Grumpypants the Dwarf in Such-insuch Land” that just so happens to be the next level appropriate area and you’re good to go.

    All the same, it’s not really necessary. 10 seconds of typing can get you the same answer, and once you learn it you know it forever and those silly ‘take x to y’ quests are forever after quite stupid.

    I think the only reason it was a glaring issue for you is that you weren’t playing the game, you were racing. Any time someone is racing towards a goal in one of these games (in this case, reaching a certain level before the trial expired) not immediately knowing where to go next seems like a huge deal. I don’t remember ever having that issue when playing DAoC back in they day, it either flowed organically, or I spent some time wandering around and found it. When you’re playing the game it’s not a big deal.

  • Bit of a surprising post today. I figured you would take the more open ended PvE model as a nice change of pace from the on-rails game.

    I think especially in a PvP focused game like DAoC or EVE, PvE benefits from being less structured and focused, since its generally considered a side game to the PvP.

  • Unlike some, I guess I don’t consider wandering around, exploring, and see what sort of things I stumble into, work. I consider it, playing the game. But then, I don’t care about leveling, I refuse to grind, I don’t really care much about gear, I just play to have fun — and I fully understand that I was an anomaly even back in EQ1. As such I level *extremely* slowly, am usually poor, my gear is crappy and my dps not as high as it could be. But I have fun every single second I am in the game, even if I appear to be doing nothing at all.

    My gameplay is far from optimized, but then, why should it be?

    Racing through content is so incredibly antithetical to me that I just react in horror when I read a post by someone I respect damning a game because it put any barriers at all between him and his goal of achieving levels in as short a time as possible — even the time to ask “where next?” was too much to take.

    A monofocused attitude, a desire not to socially interact with others, an impatience with reality (as it is in the game, anyway). I dunno. Is autistic too harsh a word? Or a description? Sheesh. DAoC is a great game. Sit back and enjoy it. Don’t treat it like an inconvenience.

  • @syncaine: Fair enough, but read below for a better explanation of what I meant.

    @Tipa: Where to begin… When did I damn the game? When did I say that I didn’t take the time to ask “where next?”? Please read the post from a few days ago where I described how awesome the DAOC community was for helping with questions.

    I never said exploration is out nor did I say taking it at whatever pace you want should be out. Honestly my post is so much less about DAOC and more about PvE in general and how I think it should be designed.

    Okay, now for a bit of clarification. There are two layers to this post.

    Layer 1: Linear PvE
    Layer 2: Quality and Polish

    I really made an error here by not clarifying what I meant when I said linear. I’m not saying that the game has to be on rails or funnel you perfectly in one direction or another. What I meant to convey is, I like games that are the opposite of that “where do I go now?” feeling. I hate that feeling. Not knowing where to go or what to do is horrible! Feeling like the game drops off suddenly every few levels with steep leveling curves that require you to “push” through… I’m tired of playing that way. I like games with a direction!

    I want the PvE, regardless of whether or not I’m racing through it, to feel effortless. Then, and only then, will I feel immersed in the adventure. When those feelings of work and chore subside, they make room for the feelings of fun to take over. One way to get that feeling is to have the game provide for you. If the game provides for me by leading me to the next location, giving me decent gear and engaging quests, then all is good. I could have 20 choices and be happy, as long as I knew what they were and that they would be fun.

    Does that make it any more clear?

  • Sometimes a game’s community isn’t that helpful anyway. I can think of several instances where I’ve asked people where to exp at and been told to go to places I had already been to several levels ago.

    You shouldn’t have to rely on the community for direction. Sometimes you want to figure the game out on your own, because thats what the first people did before they passed on their knowledge. But if the game makes it too difficult to find out on your own then that can be frustrating.

    Community support can be great and all, but I’d hate to have to rely on it to enjoy my game.

  • People would have relied a lot more on “the community” in WoW if “the community” hadn’t been replaced by the instant gratification of Thottbot and WoWHead. 😉

  • One other quick thing to add regarding the urge to rush through content:

    In both WoW and DAOC, I always viewed the endgame content as the ultimate goal and the leveling-up process was just a series of hoops I had to jump through to get there. I was all about the arenas and the frontier, neither of which could be experienced unless you “raced” towards the finish line, as another commenter so eloquently put.

    Having unpolished, open-ended (non-linear) PvE is like an itch that can never be scratched; annoying you all the way towards your ultimate goal.

    I don’t knock people for wanting to unlock every little secret on their own in a Final Fantasy game, but I don’t knock the ones who follow the Brady Games manual either.

  • Snafzg I’m going to steal that line.

    “Having unpolished, open-ended (non-linear) PvE is like an itch that can never be scratched; annoying you all the way towards your ultimate goal.”

    Perfect.

  • “I swear. WoW is turning a generation of people autistic.”

    Huh. I guess it’s important to look at the perspective of each person coming to a game. To those of us who played MMOs pre-WoW, we grew used to having to “work” to find content. One of WoW’s great innovations — yes, innovations — was helping to guide players to more and more content without that lost feeling Keen describes. It’s easy and en vogue to bash the big boy these days, but I remember how much I used to struggle to figure out just what the hell I was supposed to do next in Anarchy Online, and always feeling like I was drowning unless I went to the internet for support. Star Wars Galaxies took the open sandbox model too far instead of guiding players a bit more, and it was swept aside when a new generation of MMOs came onto the scene.

    What’s important to realize is that what worked *then* doesn’t always work *now*. Just because some of the older school MMO players yearn for the hardcore death penalties, the forced sense of exploration to find content and anything-goes open world PvP, doesn’t mean that the new crowds of incoming MMO gamers do. It doesn’t mean even us older school players are shunning the evolutions of the genre.

    I don’t think anybody these days wants to play an MMO that strictly and sternly forces you down an unbranching path from beginning to end. And by the same token, I don’t think most people really want such open-ended vastness that a majority of their game experience feels like you’re bumbling about until you get a guide or you die. A dev’s goal should be to guide players along multiple, branching paths that are level appropriate, subtly bring players to areas loaded to the brim with easy-to-grasp content, and then step back and let the players make a choice what they want to do and where they want to go about doing it.

    MMOs should absolutely hold high standards for themselves and their content — dumbing themselves down to appeal to the lowest common denominator helps no one but the idiots. But we need to recognize that this has been a niche genre for so long for a reason: inaccessibility to the average player who does NOT want to feel stupid or spend their first few weeks in a game begging someone, anyone to deliver them a working game manual and MapQuest so they know what to do right. Sigil worked under the assumption that there were hundreds of thousands of people longing for the good ol’ days of horribly tough MMO gameplay, and, well, we see how that turned out (although their failure went far beyond the hardcore attitudeo of the game).

    We do need a working community in a game, and I know it’s distressing to see titles like WoW make it easier for some people to be more anti-social (although, frankly, that’s some people’s cup of tea and it’s not a “wrong” way to play MMOs even if you start winging around the word “massively”) without giving them great incentive until late in the game to group up and work together for common goals. That’s why I’ve always loved my guilds, but it’s nice to know that even if I log on to WoW or LOTRO or whatever and I’m by myself, I’m not stuck in the mud.

    I don’t think when UO and EQ and MUDs broke onto the scene that any dev could’ve predicted such a wide variety of player types and the future expectations of players to keep making a title more user friendly, more solo-accessible, and more guided. It really makes me wonder what we’ll be seeing years from now.

  • I take Keen’s point to be like this:

    You buy a new device. Some people want to take it out of the box and play with it, never looking at the instruction manual. Some people want to take it out, play with it for a bit, then go get the manual to see what they may be missing or if they have any problems. Some people read the manual from cover to cover before they ever touch their new device.
    Now imagine that the device came with no manual at all but instead just a phone number you could call during certain hours and there was no guarantee anyone would answer. A good company wants to help it’s customers get the most out of their product. So a good company would include the manual because that’s what makes the majority of their customers happy and it won’t bother the other folks anyway.

    Seems to me like Keen is saying he wants the company to have included the “manual” just in case he needs it. I’m that type of person too. I like to know in the back of my mind that if I need help finding the next sweet spot to level up I can simply head into town and talk with Johnny Classtrainer and he’ll give me a fedex quest to get me headed in the right direction. I don’t want to have to spam the global chat in between Chuck Norris jokes and/or hear “L2P nub!!!!11” or search for an online guide.

  • I played DAOC only a couple years ago, well past it’s busy days. I’ve posted about it before and say it here again…it really was the most enjoyable PVE experience I’ve ever had. I never felt that I didn’t know where to go. There was just so much to see.

    However, I was on a PVE server, so there was no pressure for me to level up so that I could PVP. I just explored. Both the catacombs and shrouded isles had lots of quests. When I didn’t want to quest, I just explored the old world zones and dungeons. Even within the old world dungeons were additional catacomb dungeons to be found where I would accumulate aurulite to purchase armor with.

    I just thoroughly enjoyed my time there.

    My son has autism. That remark was harsh indeed.

  • Whoa whoa whoa, hang on, you wanted to get to max level ASAP so you could PvP, amirite?

    You know that you get like 2x exp from mobs in PvP zones right? How about that killing an even con player gets you about 2.5x the xp of an even con mob (probably with phat camp bonus)? Did you know that there are Battlegrounds for every 5 levels?

    DAOC has the fastest, easiest, grind to max level. Don’t play on a ToA server, though, artifacts and master levels are too ghey imho. Classic server ftw.

  • You can get there in under 30 hours played, definitely. Probably 16-20, to be honest. I can show you the ways young padawan! DAoC was my first 3D love after UO, it took me 3 years of playing on and off to get to 50, since then I’ve gotten 2 others to 50 during 14 day trials. Let me help you, don’t give up! 🙁

  • Unfortunately I think giving up is inevitable at this point. 😛 I really don’t plan to play past the 14 day trial anyway. Back “in the day” I took 4 chars in Midgard alone to 50… things are just so crazy different now. There aren’t players to group with or anyone doing dungeons. It’s mostly buffbots+power levelers. Thanks for the offer though! I would take you up in it if I were sticking around longer. 🙂

  • Meh, ToA servers are for bewbs! If you’ve still got some free trial time, and you haven’t uninstalled yet, please stay in the BGs. You shouldn’t ever have to leave them, except at 20 to farm some aurilite from an instance in the underground tunnel mineshaft place.

    It’s good though, I shouldn’t take a break from SWG anyways or I’d probably never come back.