What's the point of enemies?

Nah imo the problem is the grinding part, not the resources part. Managing resources makes the game more interesting in the long run, but the actual gameplay should be less about going around and hitting XP bags that are waiting for you to kill them, as per the OP.

Disagree completely about combat: what makes something grinding is that its mindless. Make combat mindless, and its not fun. Make combat less mindless, and it'll be fun whether you're trying to get a reward or just going out and killing people. Right now one of my biggest bugbears is that as you level up, more and more of the combat becomes easy; so this becomes the functional purpose of the 'conning' system to the average player -- finding the enemies you can grind without a problem. We need better enemy AI, first of all. But I also wish level mattered less.

 

Well, there I can agree without reservation, when combat no longer has any challenge in it then it stops being fun. The problem is that not everyone wants their adventures to be a slice of Dark Souls, which isn't actually a hard game so much as simply a game that never throws you a fight you're guaranteed to win.

 

Don't the single player modes of SotA discourage group play, too?

I do think that many people want advanced RPG elements but I also think that many people are stuck in a treadmill. They know how MMOs "have to work" as many use the same formula. So when I know that excessive grinding leads to me being the best player on the server then I want to try this in the next MMO that is of interest to me. Why do so many MMOs use those same forumla? Why don't even AAA MMOs offer complex quests, interesting stories and a more natural behaviour of enemies? I think this is because the devs know their players and what they expect from a MMO. Take a look at The Secret World. A MMO that tried something different in telling stories. Did it succeed? I don't think so.

Maybe it was a bit hard for some to follow the instructions of finding the key to the gate in Highvale. But then, why did they water the quest down to something where we have to do absolutely nothing anymore instead of giving better clues?

 

Well, first of all, SotA wasn't pitched as an MMO and I was referring to mechanics that practically penalized people who tried playing in groups... like having dungeons that only dropped plate armour so all the casters and stealthers didn't care about wasting hours of their time grouping with a random tank. Or trying to quest with your friend but, because you're at different chapters in the story, you are unable to play together. Or trying to do a gathering quest as a group but the item drop isn't distributed evenly among the players (some completing their quests 30min-to-an-hour ahead of the rest of group). Or designs philosophies that rely on automated processes that don't work, like the non-functioning GroupFinder. That sort of thing.

Offering an offline mode is perfect for those who don't like (or absolutely hate) multi-player environments.

Because WoW was a massive success and companies want a piece of THAT pie and they want it as soon as possible. This sort of behavior is present throughout the entire industry; that's why even renown developers (like Richard Garriott) go indie... or that the ones that make a large impact from the AAA studios are low-budget (Portal).

Secret World is one of the few that I don't know about, so I'm not going to pretend to know anything about it. However, trying something different for the sake of doing something different isn't necessarily a good thing either. Ultimately, regardless of how much of a masterpiece the story may be, if your game-play is subpar/boring, it won't succeed. That is the reality of the interactive medium of video games... and why a lot of us are uneasy about SotA's combat. Is that what happened to The Secret World? I don't know but, if it failed, I could think of a handful of reasons why.

 

I tried to post this yesterday but i ran out of time... Luckily the thread became (once again) a MMO vs Single Player elements discussion, so i think this could even help to get it back on track.

Hear Hear! we're here to make a game after all. Comparisons shouldn't be taken as "what we're forced to do" but just as situations. Many of the things said in this thread (and in many others) in the structure of "but most MMOs do this and that and that's why MMOs are awful" have a simple answer, and that's "great! we shouldn't do that then!"

In the same fashion i could state that MMO players aren't catered for meaningful PVP, or reaction based combat, or hardcore rp elements, since everytime a good idea that caters only to the players from an specific faction of the game, some others are bothered by the presence of that elements. That's not MMO players, that's humans. I'll skip the rest of the criticism since is heavily based in "what happened in the industry until now" and i sincerely expect we're here to make things different. Once again, the real question is in the "when". Players can be satisfied with the game the way it is now in many of their aspects; i hope the devs aren't and they keep steadily improving every aspect of the game. I'm not trying to say you shouldn't be disappointed... but even what we have now is not final. Everything can change.

And since everything can change, we should protest about the things we don't like so they change, but there's no point in giving them too much importance. What should be really important is what we want to have in the future, and for me, the outmost importance is in taking the proper first steps, so we can keep working from there. That was my intention on my first post, but i was focused on mob distribution and behavior... Mostly because that was the topic of the thread

If i recall correctly people complained a lot on that one! i never took it so i don't know, but i'd say maybe they watered it down as a "fix"? I've read Lum talking many times about how they keep working on quests and that kind of stuff... and for what i've seen from this guys, their thinking seem to go more in line with ours than with the "MMO Crowd". I'd love to see them taking a step in the right direction for our peace of mind, though

Some people have expressed their fears of SotA being too ambitious because it may fail since it's trying to merge two different kind fo gameplays. I think that fear never accomplished nothing so i say that it may also success! We don't want a Single player that plays as a MMO, and neither do want an MMO that discourages social activity as a single player... but if the elements are carefully selected we could have something new and awesome. The key is in the stepstones for everything, things that points the game in the good direction, because i'm sure we won't get the full experience for episode one. By placing the adequate stepstones we can keep hope about the experience we desire becoming better with time, as long as they're fun. Because that's the most important thing... after all

 

As has been stated oh so many times every single time this has been brought up, things like npc schedules are coming. Of course there will be a meaningful single player experience. It's just not at that stage of development yet. Offline single player was just activated. There's really no more to the discussion. These are points that have been made, questions that have been answered etc al over and over again. Dont fret, all of that will come in time. Game is not complete.