Bring Back The Train

[Inhoptep]

Does anyone else miss the good old days of the runnaway train?

Think back to to the days of camping Blackburrow in the original Everquest game reading in the chat box the words "INCOMMING TRAIN".

The fear of knowing what was heading up that ramp and the mad dash to the exit was so exhilarating.

Would it be possible to bring back this element to certain zones in Everquest 2?

Just a thought

[interstellarmatter]

It was fun in the old days. 

But...people tended to be more polite and the community tighter back then.  These days, trains would be a nightmare.  People would use it to be rude and wipe your group. 

You'd be waiting for a name to pop and all of the sudden your group would be overwhelmed because someone else wanted it.

[Gladiolus]

Inhoptep wrote:

Does anyone else miss the good old days of the runnaway train?

No.

[CoLD MeTaL]

Inhoptep wrote:

Does anyone else miss the good old days of the runnaway train? 

"Things I can't say or Kiara will get me" NO!!!!!

[Inhoptep]

Select zones.... not everywhere.

[Cyliena]

Don't miss it one bit. That's one of many things that I like about eq2 over eq1.

[Yimway]

Wait, I wouldn't be able to blindly run around a world of hostile creatures with the intent to kill me with impunity anymore?

That hardly sounds eq2 like.

[Eveningsong]

interstellarmatter wrote:

It was fun in the old days. 

But...people tended to be more polite and the community tighter back then.  These days, trains would be a nightmare.  People would use it to be rude and wipe your group. 

You'd be waiting for a name to pop and all of the sudden your group would be overwhelmed because someone else wanted it.

Umm, people did that back in EQ1 too...

[Alenna]

The guildies I group with dont' miss the train, they have me or did when I kept experiencing lag do to a poor computer set up. They'd hear me say I'm bringing friends and know they were in for a more exciting time.

[Rahatmattata]

I miss trains. I didn't play EQ, but FF11 had some massive trains. It was good times. Was fun to be the hero and clear a train for a bunch of parties trying to xp. I miss being able to buff and heal people outside of my group too. Death actually had a penalty and people would stay down and wait for a rez. All stuff that made playing a healer more fun cuz you could actually... you know... spend your play session running around helping other adventurers. Of course you can't have parties tucked away in neat and tidy little packaged instances for that to be possible. Travel was meaningful, and having a centralized non-instanced town where players gathered was nice as well. People would shout for ports, and a white mage could make decent money.

As far as the training and MPK thing, any class in EQ2 that can charm can easily PK as well.

[juggalo0385]

I just enjoyed watching people run for their lives from 20-30 mobs

[feldon30]

Atan@Unrest wrote:

Wait, I wouldn't be able to blindly run around a world of hostile creatures with the intent to kill me with impunity anymore?

That hardly sounds eq2 like.

If you think the reason we don't want Trains back is because we are "wimps". That tells me a lot about what you think of the playerbase.

A player should not be able to drag THEIR mobs to me and then force ME to deal with a problem THEY created.

Google "griefing".

[Yimway]

feldon30 wrote:

Atan@Unrest wrote:

Wait, I wouldn't be able to blindly run around a world of hostile creatures with the intent to kill me with impunity anymore?

That hardly sounds eq2 like.

If you think the reason we don't want Trains back is because we are "wimps".

Wimps is your word not mine.

I infered players want to be able to run thru hundreds of mobs to get to a destination without incuring any significant reprocusion.

I wouldn't call them wimpy, I'd call them lazy and seeking not to be challenged by the environment within which they play.

I would enjoy more risk in the game environment, thats my only point.   I certainly can understand why players wouldn't want to be challenged and be able to run directly to update after update unimpeeded.

[Moomar]

I do miss it and still go back to black burrow on a lowbie toon and try to kill the train. That was excitment and have found nothing like that in eq2 but still love both versions

[Kaita]

You would need a death penalty to make trains even start. . Eq2 does not have a death penalty. 

[eqaddictedfool]

maybe fun in an instance or something but not in open world

[Armironhead]

feldon30 wrote:

Atan@Unrest wrote:

Wait, I wouldn't be able to blindly run around a world of hostile creatures with the intent to kill me with impunity anymore?

That hardly sounds eq2 like.

If you think the reason we don't want Trains back is because we are "wimps". That tells me a lot about what you think of the playerbase.

A player should not be able to drag THEIR mobs to me and then force ME to deal with a problem THEY created.

Google "griefing".

why not? the point of an mmo is to play in a world that is impacted by other players.  it reminds me of the difference between toddlers and older children - toddlers engage in parallel play while older children actually play together.  An mmo is supposed to be about playing with others both the good and the bad, not merely playing along side each other.

[Armawk]

Atan@Unrest wrote:

I infered players want to be able to run thru hundreds of mobs to get to a destination without incuring any significant reprocusion.

Im not sure you and other people are talking about the same thing.. You seem to be referring to personal risk (which I agree with), they are referring to the ability to generate risk for others at no risk to yourself.. you are long gone and the train is beating on other people no?

[Grimslad]

While i never played EQ1..I did play EQOA and FF11 and yeah those were the things that kind of made the game hilarious. Going ..."oh crap look out!!!... Fighting for your life because some idiot just ran 20 mobs into you. I miss having the option of trying to kill a certain mob with either 18 people or 88 people ..no limits.. no instances...camps of people everywhere was fun.

[Nightshade]

The online community has changed drastically since EQ1, believe it or not. We live in an age of 4chan, somethingawful, etc. Anonymous griefing is the name of the game on the internet these days, and MMOs are far from being an exception.

If you give players the ability to wrack up countless enemies, run them passed other players, and slaughter them, it 'will' be used as a method to grief, time and time again.

I'd love to see a world where the AI was as smart as the player, but I have absolutely 0 faith in the Anonymous Generation, and I don't think SOE does either.

[Rahatmattata]

The first 2 things I noticed when I started playing EQ2 are... wow any class can sprint? and... hey, these mobs give up chasing me after a short distance. It was weird to aggro a mob and not have to zone to ditch it. Training wouldn't work too well in EQ2. You would have to make it so mobs don't lose aggro until you zone or use some special ability, and most people are in instances where it doesn't matter anyway. Even if you did manage to train a ton of mobs to a zone line, and the mobs didn't run back non-aggro, anyone could just evac or even just kill the mobs if they were trained.

SOE would have to completely revamp their whole game to make it a remotely dangerous world. All of there easy cheesy overland solo content would have to go away. Travel would need to be time consuming which means run speed and ports would have to be nerfed, dying should port you back to town if you respawn instead of get a rez... etc etc... EQ2 would probably lose a ton of players. The good thing is there are other games if you like that kind of thing.

[Crolack]

All I have to say is Fansy the bard

[standupwookie]

20 years from now, no one will ever remember EQ2 in the same fashion they remember EQ1.  The game is just not good enough. 

If you were around when this game was released, they had some things in the game that were like EQ1.  You had to retrieve your shard, shared group EXP debt (ok that was not in EQ1).  But the community hated these things with a passion.  There was massive outcry, and the game was dieing very fast.  Had they not changed this game to be very user friendly, they would not have made it those first six months. 

This game is very basic and very easy, they have everything down to a science.  It takes a lot away from the game, but overall EQ2 is an ok game.  It's nothing like EQ1.

By the way, EQ1 is still going, though not real strong.  They have had about 14 expansions and they changed the game to be more like EQ2.  No more corpse runs, etc....

EQ1 was exciting because there was a real penalty to screwing up.  You could lose a lot of EXP, you might even lose your corpse if you could not get to it, and if you played on a PVP server there was even more tension because people could loot your gear.  It was very hard to play and frustrating, but it really was a great gaming experience.  Crawling your way through a dungeon, knowing that one wrong screw up could set you back big time.

Nobody seems to want that type of game anymore and while it was frustrating it could be exhilerating on so many levels.

I played EQ1 for a long time, still have my characters and pop on every once and a while.  EQ2 is technically superior in every way, has just as much to offer, is full of fantastic content and has a wide variety of play stles but every time I compare it to EQ1 it comes up way short.

[Armawk]

standupwookie wrote:

EQ1 was exciting (to you) because there was a real penalty to screwing up (the concept was new to you then and the first game you get deeply into is always special to you). 

 Fixed that for you

[Qandor]

shaunfletcher wrote:

standupwookie wrote:

EQ1 was exciting (to you) because there was a real penalty to screwing up (the concept was new to you then and the first game you get deeply into is always special to you). 

 Fixed that for you

No, you fixed that for yourself. I actually agree with Standup. Eq2 is Candyland compared to the way EQ1 was in its heyday. Of course , if Candyland is your thing I guess that's all well and good. Eq2 is kind of like darts for kiddies - the ones with the suction cups instead of points. What's the penalty for dying in EQ2? A repair bill? lol That will get the adrenalin pumping for sure.

[Armawk]

Qandor wrote:

shaunfletcher wrote:

No, you fixed that for yourself. I actually agree with Standup. Eq2 is Candyland compared to the way EQ1 was in its heyday. Of course , if Candyland is your thing I guess that's all well and good. Eq2 is kind of like darts for kiddies - the ones with the suction cups instead of points. What's the penalty for dying in EQ2? A repair bill? lol That will get the adrenalin pumping for sure.

If you liked it that much better you would be playing it instead of this.. but nostalgia doesnt work like that.. you remember all the good bits and forget the bad. We all do it.. I still think in my heart of hearts that manic miner was the best platform game ever made. It wasnt, I would now find it simplistic and dull. I have little doubt you would find old school eq1 annoying, crude and pointlessly grindy.

[MadHatter1]

Guess I'm nostalgic that way also.  I miss the trains that would chase me across half the zone.  I miss having to go get your shard after said train killed me.  I also miss being able to feign death someone out of grp.  Ahhhh, the good ole days.

[The_Cheeseman]

I loved EQ1 when I started back in Jan. 2000. It was an amazing game and a strange new world to explore with interesting people and experiences.

It was also one of the worst-designed pieces of fodder I have played in a really long time.

Seriously, everybody loves their first time. It's special and new, and you looked at the low-res textures and jagged polygons with awe and wonder in your innocent eyes. But the people always view the past through rose-colored glasses. It's just human nature, the good experiences stick with us, while we forget the bad ones as quickly as possible.

Personally, I believe that EQ1 was fun. However, it was fun despite the game, not because of it. EQ1 was a totally fresh experience, the first time the general public had ever had the opportunity to explore a fully-realized fantasy setting in 3-D. The community, the people and the experience they had interacting in the world, are what made it a fun experience.

Corpse runs and massive death penalties don't make a game more fun. The real reason people liked those kinds of mechanics is because they encouraged community involvement and interaction. Having to go get your corpse or face the loss of all your hard-earned gear isn't enjoyable on any level, but it often caused you to ally with other people and tackle serious challenges as you fought back down to where you died, naked and hoping invis wouldn't randomly wear-off around a pack of hostile orcs. It wasn't the corpse run that was fun, it was the adventure of forming a band of players to tackle a serious challenge. Adventures like these often formed the base of long-term in-game friendships.

Everybody is entitled to their opinion of whether current-generation MMOs do enough to encourage player interaction, but I definitely prefer mechanics that encourage community building in constructive ways, rather than the old days of forced cooperation just to avoid harsh (and often undeserved) punishments. I'd rather choose to join a group to tackle a dungeon for fun and reward, rather than being forced to desperately beg for assistance with retrieving my corpse just to prevent the total ruination of my character.

It often seems like everybody who plays MMOs feels like they are experts at MMO design, and that if only they were in charge, they could make an infinitely superior game compared to the companies that have been in the business for over a decade. Ironically, the vast majority of such suggestions are not new ideas, they are requests to return a specific feature of a past MMO to a newer game. Rarely do such "experts" really attempt to understand why their pet feature lost favor and disappeared from the general MMO market in the first place, or even what the full effects of said feature would be on a new game. Usually it's just the, "Kids these days have it too easy! In my day, we walked to school in the snow, uphill both ways!" kind of mentality. It's not serious game design theory, its just self-important MMO geezers tellin' those darn kids to get off of their lawn.

I cannot remember who said it, but I do recall reading an interview with one of the developers of EQ1 in which he stated basically that they rarely listen to the desires of their players, because most players have no idea what they really want. I think that is very accurate, indeed. It is my opinion that if a game company actually paid attention to their players and implemented all the most popular ideas, the game would be dead in no time at all.

Just to be clear, I claim no expertise in game design myself, but I do strongly admonish everybody to consider carefully the full ramifications of any cause they choose to champion, especially one that affects a diverse community of people.

[Te'ana]

No.

[Occa]

I remember my first train in EQ, it was 1 Lion chasing my level 6 butt down the road back to the inn in the Commonlands. It was just on dusk and the sky had this orangy pinky glow to it............