Two populations playing the same game

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Corwyhn Lionheart, Jul 14, 2019.

  1. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    I see a lot of the discussions/arguments on the forums based on two different populations of players playing the same game. Competitive players versus Non-Competitive players.

    Now there are many ways to define these two types as there are many ways you could be considered competitive or not. And there is no black and white line. People can be competitive in some ways and not others. And I have to stress both are valid ways to play Everquest.

    For the purpose of this post I will say competitive are the upper tier raid guilds and those who want to play their top game to be above the average person. This is a completely valid way to play.

    Competitive raid guilds review parses a lot and work hard towards higher standings in completing an expansion etc. An important part of their game is getting players to improve their playing skills and when they find a weakness they work with the player to fix it or sometimes players who don't improve enough can get replaced by those who can do the job better. Getting every bit of DPS or tanking ability out of each player is part of the fun. It is part of what makes the game enjoyable. Competitive players do a lot of things to maintain their competitive edge. They always do beta for instance to figure out the best strats for raids for getting any kind of progression done as soon as possible.

    Non competitive players are not as driven. They may be great at playing the game but that is just for themselves they don't measure themselves against others. The fun they are getting out of the game is just not as hard core. They take a more relaxed attitude towards playing. They play the game to progress but it has to be a certain balance of effort versus fun for them. They do want to constantly improve their characters but might not be investing as much time and effort in fine tuning their play abilities.

    People can also drift in and out of either group nor is either group all raiders or all groupers there are many ways to be competitive. From raiding to playing the Bazaar. Even in the raiding game there are competitive raid guilds and not so competitive raid guilds.

    I think both groups are needed to keep Everquest going and the hardest job of all falls to the game devs trying to satisfy the gaming needs of both populations.

    It would also be nice that while we all promote the style of play we currently enjoy that we keep in mind that not everyone enjoys the game the same way. I am sure I can be as guilty as the next person in not keeping this in mind but I do make the attempt to do so.

    Someone in a a top raid guild said to me recently that they are a raider but they group too insinuating they are part of the group game. And yeah taking it down to the basics they are. But to not see they are also part of a highly competitive part of the raid game and cannot be compared to those who just group and not raid is a blind spot.

    I guess it is fine for us all to consider how we play the game to be THE way to play the game but in the end I don't think it does us any good.

    Anyway thanks to the game devs for trying to balance out the game for everyone as it is basically a job herding cats. :)
    Treygolas and Maedhros like this.
  2. Cicelee Augur

    I used to play Call of Duty on my Xbox 360 online. I would get into matches, and usually finish with around 8 kills and 40 deaths.

    I had to make a decision. Either get better at the game, or accept the above results. I chose not to improve, which resulted in more 8 kill and 40 death matches. Eventually I realized that online Call of Duty is not my game, and moved on.

    The bottom line is, as SOE used to say, you are in our world now. It is their game. Either accept the difficulty level and get better, or stay status quo and accept what you cannot do...
  3. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    Thing is DBG is there to make money. So it is actually in their interest to try to satisfy as many players as possible instead of say this is it take it or leave it. And yes they will try to find a balance and all we can do as players is then deal with that balance how we want to.

    A lot of Live players hate the emphasis DBG puts on TLP servers. I am one of the folks that prefer Live get more attention but understand that successful TLP servers help extend the life of the game. Same situation here. You can tell everyone they should go play something else if they dont want to play at a certain difficulty level and then if the game dies live with it. Or you can accept that DBG knows they have to try and balance things out to reach the largest number of players.

    Since we are talking CoD I could get into the top 80% in CoD matches but that was the best I could do. I really enjoyed the game regardless of that and that was where I wanted to try and be competitive. EQ was where I went to relax. Now that isn't do say in the 20 years I have played EQ that I haven't excelled in playing at times. Twenty years is a long time though so how much effort I want to put in the game has varied at various points in time.

    Personally, I will deal with Everquest however they tune it. I just want the game to stay around for there to be tuning to do. Or I guess we could take the cut off your nose to spite your face approach.

    Was TBL well tuned?

    Where does a game like EverQuest and its loyal player base go from here? The game has suffered a bit as late, and the last expansion, The Burning Lands, was rather poorly received. Longdale said she was distracted with an 18-month project (she would not disclose what exactly) that took her attention away from the game and left someone less experienced in charge, but now she is back.
  4. zarcal Elder

    Corwyhn definitely has a point. I am not buying any more expansions until i have some success in the expansion before. Even now I only have 3 pieces of ROS gear so why buy TBL. Yes, i could get better friends or 'get gud' but that's irrelevant.

    It ABSOLUTELY is their world but it is my money.
    Bottle and Miss_Jackie like this.
  5. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    Also had to say online deathmathc CoD is a really bad example. There is pretty much ONLY the competitive game it is only about racking up kills and winning.
  6. kizant Augur

    You're not totally off but there's way more than two populations. And each of these big groups has a lot of sub groups.

    I consider myself to be a competitive player. When I played CS or TF2 or really any game I generally advance to league play and try to be as good as possible. However, what do I like competing over exactly? I don't care about who completes the expansion first and I don't care about who completes achievements first and I don't care about who has the higher score on magelo. I only compete on the individual level.

    My goal is play a Wizard better than anyone else can play a Wizard. That includes both raiding and the group game and it includes more than just DPS. Whether it's knowing how to pull as a wizard or figuring out how to molo something that most people wouldn't be able to do or fill a role in a group that you wouldn't think wizards are normally capable of. And I only go after achievements and gear that help me actually play better.

    Then there a lot of people who do compete at a team level over things like beating expansions first. They may not be the best at their class but they work well with people, write guides and understand how to play, take on leadership, etc. There's a lot more to their goals than just playing their own character well.

    A lot of people do play video games for the challenge. They enjoy difficult content and being able to finish things quickly that others are struggling with. Wiping on a raid 20 times in a row is fun to these people as long as they're making some small improvement each time and there's hope that they can beat the challenge they're faced with.

    Some people are min/maxers who compete over magelo profiles. Some of them tend to be completionists and are unhappy unless every checkbox has been met. They may raid with top guilds because it's way easier getting those items or checkboxes completed if you belong to one. But that doesn't mean they're the best at their class or care about all the other things. If you're a completionist you don't necessarily enjoy hard content because it can slow you down and cause anxiety.

    Then there's a whole bunch of people who play EQ for the social aspect. It's just a glorified chat server with other stuff to do. Then you have some people who are crazy about housing and customizing their character. They spend a lot of time getting ornaments and building up some persona like they're playing the sims. Are these also tradeskillers? I don't know. They could be a whole other group that I sure don't understand. And some people do just play the game to relax.

    Then there's another whole group that's usually looked down upon but some people do use EQ to make money. They level up a character, get it a set of current group gear, and then sell it. Or they're just farming plat for the same reason. Maybe they have a physical problem and it's one of the few ways they can make a couple bucks or maybe they're just evil people. Whether you think what they're doing is good or against the rules or not they're people who pay for accounts and play the game and are posting on here too.

    In recent expansions I actually think the EQ team has done a good job at giving each group something but you can't make everyone happy all the time.
    Leex, Miss_Jackie, Kamor and 5 others like this.
  7. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    Oh I agree completely that there are many ways to classify the player populations and that there are groups within groups. I was just speaking in broader terms for the purpose of discussion.
  8. code-zero Augur

    There are way more than 2 types of player and any player may transition regularly from one to another type depending on circumstances.

    You referenced competitive players, in my experience there are people who will take vacation time to do beta, max out levels and AA's and get all progression done then raid until every possible item is as close to best in slot then slack off till the next expansion. I'd really call those people seasonal players rather than competitive. Some people play at a lot lower intensity but it's constant and they'll gradually catch up but never be at the level that those seasonal people are.

    Seasonal players drop off because they may at some point fail to return should they have gone too long without playing, maybe they come back to find that the newest expansion kicks their butts and they can't knock the rust off so they grouse a while then leave before achieving anything.

    Maybe some non-seasonal player finds their play time getting progressively shorter and shorter and they simply can't maintain interest.

    That's only two types and I imagine that there are others and sub-types of those as well
  9. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    Yep lots of times I was looking at the competitive versus non competitive in a general way.

    Like we both said people can drift in and out of groups.

    Seasonal players can be competitive or non competitive.

    I think the difference between the competitive and non competitive players gives the biggest headaches to DBG who is trying to balance things such that the maximum amount of players want to play.
  10. code-zero Augur

    I can agree that it's going to be a huge pain to create an expansion that will keep the people who hit the release with a non-stop blitz to do everything as fast as they can while making sure that others won't feel like they are stuck. I enjoy doing stuff from the past just for grins, check /ach, maybe get the BiC and you can't do that if you have to devote every play second to the current expansion.
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  11. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    I thnk the other difference between the group game and the competitive (mainly on the raid side) game is that as one of he very top raid leaders said

    "The leader of the Machin Shin guild, Michael “Allayna” King, doesn’t run a company, but he can admit that leading the arguably number-two guild in the entire game often feels like the same thing. “I often think it would be great to list running this guild as a company of 65 people,” he says. “They get paid in loot, and they get in trouble if they don’t show up to work. There are definitely frustrations with running a company this large.”

    On the group side it's not nearly so company-like. It's more of a just for fun less serious and intense side of the game. Running a guild ends up being more about handling the people interactions when needed or just setting a tone for a guild. On the group side (and in this case I am saying non raiders) players want to play Everquest as a game not as a job.

  12. Brohg Augur

    Your public facing isn't as an advocate for those. You are seen to advocate for those who *don't* actually play the game, and especially for those who play it in a very limited fashion, still being granted the rewards for high achievement.
    Sheex, Allayna, Cicelee and 2 others like this.
  13. Aurastrider Augur

    Obviously you can break this game down into many groups and subgroups and the example of competitive vs non competitive really breaks down to lots of time to spend playing vs limited playing time. Yes I know there are players who can accomplish a ton in a short period of time and there are others who might not accomplish hardly anything playing all of the time but these are the two extremes of both groups.

    It would be nice if new content had things designed for the time deprived players. Gribbles were a perfect example of great design that allowed those with limited playing time a chance to get something done even if it was the same 3 missions over and over again. Have a Gribble style mission in each zone of a new expansion or at least the first couple and it will keep these players coming back to the game and buying new expansions. Adding in the evolving gear, end zone flagging, raids, a couple of difficult dungeons and the such will keep the others coming back. Making sure the other stuff is somewhere in between the two should satisfy the rest of the population. Failure to do the above just creates less players as the group who feels the game design does not fit their needs will either stop playing or stop paying to play.
    Evatini likes this.
  14. tyrantula Elder

    Your posts are always about how the game is too hard, it's really frustrating because I think the game is too easy.
  15. tyrantula Elder

    There's a zone like that already, it's called Gnome Memorial Mountain.
    Allayna and kizant like this.
  16. Aurastrider Augur



    And this was released at launch with TBL? Again this is about getting money from those with limited playing time. Nobody is asking for an entire expansion of gribbles but just enough for these players to justify its purchase. You will still have your raids, end game zone, evolving items and all that jazz. Throwing a couple of these in from the START just realistically means more people will throw money at the game. Leaving this content out entirely or waiting several months to provide it does nothing for these consumers who want to experience something new with everyone else. I would venture to say that DBG lost some of these customers with TBL launch. Not everyone is going to stick around with hopes that they will release a zone that fits their needs in the future.
  17. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    [IMG]

    I’m all for easymode group content, but let’s not pretend Gribble popularity had anything to do with “great design”, sir.

    People went where they could get the most with the least amount of effort. That’s not something I think the dev team should encourage, for the most part.
    Faelthos and Leex like this.
  18. Zurril Elder

    I don’t disagree with some of your points. I believe that the content should scale from easier too harder as you progress through the expansion - as long as the rewards also scale from OK to Great as you progress.

    Gribbles was a high reward (xp) for an easy mission. If its easy for a non-competitive player, then it is easier for a competitive, hardcore player. When this happens, both groups of folks take advantage of the reward gain, which leads to jealousy or abuse, which leads to forum posts and nerfs, which leads to a ‘new member’ cancelling all 27 of their gold accounts.

    Personally, I loved TBL. I am a fan of the puzzle like content and the challenge. I get that I may be in the minority here. I do think that there can be a change next expansion though, and I honestly think it starts with Beta.

    Anyone who pre-orders the expansion has access to Beta. But it seems like with Beta, 2 things are happening. Either they are a competitive, hardcore raider, who is playing, testing, and giving feedback based on how they like to play (usually on the challenging side), or they are a non-competitive player who puts on the top end raid gear of the expansion and goes around and explores different things in a buffed up manner that they will not experience when they start the expansion. I’m not saying that’s everyone who is Beta testing, and I could very well be wrong - but that is definitely the vibe/ themes I’ve seen personally on beta and in the forum posts.

    Skill is definitely a factor. There is content that some groups struggle with, that other groups face roll. I don’t believe that competitive folks are going to do the mission twice, with one time removing half their augs and lowering their cast counts just to see how it goes. Non-competitive folks do need a better representation during that Beta testing time. The squeaky wheel gets the oil (sometimes, anyway).
    Allayna likes this.
  19. Aurastrider Augur

    It was a great design for those with limited time. Just because those with lots of time would farm the heck out of them does not take away from the fact that it was a good design choice. There were plenty of other more challenging missions for those who have more time or enjoy a challenge. Not everything should take an epic amount of time to complete or even be challenging. It's ok to have some easy mode content.
    Elyssanda likes this.
  20. Kamor Lorekeeper

    Oh look , another post framed to divide the community w/ a stupid false dichotomy.

    Why, oh why is every post of yours about raiding vs. grouping. Why do you piss all over half the community?

    That's an enjoyable environment for them, nothing wrong with liking it, or not wanting to participate. Yet somehow your posts always frame competitive people as ruining the game.

    What is your point exactly? That Everquest needs a community of players with different goals?

    Someone told me something, is code for I'm gonna make up a story that proves my point. And again Corwhine is trying to divide the community into group vs. raider. When in fact people who play do one or both of them very consistently. Raids take up maybe 6 hours a week, or as little as 3 hours a week.

    Corwhine reluctantly agrees that you can play however you want. Bravo Captain Obvious.
    tyrantula likes this.