crystalklear64
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[quote name='DarkonJohn']Just curious, but do you play many MMOs? Most that I've played (which isn't a lot) involve a good amount of grinding in order to level up, so if you know of other MMOs that don't involve grinding or have more interesting story lines, I'd be curious to hear about them.
The F2P model just gives you the option of doing additional grinding in order to get access to the "paid" content without paying $$$ for it. Instead, you pay with your time spent grinding. Personally, I value my time so I'm willing to pay $$$ to get on with the storyand avoid repetitive grinding.
Regardless, I'm glad you tried the game out and it sounds like you've given it a fair chance to convince you to keep playing. For a reasonable price you could continue playing new content if you don't want to grind for free TPs, but it sounds like you aren't enjoying the game enough to do either and there's nothing wrong with that.
Games are supposed to be fun, so if you aren't having enough fun it sounds like it would be time to give another game a shot. And if your backlog is anything like mine, there are plenty to choose from
[/QUOTE]
I have played quite a number of MMOs and not-quite-MMOs. Of the genre, Dungeons and Dragons Online (by the same company no less!) and Guild Wars have been the best.
Typically what I look for in an MMO-ish game is a well presented story since I hate the feeling of wandering around without a goal other than "reach max level."
With Guild Wars its a nobrainer. The combat mechanics and economy of the MMO genre combined with the story, voice acting, and music of single player quality. There are cutscenes for everything with an extremely clear mission structure and progression system that requires 0 grinding. In fact, the majority of the game requires you to be max level which takes only a few days of normal play. With the constant cutscenes and the action being reflected as you play in game, there is a very tangible connection with what you are doing and what is occurring in the story. That bond is very strong in Guild Wars and helps keep me focused and makes the story, at least for me, memorable.
DDO is very different for me. There is no "main" storyline in DDO, its just a bunch of quest and adventures here and there which is usually a turn off for me. However, every single quest is different in some regard and each is narrated as you progress through them, giving them a personalized touch. The dungeons are instanced creating a very personal feel and each can be approached in a variety of ways. Do you charge through as a warrior? Do you find a hidden passage and disarm traps within said passage as a rogue? Do you cast a variety of movement spells granting you the ability to run fast, jump high, and float through the air as a wizard to allow you to completely skip the area? There are also many things going on in an adventure apart from just the combat. There are platforming elements, traps to avoid/disarm, secret rooms to find through careful searching, puzzles to solve. And all of these things can be found in even the earliest quests. In this way, each adventure is a full on story of its own, so DDO succeeds to me in that category.
LOTRO has a main story with "cutscenes" which is what initially drew me to it. I also had very much enjoyed DDO made by the same company so I assumed they would be similar. My time spent playing LOTRO was mainly as a Burglar which I picked because I wanted to steal things and I generally enjoy playing the stealthy class. Where LOTRO failed for me was the presentation. There are story missions and there is a story but I honestly have no idea what it is. It seemed like it is trying to tell a story parallel to the events in the books, filling in some background info. The dialogue in game is quite scarce apart from your usual acknowledgment blurbs and text based story telling through npc quest dialogue in a game feels extremely dated to me these days. There are also cutscenes of a sort to help tell the story, but you come across them very rarely especially in comparison to Guild Wars that has them happen at least once or twice in every single mission.
Compared to the mechanics of DDO there is much less going on. Quests I encountered were entirely of the "move through area killing everything till you get to the end" variety. No puzzles, no platforming, no traps. Nothing but me and some dudes to slay. As I mentioned I had played a burglar for my love of stealth. DDO has a full on stealth system with separate skills for hiding yourself visually and moving silently to evade audible detection. There is also a "light" system in that you are better concealed if you stick to darker areas. Adventures are also designed with this sort of path in mind, plenty of traps to disarm, hidden passages to find and sneak through, and that sort of thing in DDO. In LOTRO, the burglar gets a "stealth" skill and thats the end of it. Detection is through some random dice roll and if there is more to the system, it is not presented as such in the game. Also, none of the quests I played seemed to have been designed with stealth in mind. It just seemed like its something you could do, not that any specific considerations were taken for it.
Perhaps as the game continues, the quality and presentation improves. Perhaps the quests become more varied and the expansion and later areas introduce to elements to worry about apart from the enemies. But I shouldn't have to wait till the end of the game to have fun. DDO has something different from every MMO I had played in the very first adventure I played and keeps it up throughout the whole game. Guild Wars presented a story in a manner I didn't think possible in an online game and did away with things like grinding for loot and experience so that you reach max power before the game is even halfway through.
I had hoped LOTRO was going to be a sort of mishmash of the two. The story telling of Guild Wars with the amazing game mechanics of DDO. Instead, it fell short of everything both the other games had to offer while offering up nothing new to keep my interest or entice me to spend money to continue playing.
This is not to say there weren't things about LOTRO I did not enjoy. The crafting system seemed to be a good idea; I enjoyed traveling through the wilderness looking for resources and finding the ruins the resources would usually reside in. The atmosphere present in the game and the music was very appropriate given the setting. While burgling things, I would get useful items that weren't complete shit, a first in any MMO for me since stealing usually results in crap. One of the last story missions I completed in the barrows was the best one I had played, comparable to some DDO quests. I was able to finally play "stealthily." Advancing while invisible, triggering spawns of monsters, and taking them out one by one. I accomplished this at a level lower than that of the quest as well, so I felt like it was my tactics paying off which added to the experience.
So while I don't feel like it was a waste of time (apart from the inherent waste of time due to it being a video game), I feel like I would be better entertained by pre-exisiting games, which is sort of a shame as I was looking for something that could rival DDO and Guild Wars for me.
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Ridiculously long reply, I know.
To answer your question, Guild Wars has a much better presented storyline and has no grinding at all, and DDO has much better game mechanics with bite sized stories. If you play DDO for free, there is grinding after a certain point though its not as bad as other games since you're not grinding on monsters for exp, you're going through the adventures again, on higher difficulties you've unlocked if you like.
The F2P model just gives you the option of doing additional grinding in order to get access to the "paid" content without paying $$$ for it. Instead, you pay with your time spent grinding. Personally, I value my time so I'm willing to pay $$$ to get on with the storyand avoid repetitive grinding.
Regardless, I'm glad you tried the game out and it sounds like you've given it a fair chance to convince you to keep playing. For a reasonable price you could continue playing new content if you don't want to grind for free TPs, but it sounds like you aren't enjoying the game enough to do either and there's nothing wrong with that.
Games are supposed to be fun, so if you aren't having enough fun it sounds like it would be time to give another game a shot. And if your backlog is anything like mine, there are plenty to choose from
[/QUOTE]I have played quite a number of MMOs and not-quite-MMOs. Of the genre, Dungeons and Dragons Online (by the same company no less!) and Guild Wars have been the best.
Typically what I look for in an MMO-ish game is a well presented story since I hate the feeling of wandering around without a goal other than "reach max level."
With Guild Wars its a nobrainer. The combat mechanics and economy of the MMO genre combined with the story, voice acting, and music of single player quality. There are cutscenes for everything with an extremely clear mission structure and progression system that requires 0 grinding. In fact, the majority of the game requires you to be max level which takes only a few days of normal play. With the constant cutscenes and the action being reflected as you play in game, there is a very tangible connection with what you are doing and what is occurring in the story. That bond is very strong in Guild Wars and helps keep me focused and makes the story, at least for me, memorable.
DDO is very different for me. There is no "main" storyline in DDO, its just a bunch of quest and adventures here and there which is usually a turn off for me. However, every single quest is different in some regard and each is narrated as you progress through them, giving them a personalized touch. The dungeons are instanced creating a very personal feel and each can be approached in a variety of ways. Do you charge through as a warrior? Do you find a hidden passage and disarm traps within said passage as a rogue? Do you cast a variety of movement spells granting you the ability to run fast, jump high, and float through the air as a wizard to allow you to completely skip the area? There are also many things going on in an adventure apart from just the combat. There are platforming elements, traps to avoid/disarm, secret rooms to find through careful searching, puzzles to solve. And all of these things can be found in even the earliest quests. In this way, each adventure is a full on story of its own, so DDO succeeds to me in that category.
LOTRO has a main story with "cutscenes" which is what initially drew me to it. I also had very much enjoyed DDO made by the same company so I assumed they would be similar. My time spent playing LOTRO was mainly as a Burglar which I picked because I wanted to steal things and I generally enjoy playing the stealthy class. Where LOTRO failed for me was the presentation. There are story missions and there is a story but I honestly have no idea what it is. It seemed like it is trying to tell a story parallel to the events in the books, filling in some background info. The dialogue in game is quite scarce apart from your usual acknowledgment blurbs and text based story telling through npc quest dialogue in a game feels extremely dated to me these days. There are also cutscenes of a sort to help tell the story, but you come across them very rarely especially in comparison to Guild Wars that has them happen at least once or twice in every single mission.
Compared to the mechanics of DDO there is much less going on. Quests I encountered were entirely of the "move through area killing everything till you get to the end" variety. No puzzles, no platforming, no traps. Nothing but me and some dudes to slay. As I mentioned I had played a burglar for my love of stealth. DDO has a full on stealth system with separate skills for hiding yourself visually and moving silently to evade audible detection. There is also a "light" system in that you are better concealed if you stick to darker areas. Adventures are also designed with this sort of path in mind, plenty of traps to disarm, hidden passages to find and sneak through, and that sort of thing in DDO. In LOTRO, the burglar gets a "stealth" skill and thats the end of it. Detection is through some random dice roll and if there is more to the system, it is not presented as such in the game. Also, none of the quests I played seemed to have been designed with stealth in mind. It just seemed like its something you could do, not that any specific considerations were taken for it.
Perhaps as the game continues, the quality and presentation improves. Perhaps the quests become more varied and the expansion and later areas introduce to elements to worry about apart from the enemies. But I shouldn't have to wait till the end of the game to have fun. DDO has something different from every MMO I had played in the very first adventure I played and keeps it up throughout the whole game. Guild Wars presented a story in a manner I didn't think possible in an online game and did away with things like grinding for loot and experience so that you reach max power before the game is even halfway through.
I had hoped LOTRO was going to be a sort of mishmash of the two. The story telling of Guild Wars with the amazing game mechanics of DDO. Instead, it fell short of everything both the other games had to offer while offering up nothing new to keep my interest or entice me to spend money to continue playing.
This is not to say there weren't things about LOTRO I did not enjoy. The crafting system seemed to be a good idea; I enjoyed traveling through the wilderness looking for resources and finding the ruins the resources would usually reside in. The atmosphere present in the game and the music was very appropriate given the setting. While burgling things, I would get useful items that weren't complete shit, a first in any MMO for me since stealing usually results in crap. One of the last story missions I completed in the barrows was the best one I had played, comparable to some DDO quests. I was able to finally play "stealthily." Advancing while invisible, triggering spawns of monsters, and taking them out one by one. I accomplished this at a level lower than that of the quest as well, so I felt like it was my tactics paying off which added to the experience.
So while I don't feel like it was a waste of time (apart from the inherent waste of time due to it being a video game), I feel like I would be better entertained by pre-exisiting games, which is sort of a shame as I was looking for something that could rival DDO and Guild Wars for me.
=======
Ridiculously long reply, I know.
To answer your question, Guild Wars has a much better presented storyline and has no grinding at all, and DDO has much better game mechanics with bite sized stories. If you play DDO for free, there is grinding after a certain point though its not as bad as other games since you're not grinding on monsters for exp, you're going through the adventures again, on higher difficulties you've unlocked if you like.
D
