Comments on: Item Farming, Why?

By: Peter

Peter — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 13:25:05 +0000

The more time you’re online, the more money publishers get. That’s why they don’t want to think about alternatives to item farming, it brings them cash.

By: Pollynit

Pollynit — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 01:45:39 +0000

Time sinks. To make money. To keep you online.
The tunnel that never ends.
It’s that simple, nothing more.
Looking for any other explanation is pointless.
The only reason MMO’s require raiding/grinding.

By: Qix

Qix — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:24:55 +0000

Descent mob and boss AI would go a LONG way to making things less repetitive. Scripted boss battles is annoying.
Anything that is scripted should never be done repetitively.
…
If Darkfall’s beta comments are half true about the awesome mob AI, I will be in heaven. People were commenting saying that even low level goblin archers try to kite you. Work as a group to spread out and hit you at range while the one your not looking at swings at your back.
Pure win.

By: Rheokhu

Rheokhu — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 01:42:42 +0000

The strongest argument, I think, for a microtransaction based-MMO is the potential to free a designer from the built-in financial incentive to drag out content with tedious, repetitious grinding. As long as they’re running the monthly subscription scam, players will be expected to waste the time they buy running on treadmills.

By: KeithGamerMan

KeithGamerMan — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 08:05:58 +0000

Item Farming may be a neccassary evil from a business perspective – not only to keep players engaged but from a developers perspective too!

To add features in a game that constantly change is ‘doable’ but requires more programming and that means more $$$ spent and more time spent. Developing such games could get very expensive!

What is needed is some thinking that is totally outside the box from game developers.

Totally new game engine ideas with fresh new approaches that keep players engaged without being so repetative.

It is a challenge that hopefully many new game developers will rise to.

By: wilhelm2451

wilhelm2451 — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 05:05:27 +0000

This behavior descends straight from the DikuMUD days (which in turn got its ideals from D&D), fighting your way through a zone to kill a boss that had the cool item once per reboot.

It is a method of enforcing rarity and keeping items special, and I was burnt out on it before EQ1 even appeared.

Why do games keep doing it? The same reason, maintaining item rarity. You have to get away from equipment driven games to get away from it.

By: Ignas

Ignas — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:29:30 +0000

If you’d look at Raids as Levels of arcade games there are a lot of options to make them work, and even add the replay value. “Add value” not “make me do it again just to get any value at all”

Like – add accomplishments (did this raid in less than 1 hour), maybe with prizes
Did the raid without healers, without tanks, killed all bosses, did it with 30 people, with 20 people…

How would you like an arkanoid clone that “rolls a random number” at the end of the level and if it’s less than some preset value – makes you do the level again! Because you know – levels are in short supply and we only have 20 of them. And we’d like every customer to do these levels at least five times, why should we make a level that player only sees once?

High level MMO play is just a set of arcade game levels

By: maui

maui — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:28:02 +0000

every played diablo 2 ?

By: spongly

spongly — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:11:48 +0000

I’m not a raider… Have been, but for the reasons you cite; got very bored of it all.

I’m always intrigued why raid encounters are scripted rather than random. Wouldn’t that keep things fresh if boss mob X had a range of things he could do and would do them randomly. That way each run would be different and your raid force would take a lot longer to get something on ‘farm’ status.

I do agree though that once you have done the challenge once, there is little incentive to go back time and again just to get a specific piece of loot (at least for me).

By: null

null — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 08:16:12 +0000

Nobody used to call it item farming before WoW came along. We used to say, “We killed the Avatar of War”. The entire point of raiding has been so devalued, that people just think of the raid mobs as item dispensers. All hail the casual gamer.

In response to Paragus, the formula was absolutely not from EQ1. The concept of playing in groups to kill mobs to get random loot in an RPG is ancient. The original D&D came out in 1974, and it wasn’t a new genre even then.