Unsurprisingly, some of the most fun I've had in MMOs recently has been when I've specifically avoided guides and the FOMO rush-to-end-game mentality. My revisits this past year to games like ESO, Destiny, and Guild Wars 2 have really highlighted this. Removed from the launch day hype, and desire to keep up with friends or be on the cutting edge, has had me slowing down and enjoying the experience so much more. There is something special getting wrapped up in the first few weeks of an MMO, grinding it out like crazy. But equally I feel not giving a fuck about any of that can result in a more immersive and memorable experience.
I can remember starting Wow for the first time. I chose night elf and bunch of my fiends were dwarfs. I leveld a bit on my own because I was mezmerized by how massive the world was and how the game played (vanilla BTW). i can remember figureing out on my own how to travers the world to get to iron forge and it took me a while. But man the feeling I got running up the road when I finally found it was epic! good memories. It is unfortunate how much information now a day's is at our finger tips.
I won't lie I am honestly quite similar to this, I tend to find dumb and abnormal approaches to situations and quite often enrage teams I enter in while playing Warframe. The reason being is since I frequently ignore meta builds and simply use whatever I find fun or enjoyable, which results in me frequently using "bad" weaponry or otherwise equipment that I find to be highly entertaining. As for in EVE Online I'm a miner/industrialist by trade, which is frequently touted as "The worst option" which I simply do not care about. I do have high ambitions though to use the funds I can gather through PVE to fund the construction of a Supercarrier, which I will then proceed to inevitably lose it in a drive by.
Interestingly enough, I got the most enjoyment out of GW2 once I started to use guides. I played the game casually for years without ever using with any web source for information. And due to the casual nature of open world and story, I never seriously interacted with the build craft system or other players. Same character, same gear, same traits. Alone. Only once I started to "git gud", read up on how things work and how stuff is done, I saw the variety it had to offer, interacted with and befriended players while doing content I had simply accepted to be out of my reach before. When I started doing them, Raids definitely were in a post information area, but it's not like I was at the required level of game knowledge and skill to reasonably take part in progressively exploring them when they were new. And without community online resources, I doubt I would have ever gotten there.
I remember this happening during WoW Classic. Everyone doing Scarlett Monastery and other dungeons over and over and complaining about how boring and long the leveling is. At the same time, I had the time of my life leveling through questing without any strict path. I think looking at guides and following them is a good thing, but not to the point where it makes your experience a bad one.
You do realize that WoW Classic was already min-maxed more than a decade ago from the Vanilla era (2004) to the private servers scene until Classic. Everything was already known and people were already overtrained.
the issue is now you can easily go online to find faster ways to level, gear up and hit the end game, when WoW first came out we just had Thotbot and that didn't have everything, i knew as soon classic come out people will clear end game content in short period of time
@@ShuShuKing it's always been around, these days it's just easier to find out what the meta is. Honestly though, this is a minority of players. Most gamers just play the game, and if they get stuck they start looking up strategy guides.
@@Nerobyrne Yeah, people need to stop acting like metagaming and so on started in the 00s, it always existed, they just didn't do it because they're casual. It's like in yugioh, people act like the competitive scene formed in the last 5 years when it's been around since literally the beginning of the game.
You've put into words how I've been feeling for years now. When I started playing MMOs I was clueless, extremely slow to progress and fascinated by everything. And I had a great time. My goals were miniscule but I was happy to just be out in the world doing whatever looked fun at the time. Now days I just feel this pressure to min max, watch guides for hours, read patch notes and generally act like a meta elitist twat. And at the end of the day its a hollow feeling. I want to be a noob again.
Same here! I recently started playing FFXIV after all this time, I've only seen a few screenshots and have word of mouth that it's a good game but deliberately stayed away from content about it beyond that simply so that if I decided to play it one day I would do it blind and I'm SO glad I did, it's really scratching that MMO itch for me right now xD
Same, also, when a game is announced that realy interests me, I stop following it/getting infos about it, till it is released. In the end it results in good entertainment and not disappointment because promises were not kept.
I remember being a kid, or even in college, in like '05, '06, and spending dozens of hours with a new game just exploring new areas and adventuring. Games are supposed to be bigger and deeper these days but I find myself loosing that sense of adventure more and more quickly. I think Subnautica (Yes not an MMO) was the last game that held my interest for exploring for a long time.
You should try Kenshi! It has so much strange lore that you have to really look around yourself to unravel, because most of the characters know as little about their world's past as you do. Similar to Subnautica it's one of the most unique games I've come across in ages, wish there were more like it. And definitely don't read any guides before diving in.
I had/have so much fun with Monster Hunter: World. Because no matter how much strategy you look up online you really do have to find your own way through the game along with your own play style and strategy.
subnautica, the only game i managed to lose my way going anywhere well into the endgame/postgame, it was glorious not knowing where i was at any point exept when at or near the surface
I think a big part of that is just how much you've already seen. You sorta know what games can do and what games cannot yet do. You know what to expect and largely your expectation are met, not exceeded. As a kid that area behind a hill was mystical, it could hold anything! Now you know it'll likely be some random monster you kill and move on. Or some random NPC that hands you a fetch quest that has no consequence. plus of course everything is hypertelegraphed, games are more about chasing quest markers than they are about exploring
I would like to have the possibility to set different marks/symbols onto map. So i can adjust it like I want to. Similiar to the system like in Genshin Impact.
I remember a DOS game where you had to write down codes and commands becuse there was no way to save it and if you dident your last 50+h was wasted and the world woud get corrupted XD
Making maps again I can do without but I still keep a pad and pen nearby if it's something I need to keep track of that the game doesn't itself or when it's a detail that sounds important amidst a ton of other information being dumped at once but isn't being especially highlighted.
Personally I never resort to guides or wikis until something completely stomps me in the game, I prefer to try and see things blind the first time, then try to figure them out, and if everything fails I only look up the part I had a problem with, IMO that's the best way to experience a game MMO or otherwise.
This is what i enjoyed about the closed beta and will consider it as the gold age of the game. No one knew what to do at the start, if you were stuck there were no guides, if you get lost you are fucked.... this is something that no one will experience in the next year until they release an expansion / new areas.
man I remember in world of warcraft I'd literally have to use some guides like thottbot in later zones because some of the shit was so obscure and I loved it. I loved having to actually write down a list of things I wanted to do because the mini map wouldn't highlight anything
You are still are doing it wrong. You used a guide on the best part. The best part of an mmorpg is hitting that wall again and again and again and then finally running through it
Spot on about the friends thing. I literally never touched Genshin Impact again after a group of friends and I downloaded it together only to find out you’re level locked out of playing together.
@@Brsak commenting this in a video where he explicitly states people will make up their minds within the first minutes to, maybe if you're lucky, 2 hours is highlighting the issue with OPs statement.
I played City of Heroes for 7 total years when it was live and I hardly ever followed guides for character builds because we had such a system that you could really play however you wanted and not hinder your party members, had tons and tons of fun and sorely missed the game when it was shut down. Now the game is back being run by the community and I was thrilled to play again and I enjoyed every minute. Around last summer, I started looking up endgame builds and actually trying them and some of them are so overpowered it's ridiculous. That was fun for a while because I never experienced that before but I soon realized it shifted me into a cycle of farming for resources to make other endgame builds and I burned myself out on it. It also had that added effect of me wanting to play my newer toons but being spoiled by my OP ones and not wanting to go back down to normal style play. I still love the game of course, but there is indeed truth in Josh's argument against guides meant for efficiency. I got more mileage out of the game when I didn't care and immersed myself in just being my superhero, less so when I dove too much into the metagame.
Back in CoH live, we also had MIDS then too. The hyper builds were available for sharing and on SG websites I remember trading them with my friends to compare. I always thought part of the fun of CoH was tweaking those builds ever so slightly.
@@1sennacherib I can remember saying why would I need MIDS, I don't wanna prebuild a toon then I finally used it for the first time on this go around which is how I landed on the OP builds I made with some slight thematic tweaking. Even if I wasn't going to do that, it was eye opening to actually see my stats in graph form and figure out what kind of bad habits I used to have that would get me in trouble in combat, hehehe.
City of Heroes was one of those MMOs that was forgiving in terms picking powers that weren't "efficient" but you could still play most of the content. I mean you could occasionally find the odd bunch of snobs in a group that would sneer at your build, but if you had your role down, you could punch through the missions. Loved that game.
CoH is VERY roleplaying friendly and PvE focused, that was it's edge and the fun factor. The reverse is true for a pvp oriented game like New world, where the end game is really pvp where you WILL be left behind by the majority that reads guides. You might not read guides, but I can safely say most of my friends that are already telling me what weapon they are aiming for, have seen a bunch of guides. Their other content pve is short and will probably run out by in a couple of week and the pvp is the thing going to carry it for a significant period. So if you wanna win pvp, you gotta go against the ideology of world exploration. Besides , the updates are also likely going to be inconsistent with the business model they are going for, that is what really scares me.
No matter how overplayed any mmo will ever be by the most hardcore people, There will always be lots of casuals asking for the most simplistic of things - happy to discover games for themselves. (Like, how you repair. Or whats the level cap.)
I'm not a casual player by any metric, but I avoid looking up solutions for the most part. I feel a far greater sense of accomplishment when I take an hour to figure something out for myself, than from looking it up.
This is true, I also do this myself. The real enjoyment is through discovery, although I already got spoiled when I played through the closed beta. So unless the game drastically changes from beta to live (which most likely won't happen) I guess I don't have much to look forward to other then the progression system and character builds.
The problem are the hardcore players that will mock you instead of ignore/help you. Then there are the "altruistic" ones that will force you to a certain guide to be like them.
Yeah, until the game caters so hard to the old players that the new players have a dogshit experience without guides - PoE is the perfect example of this. My first playthrough was completely guideless, as I was only playing it because the lead writer is my favourite writer of all time, and i was actually relatively close to making one of the optimal builds - but the couple of things I missed, like damage over time interactions with abilities and self-preparing by buying legendary items with certain abilities off other players, caused me to be essentially useless after a certain point in the endgame, meaning I had to reset and then grind for currency.
I've been playing FF14 for a couple of months now, and I've just dabbled into some Extreme trials. I'm seriously conflicted over using guides vs. not, because I want to be able to experience the game as it was meant to be experienced, from a newbie's point of view. I don't want to be handed the step-by-step solution, I want to actually learn and understand the content organically. Yet, there are those who, if not outright demand, at least expect that you know the entire fight before you even go do it. I do understand their point of view as well: not everyone is new, and they just want to get through the fight #72523 as quickly as possible. Simply because guides exist, I feel external pressure to use those guides. If I do not use the guides, I will die to mechanics that I do not know about. But if I use the guides, then it feels like the game has been solved for me. I think I've found an okay middle ground with that. I go into most content blind, except for Extreme and up. For the harder content I will look at a general text-based outline of the fight to get important tips, but refuse to watch a guide video that shows the fight step-by-step.
@Colin Deal i was in a very very successful raid team in SWTOR. we never used guides. it was fun to work out tactics yourself and not just paint by numbers. everybody can just follow orders. that way we established new tactics for bosses, which sometimes were easier and better for the dps as the ones from the "guides" after all its a game. not something to be done with as fast as possible. i want to take out the trash as fast as possible, but i want to enjoy a game.
I still remember the era when I was an elementary school kid and we didn't use the internet much (it was AOL over dial-up modem), so we figured out games by ourselves or perhaps discussing with friends at school. It was magical when we finally got through the Water Temple in Zelda:OoT on our N64 in the basement as little kids that didn't search for some tutorial or tips online.
That's my problem as well with games in general, unless it's an obscure game you'd most likely already have a tutorial on how to beat it, and now with games that haven't even launched yet already being solved, why even play the game at all ? I wish Josh would make a video about how to bring back the MYSTERY of games once more, because until that happens, I don't think ANY game will be enough to satisfy us anymore like back in the day
@@knightmer3645 Individually I think you answered your own question. Dont watch the tutorials. Of course the problem is we rarely play an online game solo and your exp gets impacted by people who are min/maxing. WoW classics relaunch brought this home hard. Same game only instead of thousands of people not knowing what they were doing and learning by trial, almost everyone knew how to play their role which made the whole experience seem watered down.
@@tkell31 That's exactly what I'm saying, though I don't see how I've answered it ? I mean just like Josh said in the guides video, unless you put your head in the sand purposely and your friends are willing to do the same, you're gonna be playing alone which kills the Social aspect which MMOs are (well were) built around
As a Guide Creator myself, videos like these really make me think about how I want to cover stuff. I love learning things, and then explaining what I know to others, but I'd hate to contribute to the issues you mention. Great stuff as always man o7
@@MikeNewton1 if only it were that easy. Since mmo there is group content. Since group content there will be peer pressure to play most optimal builds, etc Which really can get in the way of enjoyment of the game. Especially if you're stubborn of not.following the guide and tell people that you just want to play around and test things yourself. It'll end up getting hate. Starting fights and stuff.
Even if you, and other guide creators decide to tone it down - there will be plenty of others that won't. There will still be an ultra optimized guide out there somewhere. We have to learn how to adapt, knowing that such guides will always exist. Game designers especially need to create with that in mind too.
as a person that doesn't have a lot of time to game, I urge you to continue what you're already doing. If I look up a guide it's because I want to take the most optimal route to be the very since that to me is what I enjoy and I'm assuming that's also what the people reading your guides want as well.
@@delamain2077 yeah if you just use the guides for yerself and not be one that demands everyone you play with follows the guides as well to save you time or effort to get "your" rewards it isn't an issue.
I think this is why I'm enjoying Guild Wars 2 so much. even though there's a meta, I feel absolutely no pressure to rush after it. It feels like it's designed around taking your time.
I disliked GW2 (but it has been years since my 2nd and last attempt to play the game). For starters I'm totally biased because I happened to love GW1 and that has been killed by its successor. But the more important reason is I felt the game has everything completely planned out for you. You get the questline, the map completion tasks, the zone events, jumping puzzles that make me want to smash my computer and call it a day... and I also felt pressured by the limited time events a lot. I believe they got rid of that living story stuff though. It was no fun at all.
@@nervsouly that's interesting, it sounds like you dislike it for the exact reasons I love it. I love working toward 100% on the map, just feels like there's things to discover around every corner. Not to mention the amazing mount system
You know that this game is way more like GW2 then any game in the world. You just pay the box like GW, you don't have to rush, you just play like you want. Also, because the level caps is 60, pretty much every rush people will get it in a week, so... you can play like you want and do what you want... you have time.
@@seb4sti4n666 Honestly, one, it's 80, two, past the first character you'll get plenty of tomes, you can level pretty much any character to 80 instantly. Then you just gotta buy the armor off TP (except for condi necro, holy shit) :V
Perhaps Amazon can fix this by adding a menu during character creation where people can pick some RP-friendly options like which town/village the character was born in, and this would spawn the character in nearby places around that village. This way you can tell your friends where their characters were born and you can decide where to meet up. Random, but not too random...
One aspect I think you failed to touch on is the economic advantage of getting to endgame first. I know several people who rushed to Level 60 in New World on launch and I know their motivation was to be the first to have access to endgame resources and gear. This sets them up to be to be wealthy on their server, have the best gear, and sell carry and kill services long-term. This is how they have fun in games with a economy - they want to be the plutocrats of their server and set themselves up to have enough currency to play whatever they want.
I mean yes? That is what I am saying... I have no intention of giving this any money or even playing it. However I will say that "they didn't need to" is somewhat reductive, the faux-beta tests are a huuuuge part of marketing, giving them to streamers, then gating future keys behind watching the game, boosting it's ratings on YT and Twitch and fueling the hype... There are reasons for it, just they are mostly made by the marketing team and hurt the game as an experience.
This is legit the best review and concept video I have seen yet! It gave me everything and such a point of view I never thought about! Truly one of the best video for New World yet!
"How do you get a human to work as hard for money as they do for pixels?" Well there's the difference now isn't there. To get ahead in a game I do fun stuff, and I may even grind, and there are specific levels and rewards for that play. Even the shitty grinds have a specified reward at the end, and they are worth it. In real life, I work myself to death. I take on the stress of an entire production plant, I walk 25 - 30k steps a day, and I spend all my time trying to solve other people's problem to the detriment of my own mental health. My reward for that? Three bosses following me around with more bullshit to throw on my plate. So yeah, bring on the fucking pixels.
Sounds like you'll appreciate commission based payment instead, where you get rewarded after finishing a project rather than working for a set amount every time. Getting paid a dollar for every paper you sign definitely feels more rewarding than getting paid 100 dollars at the end of every work day regardless of how much work you do
In the earlier tests of new world you could pick your starting zone. I have a feeling they changed it to try and prevent hardcore guilds from sweeping zones like a plague, but all it does is potentially delay that and, as you pointed out, turn away casuals.
I'm gonna be honest, once people get used to it, no ones gonna care. It feels inconvenient, but its not that big a deal. They could add it, or they could take it away, both options are fine for the casual. Rust has random spawning and it still has tonnes of casual players
I always love finding out new stuff in mmorpg's but it's really hard because of stuff like this. before you know it theres a meta, and if you're still figuring out things yourself people won't play with you because of it..
Kinda why I HATE the western model that uses "free" beta testers who effectively just post away all the interesting parts of the game before it even launches. Even if I don't consume the posted content, the biggest draw of New World is the PvP so every other sweaty player is gonna affect my experience. Feels weird that some players get to effectively play the game free for an entire year while the rest of us who pay are gated outside. It's a dumb model.
nah don't think about it like that, the majority of players will play it slow, something like 5% will be going fast, and i'll be one of them, because i already have more than 500 hours in this game, so i already explored the game enough, but never worry because the majority will take it slow like you, this is an MMO in the end.
In WoW someone got mad at me in an instance after a wipe for doing a low level 5-man dungeon while leveling without first studying up on the boss encounters with a guide.
@@dongster529 I see what you mean, but Beta's are a good thing for MMO's helps in finding bugs/exploits and also helps with server stability issues, so overall its a good thing to do to ensure a smoother better launch.
@@Auguzto. and they usually skip thru content dialogue that tells the information needed to appreciate the story at all, only looking at cutscenes for any information. genshin doesn't have a lot of content for hardcore ppl, but to say it has nothing is like saying a Camry isn't a car: not the best, but clearly still a car
I just recently discovered your channel, and I am in love with your analyses, and not just because they mirror my own almost exactly. I really wanted to like New World. As an old SW:G player who focused almost exclusively on crafting and economy building before the age of internet guides was so prolific, I was really looking forward to another game where I could really focus on creating tools and items for others to use, and to foster relationships in doing so. I had a REALLY FUN opening weekend, going so far as to be the first in my faction to get to steel tools, discovering a really solid iron route, never EVER seeing any fey iron, and making a ton of friends along the way by selling my superior gear at reduced prices for faction members. I even felt encouraged to wander to the mythical tier 3 smelter in a dangerous northern zone, just so I could put starmetal weapons and tools into the hands of my faction's troops and artisans before anyone other factions got there first. All of this without looking up a single guide beforehand. The only foreknowledge I had was the stuff I had discovered on my own in the beta. Then I missed a day due to family obligations. By the time I got back, I was overwhelmed by dozens of other crafters. I had even been outstripped by just about everyone in jewelcraft, a skill nobody was focusing on the prior weekend. Not only had I lost my competitive and economic advantage in barely 24 hours, I had also basically lost my use and function to the community. Because EVERYBODY can do EVERYTHING, there was no point in diversifying labor past a certain hour mark. Sure, in the early game it mattered who was focusing on lumber/flax/ores/etc., but once you hit a certain point, so many people are just passively good at a specific skill that it becomes functionally worthless. That's not even touching on how barebones and simplified the crafting system really was. It was fun to explore for a day or two, but it was clearly an afterthought for a game that was primarily PvP focused. If it had been given a little more attention, I think that there might have been a place for me as a creator in New World for quite some time. It would have been nice if the settlement turn-in consequences were themed to what was being done. Gathering and cooking food could spawn some NPC militia to help bolster ranks during a defense. Weapons and armor turn-ins could then better equip those militia. Instead, every contribution just became a universal use resource that a select few people got to use to make decisions for everyone else in town. It just wasn't well thought out. Anyway, love the videos, and I look forward to listening to more of your excellent observations and critiques as I paint miniature bug aliens.
After many years of playing mmos and listening to this view point about guides, i now realize how subtle the mmo community's "rush" mentality has influenced me to become way less patient than i used to be as a kid. (I'm not saying *partially influenced* because as a gamer, i can't remember the last day that went by without me playing a game.) Josh, your videos are eye openers in a world that is full of confusion. I deeply thank you.
@@garpten7772 ah yes, the critically acclaimed FFXIV, with the most difficult raids in the mmo landscape, pvp and rp up the kazooie. The true single player experience.
It's interesting to see that you've been thinking exactly what I have been. People are still consistently pumping out new world content, guides, montages, dungeons etc well outside of the time the game was even available to play and it feels like it's already been out for years. I've definitely opted out of watching any of those
I think it says a lot about the game that Content creators are sort of in a war of New World content. I’d prefer the information about the game in a form like wowhead does for World of Warcraft.
@@diamond_h0us wowhead is no different to youtubers, its just run by more people so it's a more centralised location, but it's still fan owned and operated and all contributions come from fans.
@@diamond_h0us yeah it feels like they are all desperate to make content for the game even when it isn't out yet. Until people are less interested and they move to the next big thing most likely.
It makes sense why they don't allow people to pick their starting zone. If people pick their starting zones, regions would be imbalanced which is hell when everyone is trying to kill the same things for the same quests. As for why you don't start with your friends, well for one thing friends are tied to your character, not to your account. So you first have to make a character before you can friend anyone. If they were going to add friend adding then it would have to happen in the instanced tutorial. But then again it falls into the same issue of, well what happens when you have a company of 100 friended with each other and all spawn in the same spot, but then do that 5-8 times (i.e. 800 people spawning together in everfall).
Just for the hell of it, I went back to the beginning of 2021 to see how many Patreons Josh had back then. On the Rifts episode of "Worst MMO Ever", he had 20 names on "The Wall", 20 people paying him money on Patreon to make content. There are now, as of this video, roughly 800 people willing to fork over some pounds or dollars for quality content. That is some serious growth right there, congratulations to Josh for just crushing it this year, keep up the good work!
I'll be avoiding all the info websites, I would rather find out as much as I can by playing and only use any sites like this if I'm completely stumped. What in the world were they thinking about the random starts for friends joining the same server at the same time? Sure, have characters start randomly if they are solo. That's not really a big deal, but why wouldn't you want to allow new characters to join on a friend who's already in the game and send them to the same starting zone? It would take almost no effort to code that.
Certain zones are closer to the settlements. Certain zones also have more resources of something then others. For example. Monarchs bluff has more iron deposits, first light has more food from farms.
I would imagine that one big reason to spread players out by force would be to avoid congestion in certain areas to better manage the influx of new players. However I can't say for sure, but there likely is a reason other than making our lives less convenient.
Thats because your bad. One thing your great at is eating corn the long way.. Also when you knowing make yourself bad by not using tactics and strategies that are available is just dumb. Meta=Most Efficient Tactics Available.
The only time I use a guide in an mmo if I'm stuck on finding an npc or making my build a bit better, but I usually try and figure it out myself. Also, not related, but I just noticed you having Timesplitters on your shelf; I see you are a man of culture, as well.
Dude, you took exactly what was in my brain about ALL MMOs and said it here. I've never understood why I didn't really like MMO games..I couldn't put my finger on it, but this was perfectly worded. Pressure to play efficiently, FOMO and friends leaving you behind.
Regarding different starting zones. During the beta my friend and i started about half an hour apart from each other and on opposite sides of the map. we spent maybe 10 minutes meeting up. It was not at all inconvenient, though it was a bit harrowing. Was a fun little adventure. I was level 2, he was level 5.
Yup, and we all get funneled in to Everfall for the MQ fairly quickly. What my friend group has been doing during the betas was to just hang in a discord call and meet up in game when we can meet up.
Honestly loved that aspect forces you to either stay alone or meet new people while you adventure to find your buddy, shit was great. Basically one long tutorial section till you get to everyday, though i wish they didn't ask you to level a faction till you reached ever fall tbh. Would've been nice to have it be a free city where all the factions meet
Im all in for exploration in games.. part of the magic and immersion of a game for me is the exploration aspect... I ignore the guides :) Theres a simple fix to this that Amazon can do for the starting zones - Have the social pane be available right after creating a character so one can add friends and group up so the group will spawn together in the world.
@@timothypeterson4781 I'm also super keen for the crafting - tried out the open beta and spent a good amount of hours just gathering. My only issue is how much the player driven market and economy will matter IF there's no reason for people to buy crafted items or the market just gets flooded with items. Time will tell but I'm still going to be super happy with crafting and gathering.
@@Laughablematter Agreed. And if I just enjoy it for the first two months and the economy and game fizzle out. Well I spent $60 on it, and I'm ok with that exchange rate. If it lasts for longer, all the better. (And bright side, Amazon has shown that it's trying it's best to make the game last, since, you know, they want to make their money back.)
Treasure Island is literally about the adventures that happen following a giant arrow to where the treasure is. That's why it's fun, the people having to work together to get there when they'd rather be slitting each other's throats, and then fighting it out rather than following the arrow
Sorry man I tried to find out what "restricted accounts" mean in the gaming world but google doesn't help, will you please explain to me, the noob what it is ? I'm interested because if it's something like an iron-man challenge that increase the enjoyment of the sense of discovery I'd love to know more about it
@@knightmer3645 In Old School Runescape there are Players who make an Ultimate Ironman Account and further limit Themselves by only Playing in a specific Area of the Game. They usally have some Goal in Mind and try to accomplish it within those restrictions and they have to play in ways no one ever would and have to find solutions to problems no one ever faced. But something like that takes a lot of time so only really dedicated players try something like that.
@@Zwergenschnitzel I see, thanks for explaining that, it's sort of an "imposed" achievement of sorts like "No damage run or 1 life run, Ironman" which is used by players who love the game so much they can't get enough so they come up with creative challenges to enjoy the game for longer
@@knightmer3645 More clearly perhaps: The game has in recent years offered the option to, at account creation, select whether you want to play normally, as ironman, hardcore ironman, or ultimate ironman. Normal players can just die as often as they want (may lose items on death), trade with others, and do whatever they want. Ironman players cannot trade with others, and thus must get all the materials for everything themselves, get every boss's drop themselves as they cannot buy it, etc. Hardcore ironman are the same, but they only have one life. If they die, they revert to regular ironman status (and the highscores are capped at what they achieved until death). Ultimate ironman is less popular as it also removes the bank from players.
This video is litterally spot on. I thought i was the only one who thought this way. Great video and SPOT ON congrats brother i don't sub often but you defiantly earned it.
While not the same, it does remind me a bit of the problem SW:TOR had at its start. The developer (BioWare / EA) did not expect players to go through the content that fast. As far as I remember they expected their (well crafted) story to last at least 2 or 3 months. But players were at max-level within days. While SW:TOR had multiple problems (initial player boost and then drop-offm bugs, etc), the realisation that after rushing through the game and be at the endgame and nothing was there... that was bad. Word spread fast and it created a chain reaction of ppl leaving and servers having to be merged to at least pretend that there were ppl left playing the game.
For us casuals though, it was a great game. Story was great, and fully playing every planet did take me months. I was playing the game years after all my hard-core friends had moved on to the next big thing, or back to WoW
That part about each step of the beginning process losing players is so true. I was going to try FFXIV years ago, and I did, but I never managed to get into the actual game. Hours and hours of trying to install and having it fail and start over entirely. Eventually gave up, and it wasn't until about a month ago that I gave it a new try.
One of my best MMO experiences was in RIFT. When it launched, most people did not have much of a plan on how to push through it, so there was a lot of discovering new areas along with other players. Having had a lot of time to explore it and then slowly seeing more and more people populate the latter areas, exchanging tips on where to find what...
I loved Rift, It launched the day my school holidays started, I ended up running a explorers guild hunting all the treasures.. we had 6 raid groups of low levels running around every zone.. no matter the faction or level looking for them. That character is still wearing the pirate hat I found during that. I was level 50 with a level 7 hat
Josh, I just wanted to say thank you for making this video when you did. The part where you described the pressure a new player would feel to use the guides since they're out is exactly what I've been grappling with for the last couple weeks, and was even planning to look up some guides over the next couple days. Problem is, I've been feeling anxious and overwhelmed about learning everything and dreading the, essentially, PvE/PvP study guides I'd have to consume before the proverbial test come release. After watching your video, I've decided to not look up any of the guides and go in blind to thoroughly enjoy the exploration and gameplay for what it is. Much appreciated for this video!
I remember when I preordered limited darkisers 2 and received it two weeks before rollout and there where no guides or tips, it was AMAZING! That unknown was the best feeling playing a game
Fantastic Vid :) I'm trying my absolute hardest to not watch any guides as are most of my Guild buds. Didn't level higher than 10 in the Beta and have not touched crafting at all. Actually fairly excited to try and figure stuff out :)
I fully agree on the split starting zones being a major concern and I hope they solve that before release. The first few levels are crucial and many players may leave if they can't play with their friends immediately. On the topic of guides covering everything: As somebody who creates theorycrafting content for New World, I can confidently say that we have only barely scratched the surface of what's possible. As of now, I can spend 10 minutes with some datasheets and find something that hasn't been discovered yet. That's not the case in a fully mapped out game. There will always be those who minmax from the start and those who enjoy the ride. This isn't something inherently new. Back when I first played vanilla WoW, I bought the official guidebook, which had maps of dungeons, gear advice and a bunch of other (quickly outdated) info. I had also spend hours upon hours in one of the fan forums for a solid half year before launch, learning more and more about the game. And still, compared to some guilds that switched over from Everquest and had started theorycrafting in the early alpha stages, I was completely green. Yes, info is easier (and cheaper) to come by nowadays. But even I myself went into NW blind the first time I played it. There are only so many minmaxers out there and a much bigger casual base that will happily wipe 3 times in the first dungeon - just as I did - while they are figuring things out. People who CURRENTLY watch New World content are mostly very dedicated players anyways, since they're the ones who start looking up info before the game launches. They won't harm the "Oh I saw a New World ad, let's check it out" crowd's experience, since they'll level at a different pace anyways.
I think there's merit to what you're saying, at least for the most part, but I also think that Josh' point still stands. The amount of videos that has come out about recent games - both MMOs and singleplayer games - is absolutely insane. Even if you don't watch UA-cam for gaming advice/videos chances are they will be recommended to you based on your interests (like trailers and such). I get that a new game is popular and I get that a lot of content creators use said game to, well, create content, but when will it be too much? Yes, there are still people who play games without ever watching one video or reading one guide or even using a search engine to find information about a game, but are they still this silent majority, or are modern gamers growing up with this sense of 'having to know everything' to 'play the game right' as Josh suggests? Even I, and I consider myself a casual gamer (though according to one of Josh' videos I'm definitely not, LOL), find myself taking a quick peek at walkthroughs, tutorials or tips on how to get through (hard or confusing) parts of a game rather than bashing my head against the wall out of frustration of having to try something again and again and again.
@@DvanderPluijm I know younger gamers definitely use a lot of info resources more than back in the day, simply because of their availability, but I don't think that needs to influence how anyone else plays the game. I'm the type who reads the manual before using a product. Plenty of my friends only ever touch the manual if they broke something (maybe because they didn't read the manual). We have easier access to information than ever before through our phones, if we want to use that for fun activities is entirely up the individual. Some people enjoy learning quickly and minmaxing and they won't disappear. It's also not like the bigger names in this conversation should really have an issue with guides. Josh Strife Hayes used to make tons of guides just a year back. Force Gaming, who replied as well, has more "ultimate" guides than I can count. So I don't think (or at least hope) they're suggesting that guides themselves are an issue.
"The first few levels are crucial and many players may leave if they can't play with their friends immediately. " That's one of the things that killed the ARPG Magic Legends. People didn't get to the full gameplay experience, including grouping with friends, until after playing for several hours and so they just left.
It's sort of like Pokemon. When we were younger and information is much harder to come by, we liked the sense of exploration. We built teams out of what random Pokemon we find, and get excited when we find a new rare Pokemon Now, in the age of the internet, entire Pokemon rosters are datamined before release and everyone already knows what team they're going to be using, where to find them and how rare they are. The sense of wonder and surprise at finding something new isn't quite there anymore because you know what you're getting into
As a casual that hasn’t even been on the new world subreddit and as a loser with no friends I think the random start is neat and I’ll probably enjoy exploring
Who knows, you might even make a friend or 2 through new world while you're exploring. It is an MMO after all, so your bound to run into someone who shares similar interests eventually.
This is how I use them too. Basically to check what things I missed on the way, or if I get really stuck on something like a hidden path I just can't find.
Honestly, I've never understood the prospect of power gaming, and TotalBiscuit, may he rest in peace, was a big advocate of that mentality as well, I paraphrase his own saying when I say, there is no sense or purpose in playing anything if you just want to be done with it in 10 hours, it takes every joy out of gaming and replaces it with mathematical equation.
i enjoy power-gaming because adding mathematical equations to my games increases my joy (math major lol) games that let me powergame and still destroy me are the best, like dark souls is a blast because you can be uber-optimized and ng+3 will still kill you for making mistakes.
Thats what I like about FF14, everyone starts blind at release. If Endwalker was a WoW expansion, every story bit would already have been data mined or spoiled from the Beta Testers.
tips and guide proly for casual player that doesn't have much time to spend in the game. for me as a hardcore player which spend at least 8 hours a day playing mmorpg. especially with open world mmorpg with great landscape view, hidden objective and enjoyable fighting gameplay. i wont use any guide or tips until theres a point when im really stuck and doesn't know what must i do to progress a quest or secrets after im trying to solve it myself. i like to enjoy the story and the complexity of mmorpg on my own. because all those people that make guides more or less experiencing the same game and journey as im going to. and sometimes i found secrets, variety of class, or some hidden quest that has not been discovered yet. and yes i did found some in other mmo, and it feels satisfying. thats why im going to enjoy new world with my own pace, i don't really care if im being left out by the current community on progressing.
I’d love to see an MMO that randomises NPC names, weapon names, skill names, the order each class unlocks skills etc. for each player individually - making it basically impossible to write guides on. I’m sure it’d have technical issues and unbalanced elements, but imagine a multiplayer game where each player interpreted the world slightly differently so there was no way to identify the “best” routes to take.
@@5H4D3 That point has nothing to do with what JSH said in a previous video about the game. If a game feels low budget, that doesn't mean the game literally had a low budget. It means it feels like the devs didn't know what they were doing and the game feels incomplete. To then turn around and say the game feels high quality means the complete opposite of the first statement.
I feel like over the years there is some kind of tumor creeping into the gaming community overall and it's this sense that you have to be a "professional" when you play a game, like if you stop to enjoy a game to the fullest, you're doing it wrong, like the only way to "correctly" play a game is to try to be as competitive and "professional" as possible, this idea that you have to prove everyone (including yourself) that you're "good" at the game, either because of social pressure or just pure internal anxieties. Like this delusion that you have to prove your worth and sweat through the game and "be good" like you're applying to be part of some imaginary professional e-sport team and that they're watching you and will be very interested in checking your statistics as a player so you have to be ready "just in case" or some weird shit like that and if you get lost in the game and start to "enjoy the game" (aka procrastinate or waste your time) then you're worthless and nobody will take you seriously or nobody is going to play with you or some crazy shit like that, like the purpose of playing a game is to impress some unknown imaginary boss or like it's a competition to be at the top of the social hierarchy within specific communities. Back in my day, playing games were just a fun and healthy way to escape from reality but nowadays people see games almost as some kind of serious career path you're supposed to pursuit like playing a game is now some kind of second/third job and thats how you're supposed to play a game.
I kinda feel it myself - fear of even starting a game because I will suck at it and then the fun goes away because I want to not suck at it.. instead I should just enjoy the game.. regardless of me sucking at it or not.
There's a reason why being called a "casual" or a "filthy casual" is a slur - it's the 'othering' that people do when they want to gate-keep their territory and hate it when new players slow them down while grinding through their daily chores. Meanwhile, it makes the community toxic and stops people from taking up the game, then the game dies - GG. This seems to be a bigger issue with games centered on 'end-game' and that have ongoing obligatory fun-less grinds. The game becomes about speed, pain-reduction and grinding the end-game for visibility. I think a lot of people do feel that the game is effectively their only way to assert dominance/supremacy, or hope that excelling and standing on a pile of corpses will somehow lead to an alternative to some banal RL situation. Then again there area also a lot of sociopathic arseholes that enjoy ruining as many people's day as possible - VR real-time trolling.
This is actually such a good point. Idk about the rest of y'all but I've started to go into every single game that I play blind. If I can avoid even the trailers I will. Generally makes every single thing that I play so much fun.
My friend's used to call me Thottbot(it meant something different back then, I promise you) back in WoW. Not because I did everything, but because I was the one who would do all the research, and then I'd be able to help them all out. I was always a lower level, wasn't in the guild doing the newest raids, and never was the best PvP player. I was the guy who played way too many alts, but enjoyed my time the best I could. I'd run through every starting zone, race/class quest, and bridge out to different leveling areas as much as I could; so when a friend had a question, if I didn't already know the answer, I searched out the answer for it. We didn't have video guides for everything you could ever want, it was a tight group of friends, who would share information and spread it to those we cared about in an effort to see other's do better. While I do miss this feeling, the sense of community and belonging that came from checking forums, messaging chat and hoping one of the "helpful guys" was online to answer your question, I just can't see it ever going back to such a time. As much as my nostalgia addled brain yearns for that, I know it just isn't possible anymore.
This always ends up being a problem with games that have over-hyped "paid betas". Amazon wanted this to be a socially extensive game to the point where Twitch streamers and content creators get direct in-game benefits. It's less about actually playing the game, and more showing off to everyone else what you have played. They never had the intention of making this game feel mysterious, but aggressively marketed through its player base over social media.
I sort of understand the idea of the random location start so as to prevent everyone from mobbing one area over another ... but I agree there should be a way to play with your friends. One solution would be to add your friend as an in game friend (friend list? contacts?), which would then allow you to instantly teleport to where they are *as long as they are in one of the starting areas*.
The only thing I know is what I'll play in the game (weapons and armor.) I've ignored all sorts of guides you mention in the video, so I'm going in pretty much blind, minus what I got to try in open beta. Super excited for it. :)
this is the exact reason I am starting new world without looking at any guides. Time to explore the game , it's world and the features by myself again :)
I honestly usually do blind playthroughs for games to feel immersed Unless it's Warframe where i have to read everything to understand what i have to do in that game
I've watched a lot of these videos (mostly because I'm thirsty for anything New World right now), and I think I could use these guides to great advantage. The downfall for me is when I actually sit down to play the game. I get immersed enough in games that I enjoy, that all thought of efficient play or all the tips and tricks I've seen, simply fly out of my head. Instead I just run around killing and skinning turkeys with great excitement
Important relevant questions imo: "Should game developers make games assuming players will look everything on the bound-to-exist-wiki? And: "Should MMOs be balanced around the 100 most sweaty nerds on reddit?"
The most fun I had in Classic was the early days when I just ran around, meeting people, chatting, traded some spring water for jerky and joining random groups for quests, didn't last too long though, eventually I found myself alone and I ended up losing interest, RL friends didn't have time anymore either.
You just made me want to play the game and explore it. I miss that feeling of playing something excitingly unknown. I don't like guids, but the last MMOs were spoiled by friends that used them.
another view on the emergence of the guide is the players getting sick of MMOs purposely wasting their time and padding "gameplay" with useless barriers and grinds. and yes, being able to start with your friends would be ideal. i'm impressed MMOs haven't picked up battle royal tricks yet. just have a grouping system right after character creation or outside of the world login, so a group of friends can log in together as a group and start as that group in the same randomized area.
Luckily as a PvP player even with all the "guides" generally there's still a ton of discovery left and metas change even if the game never does. A perfect example would be Smash Bros Melee tier lists over the years.
This is exactly why I don't look at guides at all. I feel like it gives you a better experience if you get to explore the game with no knowledge of anything
Great video as always Josh :) I've specifically avoided looking at any guides/beta streams for this very reason; I really feel that MMOs (and games in general) these days are lacking a lot of that exploration/mystery feeling that I used to love. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but some times it gets to be a bit much. Looking forward to going into New World without any knowledge about the game. A bit annoyed at the difficulty of starting out with friends from level 1 though, this was the first I've heard of it.
What I like about FFXIV's start is that, yes, you might start off in different cities then your friend does at the beginning depending on which starter class you chose, but getting to the other towns and linking up isn't a hard task to do. You can rent a porter and the chocobo will take you to that location hands-free. Or you can always ask any player walking around to just give you a lift. At worst, it's a mild inconvenience that is solved within 5 minutes and never becomes a problem ever again.
I've been playing FFXIV since 2013, and I can tell you that meeting up with your friends is actually easier and faster in New World when you start the game. just hand in the first quest, and run to the beach your friend is in, how hard is that? you can take the same quest from the other beach.
@@AllerionGr I don't think the ability to form parties impacts bot activity very much though I agree with your overall point. To Grimno's point, I agree to an extent but am I incorrect in remembering that the main quest line differs from place to place so even if you meet up you have to then separate to make any kind of progress in your main quest line up to a certain point where they all converge? my two friends choose the elf race and I chose the dragon descendate race or whatever and it was a good couple hours of running back and forth (the real worst part of ff14) before we were able to meet up to do MQ stuff.
@@j.asmrgaming1228 your race has nothing to do with your questlines in ffxiv. the only thing that does is the class you choose at the start. you are right, tho, that the msq is different based on which city you start in (i think they meet up somewhere around lvl 15-20?).
Optimization in games has really become an issue. When I played ESO back after launch, i had the most fun exploring it without any guides or anything. Looking for players to run a dungeon, keep wiping and figuring out the mechanics was always super fun. Was a feeling of accomplishment. These days it is very often in MMOs that before you even done a dungeon for the first time, you are already expected to have read a guide, ruining the sense of accomplishment by learning the dungeon through trial and error and spoiling the dungeon content altogether. If a dungeon has some quest or anything inside, good luck finding a random group waiting for you to read it, They rather kick you in the first few minutes. Then talents and similar systems, you got really nice ones to choose from, that fit the fantasy of your character, but more often than not, the "cool" ones suck and the boring ones yield higher dps. it kills build variety and every character becomes the same, heck last time I played ESO every DPS was the same. Stack as many dots as you can and have one or 2 spam skills for in between refreshing them. Oh and of course have a selfheal, so you can run the dungeon faster with 3 dps and no healer, so you skip the mechanics of boss fights altogether. Many people there don't even know the mechanics of the old dungeons and when they are faced with a low dps group, you see them struggle getting the mechanics right, but rather finding the fault for that on themselves and trying to overcome it, they blame the low dps player and try to kick them, saying it can't be done with low dps, which most of the time is simply untrue. It just creates a really toxic environment. Currently I am playing FF14 and at least during my level experience a lot of these issues are not present, because there are things in place to prevent this kind of behavior and I've been enjoying my experience in that game thoroughly. The player base seems mostly friendly, You get to see what the dungeons, trials and raids are about. People are not leaving or trying to kick others after 2 wipes. I only once had someone complaining that i didn't know the mechanics of a dungeon. And while it has no build variety apart from gear maybe (only just hit 80, so i don't know yet), at least you are not given this false impression of being able to have different builds, cuz in other games you either play the optimal set up, or you deal with toxicity
@@somsimsem Baby ffxiv huh? You mean you like to play a game, where the leveling is utterly boring, because nothing poses a challenge anymore. Craglorn stuff used to require a party or a lot of skill, I couldn't solo fungal grotta on a level 5 character back in the day. You probably don't even know half the mechanics of base game dungeons and trials, because the strategy is always "Burn it before it does something, because I can't be bothered to deal with the mechanics for longer than a minute". The game has become stupidly easy in that regard, and while endgame might not be like that, everything leading up to it is. And don't even get me started about leveling an alt and as soon as you hit 50 have full BiS equipped that you farmed on other chars. You wanna call ffxiv for babies, while eso spoon feeds you.
Hollow Knight was one of the few games I told myself: "I'm not going to watch any guides, watch any videos about it, I'm going in completely blind." It was one of the best experiences I've had in a long time. Because I went in blind, I was able to fully immerse myself in the world; I was able to have genuine surprise and amazement at all the different environments that Team Cherry crafted. If I had gone into the game with full knowledge about the game, the experience would've been worse.
You, my friend are a god ! I guess you found the "loophope" if you can call it that, and that is playing blind because otherwise... we're never gonna have that "phenomenlogy" or "wonderlust" in video games anymore...
You can play with your friends at the start of the game. You turn 1st quest you get during the intro/tutorial but you don't take the boots quest, you run to the starting beach area you all agree to meet at. You take the boots quest there.
I think a workaround for the starting area problem is if you are level 1 - 3, invite your friend, and a popup will ask if you wish to teleport to your friend. I think it should be a couple levels in range because a friend might start a little bit before you and leave you behind a small bit as friends sometimes tend to do :P
I actually found it weird seeing leveling guides for this game. I was thinking to myself, but why? It isn't out yet don't you want to enjoy it? The big thing with this game also is the PvP aspect. The casual non-guide player is going to run into tons of issues with trying to keep up. Really relates to your PvP video as well.
When I played PSO2, early on I could take on high end instances (at the time) along with the players who were optimizing the game and we're competent. Unfortunately a few months in, because I decided to take it easy to work on multiple characters/classes, everyone competent was no longer at the level I was. Literally all of the instances I would try to play were failures despite my experience, I get crap loot because of the failures, then I can't level optimally or even compete in other areas or instances because of the cascading problem. If I wanted to get to the next level of the game I needed to spend a stupid amount of currency to get that gear. It came down to roughly a week+ of grinding currency with all of my characters so that one character could get one weapon that will still need to be upgraded and still be out classed by even more expensive gear or soon to be put in content. Maybe it was a fault of the game, but playing casually really screwed over my enjoyment of the game as I was completely walled off from progression.
The problem, and I've seen it in Final Fantasy XIV mostly, since that's the MMO I play most, is when you start having to skip the story portions of dungeons/raids in order to satisfy the desires of the speed runners that throw a tantrum, insult you, and leave the instance otherwise (looking at you, Gilgamesh server). This ruins the experience for folks that are new to the raid and want to experience the story. Unfortunately, Square Enix broke it in the other direction by forcing everyone in the raid group to watch the entirety of all the cinematics in certain instances, which causes no one to want to play those dungeons at all. There needs to be a way to allow everyone to play the way they want, or else the game is going to end up alienating the very customers that keep it alive.
I always thought gw2's story mode for dungeon was a great mechanic. Helped the first timers and then the ones who had done it 20+ times had their own que
Strange, I’m on Gilgamesh and have leveled to now just finishing stormblood and doing some crafting (I have almost everything to 60 except fishing) before starting the post stormblood since May. I haven’t run into any of those issues. All the pug duty finder groups Ive been in wait at the purple border if I’m in a cutscene. I think one time during one of the Alexander raids the group started the fight while I was in the cutscene but that’s really it. They also give a lot of poetic tomes and xp for doing those first couple alliance story raids so the wait for a group as DPS has always been 1-10 minutes. So people are doing them often it seems to me as I’ve run them both a bunch of times to get the poetic gear for each main content end game.
You can generally watch such cut scenes in the Inn afterwards btw. Think it was like a Journal on the table you interact with? That said, with my experience on EU-Odin, people tend to wait (except in Alliance Raids)
are you talking about the 2 8man dungeons at the end of ARR? im not sure if you didnt play in a while but everybody is running those since they give massive xp rewards and tomes. Also generally people are patient with people that want to watch cutscenes, not everybody of course but i found very few people that complained in my 3 years of playing.
They resolved the problem for later story-centric instances by having the story cutscenes largely be outside of the instance. ARR's unfortunately they just haven't gotten around to fixing.
Unsurprisingly, some of the most fun I've had in MMOs recently has been when I've specifically avoided guides and the FOMO rush-to-end-game mentality.
My revisits this past year to games like ESO, Destiny, and Guild Wars 2 have really highlighted this. Removed from the launch day hype, and desire to keep up with friends or be on the cutting edge, has had me slowing down and enjoying the experience so much more.
There is something special getting wrapped up in the first few weeks of an MMO, grinding it out like crazy. But equally I feel not giving a fuck about any of that can result in a more immersive and memorable experience.
This is why I decided when I started FF14 I was just going to play at my own pace and take my time.
@@Mrfiufaufou the bad side of EAccess
I can remember starting Wow for the first time. I chose night elf and bunch of my fiends were dwarfs. I leveld a bit on my own because I was mezmerized by how massive the world was and how the game played (vanilla BTW). i can remember figureing out on my own how to travers the world to get to iron forge and it took me a while. But man the feeling I got running up the road when I finally found it was epic! good memories. It is unfortunate how much information now a day's is at our finger tips.
I won't lie I am honestly quite similar to this, I tend to find dumb and abnormal approaches to situations and quite often enrage teams I enter in while playing Warframe.
The reason being is since I frequently ignore meta builds and simply use whatever I find fun or enjoyable, which results in me frequently using "bad" weaponry or otherwise equipment that I find to be highly entertaining.
As for in EVE Online I'm a miner/industrialist by trade, which is frequently touted as "The worst option" which I simply do not care about. I do have high ambitions though to use the funds I can gather through PVE to fund the construction of a Supercarrier, which I will then proceed to inevitably lose it in a drive by.
Interestingly enough, I got the most enjoyment out of GW2 once I started to use guides.
I played the game casually for years without ever using with any web source for information. And due to the casual nature of open world and story, I never seriously interacted with the build craft system or other players. Same character, same gear, same traits. Alone.
Only once I started to "git gud", read up on how things work and how stuff is done, I saw the variety it had to offer, interacted with and befriended players while doing content I had simply accepted to be out of my reach before.
When I started doing them, Raids definitely were in a post information area, but it's not like I was at the required level of game knowledge and skill to reasonably take part in progressively exploring them when they were new. And without community online resources, I doubt I would have ever gotten there.
I remember this happening during WoW Classic. Everyone doing Scarlett Monastery and other dungeons over and over and complaining about how boring and long the leveling is. At the same time, I had the time of my life leveling through questing without any strict path. I think looking at guides and following them is a good thing, but not to the point where it makes your experience a bad one.
Given the opportunity, hardcore gamers will optimize the fun out of the game.
@Quentin Styger also knows as the once keeping the games alive
You do realize that WoW Classic was already min-maxed more than a decade ago from the Vanilla era (2004) to the private servers scene until Classic. Everything was already known and people were already overtrained.
the issue is now you can easily go online to find faster ways to level, gear up and hit the end game, when WoW first came out we just had Thotbot and that didn't have everything, i knew as soon classic come out people will clear end game content in short period of time
Literally a classic andy .. who enjoys suffering lmao, whats fun about leveling in classic wow? What an existence
"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game."
Need to protect the players from themselves
"Meta Gaming" is what the youth call it i think, it ruined my good old gaming
This is what wow classic devolved into.
@@ShuShuKing it's always been around, these days it's just easier to find out what the meta is. Honestly though, this is a minority of players.
Most gamers just play the game, and if they get stuck they start looking up strategy guides.
@@Nerobyrne Yeah, people need to stop acting like metagaming and so on started in the 00s, it always existed, they just didn't do it because they're casual. It's like in yugioh, people act like the competitive scene formed in the last 5 years when it's been around since literally the beginning of the game.
You've put into words how I've been feeling for years now. When I started playing MMOs I was clueless, extremely slow to progress and fascinated by everything. And I had a great time. My goals were miniscule but I was happy to just be out in the world doing whatever looked fun at the time. Now days I just feel this pressure to min max, watch guides for hours, read patch notes and generally act like a meta elitist twat. And at the end of the day its a hollow feeling. I want to be a noob again.
If I'm interested in a game I generally avoid anything about the game. The mystery and exploration of the game is a big draw for me.
Same here! I recently started playing FFXIV after all this time, I've only seen a few screenshots and have word of mouth that it's a good game but deliberately stayed away from content about it beyond that simply so that if I decided to play it one day I would do it blind and I'm SO glad I did, it's really scratching that MMO itch for me right now xD
I do the same for any single player game. I realized that I have a bad habit of looking everything up about any game that I play
Exactly this
@@BH-zo4nq I did that with hollow Knight lol, there was just so much that I could miss that I couldn't resist
Same, also, when a game is announced that realy interests me, I stop following it/getting infos about it, till it is released. In the end it results in good entertainment and not disappointment because promises were not kept.
I remember being a kid, or even in college, in like '05, '06, and spending dozens of hours with a new game just exploring new areas and adventuring. Games are supposed to be bigger and deeper these days but I find myself loosing that sense of adventure more and more quickly. I think Subnautica (Yes not an MMO) was the last game that held my interest for exploring for a long time.
You should try Kenshi! It has so much strange lore that you have to really look around yourself to unravel, because most of the characters know as little about their world's past as you do. Similar to Subnautica it's one of the most unique games I've come across in ages, wish there were more like it. And definitely don't read any guides before diving in.
*losing
I had/have so much fun with Monster Hunter: World. Because no matter how much strategy you look up online you really do have to find your own way through the game along with your own play style and strategy.
subnautica, the only game i managed to lose my way going anywhere well into the endgame/postgame, it was glorious not knowing where i was at any point exept when at or near the surface
I think a big part of that is just how much you've already seen. You sorta know what games can do and what games cannot yet do. You know what to expect and largely your expectation are met, not exceeded.
As a kid that area behind a hill was mystical, it could hold anything!
Now you know it'll likely be some random monster you kill and move on. Or some random NPC that hands you a fetch quest that has no consequence.
plus of course everything is hypertelegraphed, games are more about chasing quest markers than they are about exploring
I remember back in the olden days, making notes and a map for a game.
I miss that / thankfully I don't need to do that anymore.
this is something i think about sometimes... then 5 seconds later i realize i am lazy AF.
I would like to have the possibility to set different marks/symbols onto map. So i can adjust it like I want to. Similiar to the system like in Genshin Impact.
I remember a DOS game where you had to write down codes and commands becuse there was no way to save it and if you dident your last 50+h was wasted and the world woud get corrupted XD
Making maps again I can do without but I still keep a pad and pen nearby if it's something I need to keep track of that the game doesn't itself or when it's a detail that sounds important amidst a ton of other information being dumped at once but isn't being especially highlighted.
*nervous dnd game master noises* i have to draw three more maps before saturday.
Personally I never resort to guides or wikis until something completely stomps me in the game, I prefer to try and see things blind the first time, then try to figure them out, and if everything fails I only look up the part I had a problem with, IMO that's the best way to experience a game MMO or otherwise.
This is what i enjoyed about the closed beta and will consider it as the gold age of the game. No one knew what to do at the start, if you were stuck there were no guides, if you get lost you are fucked.... this is something that no one will experience in the next year until they release an expansion / new areas.
puzzle games are great at this.
until 5 minutes in when my dumbass brain can't figure it out.
man I remember in world of warcraft I'd literally have to use some guides like thottbot in later zones because some of the shit was so obscure and I loved it. I loved having to actually write down a list of things I wanted to do because the mini map wouldn't highlight anything
You are still are doing it wrong. You used a guide on the best part. The best part of an mmorpg is hitting that wall again and again and again and then finally running through it
Phenomenal video. It really changed my perspective on MMOs, and how I personally play MMOs as a whole.
Spot on about the friends thing. I literally never touched Genshin Impact again after a group of friends and I downloaded it together only to find out you’re level locked out of playing together.
You can reach that level in a day.
@@Brsak commenting this in a video where he explicitly states people will make up their minds within the first minutes to, maybe if you're lucky, 2 hours is highlighting the issue with OPs statement.
@@Brsak Watch the video.
And you can't complete quests or open chests in other players' world. I know why they made it, but it still feels off.
Genshin is really a single-player game with multi-player elements.
I played City of Heroes for 7 total years when it was live and I hardly ever followed guides for character builds because we had such a system that you could really play however you wanted and not hinder your party members, had tons and tons of fun and sorely missed the game when it was shut down. Now the game is back being run by the community and I was thrilled to play again and I enjoyed every minute.
Around last summer, I started looking up endgame builds and actually trying them and some of them are so overpowered it's ridiculous. That was fun for a while because I never experienced that before but I soon realized it shifted me into a cycle of farming for resources to make other endgame builds and I burned myself out on it. It also had that added effect of me wanting to play my newer toons but being spoiled by my OP ones and not wanting to go back down to normal style play.
I still love the game of course, but there is indeed truth in Josh's argument against guides meant for efficiency. I got more mileage out of the game when I didn't care and immersed myself in just being my superhero, less so when I dove too much into the metagame.
Back in CoH live, we also had MIDS then too. The hyper builds were available for sharing and on SG websites I remember trading them with my friends to compare. I always thought part of the fun of CoH was tweaking those builds ever so slightly.
@@1sennacherib I can remember saying why would I need MIDS, I don't wanna prebuild a toon then I finally used it for the first time on this go around which is how I landed on the OP builds I made with some slight thematic tweaking.
Even if I wasn't going to do that, it was eye opening to actually see my stats in graph form and figure out what kind of bad habits I used to have that would get me in trouble in combat, hehehe.
City of Heroes was one of those MMOs that was forgiving in terms picking powers that weren't "efficient" but you could still play most of the content. I mean you could occasionally find the odd bunch of snobs in a group that would sneer at your build, but if you had your role down, you could punch through the missions. Loved that game.
CoH is VERY roleplaying friendly and PvE focused, that was it's edge and the fun factor.
The reverse is true for a pvp oriented game like New world, where the end game is really pvp where you WILL be left behind by the majority that reads guides. You might not read guides, but I can safely say most of my friends that are already telling me what weapon they are aiming for, have seen a bunch of guides. Their other content pve is short and will probably run out by in a couple of week and the pvp is the thing going to carry it for a significant period. So if you wanna win pvp, you gotta go against the ideology of world exploration.
Besides , the updates are also likely going to be inconsistent with the business model they are going for, that is what really scares me.
wha wha what? are you saying there is a CoH private server out there?
No matter how overplayed any mmo will ever be by the most hardcore people, There will always be lots of casuals asking for the most simplistic of things - happy to discover games for themselves.
(Like, how you repair. Or whats the level cap.)
I'm not a casual player by any metric, but I avoid looking up solutions for the most part. I feel a far greater sense of accomplishment when I take an hour to figure something out for myself, than from looking it up.
This is true, I also do this myself. The real enjoyment is through discovery, although I already got spoiled when I played through the closed beta. So unless the game drastically changes from beta to live (which most likely won't happen) I guess I don't have much to look forward to other then the progression system and character builds.
The problem are the hardcore players that will mock you instead of ignore/help you.
Then there are the "altruistic" ones that will force you to a certain guide to be like them.
This man knows what's up.
Yeah, until the game caters so hard to the old players that the new players have a dogshit experience without guides - PoE is the perfect example of this. My first playthrough was completely guideless, as I was only playing it because the lead writer is my favourite writer of all time, and i was actually relatively close to making one of the optimal builds - but the couple of things I missed, like damage over time interactions with abilities and self-preparing by buying legendary items with certain abilities off other players, caused me to be essentially useless after a certain point in the endgame, meaning I had to reset and then grind for currency.
I've been playing FF14 for a couple of months now, and I've just dabbled into some Extreme trials. I'm seriously conflicted over using guides vs. not, because I want to be able to experience the game as it was meant to be experienced, from a newbie's point of view. I don't want to be handed the step-by-step solution, I want to actually learn and understand the content organically.
Yet, there are those who, if not outright demand, at least expect that you know the entire fight before you even go do it. I do understand their point of view as well: not everyone is new, and they just want to get through the fight #72523 as quickly as possible. Simply because guides exist, I feel external pressure to use those guides. If I do not use the guides, I will die to mechanics that I do not know about. But if I use the guides, then it feels like the game has been solved for me.
I think I've found an okay middle ground with that. I go into most content blind, except for Extreme and up. For the harder content I will look at a general text-based outline of the fight to get important tips, but refuse to watch a guide video that shows the fight step-by-step.
@Colin Deal i was in a very very successful raid team in SWTOR. we never used guides. it was fun to work out tactics yourself and not just paint by numbers.
everybody can just follow orders.
that way we established new tactics for bosses, which sometimes were easier and better for the dps as the ones from the "guides"
after all its a game. not something to be done with as fast as possible. i want to take out the trash as fast as possible, but i want to enjoy a game.
This guy is so passionate, he forgets to blink.
I very much do agree with everything he says.
I still remember the era when I was an elementary school kid and we didn't use the internet much (it was AOL over dial-up modem), so we figured out games by ourselves or perhaps discussing with friends at school. It was magical when we finally got through the Water Temple in Zelda:OoT on our N64 in the basement as little kids that didn't search for some tutorial or tips online.
this reminds me of the original tomb raider puzzles...
That's my problem as well with games in general, unless it's an obscure game you'd most likely already have a tutorial on how to beat it, and now with games that haven't even launched yet already being solved, why even play the game at all ?
I wish Josh would make a video about how to bring back the MYSTERY of games once more, because until that happens, I don't think ANY game will be enough to satisfy us anymore like back in the day
@@knightmer3645 Individually I think you answered your own question. Dont watch the tutorials. Of course the problem is we rarely play an online game solo and your exp gets impacted by people who are min/maxing. WoW classics relaunch brought this home hard. Same game only instead of thousands of people not knowing what they were doing and learning by trial, almost everyone knew how to play their role which made the whole experience seem watered down.
@@tkell31 That's exactly what I'm saying, though I don't see how I've answered it ?
I mean just like Josh said in the guides video, unless you put your head in the sand purposely and your friends are willing to do the same, you're gonna be playing alone which kills the Social aspect which MMOs are (well were) built around
I used to ask my cousin instead, who was way older than me and always gave me all the tips and tricks on how to get OP in morrowind
As a Guide Creator myself, videos like these really make me think about how I want to cover stuff. I love learning things, and then explaining what I know to others, but I'd hate to contribute to the issues you mention. Great stuff as always man o7
Make the stuff you like. It's up to viewers to decide whether they want to consume it.
@@MikeNewton1 if only it were that easy. Since mmo there is group content.
Since group content there will be peer pressure to play most optimal builds, etc
Which really can get in the way of enjoyment of the game. Especially if you're stubborn of not.following the guide and tell people that you just want to play around and test things yourself.
It'll end up getting hate. Starting fights and stuff.
Even if you, and other guide creators decide to tone it down - there will be plenty of others that won't. There will still be an ultra optimized guide out there somewhere. We have to learn how to adapt, knowing that such guides will always exist. Game designers especially need to create with that in mind too.
as a person that doesn't have a lot of time to game, I urge you to continue what you're already doing. If I look up a guide it's because I want to take the most optimal route to be the very since that to me is what I enjoy and I'm assuming that's also what the people reading your guides want as well.
@@delamain2077 yeah if you just use the guides for yerself and not be one that demands everyone you play with follows the guides as well to save you time or effort to get "your" rewards it isn't an issue.
I think this is why I'm enjoying Guild Wars 2 so much. even though there's a meta, I feel absolutely no pressure to rush after it. It feels like it's designed around taking your time.
I disliked GW2 (but it has been years since my 2nd and last attempt to play the game). For starters I'm totally biased because I happened to love GW1 and that has been killed by its successor. But the more important reason is I felt the game has everything completely planned out for you. You get the questline, the map completion tasks, the zone events, jumping puzzles that make me want to smash my computer and call it a day... and I also felt pressured by the limited time events a lot. I believe they got rid of that living story stuff though. It was no fun at all.
@@nervsouly that's interesting, it sounds like you dislike it for the exact reasons I love it. I love working toward 100% on the map, just feels like there's things to discover around every corner. Not to mention the amazing mount system
@@nervsouly new expansion drops in february. its based in Cantha of gw1 if you liked that.?
You know that this game is way more like GW2 then any game in the world. You just pay the box like GW, you don't have to rush, you just play like you want. Also, because the level caps is 60, pretty much every rush people will get it in a week, so... you can play like you want and do what you want... you have time.
@@seb4sti4n666 Honestly, one, it's 80, two, past the first character you'll get plenty of tomes, you can level pretty much any character to 80 instantly. Then you just gotta buy the armor off TP (except for condi necro, holy shit) :V
Perhaps Amazon can fix this by adding a menu during character creation where people can pick some RP-friendly options like which town/village the character was born in, and this would spawn the character in nearby places around that village. This way you can tell your friends where their characters were born and you can decide where to meet up. Random, but not too random...
One aspect I think you failed to touch on is the economic advantage of getting to endgame first. I know several people who rushed to Level 60 in New World on launch and I know their motivation was to be the first to have access to endgame resources and gear. This sets them up to be to be wealthy on their server, have the best gear, and sell carry and kill services long-term. This is how they have fun in games with a economy - they want to be the plutocrats of their server and set themselves up to have enough currency to play whatever they want.
I like to find my own way through the narrative with my first character. Then I use guides when I inevitably level an alt.
yeah, I'm the same way
A very true game design saying is "Your players will optimize all the fun out of your game".
People say a lot of things. They didn't need to let everyone play it before it even was finished. They did this to themselves.
I mean yes? That is what I am saying... I have no intention of giving this any money or even playing it. However I will say that "they didn't need to" is somewhat reductive, the faux-beta tests are a huuuuge part of marketing, giving them to streamers, then gating future keys behind watching the game, boosting it's ratings on YT and Twitch and fueling the hype... There are reasons for it, just they are mostly made by the marketing team and hurt the game as an experience.
I am for once happy to be a side character, slower than the min maxing main characters but faster than the background characters
The underdog side character, glorifying the side character over the main character
This is legit the best review and concept video I have seen yet! It gave me everything and such a point of view I never thought about! Truly one of the best video for New World yet!
"How do you get a human to work as hard for money as they do for pixels?" Well there's the difference now isn't there. To get ahead in a game I do fun stuff, and I may even grind, and there are specific levels and rewards for that play. Even the shitty grinds have a specified reward at the end, and they are worth it. In real life, I work myself to death. I take on the stress of an entire production plant, I walk 25 - 30k steps a day, and I spend all my time trying to solve other people's problem to the detriment of my own mental health. My reward for that? Three bosses following me around with more bullshit to throw on my plate. So yeah, bring on the fucking pixels.
Yeah, if I could go murder deer for a month and buy a new house I'd be soaking myself in piss right now.
Sounds like you'll appreciate commission based payment instead, where you get rewarded after finishing a project rather than working for a set amount every time.
Getting paid a dollar for every paper you sign definitely feels more rewarding than getting paid 100 dollars at the end of every work day regardless of how much work you do
In the earlier tests of new world you could pick your starting zone. I have a feeling they changed it to try and prevent hardcore guilds from sweeping zones like a plague, but all it does is potentially delay that and, as you pointed out, turn away casuals.
I'm gonna be honest, once people get used to it, no ones gonna care. It feels inconvenient, but its not that big a deal. They could add it, or they could take it away, both options are fine for the casual.
Rust has random spawning and it still has tonnes of casual players
I always love finding out new stuff in mmorpg's but it's really hard because of stuff like this. before you know it theres a meta, and if you're still figuring out things yourself people won't play with you because of it..
Kinda why I HATE the western model that uses "free" beta testers who effectively just post away all the interesting parts of the game before it even launches.
Even if I don't consume the posted content, the biggest draw of New World is the PvP so every other sweaty player is gonna affect my experience.
Feels weird that some players get to effectively play the game free for an entire year while the rest of us who pay are gated outside.
It's a dumb model.
nah don't think about it like that, the majority of players will play it slow, something like 5% will be going fast, and i'll be one of them, because i already have more than 500 hours in this game, so i already explored the game enough, but never worry because the majority will take it slow like you, this is an MMO in the end.
In WoW someone got mad at me in an instance after a wipe for doing a low level 5-man dungeon while leveling without first studying up on the boss encounters with a guide.
@@Ecalypse tbh, that's how it goes in FFXIV, you're better off playing New World with us! a new beginning! and the game is fun af.
@@dongster529 I see what you mean, but Beta's are a good thing for MMO's helps in finding bugs/exploits and also helps with server stability issues, so overall its a good thing to do to ensure a smoother better launch.
Mmo fans be like:
“I can’t wait to play this game!”
**Plays the beta for 300 hours**
**Game releases**
“So bored with this game, dead on arrival lol”
Exactly lol, happens with games like Genshin Impact too, dudes get like 400 hours of content for free and have the balls to say the game is dead
@@Auguzto. and they usually skip thru content dialogue that tells the information needed to appreciate the story at all, only looking at cutscenes for any information. genshin doesn't have a lot of content for hardcore ppl, but to say it has nothing is like saying a Camry isn't a car: not the best, but clearly still a car
I have 100hrs in New World betas but I'm still pumped for the release mostly because I just like walking around and doing the life skills
@@not_madness809 not saying every beta tester was the same, but definitely the content creators with insane hours in the game.
That's basically Ser Medieval
He played like 3000h in the alpha then complained about it
I just recently discovered your channel, and I am in love with your analyses, and not just because they mirror my own almost exactly.
I really wanted to like New World. As an old SW:G player who focused almost exclusively on crafting and economy building before the age of internet guides was so prolific, I was really looking forward to another game where I could really focus on creating tools and items for others to use, and to foster relationships in doing so. I had a REALLY FUN opening weekend, going so far as to be the first in my faction to get to steel tools, discovering a really solid iron route, never EVER seeing any fey iron, and making a ton of friends along the way by selling my superior gear at reduced prices for faction members. I even felt encouraged to wander to the mythical tier 3 smelter in a dangerous northern zone, just so I could put starmetal weapons and tools into the hands of my faction's troops and artisans before anyone other factions got there first. All of this without looking up a single guide beforehand. The only foreknowledge I had was the stuff I had discovered on my own in the beta.
Then I missed a day due to family obligations. By the time I got back, I was overwhelmed by dozens of other crafters. I had even been outstripped by just about everyone in jewelcraft, a skill nobody was focusing on the prior weekend. Not only had I lost my competitive and economic advantage in barely 24 hours, I had also basically lost my use and function to the community. Because EVERYBODY can do EVERYTHING, there was no point in diversifying labor past a certain hour mark. Sure, in the early game it mattered who was focusing on lumber/flax/ores/etc., but once you hit a certain point, so many people are just passively good at a specific skill that it becomes functionally worthless.
That's not even touching on how barebones and simplified the crafting system really was. It was fun to explore for a day or two, but it was clearly an afterthought for a game that was primarily PvP focused. If it had been given a little more attention, I think that there might have been a place for me as a creator in New World for quite some time. It would have been nice if the settlement turn-in consequences were themed to what was being done. Gathering and cooking food could spawn some NPC militia to help bolster ranks during a defense. Weapons and armor turn-ins could then better equip those militia. Instead, every contribution just became a universal use resource that a select few people got to use to make decisions for everyone else in town. It just wasn't well thought out.
Anyway, love the videos, and I look forward to listening to more of your excellent observations and critiques as I paint miniature bug aliens.
After many years of playing mmos and listening to this view point about guides, i now realize how subtle the mmo community's "rush" mentality has influenced me to become way less patient than i used to be as a kid. (I'm not saying *partially influenced* because as a gamer, i can't remember the last day that went by without me playing a game.) Josh, your videos are eye openers in a world that is full of confusion. I deeply thank you.
"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game." - Soren Johnson
And they will have fun while doing it.
then they will complain they no longer find the game fun
"you don't spawn with your friends"
well, that will just remind me DayZ
3:37 I love how we scroll through New World videos. But one smart guy managed to sneak in a Blade and Soul 2 video. Good job LazyPeon :D
Very well said! That's why when I join a friend new to a game, I shut my mouth and just follow and partake in banter
JSH: "You can't join your friends when you start!"
Amazon: "What are these...Friends? ...Money?"
Amazon: "The real friends were the money Papa Bezos made along the way."
You can tho its easy
this is why I love just letting side content build up in FFXIV; I get so many extra little things to do between down time of patches.
Odd way to play a single player game
I got three crafters and nearly 2/3 gatherers to 80 before my main class was 75 :D so much to do
@@garpten7772 ah yes, the critically acclaimed FFXIV, with the most difficult raids in the mmo landscape, pvp and rp up the kazooie. The true single player experience.
@@garpten7772 you decide if it's single player or not
@@xviii5780 100% this, FFXIV can be a solo experience or as much of an mmorpg as you want it to be. One of my favorite aspects of the game.
It's interesting to see that you've been thinking exactly what I have been. People are still consistently pumping out new world content, guides, montages, dungeons etc well outside of the time the game was even available to play and it feels like it's already been out for years. I've definitely opted out of watching any of those
I think it says a lot about the game that Content creators are sort of in a war of New World content. I’d prefer the information about the game in a form like wowhead does for World of Warcraft.
@@diamond_h0us wowhead is no different to youtubers, its just run by more people so it's a more centralised location, but it's still fan owned and operated and all contributions come from fans.
@@diamond_h0us yeah it feels like they are all desperate to make content for the game even when it isn't out yet. Until people are less interested and they move to the next big thing most likely.
I really didn’t think this whole starting in random zones would make it to launch. Cannot believe that was even a thing.
i like it
It makes sense why they don't allow people to pick their starting zone.
If people pick their starting zones, regions would be imbalanced which is hell when everyone is trying to kill the same things for the same quests.
As for why you don't start with your friends, well for one thing friends are tied to your character, not to your account. So you first have to make a character before you can friend anyone. If they were going to add friend adding then it would have to happen in the instanced tutorial. But then again it falls into the same issue of, well what happens when you have a company of 100 friended with each other and all spawn in the same spot, but then do that 5-8 times (i.e. 800 people spawning together in everfall).
@@DrSmugface Okay.
@@ppsarrakis Idk, the streamers had no problem with in both the closed and open betas.
Just for the hell of it, I went back to the beginning of 2021 to see how many Patreons Josh had back then. On the Rifts episode of "Worst MMO Ever", he had 20 names on "The Wall", 20 people paying him money on Patreon to make content. There are now, as of this video, roughly 800 people willing to fork over some pounds or dollars for quality content. That is some serious growth right there, congratulations to Josh for just crushing it this year, keep up the good work!
You have put, in great clarity, the same argument I've been making for years, from all angles and others I hadn't considered.
Hey Josh! You should put on a red vest. You look like Wilson from "Don't Starve!"
Lol, yeah he just needs the red vest😁
I'll be avoiding all the info websites, I would rather find out as much as I can by playing and only use any sites like this if I'm completely stumped.
What in the world were they thinking about the random starts for friends joining the same server at the same time? Sure, have characters start randomly if they are solo. That's not really a big deal, but why wouldn't you want to allow new characters to join on a friend who's already in the game and send them to the same starting zone? It would take almost no effort to code that.
i avoid guides in the first playtru then in the second i follow them, im very casual
Certain zones are closer to the settlements. Certain zones also have more resources of something then others. For example. Monarchs bluff has more iron deposits, first light has more food from farms.
Almost no effort? You got it all wrong. It took effort to code it so it doesn't do it like that.
I would imagine that one big reason to spread players out by force would be to avoid congestion in certain areas to better manage the influx of new players. However I can't say for sure, but there likely is a reason other than making our lives less convenient.
Thats because your bad. One thing your great at is eating corn the long way.. Also when you knowing make yourself bad by not using tactics and strategies that are available is just dumb. Meta=Most Efficient Tactics Available.
The only time I use a guide in an mmo if I'm stuck on finding an npc or making my build a bit better, but I usually try and figure it out myself. Also, not related, but I just noticed you having Timesplitters on your shelf; I see you are a man of culture, as well.
Dude, you took exactly what was in my brain about ALL MMOs and said it here. I've never understood why I didn't really like MMO games..I couldn't put my finger on it, but this was perfectly worded. Pressure to play efficiently, FOMO and friends leaving you behind.
Regarding different starting zones. During the beta my friend and i started about half an hour apart from each other and on opposite sides of the map. we spent maybe 10 minutes meeting up. It was not at all inconvenient, though it was a bit harrowing. Was a fun little adventure. I was level 2, he was level 5.
Yup, and we all get funneled in to Everfall for the MQ fairly quickly. What my friend group has been doing during the betas was to just hang in a discord call and meet up in game when we can meet up.
yeah still isnt a good idea to have random spawn
Honestly loved that aspect forces you to either stay alone or meet new people while you adventure to find your buddy, shit was great. Basically one long tutorial section till you get to everyday, though i wish they didn't ask you to level a faction till you reached ever fall tbh. Would've been nice to have it be a free city where all the factions meet
Im all in for exploration in games.. part of the magic and immersion of a game for me is the exploration aspect... I ignore the guides :)
Theres a simple fix to this that Amazon can do for the starting zones - Have the social pane be available right after creating a character so one can add friends and group up so the group will spawn together in the world.
Simple fix? Not so much.. NEEDED fix? Absolutely.
I plan on playing this game for immersion, doing side quests, exploring, enjoying the lore and building my second life on Aeternum.
I'm excited for a robust crafting system. Yes, I'm weird.
@@timothypeterson4781 I'm also super keen for the crafting - tried out the open beta and spent a good amount of hours just gathering. My only issue is how much the player driven market and economy will matter IF there's no reason for people to buy crafted items or the market just gets flooded with items. Time will tell but I'm still going to be super happy with crafting and gathering.
@@Laughablematter Agreed. And if I just enjoy it for the first two months and the economy and game fizzle out. Well I spent $60 on it, and I'm ok with that exchange rate. If it lasts for longer, all the better.
(And bright side, Amazon has shown that it's trying it's best to make the game last, since, you know, they want to make their money back.)
Treasure Island is literally about the adventures that happen following a giant arrow to where the treasure is. That's why it's fun, the people having to work together to get there when they'd rather be slitting each other's throats, and then fighting it out rather than following the arrow
"Sense of discovery" is probably the reason why restricted accounts are so popular in MMO's like old school Runescape
Sorry man I tried to find out what "restricted accounts" mean in the gaming world but google doesn't help, will you please explain to me, the noob what it is ?
I'm interested because if it's something like an iron-man challenge that increase the enjoyment of the sense of discovery I'd love to know more about it
@@knightmer3645 In Old School Runescape there are Players who make an Ultimate Ironman Account and further limit Themselves by only Playing in a specific Area of the Game.
They usally have some Goal in Mind and try to accomplish it within those restrictions and they have to play in ways no one ever would and have to find solutions to problems no one ever faced.
But something like that takes a lot of time so only really dedicated players try something like that.
@@Zwergenschnitzel I see, thanks for explaining that, it's sort of an "imposed" achievement of sorts like "No damage run or 1 life run, Ironman" which is used by players who love the game so much they can't get enough so they come up with creative challenges to enjoy the game for longer
@@knightmer3645 More clearly perhaps: The game has in recent years offered the option to, at account creation, select whether you want to play normally, as ironman, hardcore ironman, or ultimate ironman. Normal players can just die as often as they want (may lose items on death), trade with others, and do whatever they want. Ironman players cannot trade with others, and thus must get all the materials for everything themselves, get every boss's drop themselves as they cannot buy it, etc. Hardcore ironman are the same, but they only have one life. If they die, they revert to regular ironman status (and the highscores are capped at what they achieved until death). Ultimate ironman is less popular as it also removes the bank from players.
This video is litterally spot on. I thought i was the only one who thought this way. Great video and SPOT ON congrats brother i don't sub often but you defiantly earned it.
While not the same, it does remind me a bit of the problem SW:TOR had at its start.
The developer (BioWare / EA) did not expect players to go through the content that fast. As far as I remember they expected their (well crafted) story to last at least 2 or 3 months. But players were at max-level within days.
While SW:TOR had multiple problems (initial player boost and then drop-offm bugs, etc), the realisation that after rushing through the game and be at the endgame and nothing was there... that was bad. Word spread fast and it created a chain reaction of ppl leaving and servers having to be merged to at least pretend that there were ppl left playing the game.
For us casuals though, it was a great game. Story was great, and fully playing every planet did take me months. I was playing the game years after all my hard-core friends had moved on to the next big thing, or back to WoW
A lot of the pleasure of playing early wow for me was down to the fact no one knew much about the frontiers of the world.
That part about each step of the beginning process losing players is so true. I was going to try FFXIV years ago, and I did, but I never managed to get into the actual game. Hours and hours of trying to install and having it fail and start over entirely. Eventually gave up, and it wasn't until about a month ago that I gave it a new try.
One of my best MMO experiences was in RIFT. When it launched, most people did not have much of a plan on how to push through it, so there was a lot of discovering new areas along with other players. Having had a lot of time to explore it and then slowly seeing more and more people populate the latter areas, exchanging tips on where to find what...
I loved Rift, It launched the day my school holidays started, I ended up running a explorers guild hunting all the treasures.. we had 6 raid groups of low levels running around every zone.. no matter the faction or level looking for them.
That character is still wearing the pirate hat I found during that. I was level 50 with a level 7 hat
Josh, I just wanted to say thank you for making this video when you did. The part where you described the pressure a new player would feel to use the guides since they're out is exactly what I've been grappling with for the last couple weeks, and was even planning to look up some guides over the next couple days. Problem is, I've been feeling anxious and overwhelmed about learning everything and dreading the, essentially, PvE/PvP study guides I'd have to consume before the proverbial test come release. After watching your video, I've decided to not look up any of the guides and go in blind to thoroughly enjoy the exploration and gameplay for what it is. Much appreciated for this video!
This is what I've been saying for decades now. It's the journey in RPG's, never the destination
I can't wait to get rolling. I have no problem with being behind, I've been avoiding guides and spoilers so I can go through it all at my own pace.
And then you get ganked into oblivion by the day 1 crowd
@@FEARSWTOR Please explain how they would "get ganked into oblivion".
@@Tallestdwarf Open world pvp.
@@Nico78Not There are no PVP servers. You're not forced to flag for PVP. No one is ever going to get "ganked into oblivion".
“The players will optimize the fun out of your game and blame you for it.” ~asmond
People vote against their own interests and then complain how their elected officials don’t serve them. People are aggressively dumb.
“ASMOND”
TRU
@@TaddiestMason Boy does that ring true in the Draconian Covid Era
Has been a quote loooooooooooong before Asmon said it
I remember when I preordered limited darkisers 2 and received it two weeks before rollout and there where no guides or tips, it was AMAZING! That unknown was the best feeling playing a game
Fantastic Vid :) I'm trying my absolute hardest to not watch any guides as are most of my Guild buds. Didn't level higher than 10 in the Beta and have not touched crafting at all. Actually fairly excited to try and figure stuff out :)
I fully agree on the split starting zones being a major concern and I hope they solve that before release. The first few levels are crucial and many players may leave if they can't play with their friends immediately.
On the topic of guides covering everything: As somebody who creates theorycrafting content for New World, I can confidently say that we have only barely scratched the surface of what's possible. As of now, I can spend 10 minutes with some datasheets and find something that hasn't been discovered yet. That's not the case in a fully mapped out game.
There will always be those who minmax from the start and those who enjoy the ride. This isn't something inherently new. Back when I first played vanilla WoW, I bought the official guidebook, which had maps of dungeons, gear advice and a bunch of other (quickly outdated) info. I had also spend hours upon hours in one of the fan forums for a solid half year before launch, learning more and more about the game. And still, compared to some guilds that switched over from Everquest and had started theorycrafting in the early alpha stages, I was completely green.
Yes, info is easier (and cheaper) to come by nowadays. But even I myself went into NW blind the first time I played it. There are only so many minmaxers out there and a much bigger casual base that will happily wipe 3 times in the first dungeon - just as I did - while they are figuring things out.
People who CURRENTLY watch New World content are mostly very dedicated players anyways, since they're the ones who start looking up info before the game launches. They won't harm the "Oh I saw a New World ad, let's check it out" crowd's experience, since they'll level at a different pace anyways.
I think there's merit to what you're saying, at least for the most part, but I also think that Josh' point still stands. The amount of videos that has come out about recent games - both MMOs and singleplayer games - is absolutely insane. Even if you don't watch UA-cam for gaming advice/videos chances are they will be recommended to you based on your interests (like trailers and such). I get that a new game is popular and I get that a lot of content creators use said game to, well, create content, but when will it be too much? Yes, there are still people who play games without ever watching one video or reading one guide or even using a search engine to find information about a game, but are they still this silent majority, or are modern gamers growing up with this sense of 'having to know everything' to 'play the game right' as Josh suggests? Even I, and I consider myself a casual gamer (though according to one of Josh' videos I'm definitely not, LOL), find myself taking a quick peek at walkthroughs, tutorials or tips on how to get through (hard or confusing) parts of a game rather than bashing my head against the wall out of frustration of having to try something again and again and again.
@@DvanderPluijm I know younger gamers definitely use a lot of info resources more than back in the day, simply because of their availability, but I don't think that needs to influence how anyone else plays the game. I'm the type who reads the manual before using a product. Plenty of my friends only ever touch the manual if they broke something (maybe because they didn't read the manual). We have easier access to information than ever before through our phones, if we want to use that for fun activities is entirely up the individual. Some people enjoy learning quickly and minmaxing and they won't disappear.
It's also not like the bigger names in this conversation should really have an issue with guides. Josh Strife Hayes used to make tons of guides just a year back. Force Gaming, who replied as well, has more "ultimate" guides than I can count. So I don't think (or at least hope) they're suggesting that guides themselves are an issue.
"The first few levels are crucial and many players may leave if they can't play with their friends immediately. " That's one of the things that killed the ARPG Magic Legends. People didn't get to the full gameplay experience, including grouping with friends, until after playing for several hours and so they just left.
It's sort of like Pokemon. When we were younger and information is much harder to come by, we liked the sense of exploration. We built teams out of what random Pokemon we find, and get excited when we find a new rare Pokemon
Now, in the age of the internet, entire Pokemon rosters are datamined before release and everyone already knows what team they're going to be using, where to find them and how rare they are. The sense of wonder and surprise at finding something new isn't quite there anymore because you know what you're getting into
This is why i love FFXIV, there is no PTR, no betas. everybody starts on day 1 blind. Everyone is out there exploring.
Sorta, there was the live letter and people are already hyper analysing what they've shown off there haha
As a casual that hasn’t even been on the new world subreddit and as a loser with no friends I think the random start is neat and I’ll probably enjoy exploring
Who knows, you might even make a friend or 2 through new world while you're exploring.
It is an MMO after all, so your bound to run into someone who shares similar interests eventually.
Great video. Keep up the good work.
Finally some1 talking about it, appreciated!
This is why I don’t look at guides until I finish my first play through
This is how I use them too. Basically to check what things I missed on the way, or if I get really stuck on something like a hidden path I just can't find.
Honestly, I've never understood the prospect of power gaming, and TotalBiscuit, may he rest in peace, was a big advocate of that mentality as well, I paraphrase his own saying when I say, there is no sense or purpose in playing anything if you just want to be done with it in 10 hours, it takes every joy out of gaming and replaces it with mathematical equation.
i enjoy power-gaming because adding mathematical equations to my games increases my joy (math major lol)
games that let me powergame and still destroy me are the best, like dark souls is a blast because you can be uber-optimized and ng+3 will still kill you for making mistakes.
Thats what I like about FF14, everyone starts blind at release.
If Endwalker was a WoW expansion, every story bit would already have been data mined or spoiled from the Beta Testers.
True a new expac is 2-3 days of locking yourself in avoiding sooilers haha
@@ZurilasZone With these release dates it's sometimes monthes
tips and guide proly for casual player that doesn't have much time to spend in the game.
for me as a hardcore player which spend at least 8 hours a day playing mmorpg. especially with open world mmorpg with great landscape view, hidden objective and enjoyable fighting gameplay. i wont use any guide or tips until theres a point when im really stuck and doesn't know what must i do to progress a quest or secrets after im trying to solve it myself. i like to enjoy the story and the complexity of mmorpg on my own. because all those people that make guides more or less experiencing the same game and journey as im going to. and sometimes i found secrets, variety of class, or some hidden quest that has not been discovered yet. and yes i did found some in other mmo, and it feels satisfying. thats why im going to enjoy new world with my own pace, i don't really care if im being left out by the current community on progressing.
i like your channel man, very thought provoking.
I’d love to see an MMO that randomises NPC names, weapon names, skill names, the order each class unlocks skills etc. for each player individually - making it basically impossible to write guides on.
I’m sure it’d have technical issues and unbalanced elements, but imagine a multiplayer game where each player interpreted the world slightly differently so there was no way to identify the “best” routes to take.
"We can say this is a very high quality game..."
Me, coming right off the video where JSH describes it as a game that feels low budget: Huh??
Jarring isn't it?! I have played this a bunch already and feel like that previous video wasn't really true
budget=/=quality, not fully anyway. You can have great games with a low buget and garbage with a high budget.
@@5H4D3 That point has nothing to do with what JSH said in a previous video about the game.
If a game feels low budget, that doesn't mean the game literally had a low budget. It means it feels like the devs didn't know what they were doing and the game feels incomplete.
To then turn around and say the game feels high quality means the complete opposite of the first statement.
@@NormandyFoxtrot You mean aside from the video I referenced in my original comment?
I feel like over the years there is some kind of tumor creeping into the gaming community overall and it's this sense that you have to be a "professional" when you play a game, like if you stop to enjoy a game to the fullest, you're doing it wrong, like the only way to "correctly" play a game is to try to be as competitive and "professional" as possible, this idea that you have to prove everyone (including yourself) that you're "good" at the game, either because of social pressure or just pure internal anxieties. Like this delusion that you have to prove your worth and sweat through the game and "be good" like you're applying to be part of some imaginary professional e-sport team and that they're watching you and will be very interested in checking your statistics as a player so you have to be ready "just in case" or some weird shit like that and if you get lost in the game and start to "enjoy the game" (aka procrastinate or waste your time) then you're worthless and nobody will take you seriously or nobody is going to play with you or some crazy shit like that, like the purpose of playing a game is to impress some unknown imaginary boss or like it's a competition to be at the top of the social hierarchy within specific communities. Back in my day, playing games were just a fun and healthy way to escape from reality but nowadays people see games almost as some kind of serious career path you're supposed to pursuit like playing a game is now some kind of second/third job and thats how you're supposed to play a game.
I kinda feel it myself - fear of even starting a game because I will suck at it and then the fun goes away because I want to not suck at it.. instead I should just enjoy the game.. regardless of me sucking at it or not.
There's a reason why being called a "casual" or a "filthy casual" is a slur - it's the 'othering' that people do when they want to gate-keep their territory and hate it when new players slow them down while grinding through their daily chores. Meanwhile, it makes the community toxic and stops people from taking up the game, then the game dies - GG.
This seems to be a bigger issue with games centered on 'end-game' and that have ongoing obligatory fun-less grinds. The game becomes about speed, pain-reduction and grinding the end-game for visibility.
I think a lot of people do feel that the game is effectively their only way to assert dominance/supremacy, or hope that excelling and standing on a pile of corpses will somehow lead to an alternative to some banal RL situation.
Then again there area also a lot of sociopathic arseholes that enjoy ruining as many people's day as possible - VR real-time trolling.
This is actually such a good point. Idk about the rest of y'all but I've started to go into every single game that I play blind. If I can avoid even the trailers I will. Generally makes every single thing that I play so much fun.
This video is so true! I have younger friends that instead of experimenting, rush to look at a guide missing on the experience of discovery. Sad days
My friend's used to call me Thottbot(it meant something different back then, I promise you) back in WoW. Not because I did everything, but because I was the one who would do all the research, and then I'd be able to help them all out. I was always a lower level, wasn't in the guild doing the newest raids, and never was the best PvP player. I was the guy who played way too many alts, but enjoyed my time the best I could. I'd run through every starting zone, race/class quest, and bridge out to different leveling areas as much as I could; so when a friend had a question, if I didn't already know the answer, I searched out the answer for it. We didn't have video guides for everything you could ever want, it was a tight group of friends, who would share information and spread it to those we cared about in an effort to see other's do better.
While I do miss this feeling, the sense of community and belonging that came from checking forums, messaging chat and hoping one of the "helpful guys" was online to answer your question, I just can't see it ever going back to such a time. As much as my nostalgia addled brain yearns for that, I know it just isn't possible anymore.
This always ends up being a problem with games that have over-hyped "paid betas". Amazon wanted this to be a socially extensive game to the point where Twitch streamers and content creators get direct in-game benefits.
It's less about actually playing the game, and more showing off to everyone else what you have played. They never had the intention of making this game feel mysterious, but aggressively marketed through its player base over social media.
I sort of understand the idea of the random location start so as to prevent everyone from mobbing one area over another ... but I agree there should be a way to play with your friends. One solution would be to add your friend as an in game friend (friend list? contacts?), which would then allow you to instantly teleport to where they are *as long as they are in one of the starting areas*.
The only thing I know is what I'll play in the game (weapons and armor.) I've ignored all sorts of guides you mention in the video, so I'm going in pretty much blind, minus what I got to try in open beta. Super excited for it. :)
this is the exact reason I am starting new world without looking at any guides. Time to explore the game , it's world and the features by myself again :)
I honestly usually do blind playthroughs for games to feel immersed
Unless it's Warframe where i have to read everything to understand what i have to do in that game
Even after reading it... did you even understand it? I sure as heck didn't
@@AnimatronicBadgerlord it took 2 weeks to understand trading in Warframe and the meta items to trade, i have to get to lua to get rich, oof
@@disguy7345 That's more effort than I care to ever put into research for a game!
I've watched a lot of these videos (mostly because I'm thirsty for anything New World right now), and I think I could use these guides to great advantage. The downfall for me is when I actually sit down to play the game. I get immersed enough in games that I enjoy, that all thought of efficient play or all the tips and tricks I've seen, simply fly out of my head. Instead I just run around killing and skinning turkeys with great excitement
Important relevant questions imo: "Should game developers make games assuming players will look everything on the bound-to-exist-wiki? And: "Should MMOs be balanced around the 100 most sweaty nerds on reddit?"
The most fun I had in Classic was the early days when I just ran around, meeting people, chatting, traded some spring water for jerky and joining random groups for quests, didn't last too long though, eventually I found myself alone and I ended up losing interest, RL friends didn't have time anymore either.
You just made me want to play the game and explore it. I miss that feeling of playing something excitingly unknown. I don't like guids, but the last MMOs were spoiled by friends that used them.
another view on the emergence of the guide is the players getting sick of MMOs purposely wasting their time and padding "gameplay" with useless barriers and grinds.
and yes, being able to start with your friends would be ideal. i'm impressed MMOs haven't picked up battle royal tricks yet. just have a grouping system right after character creation or outside of the world login, so a group of friends can log in together as a group and start as that group in the same randomized area.
Luckily as a PvP player even with all the "guides" generally there's still a ton of discovery left and metas change even if the game never does. A perfect example would be Smash Bros Melee tier lists over the years.
How can you determine what play style you will play before the game is even out yet?
This is exactly why I don't look at guides at all. I feel like it gives you a better experience if you get to explore the game with no knowledge of anything
Great video. No game is perfect. This game is awesome
Great video as always Josh :)
I've specifically avoided looking at any guides/beta streams for this very reason; I really feel that MMOs (and games in general) these days are lacking a lot of that exploration/mystery feeling that I used to love. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but some times it gets to be a bit much.
Looking forward to going into New World without any knowledge about the game. A bit annoyed at the difficulty of starting out with friends from level 1 though, this was the first I've heard of it.
What I like about FFXIV's start is that, yes, you might start off in different cities then your friend does at the beginning depending on which starter class you chose, but getting to the other towns and linking up isn't a hard task to do.
You can rent a porter and the chocobo will take you to that location hands-free.
Or you can always ask any player walking around to just give you a lift. At worst, it's a mild inconvenience that is solved within 5 minutes and never becomes a problem ever again.
@@yuka7.999 ofc you cant, its bad to allow players on free trials that much freedom cause bots would run rampant
I've been playing FFXIV since 2013, and I can tell you that meeting up with your friends is actually easier and faster in New World when you start the game. just hand in the first quest, and run to the beach your friend is in, how hard is that? you can take the same quest from the other beach.
@@AllerionGr I don't think the ability to form parties impacts bot activity very much though I agree with your overall point. To Grimno's point, I agree to an extent but am I incorrect in remembering that the main quest line differs from place to place so even if you meet up you have to then separate to make any kind of progress in your main quest line up to a certain point where they all converge? my two friends choose the elf race and I chose the dragon descendate race or whatever and it was a good couple hours of running back and forth (the real worst part of ff14) before we were able to meet up to do MQ stuff.
@@j.asmrgaming1228 your race has nothing to do with your questlines in ffxiv. the only thing that does is the class you choose at the start. you are right, tho, that the msq is different based on which city you start in (i think they meet up somewhere around lvl 15-20?).
Optimization in games has really become an issue.
When I played ESO back after launch, i had the most fun exploring it without any guides or anything.
Looking for players to run a dungeon, keep wiping and figuring out the mechanics was always super fun. Was a feeling of accomplishment.
These days it is very often in MMOs that before you even done a dungeon for the first time, you are already expected to have read a guide, ruining the sense of accomplishment by learning the dungeon through trial and error and spoiling the dungeon content altogether.
If a dungeon has some quest or anything inside, good luck finding a random group waiting for you to read it, They rather kick you in the first few minutes.
Then talents and similar systems, you got really nice ones to choose from, that fit the fantasy of your character, but more often than not, the "cool" ones suck and the boring ones yield higher dps. it kills build variety and every character becomes the same, heck last time I played ESO every DPS was the same. Stack as many dots as you can and have one or 2 spam skills for in between refreshing them. Oh and of course have a selfheal, so you can run the dungeon faster with 3 dps and no healer, so you skip the mechanics of boss fights altogether. Many people there don't even know the mechanics of the old dungeons and when they are faced with a low dps group, you see them struggle getting the mechanics right, but rather finding the fault for that on themselves and trying to overcome it, they blame the low dps player and try to kick them, saying it can't be done with low dps, which most of the time is simply untrue. It just creates a really toxic environment.
Currently I am playing FF14 and at least during my level experience a lot of these issues are not present, because there are things in place to prevent this kind of behavior and I've been enjoying my experience in that game thoroughly. The player base seems mostly friendly, You get to see what the dungeons, trials and raids are about. People are not leaving or trying to kick others after 2 wipes. I only once had someone complaining that i didn't know the mechanics of a dungeon. And while it has no build variety apart from gear maybe (only just hit 80, so i don't know yet), at least you are not given this false impression of being able to have different builds, cuz in other games you either play the optimal set up, or you deal with toxicity
I played shortly after launch until the end of Elsweyr and the min/max-ing just sucked the soul out of it.
Pls stay in baby ffx pls. We honestly dont need to let any of those players out of that little bubble.
@@somsimsem Baby ffxiv huh?
You mean you like to play a game, where the leveling is utterly boring, because nothing poses a challenge anymore.
Craglorn stuff used to require a party or a lot of skill, I couldn't solo fungal grotta on a level 5 character back in the day.
You probably don't even know half the mechanics of base game dungeons and trials, because the strategy is always "Burn it before it does something, because I can't be bothered to deal with the mechanics for longer than a minute". The game has become stupidly easy in that regard, and while endgame might not be like that, everything leading up to it is.
And don't even get me started about leveling an alt and as soon as you hit 50 have full BiS equipped that you farmed on other chars.
You wanna call ffxiv for babies, while eso spoon feeds you.
@@D4rknesskay too long didt read
Hollow Knight was one of the few games I told myself: "I'm not going to watch any guides, watch any videos about it, I'm going in completely blind." It was one of the best experiences I've had in a long time. Because I went in blind, I was able to fully immerse myself in the world; I was able to have genuine surprise and amazement at all the different environments that Team Cherry crafted. If I had gone into the game with full knowledge about the game, the experience would've been worse.
You, my friend are a god !
I guess you found the "loophope" if you can call it that, and that is playing blind because otherwise... we're never gonna have that "phenomenlogy" or "wonderlust" in video games anymore...
You can play with your friends at the start of the game. You turn 1st quest you get during the intro/tutorial but you don't take the boots quest, you run to the starting beach area you all agree to meet at. You take the boots quest there.
I think a workaround for the starting area problem is if you are level 1 - 3, invite your friend, and a popup will ask if you wish to teleport to your friend. I think it should be a couple levels in range because a friend might start a little bit before you and leave you behind a small bit as friends sometimes tend to do :P
I actually found it weird seeing leveling guides for this game. I was thinking to myself, but why? It isn't out yet don't you want to enjoy it? The big thing with this game also is the PvP aspect. The casual non-guide player is going to run into tons of issues with trying to keep up. Really relates to your PvP video as well.
Well, what did anyone expect to happen when you give a bunch of content creators access tp a game pre-launch, lmao.
@@chrisll3438 He's got a point, y'know ? 🙄(referring to Chris)
When I played PSO2, early on I could take on high end instances (at the time) along with the players who were optimizing the game and we're competent. Unfortunately a few months in, because I decided to take it easy to work on multiple characters/classes, everyone competent was no longer at the level I was. Literally all of the instances I would try to play were failures despite my experience, I get crap loot because of the failures, then I can't level optimally or even compete in other areas or instances because of the cascading problem.
If I wanted to get to the next level of the game I needed to spend a stupid amount of currency to get that gear. It came down to roughly a week+ of grinding currency with all of my characters so that one character could get one weapon that will still need to be upgraded and still be out classed by even more expensive gear or soon to be put in content. Maybe it was a fault of the game, but playing casually really screwed over my enjoyment of the game as I was completely walled off from progression.
That's utter fucking bollocks... its in your mentality to play too much and try to be top end, instead of enjoying the game.
@@snazz2 we are talking about Asian market mmo here,i can see what he is saying happening on BDO.
@@ppsarrakis You mean Chinese?
The problem, and I've seen it in Final Fantasy XIV mostly, since that's the MMO I play most, is when you start having to skip the story portions of dungeons/raids in order to satisfy the desires of the speed runners that throw a tantrum, insult you, and leave the instance otherwise (looking at you, Gilgamesh server). This ruins the experience for folks that are new to the raid and want to experience the story. Unfortunately, Square Enix broke it in the other direction by forcing everyone in the raid group to watch the entirety of all the cinematics in certain instances, which causes no one to want to play those dungeons at all. There needs to be a way to allow everyone to play the way they want, or else the game is going to end up alienating the very customers that keep it alive.
I always thought gw2's story mode for dungeon was a great mechanic. Helped the first timers and then the ones who had done it 20+ times had their own que
Strange, I’m on Gilgamesh and have leveled to now just finishing stormblood and doing some crafting (I have almost everything to 60 except fishing) before starting the post stormblood since May. I haven’t run into any of those issues. All the pug duty finder groups Ive been in wait at the purple border if I’m in a cutscene. I think one time during one of the Alexander raids the group started the fight while I was in the cutscene but that’s really it. They also give a lot of poetic tomes and xp for doing those first couple alliance story raids so the wait for a group as DPS has always been 1-10 minutes. So people are doing them often it seems to me as I’ve run them both a bunch of times to get the poetic gear for each main content end game.
You can generally watch such cut scenes in the Inn afterwards btw. Think it was like a Journal on the table you interact with?
That said, with my experience on EU-Odin, people tend to wait (except in Alliance Raids)
are you talking about the 2 8man dungeons at the end of ARR? im not sure if you didnt play in a while but everybody is running those since they give massive xp rewards and tomes. Also generally people are patient with people that want to watch cutscenes, not everybody of course but i found very few people that complained in my 3 years of playing.
They resolved the problem for later story-centric instances by having the story cutscenes largely be outside of the instance. ARR's unfortunately they just haven't gotten around to fixing.
You're taking more breaths than usual, hope you don't have the rona brah, love your videos!!!
2:12 i see im not the only one having the "lets go" Videos revommended to me xD
Already solved... And it still has more content than PSO2 NGs 🤣🤣
Ha nice. NGS is a beautiful turd
you absolutely roasted ngs the horrible game where you get to lvl 20 and thats literally it but I got bored at lvl 14 after playing for a few days