Comment by CodeMage | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CodeMage | Hacker News Reader

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I played roughly from 1999 until 2001. The biggest pain points for me were:

* The game wanted to motivate PVP, but it did so by punishing PVE players horribly: at higher levels, dying to a mob meant losing more than one whole level, which was hard to get back.

* If you played anything but a tank, ping mattered too damn much. I like scouts/thieves. My ping stank. My experience wasn't very happy ;)

* Mandos sleep. Need I say more? Whose idea was that? I'm lucky I never got it, but it's inexcusably bad game design.

* I understand that playing evil races is supposed to be inherently harder, but it was too damn hard. My favorite moments were when the "darkies" (I apologize, but that was the slang for evil races back then) would come raid Bree and Fornost. Yes, it was terrifying for us pukes, but I loved it.

I have contemplated going back many, many times, but the first pain point I mentioned always keeps me back. I just can't dedicate that much time to a game that rewards so little and punishes so much. But I miss it a lot, too :)

Well, Mandos sleep should have only come into play if you were killing other members of your 'side'. I spent a lot of time playing characters on both sides, killing and being killed in PvP, but always cross 'side', and Mandos sleep was never a thing.

Ping time is definitely important, but I had a lot of success playing on a 1200 and then a 2400 baud modem. Running PPP over that gave me some nasty latency spikes. You could not always play in the normal way, but the game was definitely fun and playable, in different ways. (:

Re: losing more than a whole level after dying: that and the other 'hard' things about the game really drew me in.

I crave games where there are real risks, something substantial to lose. For most free games, that is going to be mean time.

It's like the difference between playing laser tag and paintball wars. It usually hurts to get lit up with paintballs. Thus, all of the players are far more focused and invested in doing well.

Definitely consider going back. There aren't that many players on these days. When I checked the other day, there were only 30 or so.

So you can play with relative safety in vast chunks of the world, as either side.

> Well, Mandos sleep should have only come into play if you were killing other members of your 'side'. I spent a lot of time playing characters on both sides, killing and being killed in PvP, but always cross 'side', and Mandos sleep was never a thing.

I thought that was Valley of Morgul, not Mandos sleep? I could have sword Mandos sleep was something that could strike a high-level char not-quite-but-sort-of randomly, ostensibly to prevent spamdying. Sort of a "take some time to cool off, buddy" thing.

> Re: losing more than a whole level after dying: that and the other 'hard' things about the game really drew me in.

> I crave games where there are real risks, something substantial to lose. For most free games, that is going to be mean time.

I guess that's the key difference right there. I found the punishments excessive and, to make things worse, the ping was leading me straight into those punishment situations. I like having real risks, too -- that's why I think the latest changes in Conan Exiles are actually pretty good -- but I guess I disagree about how hard the punishment should be.

Ironically, I felt that way back when I had oodles and oodles of free time. Now that I'm married and have a kid, I have even less of that, so you can imagine that I'm quite leery of going back to a game that threatens to punish me by taking away huge amounts of something I have so little of ;)

At any rate, I might try it again. Few games have ever scratched that itch for me.

EDIT: To clarify, it's not the safety that I need in a game. One of the best moments I still remember was when I had to run away from a BN who surprised me while I was trying to do Malardil. Safety is overrated. Losing more than a full level because I'm running from a big bad PK player and I mobrip? That's depressing ;)

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