Why Does Everyone Have to Go Fast?

[Nebless]

Not wanting to derail a thread i'll bring this to a new one. Here are two quotes lifted from the 'I wonder if melee is a lost cause' thread:

"The inherent problem being we cant go back to playing slow. How do melees get the buff they need without slowing everything way down? They need a lot: socialize melee run speed, "get over here lassos" for literally pulling mobs, "get over there" lassos for snap teleport style racing to mobs, and most importantly, price of persia style time stop devices so they can run up on mobs and kill mobs while party does not ruin it."

"The reason why this game sped up so fast is because everybody left. Only the grinders left who have already done every single quest 20 times on this toon, gotta go fast."

Why does everyone have to go fast? And I'm not talking about just here in DDO. This is also something I've seen in single player games; players creating mod's so the character movement can be sped up and the reason given is always 'because the game moves too slow', 'game is great except it takes forever to get to anywhere' etc..... etc.....

Now the second quote I can actually understand; You've ran that one dungeon so many times you can do it in your sleep. You know where all the MOB's, Traps and shiney's are so why poke along and do it slow. OK fine, but new players want to do them fast too, so what's their reasoning.

Now I'll use Haste potions prior to some fights, but not for just general moving around. I've found here and in other games that the unaltered movement speed works just fine; be it in Home Sweet Sewer' where you need to lead the dogs out, game speed keeps you just in front of them, or other games where base speed will let you run away from NPC enemies.

I understand that RL itself has sped up and maybe people can't handle the slow route anymore, but maybe there's a reason the game speed is set as such, be it to let you assess the situation, be able to find traps/items or just to keep within the normal rendering capabilities of middle of the road computers.

I've just never understood the 'need for speed'.

[droid327]

Because it takes you literally years to get all the relevant PLs for a character. Efficiency is endgame.

[jskinner937]

Movement speed is literally the most universal defensive stat in the game.

Speed helps you get to a deadly caster quicker to kill.

Speed helps you evade combat to quickly heal.

Speed helps you reposition mobs when you are ambushed.

Speed keeps you with the party.

Speed helps you twitch fight.

If you do not invest in at least striding on any toon you are at a huge defensive disadvantage. Even tanks get a speed buffs because it’s important to survival.

[Maldorin]

Because grinding is like taking medicine. It's not fun and it tastes bad, you just want it over as quickly as possible.

Of course I never even tried grinding past lives. I find grinding for gear unpleasant enough I can't imagine grinding out something like racial past lives. I would quit the game long before finishing.

[Maldorin]

Movement speed is literally the most universal defensive stat in the game.

Speed helps you get to a deadly caster quicker to kill.

Speed helps you evade combat to quickly heal.

Speed helps you reposition mobs when you are ambushed.

Speed keeps you with the party.

Speed helps you twitch fight.

If you do not invest in at least striding on any toon you are at a huge defensive disadvantage. Even tanks get a speed buffs because it’s important to survival.

Huh. I thought op was talking about zerging.

[Emerge2012]

As Droid said it's more about efficient use of time in gaining past lives and loot aka character power.

For a newer player I wouldn't worry about it much initially. In fact I'd fully recommend new players on a new toon run something that has evasion and trapping skills and then run EVERY quest you can on the first life on Normal in order to learn the nuances of the game and specific quest mechanics/spawns/whatever. 2nd life or a different stronger character step it up to Hard but still continue flower sniffing so you can learn the quests.

Once you've seen most of the quests in the game for the 3rd or 4th time you'll start to remember trap placement, mob spawns, what works what doesn't, and then you can start speeding up a little. Or if you're comfortable being a non-factor for a little bit just jump in with the r1 leveling crews and let them know you're learning and pay attention to everything that happens.

But in the end speed will always be a factor and even those that want to flower sniff will find themselves sniffing less and less as time goes on. It's pretty basic human nature to get good at something through experience and then start making a repeated process more efficient.

[bracelet]

19 races (including iconic)
14 classes
12 destinies

(19 + 14) * 3 + 12 * 4 = 147 past lives.

Roughly 4,000,000 XP per life (let's say).

147 * 4,000,000 = 588,000,000 XP. Let's just call it 600,000,000.

That's why people hurry.

And that's just one toon.

P.S. SSG is adding another class soon, for a nice even 150 past lives.

[Drunkendex]

Movement speed is literally the most universal defensive stat in the game.

Speed helps you get to a deadly caster quicker to kill.

Speed helps you evade combat to quickly heal.

Speed helps you reposition mobs when you are ambushed.

Speed keeps you with the party.

Speed helps you twitch fight.

If you do not invest in at least striding on any toon you are at a huge defensive disadvantage. Even tanks get a speed buffs because it’s important to survival.

This is correct, but due to lag and delay is actually barely relevant.

[SuperNiCd]

Seems pretty obvious to me that the root cause is that the producer of the game made a decision to compromise the game's integrity in exchange for cash flow by selling p2w items in the store: boxes, xp pots, raid bypass timers, tomes, trees, etc.

Once the original, carefully designed goals were much more easily attained, they had to replace them with stupid, grindy goals like getting 100+ past lives and counting reaper points. Those take a lot of time (by design), and to the extent they can't be circumvented with p2w items, obtaining them comes down to (r)xp/min. So it's about quest efficiency, of which speed is a big component.

In my mind, the better question is why did the player base accept this? I guess the answer is that many didn't, which is why the active player base is so small and every 3rd topic on this forum is calling for a server merge. Most of those who are left just seem to be trying to keep up with the rat race as it unfolds with each release - the current rat race de jour is 12 new epic lives. Better hurry. Don't want to fall behind.

[AbyssalMage]

Not wanting to derail a thread i'll bring this to a new one. Here are two quotes lifted from the 'I wonder if melee is a lost cause' thread:

"The inherent problem being we cant go back to playing slow. How do melees get the buff they need without slowing everything way down? They need a lot: socialize melee run speed, "get over here lassos" for literally pulling mobs, "get over there" lassos for snap teleport style racing to mobs, and most importantly, price of persia style time stop devices so they can run up on mobs and kill mobs while party does not ruin it."

"The reason why this game sped up so fast is because everybody left. Only the grinders left who have already done every single quest 20 times on this toon, gotta go fast."

Why does everyone have to go fast? And I'm not talking about just here in DDO. This is also something I've seen in single player games; players creating mod's so the character movement can be sped up and the reason given is always 'because the game moves too slow', 'game is great except it takes forever to get to anywhere' etc..... etc.....

Now the second quote I can actually understand; You've ran that one dungeon so many times you can do it in your sleep. You know where all the MOB's, Traps and shiney's are so why poke along and do it slow. OK fine, but new players want to do them fast too, so what's their reasoning.

Now I'll use Haste potions prior to some fights, but not for just general moving around. I've found here and in other games that the unaltered movement speed works just fine; be it in Home Sweet Sewer' where you need to lead the dogs out, game speed keeps you just in front of them, or other games where base speed will let you run away from NPC enemies.

I understand that RL itself has sped up and maybe people can't handle the slow route anymore, but maybe there's a reason the game speed is set as such, be it to let you assess the situation, be able to find traps/items or just to keep within the normal rendering capabilities of middle of the road computers.

I've just never understood the 'need for speed'.

Do you value your time? Do you have a life outside of DDO? Do you have a job? Do you enjoy doing other things? Do you have a family?

I'm not a zerger by definition. I have yet to do 1 through 20 in 14 hours (or basically a day).

Neither am I a "Flower Sniffer." There is absolutely nothing from 1 to 28 that has any "real" value any longer. The developers have ensured I can't sell it on the AH. And if it has any playable value I can always come back to acquire it, when it is "easier."

I know this isn't the answer you want to hear, but this is basically the answer you will get in some variation for why players move "rapidly" while they are on.

[Nebless]

I know this isn't the answer you want to hear,

I wasn't looking for any specific answer at all, just curious on why people seem to think they need to speed through many (and not just DDO) games.

I'm not on the TR hamster wheel, nor do I ever plan on getting on it so while I understand that as a reason for those, it's not one that speaks to me.

I do value my time and will set anywhere from 1 to 3 hours aside for my gaming, but I don't rate quality, by quantity. If I only get 1 dungeon in and had fun that's good enough for me.

Yes I'm a flower sniffer and think the journey's more important that getting to the end.

I thank everyone for responding, it's given me a new look on the subject.

[TedSandyman]

Not wanting to derail a thread i'll bring this to a new one. Here are two quotes lifted from the 'I wonder if melee is a lost cause' thread:

"The inherent problem being we cant go back to playing slow. How do melees get the buff they need without slowing everything way down? They need a lot: socialize melee run speed, "get over here lassos" for literally pulling mobs, "get over there" lassos for snap teleport style racing to mobs, and most importantly, price of persia style time stop devices so they can run up on mobs and kill mobs while party does not ruin it."

"The reason why this game sped up so fast is because everybody left. Only the grinders left who have already done every single quest 20 times on this toon, gotta go fast."

Why does everyone have to go fast? And I'm not talking about just here in DDO. This is also something I've seen in single player games; players creating mod's so the character movement can be sped up and the reason given is always 'because the game moves too slow', 'game is great except it takes forever to get to anywhere' etc..... etc.....

Now the second quote I can actually understand; You've ran that one dungeon so many times you can do it in your sleep. You know where all the MOB's, Traps and shiney's are so why poke along and do it slow. OK fine, but new players want to do them fast too, so what's their reasoning.

Now I'll use Haste potions prior to some fights, but not for just general moving around. I've found here and in other games that the unaltered movement speed works just fine; be it in Home Sweet Sewer' where you need to lead the dogs out, game speed keeps you just in front of them, or other games where base speed will let you run away from NPC enemies.

I understand that RL itself has sped up and maybe people can't handle the slow route anymore, but maybe there's a reason the game speed is set as such, be it to let you assess the situation, be able to find traps/items or just to keep within the normal rendering capabilities of middle of the road computers.

I've just never understood the 'need for speed'.

I'm with you 100%.

People who zerg and grind choose to do that and then complain that they hate it. They don't have to play the game that way. IT IS A CHOICE. It actually takes a lot of the fun away from the game. They admit they hate doing it, but they do it anyway. So WHY do they do it is really the big question.

There is a group of elitests who don't really enjoy the game, they simply enjoy being better than everyone else. You can have fun playing at R1 if you aren't overpowered. You can have fun playing at R5 if you aren't overpowered. But there is a group of people that only care about playing at R10 and being able to look down their noses at everyone else. They sit around patting themselves on the back saying how great it is to be the best and complain about people who aren't able to keep up.

They also like playing low level reaper and destroying everything just to make themselves feel better. The fact that it ruins the game for everyone in the group who isn't a zerg freak doesn't matter to them. It makes them feel good to have ALL of the kills, so they do it just to laugh at everyone else.

Then when something comes out like racial tr, they have a choice, to zerg or not to zerg. They could play through normally. Enjoy each life. Try new things. Take their time. But they know their buddies are going to be zerging it. And if their buddies zerg it, then their buddies will be more powerful. They wont be able to play with their buddies, so they HAVE to zerg it to keep up. If they dont zerg and grind they will no longer be in that group of elitists and the game wont be worth playing for them. They never really enjoyed playing anyway, it was just the joy of being better than everyone. And if they don't zerg they wont be better than everyone.

Being in that group of elitists is EVERYTHING to these people so they really don't think they have a choice. That is why many of them will say something along the lines of "This game is just becoming a zerg fest" and quit. Or they will complain about how the hamster wheel of racial tr (or any of the other grindy things) needs to be fixed.

It truly doesn't occur to them that they can simply play without it. It doesn't occur to them that they don't have to have all the racial past lives to enjoy this game. They don't have to have ALL of the best equipment as soon as a new pack comes out. They don't want to zerg anymore, but being the best is ALL they know. So it is zerg or quit for these guys.

Unfortunately, many simply do the zerg, remain in that snobby group, and then whine about grind incessantly in the forums as if it is anything other than their own twisted values that makes them do it.

[hinton]

It's a social issue. Everyone is in a hurry. Try to go the speed limit and see the results. Nobody takes time in life to enjoy. People would rather watch 15 minute vid then a movie rather watch a movie then read a book etc... Let them raise their blood pressure its not for me.

[Enoach]

It is a social phenomena.

Example, when people first learn a new language one of the common complaints they have is that a native speaker speaks "too fast". Part of that is because the new speaker is still learning and has the "translation" phase. However, over time and as they practice more this becomes less and less an issue.

This is very true about repetitive tasks.

Keep in mind there is a segment of the population that typically only runs certain quests (This has become very obvious to me running Quests on the Hardcore server). Because of this they learn them quite well, knowing ins and outs that allow them the optimal path to completion. If you do not have nearly as much experience running that quest you will be slower then these other people.

So speeding up as you progress is a natural progression.

The other part of this has to do with the mentality in which a player approaches the game. It is not a bad mentality to want to strive to be "good", but I do tend to see what usually happens is how someone defines "good". At one point in DDO there was a trend where you needed to have X number of HP at certain levels or you "sucked" - It drove the player base in a specific direction which eventually lead to the Toughness feat being seen as mandatory on "All" builds. Later this direction was modified.

If you approach the game as a "hill" to be climbed you tend to lean towards aspects of the game and its mechanics that help propel you up that "hill". If you approach the game from say a more social angle, you are looking more for groups to run with and create stories of "near failures" that were pulled out of some lucky haversack .

So as I pointed out speed is a natural progression in development.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

It is a social phenomena.

I agree, but I blame Blizzard for that. They invemnted "zerging" as such.

And now, everyone assumes that "zerging" is the NORMAL play style !

There's a thread over there in the SWRTOR forums telling tales of people zerging through everything - failing - and then blaming other grozup members for their failing -
- and not considering themselves playing - zerging - too fast without keeping in mind the possibility that there might be the need to be more cautions because of certain game mechanics ...

In SWTOR "skip pls" has become almost a meme, because people don't want to watch cinematic dialog cutscenes. They want to zerg on instead.

They don't even take a look at how much efforts the devs had put into crafting an interesting scenery - it's like "throwing perls before the swine", as the saying goes -

- all they want to do is going to the end loot container as fast as possible.

And this is very selfish behaviour : Merely thinking of the loot. Nothing else matters.

The dungeon could be one long greyscale concrete tunnel - they would zerg through it like nothing because to them only LOOT matters.

And thanks to Blizzard for implanting the idea into people's minds that RPGs are abbout NOTHING BUT LOOT.

No story, no social skills, no skills at all, only loot.
And the feeling of having beaten something. Or maybe not even that.
Only loot.

[Maldorin]

And now, everyone assumes that "zerging" is the NORMAL play style !

It might also have something to do with the players running the same quest for the 985th time in order to grind out the 147th past life.

After the first 100 times or so, if you can go fast why would you not go fast?

As a non-zerger your choices are pretty much these:

Solo or find a friend that also doesn't like to zerg.

Join groups and zerg as best you can/ try to keep up

Join zerg groups and just go slow and don't keep up.

Join groups and go afk and make a sandwich while the zergers complete the quest.

All viable options.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Going fast is more fun than going slow.

[Kaboom2112]

I've just never understood the 'need for speed'.

That is why nobody will remember your name.

[Fenrisulven7]

That is why nobody will remember your name.

No one knows yours.


I'm with the OP. I've enjoyed the occasional zerg - when done right, it's like an art form, precision and perfection down to the second.

But too much of current play is like spending the afternoon fast forwarding through all the Dr Who shows. Why? Take the time to savor each one.

Everyone is rushing to cap to TR to rush to cap to TR to rush to cap to TR to rush to... Why? To what end?

[Kaboom2112]

Everyone is rushing to cap to TR to rush to cap to TR to rush to cap to TR to rush to... Why? To what end?

It weeds out the slow players who contribute nothing to the group.