f13.net

I've been scoping the F13.net community on and off for the past few years and out of all of the so called "virtual world blogs, discussions, depots, etc" I find this site to have the most easily accessible and honest information I have yet found.  So I'd like to thank the F13 guys right off the bat.

<snip>

If you'd been watching the site, you'd know better than to kiss some ass and then post a goddamn advertisement.

Fuck.

Thank you schild. Their site is the same ol' same ol', fine if the world needed another hard-to-read site aggregating the same damned information as everyone else.

Well I certainly feel like a jackass now.  I apologize if I caused any offense.  For what it's worth it was unintentional.

Feel free to delete this entire thread.  No need for me to waste your time any further.

Your time has only just begun!

(http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/6501/snipsniplm4.jpg)

don't apologize! unleash the schlidcannons and shoot to grill! ride it to the den with a cowboy hat, yeeeee-aw

(http://www.joblo.com/images_arrow_reviews/arrow-petsemetary.jpg)

First we played with thejeni, now we'll play with you! HA HA HA!!!

(http://smiley.onegreatguy.net/hello.gif)   :-)

I made this for some other thread and then ended up not using it.  I'll post it here for no good reason.

(http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e121/GrimDysart/lol.jpg)

I need f13 wallpaper.

And like a WUA bobblehead.

Top right of the page.

Wasn't this in the den already?

Maybe the guy was a newbie here, did he really deserve a ban?

I don't think he got banned. Or did he?

Maybe he didn't, but I thought he was a registered member at the time of the post.

He was posting up a storm in one of the News threads yesterday.  Giving everyone shit about how they should talk nice to him and not use Haemishisms around him as they were offensive.  Don't think he said anything ban worthy though.  It's possible he deleted his account, if you can do that, he seemed fairly upset by it all.




Also, when they update the Oxford English dictionary I want full fucking credit for Haemishisms.

No one banned him.

He's just a pussy.

Yeah, his crybabymeter went off at cockstab. Cockstab is tame for the interwebs.

If I came off as a crybaby that wasn't the intent.  You gave me a bit of shit, I respectfully asked you to tone it down, you agreed, and I thought everything was all good.  A few other people made some comments about how I should be able to "handle" it and gave me some additional shit, which I did take Schilds advice and ignored.  I simply said I was here for some good discussion and I feel I've been pretty consistent since I leveled with the moderators about the whole "link posting" situation.  I don't see why you all continually find it necessary to rub salt into the wound.  At this point you guys are continuing what was previously a resolved situation by just straight talking shit.

If asking someone or someones to keep it clean in a reasonable discussion is being a "pussy" then I can see how I would come off as King Pussy himself.  If not then just cut me some fucking slack guys and let it go...honestly it seems a bit childish at this point no?

F13 is only good for external entities when they have something really good or really bad on their hands. Its like that scene in the movies where the desperate man wants to contact that one guy he's heard of who can do the job, but at a terrible price. You don't call on f13 unless you want a world of crazy to come along with it.

(http://img54.imageshack.us/img54/619/worldofcrazylg0.jpg)

Why does the f13 logo look like it belongs to some crappy band a fifteen year old would listen to?

You still play the same game you were playing when you were 15.

I don't think you should be judging.

Also, it's not the logo. It's just what happened when I was putzing around. The logo is still in the upper left of the forum.

Angst with wings, awesome.

When you come to a new forum, it's a pretty unspoken rule that "when in Rome" applies. I'm a member of several intarweb forums. In one of the Star Wars geek forums I frequent, harsh language is not allowed, and neither are trolling, flames or anything else that would violate it being a kid-friendly environment (despite the lack of any kids, because it's a massive geek board). Here on the other hand, you need to have a thick skin, as we have a very different culture where varying levels of profanity and joking insults/threats (and the occasional serious one) are part and parcel. I haven't read the other thread(s?) but if Haemish threatened to cockstab you in the eyeball or some such, I'd suggest you just ignore it till you're better established here, at which point you can tell him to fuck the fuck right fucking off. Fucker.

Schild, any plans to get that logo tattooed on you?

How is he not grief titled "King Pussy himself" yet?

Dude, haven't you figured it out yet? The internet is serious pussy.

What can I say about F13?  It's really my favorite website in the entire universe!  I love the irreverent banter and sly wit these keyboard jockeys produce.  And I especially love the staff, they're AWESOME.

I can't agree with this more--there is most definitely an "f-13 hazing phase" that goes on with new posters, and if you roll with the punches, you do wind up with some pretty damned intelligent people discussing your ideas--if you can take the heat, there are some damned fine munchies to be had in the kitchen ;)

Welcome to F13. We eat our own young.

I don't know when people decided to start putting a hyphen between F and 13 but that shit has got to stop.

I don't walk away from any of this bothered by it.  If I did I would probably just pack my bags.  My natural reaction though in these situations is to just to make respectful requests and I think it is a pretty good policy overall.

And just to clarify, I'm not one of these people who has a problem with profanity or negative comments.  I see this and participate in it myself every day.  But when someone is openly talking shit to me rather than react in a hostile manner I do what I mentioned earlier.

(http://www.clisham.com-a.googlepages.com/270913946_efa38ec3d8.jpg)

Is that an attempt at a grammatical correction or something?

I don't think he attempted it, I think he did it.

So.... I think I may have missed the hazing phase since most people around here were in the "I told you so" phase with VG flopping.

I think you got lucky somehow.  Too many newbies to haze for a few weeks there.

As for the grammar, I think you could go either way with that.  Lindorn's version sounds more intellectual.

It's hard to haze 176 people in 2 weeks.

So Lindorn is an intellectual...

(http://www.clisham.com-a.googlepages.com/Kittensaves.jpg)

Choose the incorrect response:

a) When someone is openly talking shit to me, I do what I mentioned earlier.
b) When someone is....reacting in a hostile manner, I do what I mentioned earlier.
c) When someone is....react in a hostile manner, I do what I mentioned earlier.

 :hello_kitty:

Both "react" and "reacting" can be correctly used in that sentence.

This statement coming from someone who's primary method of conveyance involves "kitty" pictures? ;)

I just solidly showed you that you were wrong, incontrovertibly. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

You can't use the construction is react. You can only use the construction is reacting. It isn't my fault that when you were cockstabbed, the perpetrator hit the part of the brain related to grammar.

If I would have said "rather than exist in the state of reacting" it would have been grammatically correct, therefore "reacting" as an assumed state I would also think would be grammatically correct.  And while I'm sure you are pretty good at this, I'd like to see some proof before you claim "ownage".

I think there is definitely validity in what you are saying and I just saw you above post (which I had originally missed) and see where you are coming from.  I do think that while "react" may be a better choice, I'm not yet ready to go as far as to say that the other choice is incorrect.

I would also argue that the construction is "is openly talking shit" to which the "is" correlates.

I got distracted by the kitten pictures. However, now that I am here to lend the vast weight of my expertise, all will be well.

I might have missed the initial sentence construction, but I take it the problem is with this sentence:

"But when someone is openly talking shit to me rather than react in a hostile manner I do what I mentioned earlier."

The problem is one of tense (it's the naughty word "is") "Talking" and "react" are in two different tenses -- 'is talking' implies an ongoing and immediate action, whereas 'react' implies a past or hypothetical reaction.

Any of the following variants would be correct.

1) But when someone openly talks shit to me, rather than react in a hostile manner...
2) But when someone is openly talking to me rather than reacting in a hostile manner...
3) But when someone has talked shit to me, rather than react in a hostile manner...

"Is" is ongoing, and react reacts badly with is in that format.

I know you're relieved I've weighed in on the subject, and you can return to your kitten-posting and word-inventing. (Haemishing is a good one. I approve!)

Lindorn, your best bet is to change the subject to something innocuous.  Did you ever play UO?  Talk about trammel for a while, any charts you have to hand might help.

Thanks. I know I'm not the only one here who got a B+ in High School Engrish II.

I do like Haemishing. I think that Haemishism, Haemishing, and Haemished should all be added to the Nazi spellchecker.

He made fun of the kittens, he has gone too far.

Please tell me one of you has tracked his IP address back to Grunk's lair of cockstabbery.

http://www.guildcafe.com/member/Lindorn (http://www.guildcafe.com/member/Lindorn)

Normally I like turning people's names into words - particularly verbs, but there's a precursor here - prior art if you will.

(http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9972/gallerystevestifler1sx5.jpg)

I was ready to write this day off as a comedic loss for F13. Thank you for the hail mary!

This grammar discussion has the Great Old One's approval.

(http://www.picburst.com/uploads/0d8e0b29f3.jpg) (http://www.picburst.com)

My ego approves of this raping of the English language.

And just for Lindorn, I'd like to introduce you to your friend and mine, Mr. Comma (http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2003/20030707h.jpg).

OHHHHH charts... where?

Yea I hear you on this.  I see the validity in that.


Lol thanks man I appreciate that.

More like fuck in the ass. Prev

Morat got to the "missing comma" thing before me.  Class dismissed.


Your Charm has improved!

Don't ever make me agree with WUA again you fuckheads...

Well like I said if what I have said brands me a pussy then I am certainly King Pussy.  Hell give me the label why not.

Got a matching Avatar.  Don't back down on me now.

Dear Lindorn,

This is the problem:







You have 18 posts. That's a third of them. Another third is a grammar fight. The other third is you apologizing.

Step back a second and think about that.

You're basically telling people how you expect them to talk if they don't want you to take your ball and go home.

Seriously, what the hell is that?

Don't tell people to be mature. We're probably the most mature site out there other than gamerdad or whatever. And that doesn't count. Because they have kids and probably say stuff like "poopy" and "Man, I used to have time to play games."

Don't tell people what you expect. No one gives a shit. For reals.

Don't tell people what kind of conversation you'll involve yourself with. No one cares. It's best to just Talk and Not point things out.

The fun part was having him say he wouldn't get involved in that kind of a conversation and then trolling him into it anyway.  He was being very pretentious and got punk'd on it.  Srsly, what kind of reception should he have expected with, "Hay guyz!  I gots betterer MMOS talk on my awesome red and black themed webz!  But you gottsta play nice!"

Also, the website theme, red and black?  Did he just forget the pentagrams and deth metal icons?

Hay guyz!  I gots betterer MMOS talk on my awesome red and black themed webz!  But you gottsta play nice!

What?

Damn, how'd I miss the gangbang of Queen Pussy Herself?


This thread was doing ok until Grammar Wars 2007.


And I kinda like the new guy's avatar. He might make it. Any bettin' folk around here?

I had a friend in highschool who was the self-proclaimed "Poontang master". He actually called himself that. Somehow, it semi stuck and our new nickname for him was Poondaddy.

I think you should be forever known as "Pussdaddy". The daddy of all things Pussified. King Pussy is reserved for WUA's carebear ass. Er wait, maybe cmlancas since he missed his hazing.

Schild I see where you are coming from, but at the same time I have posted normal pertinent information elsewhere as well.  Out of all of the posts you brought up....how many of those were merely responses to someone else giving me hell?  Hell between this post and yours there is 2 or 3 MORE posts talking shit.  I haven't pretentiously "dictated" to people what kind of conversations I'm willing to have.  That honestly is a straight up unfair description of what I've been saying.  All I've asked is to be respected on a basic human level...and the reason I keep having to restate this until I'm blue in the face is because there are still people provoking me and talking shit.

I haven't said anything standoffish or started any fires.....I'm simply responding in a pretty logical and easy going manner.  Does it make much sense to kick someone in the balls 5 times and then when he asks you to stop you call him a whiner?  I don't expect anyone to "talk a certain way".  I just expect that people would show me some respect.  I shouldn't have to stress that.  If no one wants to do that honestly man that's ok....but to claim that I'm arbitrarily responsible for any of these ridiculous discussions is just ludicrous to me.

Did you just accuse me of being pretentious and then fabricating this load of crap as if it was anything even remotely close to what I've said on these boards?

Wow.

Respect is earned on the Interwebs. It starts with not posting links to your websites as your very first post.

That I can and will take full responsibility for.  And if that has got me crucified then so be it.  It was an honest mistake and wasn't intended to cause a disturbance.  So again I offer an apology.

There is no such thing as an apology on the interwebs. Instead, you must endure weeks of jeers and a lifetime of shame. You'll always be known as The One Who Linked First, King Pussy.


Where is the grief title? It makes me sad that he doesn't have that one yet. The masses clamor!

I'm waiting for it.  I better not be wearing this avatar for nothin.

Lindorn, how good do you think Darkfall will be?

Not happening. Grief titles are earned around here too. Your fuckup was too run of the mill.

Pfft, you're the fag who thinks TNG is better than DS9.  You can watch Picard teach Planet Pussulon the value of sharing through the power of political correctness and gentle hugs if you want.  I'll take Sisko punching Q in his motherfucking face, thank you very much.

It's really tough to say honestly.  Since so little information exists about the details of the project it is difficult to say.

The things we do know are that.

1. The project is very well funded
2. The team started "official" development in 2003 (so it hasn't been that long in the scheme of things...hell look at TR)
3. They have a lot of good talent (although admittedly 0 game design experience).  Most of their talent comes from guys with previous experience designing AI for military simulations and programming for said computers/equipment.

I will admit that I have a lot of "faith" in the Darkfall Online project specifically because I really think that arbitrarily or otherwise these guys have the right idea.  I have confidence in that idea, but it takes a lot of skill and understanding of the intricacies of virtual worlds to really implement properly.  I think people's ideas of what MMORPG's can and should be are experiencing a paradigm shift away from things like level treadmills and "item whoring".  While it may be a slow process, Darkfall definitely is an example of what I believe more virtual worlds will be like in the future.

It encourages a rich and open ended social dynamic as well as allowing players the freedom to participate in a world that they can actually impact in the long term.  "Good" is a relative term but I think a lot of people desire to make a difference in the worlds they play in and want the ability to explore more than just the menial and trite aspects of MMORPG's.  How many more EQ's can we play before the industry starts to implode on itself?

So what will make a game like Darkfall "good" to me is the open ended game play.  Of course a system of consequences for asshats is necessary, but at the same time allowing player organizations to dominate the happenings of a virtual world.  Things like politics, diplomacy, economics, intrigue, social dynamics, interaction, adaptation, military conflict, building, trading, and most importantly changing.  No instances or other divisive barriers that remove players ability to interact with each other.

I think Darkfall will be great if it delivers.  Will it deliver?  I don't know, but I definitely think they have the right idea and are following the advice of Richard Bartle in the opening pages of his book.

"Before we ask ourselves what classes we want to have in our game, we should ask ourselves why we should have classes to begin with"

It is really important that more devs start questioning the status quo, because a lot of less-than-optimal choices have been made in the past.

See, Lindhor, you didn't make a mistake. Posting a link to your website is fundamentally a neutral act on the internets. What was a misjudgement was your inability to predict that said 'neutral' action would be seen here as marketing and propaganda and pretentious etc etc. As I said, F13 is a special crowd. It has a fair degree of internet acumen, for certain, and your 'mistake' was not seeing that its earned that acument precisely by taking your type of content and beating it to a bloody pulp.

Furthermore, you opened yourself up to widespread derision in thinking you somehow would be spared.

F13: Noone is spared here.

(http://smileys.on-my-web.com/repository/Laughing/lol-056.gif)

I wanted someone else to have a crack at that one first, but I want to add my piece too:

 :rofl:

Seriously Lindor just ride it out, or fuck off for a week and come back and just post in threads where you have something useful to add most of us will have forgotten all about this.

Or go away.  I hate being the 8th person on this page to explain how the internet works but its like you just don't get it.

Fucking Darkfall, jesus wept man, HE WEPT FOR YOUR MISGUIDED SOUL.  Even I'm not retarded enough to try to say nice things about Darkfall.

Friggin Darkfall????

Jesus Christ on a crutch.

(http://www.soberit.hut.fi/T-76.115/02-03/palautukset/groups/VaporWare/de/kuvia/vaporware.jpg)

(http://shadowmage.plinkomedia.com/images/Admiral-Ackbar-trap.jpg)

'xactly---and you fell right into it.

This is an extremely unforgiving crowd--and you got pushed with someone crouched behind your knees just now :(

You've got two options:

1) listen to Hoax's advice, and be careful regarding questions out of the blue--they will probably be designed to see if you can detect the traps.

2) Pull a Grunk (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=10469.0), and eventually die off in a fit of frustration or embarrassment.

Personally, I'd just accept the hazing, ignore it completely, and once they (we) realize you aren't responding, they (we) will move on to other more vulnerable targets and you'll be accepted by default.

Note: If you follow my advice, you'll be one of the few (if any) in the past several months to do so. Not quite sure why--it worked for me :P

If I wanna watch ugly bitches and freaky looking bartenders, there's a few bars here on the bad side of Flint I can hit up. At least there I know something might happen. Thats more than can be said for Deepthroat Nine.

And Picard was just a pussy so Riker could be a bad ass. Well, kind of a bad ass.



Hey, isn't this another thread WUA? hehe .....  Anyways, schild is right (I find myself agreeing with him too much lately). You tried to dictate what conversations you would allow. And about the grief title thing. I thought grunk kinda deserved one though :)

You are one (http://www.clisham.com-a.googlepages.com/EvilLeprechaun.jpg)

Ugly bitches?  Tasha Yar looked like Dolph Lungren in a dre...  Well she didn't wear a dress, she just looked like Dolph Lundgren.  Wesley's mom wasn't exactly a MILF either.  The only passable woman on the show was Troi in her tit-shoving bodystocking uniform, and frankly even she wasn't really all that great.  As for freaky bartenders, bitch please.  Two words:  Whoopi Goldberg.


Riker just highlighted how pussywhipped the entire show was by demonstrating how very little it took to be considered a badass by local standards.  Sisko makes him look like he's wearing a fucking dress.  I mean, have I pointed out yet that he literally punched out Q?  Socking an omnipotent being in the face is badassery of positively Kirkian proportions.

Shit, Kira was more badass than that god damned fat eunuch Riker.  Kira would fuck Riker's shit up in a fight.  Plus she was hotter than Troi.  I mean she didn't have her tits pushed up to her chin 24/7, but she just seemed like she would be a fucking freak in the sack.

In conclusion, I am right and you are wrong.  While DS9 was far from a perfect show, it owned the shit out of TNG.

 :-D

Hey it's not like I wasn't being obvious about it, I even mentioned trammel earlier. 

Sorry Lindorn but even if by some miracle Darkfall makes it to release, there's no way it will be any good.

Needs more rapping (http://www.toastedpixel.com/comic/clips/lawandorder/rappingleprechaun.mpg).

Leprechaun != Troll.  They're fae.   :mob: :hello_kitty_2:

That was not trolling, that was some bad ass evil leprechauning.

Shut up and talk about something more interesting than this crap. Continuing to circularly post about your own posts is boring.

Grief title? Pah. Do you have anything to talk about beyond the "memememmemememememmeme"? If so, don't bother to reply to this post. Go involve yourself in another thread and try to be interesting.


OH GOD LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE YOU FUCKING COCKMUNCH!

It's a Star Trek nerdfight.

I'll take Windu over all those guys. At least when he fucked shit up, it stayed fucked up. Erm, right until he fucked up by trusting Little Orphan Annie. Damn. What a dumbass.

I would argue your points, but I couldnt make it through the drivel that was DS9. And I tried to like it.

ANYWAYS!

Back to our regularly scheduled flaming!

Trammel.

It's over Slayerik, I have the high ground!

Stop dispensing the advice, this guy won't make it.  If the trolls/malcontents/idiots of F13 were the Batman villains' gallery, this guy would be Orca, and he is already dying in the same way.

Tell me more of this "Orca"...

After googleing it, you really don't want to know.  So DC and Marvel are both utter shit holes now, eh? Glad I don't read comics much anymore.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d1/Orca_%28comics%29_Deceased.jpg)

That's the exact pic I was thinking of.  As I went through the thread, the OP seemed increasingly like a half-eaten torso, and this just popped to mind. 

Lindorn how do you feel about Hero's Journey?

Aww, man? We're calling that one VW too?  Crap, I had some small hope it'd happen.  Simu does nice work.

I heard Dawn is gonna be top notch.

Well I figure it deserves honorable mention for being the Duke Nukem of MMO's even if it does manage to come out eventually.

Not as good as Duke Nukem Forever.  I tell ya, that game is gonna roxor!

EDIT: Curses!  Beaten to the punch with a Duke Nukem reference!

So, about the Phantom....

It was pretty obviously a trap and I thought about that beforehand.  I just figured I'd answer it because the guy who asked it was one of the few people on this thread that hadn't been a blatant ass yet.

Of course there were going to be 15 posts to the effect of "lololol vaporware".  It's pretty much the same everywhere you go on the internet.  It doesn't bother me.  At least you guys seem to be having fun in this thread, so I guess all is not lost.

Yea, but when people around here call things vaporware, they're mostly right.

As in, we're mostly right.

It's how we roll.

It may very well be.  I don't have anything to lose by exploring the conceptual design of the game though.

No, you have no pride to lose with that post. But we do have much lulz to gain.

(http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/352/cnimovieposterv2lk4.jpg)

Post on, brave soul, post on.

Edit: Clarity is hard fucking hard sometimes.

lulz are good for everyone.

I don't know that much about Darkfall.  Seriously I don't.  Can you give me a quick rundown of the main points that give it the potential to stand out from the crowd?  Your post above kinda assumes everyone here knows a lot about it and due to it's "reputation", I don't think that's true.

Im with ya. The last time I visited the site was like 2 years ago, previous to the smell of ozone that I now whiff when my browser loads up the site. Lets hear em!

Well I'd say it's reputation is pretty bad overall, but you can see that just based on the responses since I posted what I did about it earlier.  So I would assume that most people have heard of it and written it off as "vaporware" but I can't say I blame them, especially at first look. 

To list some points that will make it "stand out" from the crowd, you can probably find a lot of the present effects of such a system in a game like Eve Online.  Regardless of what you think about Eve-O; the politics, economics, and overall social dynamic are all driven by the players.  The players make choices about how to deal with each other and that in turn affects the game world.  That is a pretty prevalent concept in Darkfall as well.  The combat is FPS based which is pretty out of order for most MMORPG's.  So we are talking overall about a world that nurtures and encourages a diverse guild system and a rich social environment.  The focus will be there as opposed to on regularly updated raid/PvE content.  The advancement system will be skill based like Ultima Online and there will be no levels.  Supposedly this is one countermeasure for griefing (everyone is pretty close to equal footing) along with other things like the alignment system that penalize you for breaking your racial "specifications" regarding PvP.

There is supposed to be a pretty in depth physics engine with collision detection which is pretty innovative for MMORPG's.  You won't be able to "pass through" people.  This is intended to allow for player formations as well as being able to "plug up" choke points during sieges in strategic areas.  The devs have also claimed there will be a weight calculation system that will calculate momentum and weight on either side of a fighting formation to "push" back the opposing side.  This way players can gain and lose ground during a battle.

From what I've seen and heard I would liken the combat to the Battlefield series in many ways.  (FPS, when you die you are "incapacitated" until finished off by an enemy or revived by a healer")  As far as PvE goes the AI has been really built up and talked about by the devs as they plan to make monster spawns migrate and move in response to player movement.  Hunting too many of one spawn causes the creatures to recede and be "outpopulated" by other creatures.  (resources are not infinitely renewable).  Monsters only drop what they carry on them.  (Orc with sword and shield doesn't drop polearm).  The monsters also are said to respond to a players actions during combat; for instance a running player might see a mob pull out a bow and start shooting him on his way out.

There is a dynamic star and planetary system as well as the fact that there is nowhere you can't go in the world.  In WoW for instance you are essentially "caged" in to particular zones and you can't physically occupy any area of the world due to limitations.  Darkfall's world will be totally accessible in every spot to players.  The game will incorporate city building and territory control, as well as trade routes, resource mines, and other "empire building" tools.

As you can see this is pretty contrary to what most mainstream games offer and the list seems too good to be true, which has led many to say that it IS too good to be true and the whole thing is bullshit.  I feel like I'm in no place to make an educated decision either way and honestly like I said earlier it doesn't really matter.  What I enjoy is looking at the design concepts and how they impact the players.  In that respect even just hearing the ideas benefits my overall approach to gaming theory and virtual world design.

Holy fuck, did he just fall for the same trap twice in one thread? It would be hilarious, if it wasn't so sad...

I'd say it's pretty safe to assume at this point that I don't care whether it is a trap or not.  If I didn't want to answer the question....I wouldn't answer it.

ROFL. I was totally thinking the same thing. Thanks for brightening a Monday morning. Well played.

This just means they have an open pvp system, the politics form naturally because of the freedom the players have to act as they wish, the rest is just fluff.  What are the specifics, is it full open FFA pvp anywhere or there are set safe areas as with UO (towns) & EVE (Empire) or is true FFA pvp as with SB and AC1 darktide?  What about towns and cities?  Do the players build them all or are there a set number of capture the flag cities/castles like in L2?  Are there set factions, can you attack your own faction?  What's the situation on corpse looting?


It won't be FPS, they might want some twitch elements like AC1 but the servers can't handle FPS with mmorpg numbers.  EVE and SB can't handle more than a few hundred clients in one area and both of those have point and click movement systems.  What game engine are they using?  They aren't going to try and make their own are they?

Either it's an open pvp system or it's not, there is no countermeasure to griefing in a FFA pvp system so its silly to talk about one, you can just limit the open system with things like safe zones or factions.

Collision detection is already in the WAR beta (unless they dropped it as they knew it was going to be difficult).  Weight calculation, Jesus, they want a mmorpg with FPS style combat, collision detection and intend to calculate momentum...


Is it zoned and are there limits on player numbers in a set area?  EVE and SB both crap out with too many players, AC1 had a good system with portal storms to remove excessive clients.


So in summary.  Some kind of open pvp system (alignment means it starting to sound like factions to me), skill based advancement, PVE, raids, monthly updates, FPS (hello, 64 players in one area) collision detection (lets reduce that 64 players number), weight calculation/momentum (lets reduce the number again), Super AI (guess the server isn't busy enough), moving variable spawns & a lot of loot tables. 

Is there a set limit of say 100 players per server?  Because I don't see how all this is possible.  I also don't see any new ideas, the variable spawns were planned for the original warhammer online that got cancelled.  Reduced resources were in UO but think they got turned off as they were just a massive pain in the arse.  Also wtf is a "dynamic star and planetary system"?

Y'know, I was trying to figure out how long it's been in development, and I just can't recall.  They won "best of show" from MMORPG.com at E3 2005.. but honestly I can't recall hearing anything about it prior to 2004ish.  Hrm.

Either way, it's sure not likely to meet that "2007" release date they've got plastered on the site right now.

Atriarch is AFAIK the longest-developing vaporware MMOG besides Dawn, but neither are likely to ever be released.

Lulz, Darkfall.

[/quote]

Skill system vs levels:  I thought we had come to the conclusion a long time ago that skill systems were pretty much functionally equivalent to a level system?  Grinding out 7x GM <uber skills> is pretty much the same thing as grinding out max level,  as long as you make it such that the GM or max level toon has a distinct advantage over the unmaxed skill/level player.

Skill system versus level system isn't the problem.  The problem is the huge differentials in effectiveness between low and high levels/skill amounts.

More FPS characteristics:  Quite a few MMOs have huge amounts of FPS qualities now.  DAoC,  the last time I played it,  was getting pretty close to being a FPS in small scale and the zerg on zerg action. 

Player formations:  A pipe dream.  Formations are by nature unfun.  Do you play a football game to play an offensive lineman?  Because that's what your pvp would be.  The vast bulk of the combatants would be locked up in a formation,  while a few people got to run around and actually have fun.

Formations sound interesting,  at the time you make contact....  but for formations to work you have to move and coordinate the formation at all times.  Formations would turn a night of pvp into stick and follow for hours while some douchebag yells at you to stay in formation.

It just increases the amount of cat-herding.

Wow, lot of questions.  I'll do my best.


Skill systems have the potential to be just like leveling systems, however that isn't always the case.  It really depends how the developers intend to implement such a system.  Of course if a skill system is implemented in such a way that it is lengthy and time consuming (including the fact that it heavily increases the effectiveness of your character) then it will be for all intents the same thing.  So there are two things to take into account with %skill based progression.

1.  How much disparity is there between 0 skill and maxed skill?
2.  How long does it take to reach max skill from 0? (or how long does it take to be "effective")


Just because formations are an option doesn't mean that you are going to see two organized blocks of players approaching each other in tight units.  In Darkfall they have implemented manual blocking which essentially allows you to form a "shell" against an enemy group.  Coupling this with the idea of forming up at a "choke" point in a strategically advantageous area like in the gatehouse of a city, and you could have a lot of possibilities here.

Arthur:

1. Players build cities.  There are other cities that are the "starting" cities for each race, and do provide some protection for newer players.  There are no safe zones.

2.  There are set factions based upon race.  However, the only forced impact this has on you is which situations you will take alignment "hits in".  For instance the Alfar race are enemies with everyone, therefore they can attack anyone without taking an alignment penalty, and everyone else can attack them with the same lack of penalty.  You can attack people within your own faction and can create totally ARAC guilds, although these guilds will be more difficult to manage and those who attack their own faction will take alignment hits (with the exception of possibly the Alfar).

3. Corpse looting is totally open like Ultima Online.  All equipped items and holdings drop upon death.

4.
They have not publicly announced the game engine or technical details about their server technology.  They claim their client is completed and they are awaiting a publisher, and that all technology is sound and workable.  They have hinted at new methods of server technology and data calculation but have given no details.  This is the kind of stuff that generally makes people skeptical, which is understandable.

The PvP system is open and I believe that a player social construct is the best tactic against griefers.  In my experience greifing is far worse in games that have stringent limitations on what a player can do because most griefers (bu nature) use those mechanics to cause further grief....


Dynamic planetary and constellation system meaning everything changes continuously and interacts in the atmosphere/sky/weather/etc.
To date they claim 10k players per server, although I have no idea what kind of technology they have behind the servers or communication like I mentioned earlier.  (They haven't stated how).  You have to remember too as far as the "nothing new" claim that Darkfall has been at least in the conceptual stages since 2001, so a lot of this was pretty revolutionary for it's time.  As far as I'm concerned innovation is anything successfully implemented in an MMORPG that detracts from the mainstream.

Your skepticism is going to remain in the area of server stability, lag, and the whole idea of 10000 simultaneous players in an FPS style MMOG environment.  I don't blame you as until recently this wasn't even seen as an option for most developers due to limits in technology.  I still have no idea how they are planning it but there are really only two possibilities.

Either they are delivering....or they aren't.  Again my number one concern here is the nurturing of a social dynamic.  Also I would disagree with you that politics are a direct result of an open PvP system.  I personally believe that economic scarcity is the main reason players will associate with each other on the political level.  Limited resources are the primary reason behind political systems in sociology.  PvP merely provides players with the ability to achieve their political and economic goals through force.

1999 was the year it was officially announced.

What modern 3D MMO nurtures a social dynamic? 

Eve Online...and that's about it for the mainstream.  I view that as a problem.

Full looting, unknown game engine, new server technology, 10k players per server.

Sounds a lot like this (http://wiki.onlinegamers.org/index.php?title=A_COMPANY_IS_AT_STEAK) little (http://wiki.onlinegamers.org/index.php?title=Dawn_HoC_No._1) game (http://wiki.onlinegamers.org/index.php?title=Dawn_HoC_No._2)

If Darkfall ever hits a public beta of any form, I'll be surprised. Atriarch is the right parallel already drawn.

Eve, ATiTD, SL, vSide, SB, and :nda:. But it depends on what Lindorn means by "modern", "mmo", "nurtures" and "social dynamic"  :evil:

On the rest of the stuff:

Going by years-old memory here, but didn't they have formations and player blocking in Shadowbane? And I know they had blocking in UO because they had to remove it due to all the easels blocking monsters :) Not impossible in this genre.

And on formations, anyone here who has ever been on a raid has been in a formation. It's just that they had to manually align themselves. "Formations" does not meet RTS-style force-people-into-a-box. It means gaining advantage by coming to a battle in some other form than a drunken zerg rush.

If the game is all about maxing out your character then a skill system can be the same as a level system in the sense that you still end up grinding. But there are still other differences.

In UO my main character was an archer and a mage. He used archery for fighting, and magery to travel around and heal. I'd kill things with my bow rather than spells, because I enjoyed doing that.

Only a skill system is likely to allow someone to make a character like that. Even if a designer in a class game did create a mage-archer class, they probably wouldn't also make a halberd-archer class or a mage-thief class and so on. UO gave you a lot of freedom over how your character worked, which I enjoyed.

(This is early UO - later they made different skills complement each other, such as lumberjacking and axe-fighting, which basically created classes by stealth as far as I can see. You were encouraged to choose certain skill sets rather than just picking the ones you wanted. But I am talking about the early days).

However, this did only work because UO was a game which you could enjoy without designing your character for maximum effectiveness. If I had cared about making him the biggest bad-ass ever, I would probably have designed him differently. But you didn't need to do that in UO - you could have fun with a slightly gimped character.

So it's true that if it's all about being the toughest then you need to choose the skill archetype which lets you kill quickest, which is for all intents and purposes a class. But I'd personally like to see more skill based games - in the right game system, they give you more freedom than classes.

Shadowbane had formations, that mostly just didn't work well at all. They gave no bonuses, they were just a more varied form of autofollow. As soon as one person clicked on the ground to go somewhere else, they were separated from the formation.

Formations sounds great for PVP, but in practice, not so much because all they are is autofollow with shapes. PVP would be better if formations were about bonuses for staying within certain radii of each other and the group leader, instead of forcing players to follow the leader's pathing. Also, with the small numbers usually associated with MMO PVP (under 100), formations are pretty much worthless because militarily, formations served purposes of communications, logisitics and morale boosts as opposed to being pretty marching patterns. The Greeks didn't marched like they did for a reason, the mutual protection of overlapping shields. Since most MMO's don't allow you to block for another person (without a special skill) or to dodge incoming attacks, formations are just unnecessary.

I agree Haemish I don't think there should be some "auto function" for formations.  I think the players should hash that out on their own.  Although I think bonuses that encourage the use of such formations would be a great idea.  That way the players have the immediate payback of said formation, without some confusing auto follow function that ends up just being a pain in the ass.


Yea I was thinking this same thing earlier.  I didn't mention Shadowbane because I didn't consider it modern....but then again Eve came out roughly the same time....so...I don't know.  Then you have second life which really isn't a game at all.  It's really all about those definitions as you say.

I think an easier solution is to give bonuses of various types (offensive, melee, ranged, defensive, resistances, etc) with a radius of effect.  Should people fight in close formation, they would benefit from such bonuses. 

Came back to this because you seem to have an overcomplicated view of it. 

Any open pvp system will result in politics, guild warfare etc, there doesn't even need to be an economic system.  If have a simple game with a single island hosting 200 mob spawns locations, add 3000 players in an FFA environment and you will see guilds/gangs form immediately to fight for control of the best spawns. 

You can influence what happens to a certain extent with resources but a total lack of resources won't stop gangs forming.  If you remove the 200 mob spawns, the players will just name sections of the island and fight over those instead.  I can't think of a single type of game where gangs/guilds won't form naturally when anyone can kill anyone else, safety in numbers and all that.

This is a great idea.

Those mob spawns like you said are resources that aren't large enough to sustain the entire population indefinitely.  Therefore scarcity exists.  If you take away those spawns the players will claim territory...because land is a scarcity.  Heck even glory or respect is a scarce resource.  My intent isn't to overcomplicate or state the obvious here, but simply that when you think of it in it's more abstract manifestations, it becomes clear then how cause and effect factors into player behavior.  If you understand that then you really have the opportunity to make a kick ass game.

So you agree that gang/guild politics are a direct result of an open PvP system?

No, I think politics result from the scarcity of resources.  I think this is more visible in open PvP systems because players have a direct means of forcing those political goals on one another.

What you think doesn't really have any bearing on the discussion. What does sociology say?

On another note, with the complete lack of safe spots in Darkfall aren't developers essentially removing the only thing that keeps the majority of EVE players playing the game? (Since we're comparing the pvp to EVE here.) How do people recover from catastrophic losses?

So if we make the island 10000 times bigger, plenty of land for everyone, no mobs, no vendors, no quests, no resources except land which is plentiful.  3000 players in a FFA pvp system won't form gangs/guilds with political dicussions that mostly revolve around kicking each other in the nuts?

If you consider WoW which is probably fair (resources, loot here I guess, reside in instances and guilds do not gather herbs/ore en masse) then no, there is no real politicking going on. Discussion mostly revolves around who pwned who but there is no real political discourse.

Yep perfect example of a place where there are no guild politics.  The reason they don't exist in WoW is because there is no necessity for them to deal with one another on the macro level.  All guilds have equal opportunity access to unlimited PvE content and gear, therefore they have no need to deal with each other.

In a world where you expanded the resources to cater everyone (your island) there would still be politics for sure.  But again concepts like "winning" and "honor" can also be scarce resources as there is never enough for everyone to "have them".  I do however believe that if you did expand your world to have unlimited resources that you would see a drastic reduction in macro level social interaction.

So you agree that gang/guild politics are a direct result of an open PvP system?  As "winning" and "honor" are player created concepts automatically introduced with the players and not coded.


No I don't buy that comment either, there's not much else for them to do except interact at the moment so introducing something they have to gather will cut it back, also have you ever played a networked RTS when everyone had maxed resources?  It's not peaceful.  Resources steer guild politics, help define the battlefield, location, strategy etc but the freedom of FFA ultimately is the reason that political interaction is required for that type of game.  You just can't seem to admit when you're wrong.  Those couple of lines you wrote about Darkfall  "politics, economics, and overall social dynamic are all driven by the players.  The players make choices about how to deal with each other and that in turn affects the game world", it's nice fluff but it can be shortened to just "FFA PVP", the rest comes naturally.

Do you want to talk about how over 90% of players hate FFA PVP now?

I just can't seem to admit when I'm wrong?  So because I disagree with you I'm wrong by default?  Give me a break man.  Why did you turn what was a nice discussion into a personal issue?

There are corporations in Eve Online that are highly involved in the political environment that exist in "empire" space where the option for "FFA" PvP doesn't exist.  And if you want to argue that someone could suffer the wrath of concord and kill anyway I'd argue that there is a miniscule impact by the "threat" of this.  Even war decs for most random guilds are a non issue.  So while I do believe social institutions are a natural result of human behavior I also believe that most of that is motivated by scarcity of some kind.

I should have said "conflict" is the primary result of scarcity in resources, instead of politics.  Because as you say politics can occur in most environments.  It is politics that puts a reign on those conflicts by default....therefore indirectly resulting from "scarcity".  So I will concede that what I should have said is "conflict" not politics.  However politics exist solely to bring order to the chaos of conflict.

"The players make choices about how to deal with each other and that in turn affects the game world", it's nice fluff but it can be shortened to just "FFA PVP", the rest comes naturally."

I don't believe this is true.  If the world were fractioned or instanced even with the implementation of PvP you wouldn't see this kind of gameplay....so your deduction that FFA PvP is the sole reason that all player politics occur is not accurate in my opinion.  There was no "fluff" about what I said.  If you don't like that type of gameplay I don't blame you or anyone else for that matter.  However like I said earlier I'm exploring the concepts, and I'd like to think I've done my homework.

Also this really has no bearing in our current conversation.  If you want to bring in unrelated games from other genres I could ask you why, assuming your theory, there is no politics between battlefield 2142 clans....after all the PvP is totally free and open right?

You've got it backwards.  Scarcity of resources is the primary cause of conflict.

Also, PvP doesn't necessarily involve killing your opponent.  There was plenty of PvP in early EQ without being on the Zeks.  It involved conflict over the scarcity of mob resources.

I did say that :D

Ok then I don't know how I misread that. I blame drink.

I think I'm confused as to what exactly you mean by 'politics.' As I understand it, you're using that term as it refers to the game of winning the favor of a group of people in whom power lies, be it a voting body or a governing body. In that context I don't really see how (individually) resources, economy, or open PVP have anything to do whatsoever with 'politics.'

In the context of an open PVP MMO where groups of people, guilds, vie for control of scarce resources without any restrictions on the conflict, I just don't see political interaction even taking place as I understand it.

[edit] I was forgetting the very important fact that more than two player factions are involved. In that case politics would indeed play a very real role in the gameplay.

In the situations we are describing I would take politics to mean interaction between organized groups of people.  (guilds interacting with guilds, etc).  Politics is the interaction on the micro level (within) between the population of an organized player group and on the macro level, between those groups as entities.

My overall point with saying what I have been is that players need motivation to interact with each other in an organized way.  (That isn't to say they won't on a smaller level otherwise).  In world of warcraft for example you have individuals vying for gear, power, etc.  Therefore a political dynamic exists within the guild.  However like I said earlier all guilds have equal opportunity access to the same content, therefore there is no necessity for them to deal with each other politically.  This is why in WoW there is no politics on the macro level in my opinion.

I just had a good discussion with a friend because I was confused and we basically came up with that answer. Anyway I still think having fully open nonrestricted PVP is a mistake but time will tell.

Yes exactly, see that's why I asked you to elaborate on Darkfalls system, are they planning for safe area's & factions etc.


Ok, that's a lot better.


It is fluff, it's the fluff they will try to use to get people interested in Darkfall, because territory control allows players to do all that nifty ecomonic & world affecting stuff as a direct result of the FFA PVP system.  Yes, If the world had factions, instances or safe zones it wouldn't have the same kind of gameplay which just reinforces my point.  I also didn't say FFA was the sole reason for all player politics, I just said FFA naturally creates player politics which you disagreed with.

It doesn't matter if I like a full FFA system or not, it's a niche market, personally I think they should have a central "safe" area like Eve.  That's because as I said earlier they are restricting their market for no good reason, you aren't going to argue over 90% of players hate FFA PVP are you?  How else would you explain trammel?

All hands to battlestations!  This is not a drill!

(http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e121/GrimDysart/fight460.jpg)

No MMO is or will be 'fully open non-restricted PVP'. Rules are forced on you by the community, be it guild standings and/or the fact that you will get ganked if you leave home alone. You dont fuck with your neighbor, as long as they are like minded. Mistakes can cause wars. Players create their own restrictions, cause even for hardcore PVP guys everyone needs a rest.

Fully open turns into GvG warfare, but with far more politics and intrigue. See Eve, and to a less extent UO.

There should always be a safe area. You make much less money in safe areas, but you can get back on your feet. This was the same for UO. You could go turn dough into french bread in complete safety and make a little money if you wanted to. You fight for control of the rich areas. Its basic shit. It works. I'm still not sure whats so hard to understand about it.

Oh yeah, it's FUN as well. If you're not a pussy.

I will say that 90% of players don't like FFA PVP.

90% of that number have never tried it.

90% of that number wouldn't like it.

90% of you are as confused as I am at this point.

90% of you wish I would just STFU already.

HAH. WRONG GOOD SIR. MOAR LIEK 100%.

Chalk one up for schildy!

Sup.   OpenPVP needs a less-steep learning curve.  People probably hate it because they are assraped into unsubscribing by the old guard.

Aye, but half the fun for the old guard is assraping teh noob into unsubbing.

Brings to mind the old symbol of the serpent eating itself (circle, head consuming tail).

Time has told this. It's not a "mistake" in the literal sense. It just has very narrow appeal. This has mostly been because the game mechanics in an open PvP environment within statistics-based games really benefit those with a lot more time to play and manage their stats than those who do not*. To counter the time advantage, games have gotten more contrived, to the point where either the game is a market niche with a very dedicated playerbase (Eve) or PvP is devolved to mere sport (WoW).

* Sorry for the specificity of that sentence. But I feel the lack of FFA PvP traction is at odds with very concept of longterm statistical and holdings growth for the type of player attracted to the latter experience.

Does anyone else agree that EvE has earned the right to NOT be called niche ? If Eve is niche, then so is EQ2, UO, DAOC, etc according to subs.  I know 3 other guys here at work that play. 2 PVP and 1 is a carebear. Everyone else plays WoW.

Eve is not niche.

0.0 gameplay IS.. so long as 2/3 of the playerbase still inhabits .5 and up.

True dat.

I was referring to the game itself, not its playerbase.

And I was telling you that games like shadowbane aren't fully open non-restricted PVP.  Unless you liked starting wars.

Its all fine and dandy to have a ruleset, I'm just saying its the players of the game that turn out to decide what some of the rules are in such an open environment. To me, those are usually the most enjoyable PVP scenarios.

It's all about the competitive set and the aggregate size of the genre (which has grown by a lot in the West and is now finally understood to be way very much larger than it was measured even two years ago). EQ2 was designed (resourced) to be more successful than it was, or they'd not have gutted core gameplay things at Pub 19/20. UO was absolutely a success at launch, then overshadowed by EQ1. DAoC absolutely was a success at launch, though never surpassed EQ1, and it did become something for a specific niche playerbase later. I've said before that CCP would love numbers that SOE would consider a "failure" (for being below expectations). That Eve is surpassing some of the those numbers is great for them. But one could argue that's more about SOE missing their mark.

Meanwhile, Eve has grown. They have expanded by attracting more players, just as WoW expanded the genre by attracting more players to an EQ1-like experience. But they have not gone omfgmass either. I don't feel Eve is casual in any real sense. The very UI itself screams investment on orders not required for a WoW or GW, and walking an avatar around isn't going to change that.

But this isn't the first time I've overthought something ;)

Slayerik, I think things are changing.  I think players are becoming more and more accustomed and interested in social based emergent gameplay as opposed to the "carrot on a stick" stuff we keep seeing in the mainstream.  People keep screaming niche! niche! niche!  It's just adversity to change...the market has it and so do the players in my opinion.  If gamers really hated PvP so much you wouldn't see the monumental success in games like Counterstrike that encourage this type of gameplay.  I don't believe the average WoW player is indicative of the overall MMORPG game population (there are surveys in which the majority of WoW players state that it's their first MMO and that they wouldn't play another).

At any rate people have been screaming for years that Eve is a niche game, the problem is games like Eve are going to slowly gobble up these other types of games over time (in my opinion).  I think it just requires a degree of acclamation for the populous.

This whole idea that FFA PvP (I don't like the term FFA btw) favors people with more time is ludicrous.  How can you possibly think that an FFA PvP model favors time over skill more than the mainstream "grind/gear" models all around you?  When people say this it just blows my mind.

All those Counterstrike kids want is a quick disposable killfest without consequence, not some 24/7 persistent territorial free-looting gankfest.  In other words, something far more similar to a WoW battleground than what you're thinking of.  And fuck you for making me point this out on these boards yet again.


Go read in the EVE war thread about "alarm clock ops" and "mandatory ops" and the importance of timezones, then get back to us.

In addition to what WUA just pointed out, the type of PVP you've been discussing here favors time over skill for one singular reason.  Control of resources.   The guy who can stay on longer wins every time.  Kicking his ass with your leet skills? He'll just hide until you logout, then take the resources when you're gone.  You see this in Planetside on a daily basis and in EVE all over the place.

Also, if you aren't considering WOW players your average player, then the market for PVP of any type kind of takes a nosedive in the MMO realm.  I'd rather think that WOW shows how popular PVP can be when it's relatively consequence-free for the loser.  Much like Counterstrike.

Arthur has it right here.

The reason WoW doesn't have guild politics is because nearly everything (at upper levels of importance) is instanced.

Outdoor world bosses had Politics.

Which we can also call "scarcity of resources" and all agree with each other, at a point. But you're taking the issue a few steps further along the line. Land is a rescource. Being able to not get killed every three seconds is a rescource (call it "life"?), etc. You don't need certain specific rescources to be created for the players.

Though I think you need to account for persistance. In Arthur's island example if you have a new island and a new group of players every day politics will be constantly reset and never develop. (Unless you might consider 'bragging rights' outside the gameworld itself a rescource - I'm sure we can come up with other examples also)

The more persistent the rescources to more likely you are to get more political developments. This is where the game design for "social blah blah" would come in.

ALSO:


King Pussy is sounding like that other retard with his nonsense words of a while back.

Think about what you say and don't use stupid fucking expressions like that. Or you will keep getting cockstabbed.

I think the main starter city(s) were protected rather notably by the faction system and etc, so along the lines of a "safe" city if not 100%. Though I havn't paid much mind to Darkfall in a couple of years and it might have changed..

Land isn't a resource unless it contains resources. Otherwise it's just a place to be.

You're using a very literal interpretation of the word (or, a specific interpretation) that isn't 100% true. Nor is it overly applicable giving the conversation that I was refering to.

What do you mean you don't like the term FFA?  You don't like the term so you can ignore all the negative factors that come with it, while talking up the positive world changing aspects?  You say you have a lot of faith in Darkfall, which doesn't have any truly safe areas (apparently even the starter cities can be attacked right?).  So you want to want to refer to FFA as "social based emergent gameplay", that's great, whatever floats your boat.  But without safe areas or a lot of friends, a new or casual player can not compete or even hide from players who have invested more time in the game.  More time invested means more advantages, more friends, better equipment, better skills, increased knowledge of the game.  All MMORPGs favour time over skill and they all have grinding even the skill based ones.

Not trying to be rude, but you might want to back off a bit. It's an excellent description of a phenomenon first seen in EQ 1 (from my perspective at least), and demonstrated extremely strongly in ShadowBane, and currently Eve.

The "politics" around wars, events, and subterfuge that happen external to the game itself (forums mostly) is almost certainly social based emergent gameplay, and just because you don't like the term doesn't mean it's wrong.

Or it's ridiculously e-peeny phrase to describe "PEOPLE DOING NORMAL SHIT BUT IN GAMES."

Just because guns and lasers and other various shit is involved doesn't mean it's groundbreaking or deserving of some Terra-Nova-y phrase.

To reiterate, it's not about PvP unto itself, or there'd be no FPS, RTS nor Sports genres at all, nor the modding community. Rather, it's about PvP within the contrived meant-for-PvE rulesets that come from the RPG days. You can get better at an FPS game. You can only acquire better in an RPG one. That means a different type of competitive environment , with different people having different advantages. In some cases, those advantages are insurmountable (ie, you can't invent more hours of the day and most normal people don't get fired nor divorced to gain advantage). In others, there's a belief that can be (ie, if I practice FPS games enough, I can evolve beyond fodder).

So it's not about hating PvP. It's about hating the type of PvP, for the environment it is in.

Ok, so "social based emergent game play" is sorta redundant, but otherwise it's spot on. Every game has rules, but MMOs are rules within worlds. Developers cannot anticipate everything a player will try in an offline game. Imagine trying to foresee what a few thousand people can do concurrently. Heck, the main reason, as you note, why politics are slightly less in WoW is because the whole world is smaller, by virtue of being almost completely compartmentalized for groups far smaller than the thousands vying for that FBSS.

Social based emergent gameplay?  Maybe emergent social behavior is more apt?

Emergent is just a five dollar word for natural behavior dictated by the combination of simple rules though.  The classic example is bird flocking.  Birds flock because they have simple rules about distance that they follow when in a group.  People forming a line to get through a doorway is another common example.

Yes, you put people in a group and you get group behavior.  Include scare resources and people work together to share the resources amongst themselves to the exclusion of others.   Um, duh?  See my third grade World History teacher if you want to learn where to start.

King Pussy threw that out there like it was some new paradigm of amazing.  Really it's yet another buzzword.  That it happens isn't as surprising as the apparent number of people who fail(ed) to expect it to happen.  Fuck, the entire CONCEPT of MMO is that "We shall create a framework wherein people shall experience emergent social behavior".

Sorry, 'social based emergent gameplay' as a term is a (redundant) failure to understand even the basic premise of WHAT A GAME IS.

But it's a phrase that synergizes the paradigmatic shift of virtual interactive possibility spaces.

(http://www.monstersandcritics.com/artman/uploads/scanners1_001.jpg)

I'm still standing by my definition of people doing normal shit in a game.

You can challenge me on that.

But you'd be wrong.

Raids are jobs. Your equipment is the furnishing on your house. And guild fees, auction house, etc are taxes. Also, you Start and Level 1 and Die at some indeterminate age. Everything inbetween is just normal shit also. Arguments, etc. And they mean less than deciding what you're gonna have for dinner tonight. Even if that decision changes the entire economic focus of Eve, EATING is still more important.

MMOGs are fucking broken, as-is. You can assign whatever word you want to that shit. And I'll still be right.

I'm surprised you still allow yourself to post about MMOGs :)

And I can't believe four chosen words have generated even this much conversation. Dislike the guy or whatever, but the fact is that the reason it's a relatively new term is because most people don't crack open a history book to see the easy and stupidly-obvious connections between all the new-shiny-never-seen-before behaviors that happen and crap they were doing in Jericho (the real one). There are no firsts. Ever. The idea that "new to them" means "new to everyone" is so pervasive in our culture though I've long since stopped getting pissed about it.

I'm actually not pissed that chumbag over here thinks it's new.

I'm pissed that he used Business 2.0 style fuckery to describe "DOING NORMAL SHIT."

I don't know that I can agree with the "doing normal shit" since anonymity allows most gamers to do shit in games that they would NOT normally do given "normal" levels of accountibility. 

You are correct. As I've said before, the social part is just natural, it happens in games that aren't even built with social components, such as FPS games. Why do people form clans in FPS? There are no real resources to speak of or fight over, other than efficient gameplay, so why form clans at all? Because that's what people do.

Wrapping it in buzzwords just makes it seem like overintellectualizing wankery.

Forum-emergent bullshit, as it were.

I agree with you and schild, but I wanted to dispute this point.

FPS clans are formed for largely the same reasons Guilds are formed in MMOs. It is about resources,  just a different type. Clans are looking for consistent performance either on a personal/ego level or in brackets/tournaments. Guilds are looking for consistent acquisition for their members to increase their aggregate performance at future acquisition. Both methods are far better served by having a consistent group you can train up with and grow to know and/or trust.

That's the long way of saying it's because we do it in life too.

I don't mind the discussion. It's nothing words, politic and business speak as you like, that I am annoyed about. And what other in this forum also get annoyed about. You don't have to use wank-words to describe things just for the sake of it. Sounding like a press release doesn't really facilitate decent discussion.

( See this book: Death Sentences: 'How Cliches, Weasel Words and Management-Speak Are Strangling Public Language'  by Don Wtson for some discussion on this issue. Note that the book itself isn't all that great beyond the initial discussion it raises. )

As I said earlier in this thread. 'Rescources' here is being understood too specificaly. Positions on competitive ladders, bragging rights, envy, power, etc etc are all things you can consider 'rescources' in this vein. Whenever there is something that two or more people consider of value, the right to call themselves 'the best', for example, then you will see this competition taking place. This is a social component. Note, for example, how schild posed the screenshot of him owning in that Zombie game in the other thread - you might think that game has no social components but it does. Simply being a multi player game gives it such.

Rescources is not just gold, silver and 'loot', it's much much more (or less, depending on your viewpoint).

The point I was trying to cover is this:

How else do you describe players spending in some cases more time posting about the game than actually playing the game? When I lead my nation in Shadowbane, a fundamentally necessary part of "playing the game" was posting on the forums--establishing points of belief, diplomatic treaties, answering challenges, negotiating conflict resolutions, and a host of other "emergent activities that were social in nature" that weren't core game mechanics within the game itself.

Can someone come up with an equally descriptive yet less flamboyant phrase to describe this? I'm honestly curious.

Posting about all games is nearly as much fun as playing them.

You're talking to living, breathing, humans (human, most of the time) who share an interest with you.

As humans, we seek conversation. I can say that, because anyone who reads or posts on a message board seeks conversation.

A bond. What have you.

The reason people stay in MMOGs past the honeymoon period is other people.

They'll still talk about it on boards. See: SW:G.

So, less flamboyant?

People like talking.

Well, first of all calling such activities "emergent" is not only false, for such activities have existed in games from the get-go, but it is also redundant. Even if they were only emerging now the activities themselves are not necessarily emergent - that is just the stage they might currently be at. So it would be much better to say that there has been a rise in "social based gameplay".

But of course that is still very vague and doesn't really isolate the point of discussion we're trying to isolate.

We might instead describe it as "social-politics as gameplay". That is, where the political aspect of social interaction around the game (within and without) is an attraction - deliberate or otherwise - rather than a consequence.

But to really describe this is detail we're going to argue over these terms too. Such a discussion - attempting to coin an expression to describe something we havn't described before, will result in such a back and forth until we've decided on appropriate terms. And it might be that we'll agree the the words we're using currently aren't adequate and that we need to generate a more specific and technical language for these general concepts, through these discussions, before we can come to this agreement.

This is why most specific fields have their own language, for discussions within the field. But that language is not decided upon by the first guy to come along and coin a phrase, and it is not used appropriately when trying to communicate with those who aren't members of the field familiar with this particular language.

Using expressions such as "social based emergent gameplay" might begin to have some meaning if we discuss it for a while and agree that it is an accurate term for what we're attempting to describe (and I don't agree it is), but just throwing it out before we get to that point confuses the issue and is an impediment to genuine communication.

Let me know if that made any sense.

That's called metagaming (if you need something more precise than people liking to talk).

When people play games they tend to metagame, some even like it more than the game itself.  In Shadowbane you tried to control public opinion and put out fires (sewing Fear Uncertainty and Doubt was an important component of many successful national fronts).  Playing poker one might try to entice the other guy into laying down in response to your bluff or swooping into your feigned weakness.   Playing Basketball or Football one might thumb their chest, trash talk, or otherwise mock your opponent's weakness or lack of game.  Each of these behaviors is outside the established rules of the game, but they are intended to influence the run of the game none the less.

Metagaming isn't new, nor is it limited to online games.  And it happens because people like to mess with each other.  The context of the game just provides a measurable impact of one's metagaming effectiveness.

Edit: Spelling, still hard.

On the subject of phrases that don't really add anything to the discussion.


An example of metagaming from the Eve forum.

http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=527

Metagaming is a thousand times less precise than people liking to talk. Economics was metagaming in SWG, as was watching resource location. Inter-guild politics is metagaming in Eve. Playing the card game in EQ2 will be metagaming in EQ2. Also, talking about shit in a game on a forum instead of in the actual game can be considered metagaming.

But, SPECIFICALLY, what he's looking for is "birds of a feather." People who like to talk about one thing must like to talk about other shit. Here's the thing, VERY VERY few people talk more on forums ABOUT a game than they do play the game. But people on forums talk much more about the game AND OTHER SHIT than they play the game. This is because they want to interact with likeminded individuals. It's not metagaming at that point, it's being human.

Though, I suppose working in the online gaming industry can slowly kill that side of you while you search for the perfect virtual world and forget that you're living in it already.

How is it false? There is a point in time when weddings and funerals did not take place in virtual worlds. There was a point in time when kiting, perching, monster blocking, and trains did not exist, neither as an activity nor as a term. These play patterns were largely invented by players and then either featured or removed from future games. Heck, I read once that friggin' song twisting in EQ1 was more a result of a mistake in programming than something intended by the designers.

The way I understood it, "emergent behavior" was coined to label activities that the designers did not intend for the game, and which resulted in new behaviors.

Exactly.

Select quotes from the Wikipedia article on emergence:

Seems like some of you are calling mechanics-twisting and exploitation as "emergent behavior" while others are protesting calling social activity and meta-gaming "emergent behavior." 

You're not discussing the same things at this point.   

The original protest was calling social activities as emergent behavior, not twisting, kiting, etc.  Those are mechanics aspects, not social ones.

Darniaq was simply trying to stress the "things that designers didn't plan for becoming gameplay". Personally, I agree with you and twisting is probably on the far line of "emergent"--it was just unexpected. It very well could be argued successfully on both sides however, since the concept of having multiple spells active all at once form a single bard was not something the designers planned.

Which is exactly what schild and I said. Thanks for agreeing with me.  8-)

Here's the goddamn problem though.

People aren't creating more complex shit.

Am I not getting through to you all? Emergent behavior is the type of bullshit you talk about when you don't want to get anything done in a design meeting. It's the kind of words you throw around to impress Investors who like FEELING SMART. It doesn't mean a fucking thing in games! People in games just act as they'd act in real life given the same circumstances.

How about this, you can call it "emergent behavior" but you say that with the full understanding that it simply implies that people will do what they do, in any system.

As for meta-gaming, well, that's a pretty easy one, isn't it? Anything a player does to support his fun in the game or support the main "game" of a game, without it being the main game can easily be considered metagaming.

Stephen, I figured why those 4 words set us all off.

IT'S BECAUSE WE COULDN'T PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE.

This is the problem with using the word emergent. It is so general we are all right and wrong at the same time. It adds nothing to meaningful discussion.

This is the point of the complaint.

I think he's gone now, pity I was on a mission to get him talking about trammel, guess it was before his time.

I'm not sure how Stephen managed to quote the relevant points of the emergence article and yet still miss what it means.

Emergence is the collection of rules that when applied creates a superset of complex behavior or patterns.  Social gaming is not emergent behavior.

100,000,000 Termites, each one building according to innate rules that results in a cohesive 30 foot high tower is emergence.  A flock of birds that turns simultaneously to avoid a threat as though some force guided the action of every bird simultaneously is emergence.  People in different crowds filing into lines going in alternating directions to walk through each others center mass is emergence.

Saying, "I am going to form a group of friends and we shall all play together to accomplish common goals" is not emergence.  It's planning.

Different perspective. Fundamental game play (treaties, politics, diplomacy) that self-generates outside of the delivered media (the game itself) is both:

a) An emergent property of a system, in this context, is one that is not a property of any component of that system, but is still a feature of the system as a whole.

and

b) An emergent behaviour or emergent property can appear when a number of simple entities (agents) operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviours as a collective.

That's straight logic, and while you may argue that to "be emergent behaviour, it has to do more than that", that's completely within your rights. Doesn't make you correct (and doesn't make me correct, either).

And "fun", and "good", and "MMO", and "crafting", and "player-driven economy". We're a genre of labels nobody agrees on :)

If you're using the term "emergent behavior", it's not really "emergent behavior" anymore, because you're planning for it. Now it's just "contrived" or "directed". You don't sit in a design meeting and say "ok, we'll just leave that one up to the players and see what what happens, EULA, TOS and Lawyers be damned" unless you're Linden Labs.

Look, I know some people don't respond to high mucky-mucky stuffed-shirt suit speak, but a) language is fluid; and, b) it helps train folks to be able to talk to high mucky-mucky stuffed-shit suits. Someday when code jockies are controlling the purse strings on big ass budgets we might get back to "player does A, result B happens, and if that's not the case they're cheating so ban their ass".

Until then, count your blessings that we haven't begun using words IP developers use. Christ, even I have a low threshold for that abstract stuff. "But Bobo wouldn't do that! His {clearly never defined but entirely invented at that moment to make some stupid irrelevant point to win ego points} family didn't bring him up that way back {at some just-invented previous point in time that'll be hastily scratch into some Powerpoint in about 6 minutes} in {some place that'll be entirely reimagined if this IP ever goes to the big screen}.

Oh, I agree Darniaq, it's perfect for those sorts of MEETINGS. But here, comeon, it's just more bullshit to cut through. Bullshit that 90% of the people here can see coming a mile away. Especially from someone who started a NEW website about MMOG theory and design.

I disagree that the given definition is is applicable in this context.

The guilds in MMO's are planned constructs, that the developers knowingly leveraged existing internet infrastructure (i.e. they consciously decided not to provide guild forums) as a cost saving mechanism does not make the fact that they exist anyway 'emergent' behavior.

Eve's devs planned for extended groups to form and claim ownership of systems, they planned that battles would be fought between those groups and they anticipated that the stronger groups would be more organized and thus provided mechanisms that can only be exploited by large groups of well organized players (Titans, stations and et al).   They also provided numerous mechanism to facilitate the formation of those large organized groups.

The ENTIRE design of the game (and all MMO's to a greater or lesser extent) was directed toward creating this style of game play and every participant is a willing and knowledgeable actor.  The complex behaviors seen in EVE among groups didn't emerge from the components in the system automatically so much as they were enacted by the conscious will of every individual involved.

To my understanding that is the direct polar opposite of emergence.

But that's the point I was trying to make. We're not a bunch of Devs who've agreed on these terms between ourselves and can thus throw them out willy-nilly. Unless we're having a closed discussion with those who agree to these terms and understand them using them has no point. Now that the conversation has gone a little further (and we're still arguing over definition a bit) we might all have an understanding of what Lindorn meant when he used the term, and thus using it again might have some meaning where it didn't before, but that's now.. and he said it... before...

Wow I didn't know this thread had devolved into my favorite topic of nerd rage (word usage).


This is the proper usage of the word.  If you hear someone use the word seriously and you think it means something else, then you are wrong.  It has nothing to do with being "new".  Edit: It also has nothing to do with being unplanned for, although unplanned for emergence is supposed to be the best kind as far as investors are concerned.

Schild is right that it's just crap for business meetings though.  Most likely when game investors hear "emergent" the words "stuff I don't have to pay for" pops up in their head and dollar signs start spinning in the location their eyes once occupied.

Indeed my knowledge of this word is strongly related to my desire to own and wear money hats.

Wow.... Sorry I couldn't reply earlier but it seems all I missed was another onslaught of all of your vitriol.  Social interactions between players that utilize the tools within a game that result in events the developers DO NOT EXPECT IS CALLED EMERGENT GAMEPLAY.  I did not overblow the english language, I did not use words that did not accurately describe the concepts I meant to convey.

It's a terrible shame that you fill in the holes in your arguments with blatant personal attacks and insults.  What's even more sad is that a good chunk of it comes from staff members from this site, in response to someone that has done nothing but tried to be a productive member of your forums.

Eve's Devs planned everything?  Have you even followed that game?  Have you seen the many community uproars as a result of meta gaming relationships with devs, player owned banks, and other things that really have never before occurred in an MMOG environment?  You've got to be insane to make a statement like that.

:inluv:

(http://www.misanthropyonline.com/images/violin.gif)

Rejecting emergent behavior after the fact as too obvious and rejecting evolution as too unobvious: two sides of the same coin.

Yes, but are you intrigued or appalled?  :-D

I'm not sure how you read what I said and managed to twist it into that bit of retardery.  I said that the actors in the eve meta-game are conscious of their behavior and act in a directed manner within a framework that was created for exactly that purpose.  Last time with the classic examples, birds flocking, their combined individual behaviors make for an emergent complex behavior.  IF the chief bird sqwaks, "Alright!  Everyone turn left!" and all the birds turn left it's not emergence.

You are very confused if you really think cheating and scandal is evidence of emergence.

Oh and I missed the part about things that "really have never before occurred in an MMOG environment". That's merely a lack of scope, not a lack of actual occurrence.

Maybe CCP didn't plan for the relationship between Devs and some ubers, but the entire Eve experience, from client to development, is as fertile ground for abuse as any other game (like, say, the recent issue where a PvE character was moved to a PvP server in WoW, or the volunteer program from UO, etc).

Scope != Actual

But we don't need to devolve into a history lesson in this thread. :)

One of your arguments is that Blizzard supports communism? (http://revolutiong.blogspot.com/2007/05/scrubs-have-won.html)

That was hilarious.

It is gameplay that was not intended by the developers....therefore emergence.  whether you like it or not it fits the definition.


I am sure that communism would seem to be the point of that blog to someone who lacks reading comprehension.

I disagree no game to date has actually approached ruination as a result of large amounts of emergent events other than Eve.  They are actually flying people out to Iceland now to audit CCP games to avoid any more massive community panics as a result of misconduct....tell me when this has occurred before?

Thanks for the tangible contribution to the discussion btw Darniaq, seriously I appreciate it.

You're welcome :) And in that spirit, I need to point out the rather long and inglorious history of CSR disasters that were a part of the earlier days of this genre and its precursors. Eve is not unique in having to deal with imagined or real uprisings due to perceived or real abuses. It's more poignant now because the genre is much more populous with a lot more people who haven't been around since the beginning, but that's just a question of scale.

Some of this stuff actually brought real legal action, not just the spin of Eve and them finally recognizing the lack of their own skills on the dev team in macroeconomics.

List in a bit. Family duties :) For now, look up UO volunteer program, Blacksnow, anything involving Second Life.

Yea I've been reading about this child porn thing with Second Life.  That's a huge example right there.

SL's a good example of an environment specifically designed to let players do whatever they want (within the confines of the toolset) and letting them "own" it after a fashion. It's really more a platform than a "game" per se, so wouldn't really come close to "emergent". It just is.

The Blacksnow thing is more interesting in my opinion. We'd need the resident counselors to explain it better. But iirc, Blacksnow sued Mythic Entertainment because the latter group banned employees of the former group for RMTing. Blacksnow thought they could get reinstated or some such because their livelihood was shut down. It was a pretty quick case of course.

But what I find interesting is RMTing in general. Long tradition of gaining virtual goods and selling them for real cash. There's pretty much always been a market for such in games that allow inter-player trading. That could be considered "emergent", as it is an unintended consequence of tools given players in a game and wasn't really planned for. But nowadays there's a whole segment of the genre that does plan for it. They just call it micro-transactions. And that practice is pretty old, just previously relegated to a portion of the world that many in the West (including myself at the time) didn't consider.

See, this is bullshit.

Developers who don't figure out what players will do, especially in a world where 4chan, not4chan, 7chan, somethingawful, and YTMND exist just means that developers aren't in touch with what the hell is going on.

Your definition of emergent is silly to me simply because developer's not expecting something is their fault.

The first thing I thought of when I heard of Second Life was 900 foot tall dildos and a land where furries could roam unchecked (they should be tagged like dolphins, imo). Child porn probably would have been 4th or 5th on my list before the game even hit beta.

There's something to be said about expecting the worst from people when you give them the freedom to make their own content.

That said, even in Eve they should have expected what they're getting with staff members in regular guilds and politics set up as they were.

It's not emergent gameplay, it's just not the IDEAL developers had come up with.

Back a few pages when I said "it's people doing STUFF, regular stuff," I should have been more clear and included the fact that it's on the internet. So, regular stuff becomes amplified to fucked up stuff that would get you punched in the face in real life but brings out the epic lulz on the internet.

Huge?  How is it huge?  I thought they were just trading stuff and using Second Life as a chat room/forum to meet each other?  Isn't it the same shit that's been going on in IRC for like forever?

I wouldn't argue with you on this in a million years.  I think you are 1000% correct here.

Schild we are on the same page here, I'm just not coming at this from the angle you think I am.  Emergence is just a word used to describe something that happens beyond the intents of the developers.  Meaning "we'll make this open forum area in Ironforge so that people can hold weddings and whatnot in a cool open space", is not happening, rather they just put it there for looks.  I'm just throwing at a random example that doesn't happen to be real in this case.

I'm not saying developers shouldn't expect this stuff....hell most of the things I discuss and write are wishing that developers would be far more aware of the deeper consequences of their design choices, however regardless of whether or not developers are, or should be more aware of what is or could happen in their worlds, anything that happens to use a certain set of tools from their design set that ends up resulting in something they didn't intent....is emergence.  That's all I'm saying.


This is sort of misleading though....there isn't really a political system "implemented" in Eve per se.  I mean honestly at the time Eve was released (shortly after SB) all they had to really go off of as far as what to expect in an environment similar to this was what had happened in their own beta (or maybe Shadowbane's)...so while they did put the tools there to encourage this...there is no way they could have anciticpated completely what happened.

Unless you want to argue that they should have read up on politics, history, economics, and sociology to predict the human behavior beforehand.  I would agree with you on this btw, but unfortunately a lot of the problem is most developers don't get involved much in the academic side of things...if they did I think we'd see more complex virtual worlds than ones available today in the mainstream.

Having a word to describe the tunnel-vision of developers is sickening to me. That pretty much sums it up.

It's a huge example of emergence....again emergence isn't some complicated theoretical fringe concept....it's pretty simple.  Of course anyone would slap their head and think "duh" but it still serves the discussion.....I don't think I or anyone else here talking about emergence meant to convey it as if it's some crazy ass "super new" concept....it's only being discussed now because everyone jumped on my ass the moment I mentioned it.....people jumping on my ass has been responsible for the direction of this discussion since the getgo :p.  Not that I mind, it's been a great one minus the insults.

Fuck man, what did I say back there, stop doing that shit. Fuck.

Well the term goes back to the MUD says honestly, back when these things were fresh and new.  I agree that virtual worlds have gotten to a point now that you'd think more of this would be taken into account, but it isn't unfortunately.  I used the phrase to convey a point about MMOG theory, trust me when I say I'm the first one to open my mouth about people in the gaming industry not "thinking ahead" about the results of their design concepts.  I'm just as much a disgruntled MMOG'er as the next guy....

Sorry man I've got an ego too believe it or not, and making comments like that is the best way to get it off my chest without firing right back with shit on the same level... so unless you'd rather I just feed the flame with my own illogical and immature bullshit, let's just call it even dude.

LL was not designing a game. They designed a collaberative CAD environment. They didn't think that shit through any more than Alias thought through some of the movies and games their Maya studio would contribute to. And LL tries to absolve itself by saying the residents own their creations (IP and licensing and all), because SL is a tool.

But everything you say is correct when it applies to game development. The times "emergence" is used is usually fairly innocuous, like the examples mentioned earlier. The darker side (ala that LambdaMOO incident) is unfortunately categorized in the same fashion. It's nigh impossible to use that as an excuse anymore though, and it sickens me as well when or if it is.

This isn't an aspersion on the whole genre though. You can get this kinda shit from any game with any amount of player control in it.

Perhaps you can give lessons.

Lesson 1:

Learn when you're being lead to make a fool of yourself.

Lesson 2:

Re-learn when you're being lead to make a fool of yourself.

Lesson 3:

Re-learn when you're ...


You probably see where this is going by now. That's because you have excellent reading comprehension. Please explain the finer points for the other forum readers though.

Unintended behavior is unintended behavior, emergence is something else.  The definition, with examples, has been posted several times now.

Ok I wasn't going to rag on you like the others but that's fucking bullshit.   Pediophiles gathering in graphical chat rooms and chatting about their sick perversion isn't fucking emergence.   Even if it's fucking sick and it happened unintentionally it's not an emerging factor of the games different systems.

Of course it's sick....and I have to say Second Life hardly even classifies as a game so you can't really consider it gameplay of any form.  Again though, the definition of Emergence is on Wikipedia...that's the definition I'm using.  Sorry if we don't agree.


Your entire argument assumes that I care whether or not I'm being "lead".  Do you honestly think I didn't consider the possibility that I was getting jerked around after several pages of downright belittlement and insults?  Give me a break man.  I decided that if there was even a 1% chance that the guy was asking a serious question I'd put forward a reasonable answer.  Why?  Because I'd think it's pretty evident by now that whether or not I have the approval of the more vicious among you is neither here nor there for me.  If there is one person that wants to have a good discussion about game design then I'll have it with them.

You started by criticizing something I wrote in a way that frankly didn't even make sense, then when I respond you bring up something completely unrelated that if I really cared about, I probably wouldn't be here.  Is that honestly the best you can do?  This is schoolyard stuff now.

What did you expect to happen?  You and Mayson have been linking that shitty website of yours all over the net, even trying to get friendly guilds to inflate your digg rating (http://degaming.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=1855).  I also notice you have been critical of mmorpg.com, WoW & UO in various places but that doesn't seem to stop you advertising yourself to UO players (http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/stratics/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=gendesign&Number=53253&Forum=,All_Forums,&Words=&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Main=39707&Search=true&where=&Name=261131&daterange=&newerval=&newertype=&olderval=&oldertype=&bodyprev=#Post53253), wow players (http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:xWCpOFyVDCwJ:forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html%3Bjsessionid%3D62DBEBE0D0C387983BD8D09D41AB610D%3FtopicId%3D105892416%26sid%3D1+revolutiong+wow&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=24&gl=uk) and posters (http://mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/1415186#1415186) at mmorpg.com.

There's nothing wrong with being a film student and saying you want a job in the game industry, but you don't have to be so desperate about it.

I don't think you know enough about development to have that conversation.

I don't think I've had one sore word to say about UO...ever...in fact I think it get's shortchanged all too often.  I make my issues with WoW and MMORPG.com known, but how does that relate to the people who play WoW...or who frequent MMORPG.com?  Hell I still post regularly on MMORPG.com...I may not like their journalistic style but that doesn't mean I hate them as individuals.  I guess I don't see where you are going with this.

Degaming...is my website man....ugh.

And the stratics post was only posted in response to a discussion that regarded ideas similar to the things we talk about on our site....so what surprises you there?


What does my personal life have to do with any of this?  You don't see the irony in calling me desperate and then bringing up things about me personally that have no bearing on the discussion whatsoever?

If you find our site to be shitty....don't go to it.  I fail to see how it affects you in any way shape or form.


That's ok Schild...I'm almost at the point where I'm ready to cut my losses and move on.  You won't have to deal with me for much longer.

The fact you think that there is some kind of discussion taking place here other than how you're a bit silly, let alone that you are making a positive contribution to it, is just why no one will care if you stop coming here. And don't go out in a blaze of ego when/if your leaving does take place.

I understand, and I won't.

Aw, you foiled my slightly nicer ninja edit.

Lol, late night posting has me hot on the refresh button.

That was the worst several paragraphs of wrong I've read for a while.

Just...wrong.

Lindorn, you won't change minds by over-explaining yourself. If you stick with your opinion and ignore the derails, good conversation can happen. As long as you're not cross-selling your site :)

Actually, emergence is a pretty complicated theoretical fringe concept, as far as concepts go, because it contradicts everything we first learn about the world.

Humans live their life inside their own stories. Stories have a beginning and an end and a chain of events connecting the two. Often, they have a protagonist or at least a motive force, and they have distinct elements.

Emergence contrarily has no beginning or end. The processes go on continuously, and don't so much stop as reach equilibrium. There is no motive force, and no distinction - every element of an emergent process has to be the same and act in the same way.

Emergence is not the same as surprise. Child porn in Second Life may have come as a surprise, but it's not an emergent activity. Second Life was not a collection of identical people with identical motives interacting identically and then suddenly child porn popped up like Venus out of a clamshell.

You want to talk about emergence in online games? Look at traffic patterns. Foot traffic patterns. Over in WoW, Darnassus is a ghost town and the city in the 60-70 zone is bustling, even though they offer the same services. Why? Not because guild leaders said "move or you're kicked", but because people with mostly identical thought processes and capabilities for action all decided on their own to go there.

I think people are drifting pretty far from the base discussion--the term that was used was "social based emergent gameplay" (emphasis mine).

At least somewhat different from emergent behavior.

Let me ask a different question: Was the origins of RMT a "surprise", or an emergent event (behavior, gameplay, whatever--don't want to focus on that particular aspect of the definition for this question).

What ?



That's Rubbish.

No kidding. Everyone binds in Shattrah because then you can get everywhere in Outland without hassling with the Dark Portal AND it has portals to all three main cities in the Azeroth.

Everyone was in IF prior to the AH-linking because they had the Auction House -- it's not emergent, it's just how it happened.

Now, things like DK point systems and mob-queuing (people actually creating lines to handle a needed spawn in order) are more interested, but I don't know if those count as emergent.

I don't know what to say about emergence after this point because it seems most people disagree on what emergence means.

If we stick with "social based emergent gameplay" as Stephen put it, we're mostly all close enough on agreement to prevent fires and pitchforks. It's when that's extended into the wierd/alienating realm, or misapplied to a misunderstanding of design vision, when the fights break out.

Exactly. Forget that Darnassus was never popular for a second (compared to IF and then maybe SW). Shattrah was designed to draw people there. It's just normal expansion-selling design direction, like the new races and starting zone (buy the expansion!), jewelcraftin (buy the expansion!), flight only in the new zones (buy the expansion! {yes, I know the tech limits on old world}), Arenas (buy the expansion!), Netherstorm (buy the expansion!), new quests, profession skill caps, materials, and so on. It was all designed to give people reasons to go there, which could only be done by?

This is the very essence of intended gameplay, the absolute opposite of designers being surprised by unintended ones.

It's like when the EQ1 Bazaar was launched a few months after Shadows of Luclin. This didn't displace EC Tunnel as the spot for auctions because people collectively decided to move. It's because the Bazaar was designed to bring them there by offering features they otherwise wouldn't have.

To follow this analogy further, I would suggest that the original player aggregation at the EC Tunnel into a bazaar was in fact emergent behavior, but not necessarily emergent gameplay.

I absolutely agree. EQ1 and UO are replete with unintended examples, like all of the points in EQ1 old world where players grouped: Docks in Oasis Del Mar, Orc Lift in Greater Faydark, Windmill at Lake of Ill Omen etc. Most of these seemed due to players finding safe havens from mob spawn points that were also conveniently near them. And it became more obvious in later zones that the devs were pushing players around smarter (or maybe I just became more aware of it). UO's player sales at West Brit Bank is another one. Behaviors in these games probably stemmed from worlds that preceded them, but I only personally witnessed how they migrated to games that followed.

A surprise.  If you broke it down enough you could say there are multiple factors involved but emergency basically demands that the emergent portion has to be more complex than it's contributing factors.

If you break down each of the steps of the RMT process all of them can be carried out basically independent of each other and nothing new arises when you perform each step together in any way.

If you were to expand your question to ask if RMT companies are an emergent event then the answer might be yes.   Personally if I were you I'd never give a philosopher such an opening though.

I disagree. RMT is more complex than its contributing factors because it brings them altogether. I don't think anyone foresaw the the emergence of RMTing, but that was probably due to focusing entirely on the existing userbase of the day. That, like earlier stuff in this thread, is simply a lack of scope. It wasn't predicted who else would come to this genre and what personalities/desires they would bring, and the genre has evolved since in three clear directions: a) accept it and move on (many); b) actively and publicly ban to such a degree that it actually diminishes the practice in your game; or, c) embrace it and call it micro-transactions.

To me, looking at evolution within a system, whether contrived or based on emergent behavior, you must understand the external factors that many would consider irrelevant.

Like, say, the success of DIKU to retain a playerbase combined with the usual speed of play the average Battle.net user is accustomed to.

You don't say much about UO because, even though it's listed in your previous game history on the darkfall forums, you have never played it, right?  First game was daoc (briefly, as you didn't like leveling up) and then straight to SB.  You registered on the uo forums just to spam your web link, same thing as you and Mayson have done on a dozen other forums, even when you don't really like your audience (http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=35858).

Wow.

Sheesh. That Darkfall forum is just chock full of stupid isn't it?

Check out your evil twin brother talking to Lindorn about Darkfall in this thread yesterday (http://www.guildcafe.com/showthread.php?p=38624#post38624).

Oh, there's no need for this. Leave poor Lindorn alone!

Still I have learned that using empty words and terms is a great way to attract red names to discussions. I'll be sure to toss out some wankery in future if I think I'm being ignored.

GREEN TEXT, by the way. For truly only Lindorn has the reading comprehension to know without the disclaimer.

Evil twin? More like his kinder and gentler twin :-D

Starting to see a recurring theme here...

Yeah, it's probably clear, but I'd like to make it explicit :  That ain't me.

The vaporware fanboism or the Zod avatars? I'm confused.

Mesmerizing Zod was amusing, in case you missed it.

You keep insinuating that because I don't appreciate MMORPG.com's reporting style that I somehow dislike the community.


I say a lot about UO actually.  When you posted this I figured you had read a lot of the things I've written...but I guess you've only seen a bit.

Arthur I really have no idea what exactly your motives are.  We've somehow detracted from a discussion about games to you basically digging up random posts about my website or me personally in order to selectively use them to attack me.  Do you want me to stop posting here?  Do you want me to admit I'm wrong in some way?

I am failing to see the reasoning behind any of this, and I feel all I'm doing by responding to it is making it worse.  Yet I also feel like if I don't respond you'll continue.  Is there something in particular you are looking for me to say?  I really don't get it.

So, how do you really feel about it?

Well I think I've stepped past (maybe a long time ago) the point where there was any possibility of anything I say doing any good here.  So I'll bow out (as cordially as I can).  Arthur....I have no idea where I went wrong that got us on the current topic, but maybe you'll tell me here or elsewhere sometime down the road.

At any rate, I'll let you guys go back to whatever you'd be doing if you weren't posting on this thread.

Thanks for the discussion and despite the fighting, I hope all goes well.

Sorry for the interruption guys.

first.

FUCK FUCK GOD DAMNIT!



Edit: That was from the collegehumor.com video btw, if you missed the joke :)

I think it's only fair that you provide some links for a change.

Edit to add, I know you mention UO in this link (but it's just a passing reference) (http://www.rpkhq.com/Vox/04073-Smith-Dynamic-Worlds.html) and doesn't really comment on UO pvp.

Forgot how to link to the previous post, so here it is again:

And thus does Lindhorn join grunk in the pinata poster annals of f13.net.

No it's not.  On a basic level it is simply trading.   Trading is the only dependent factor in the equation.  It is not more complex than other forms of trading in the game either.  It's surprising because nobody thought one end would trade something of real value for in game money but it's not more complex.

The real world effects of RMT are emergent in some ways, but the actual act of RMT itself is not emergent.   That's why I said a RMT company might be considered emergent in this case.

<3 Oban. Thanks :D

RMT companies are like pimps and phone sex advertisers.  Pay a premium so you can skip all the work and get straight to the good stuff. 

Not emergent.

I was happy to let this lie but considering you just sent me a wall of text private message, I'll explain a few things.

You are not causing disruption on these boards because this whole thread has been fun, true it's been mostly at your expense but I can't help that.  A lot your ideas are a throw back to years ago when UO r'pking discussions were at their height and when Shadowbane was the holy grail of the hardcore pvp crowd.  The fact that you have only tried UO very recently explains an awful lot.

If you quit posting here that's your decision, just as posting a link to your mmorpg discussion site here (of all places) while you aren't really that experienced (by your own admission) was your decision.

Simple trading yes, but using tools not previously thought to relate to each other. Virtual and real world economies were completely separate. I'm sure there's an analogy that could be drawn to the real world, possibly between some isolated self-sufficient insular country and a world economy at some point in history. But I'm not up on that stuff.

Nobody conceived that virtual goods would have a real world value afaik. The "complexity" is in the early thought process and use of external tools the developers didn't design nor ever intended to have affect their game. In my opinion anyway :)

Is that a joke?

I think Darniaq means as part of the "early" developer thoughts on the issue. It probably wasn't a big consideration until virtual items started being sold on eBay.

Thanks UnSub. That is what I meant.

Lamaros, at some point in time there were games in which player trading was possible but not with goods deemed so valuable as to be worth paying real world cash for them. People did not design RMT into games back then so were unprepared to deal with the practice when it started to emerge. Even now you see the three distinct schools of thought I mentioned earlier.

How would be selling a +5 sword in a MMO be different from selling a +5 Sword Card for MTG or something similar?


Maybe I'm just not understanding what is being discussed   :|

I think I have the same confusion.

I'm sure many people right from the start had a conscious knowledge that virtual goods had real world value.

There are games now where player trading is possible but the goods are not deemed to be worth real world value (or, not valuable enough to offset the costs of trading), but that doesn't change the fact that there are games where these 'virtual' goods have real value.

I put 's around virtual because I think the term is stupid. The difference between these so called virtual items and other things in the real world is not nearly great enough to have such a distinction (Fordel provides a nice example). The fact that some people have thought of game worlds and real worlds as having a genuine rather that artificial separation and thus found the application of common aspects of the 'real' world to them unexpected doesn't mean it was in any way beyond conception.

I don't see how the ignorance of some people, developers or otherwise, actually changes reality.

Going all the way back to UO (at least), it wasn't thought out loud by a lot of people that players would be willing to pay real money for items in-game. Or even pay for someone else's accounts. Which is why people were suprised when suddenly things started popping up on eBay (which was also new-ish) that sold for big money, rare drops and high level accounts especially.

This led to companies rapidly developing policies regarding selling in-game items on an out-of-game auction site. And who actually owned the item - the player or the company.

This is all obvious in hindsight, but at the time there was some amazement that people would play $50 for a pot of hard to get dye, or could actually generate an income off supplying in-game items to others for real dollars. I'm sure some dev somewhere went, "Hey, maybe people will pay money for these things," but no-one was game enough to try for it or to perhaps think through the ramifications of such player actions.

But then lots of things seem incredibly naive at this point in time if you look back a decade or so. Just like a decade hence will see issues surrounding RMT resolved.

But I don't think you can say just because some people were surprised that their surprise is well founded. Lots of people were not surprised - the original buyers and sellers of these accounts and items, for instance.

You can find "some amazement" for lots of things (I'm constantly surprised by popular music) but that isn't a sound basis for arguing that something is essentially surprising.

Okay, I'll put it this way - if you'd told UO devs that they could probably double their revenue just by allowing people to buy items directly in the game during development, they'd have done it.

Or that the first guy who sold his house for a big sum was surprised by how much he got.

That people sold in-game items: not surprising. That people sold in-game items on an out-of-game auction system and attracted significant dollars: surprising.

But as I said: hindsight is 20/20.

I don't agree and I think you're getting caught on a slippery slope by making such statments.

What you're missing is that this practice pre-dated UO, and the term "MMORPG" itself. eBay certainly helped facilitate this activity, but neither that nor Garriot not-condemning it (while being surprised by it) in any way signified the invention of RMTing. My point earlier was simply that trading items in game pre-dated doing that for real world sales. I don't know by what margin, but you could trade items for years before UO launch, maybe even over a decade prior. Since item trades first between player and NPC and then between actual players were built on a long history of game features, it is not so hard to assume that adding the real world commerce reward was actually surprising. You just can't look at it from the lense of this particular offshoot of MUDs though.

We'd need someone who lived this stuff to really lend some insights, but this rather valuable historical discussion is buried as a derail in a thread that otherwise should have died a few pages ago.

Well, if people want to let this thread slide and end the topic here I guess that's ok with me. But as a final point:

As you implying that this began with UO? Many MUDs had Dev (and player) driven exchanges of game items for money before UO came about.

And where do you draw the line on what is a virtual good or not? The example Fordel gave is meant to illustrate this; if we take things offline we can look at card games as an example where virtual items assumed a real world value, and I'm sure should we want to we could keep taking it back step by small step. By doign this I think you would recognise not that there are real and vitrual goods, but that many virtual goods had such a low value that it was not realised in real currency. Right from the begining any virtual good that was of sufficient value was immediatly realised in real terms - it's just that the relative market was smaller and thus the demand, and thus the vaule of many of these virtual goods, was lower than this point of realization in more instances..

You're creating a seperation between the 'virtual' and the 'real' that both current and prior examples show to be imagined. There is no difference between them.

Now you might say that many people never thought that certain goods would never attain enough value to cross the realization threshold, but that is a different thing to saying that those goods never actualy had value. Which is how I read what you're saying now. Nothing has been fundamentaly added, the scale has just changed.

So it's not surprise over the existance of value but over the level of value. Thus not fundamentaly surprising.

Anyway, I'm meant to be writing a philosophy essay.. and I'm not sure how this discussion relates to the original topic of conversation anymore.

I'd love to see the last 20 or so posts split off into a new thread rather than this one go away.

No. As I said, the trading of items in games pre-dated doing that for real world sales.

Where we seem to come down on different sides is what constitutes "virtual". I've been specifically focused on virtual goods as they appeared within online worlds (not just persistent) that are traded between two player characters. That practice came first because developers added that ability. Then people began to realize that those virtual goods could have a real world value. And this surprised people because the original designers did not conceive of a time when their virtual bits and bytes would carry real world dollar values.

That any intangible/virtual good carries value is not surprising. That's been going on ever since banking was invented, much less futures markets. But that only serves to drive my earlier point further.

The reason things can be seen as surprising/emergent is sometimes due to a lack of scope. There are people, including developers who are surprised by antics of players in these worlds. This could be argued as relatively emergent behavior. There are others who realize the sociological elements as they relate to the real world, and are therefore not surprised. There it's not fundamentally emergent behavior. But until the industry employs more psychologists and macroeconomists, we're likely still to see surprise where one could retroactively argue none should have been.

Edit: Grammar, punctuation, etc

Emergent behavior, regarless of what incomplete or inaccurate definitions you may find elsewhere, is really quite simple to define.  Emergent behavior is an apparently complex social activity which is the direct result of the application of a relatively few simple rules governing the interactions between a number of individuals.  Tests for true emergent behavior include ensuring that outside factors aren't the actual source of the apparent complexity.  The classic example of emergent behavior is a colony of insects, each reacting to the others it encounters according to it's own simple internal ruleset, building an elaborate nest without any centralized guidance or predefined plan.

Now, is players engaging in RMT with virtual game items/accounts an emergent behavior? Taken from the point of view of the game design itself, not at all.  The players are breaking the game rules and injecting external considerations into their decision making.  On that level, RMT is more an example of what happens when the actors in a complex system DON'T follow the simple rules.  The system stops functioning as designed and becomes, essentially, broken, with excessive amounts of resources being diverted to one activity/funcion to the detriment of the rest of the system.  Rather like a cancer whose cells have been induced to break the rules and run amok.  Now, the system may still be "fun" or "interesting to study", it may have been unexpected by those who failed to consider either history or human nature in designing the system, but it's definitely not emergent behavior.

On another level, RMT definitely could be considered an emergent behavior, along with every single other human activity, if you subscribe to some theory of biological determinism that considers life in general and human activity in particular to be merely the end result of the relatively simple interactions of our constituent cells with each other based on external stimuli and the basic laws of chemistry.  Or of the molecular and atomic interactions between our cells constituent atoms. Or even the quantum interactions beween the subatomic constituents of the atoms, etc.

Somewhere between those extremes, on the level of basic human social interaction, RMT might possibly be argued to be a symptom at least of human emergent behavior based on human motivational rules such as acquiring the most for the least effort, or some such.  But that's more the playground of sociology and macroeconomics, and definitely not something unique to virtual games.

As for the history which keeps being ignored, the earliest example of RMT involving virtual game assets which I can recall was the buying and selling of Gemstone accounts on Genie back in the 80's.  I'm willing to bet that there's probably even earlier instances that I'm not aware of.  Jessica Mulligan, among others, could probably describe how what was happening in Gemstone was already old-hat and not something new even then. 

Ignorance of history and failure to take into account human nature when designing a game do not expose some wonderful new interesting emergent behavior.  They just expose ignorance and failure!

Well said.

Yeh, it was--convinced me :)

I agree, and well said. But how often it occurs anyway is why I call it perceptually emergent when it happens. And that could be applied to everything from games to politics to life :)

I can attest to personally doing this to pay for the costs of playing. There were "auction" boards and, later, websites to handle this as well. It certainly wasn't a new idea at the time, though nobody really thought much of it back then. I do believe that most of it was done in order to pay the expensive costs of playing, rather to make cash though.

People mistakenly think a game is a closed system.  RMT is a example of bleed from the outer system.  So is most griefing.