SWTOR

[Sjofn]

My bunny icon is all the cred I need, baby.

[DLRiley]

It's a good idea to go ahead and decry the game now in public since it's pretty easy to just have a secret subscription to it later.  However, if you hump its leg now and it turns out to suck... well, there goes your f13.cred down the shitter.

Lol, I think your on to something.

[Malakili]

While we're at it, I've never really gotten the hate on instancing and quests.

..


Is this just I HATE EVERYTHING THAT ISN'T A LORD OF THE FLIES SANDBOX?

From my point of view, the general problem is that the MMO genre seems to have the potential for the really cool experience of creating a character in a world, and interacting with other characters.  Your story is created by what you do, the players you meet, and the interaction between the two.  Of course, this sort of idealized version of the sandbox MMO doesn't really exist as near as I can tell, even though I do admit I'm sympathetic towards that ideal.  As neat as it is to imagine having your character out in the woods for a month, scraping by, killing stuff, collecting stuff to craft, etc.  The reality is that MMO game mechanics don't reward this kind of behavior, you are encouraged to AoE grind mobs, or farm, or whatever, rather than attempt to live a "realistic" (by which I mean, realistic by the standards of the game lore, obviously it isn't going to be realistic). 

I think its that ideal that makes people long for something besides quests, which just railroad you to max level, or instances, which remove you from the game world where you can have meaningful interaction with other players.  The sad thing is, that kind of thing never happens anyway.  Its not necessarily a roleplay thing (at least from what RP tends to mean in MMOs these days, which is more about standing around talking, than really only taking actions that your character would take)  but hoping for a game that rewards behaving like a person living in that world would actually live.


Let me put it this way, its a really alluring idea, but i've yet to see it realized, especially in an MMO. (more in private persistant world servers in NWN maybe, or in RP muds, than anything in an MMO).  Theme parks aren't nearly so sexy in their design, but they do actually produce genuinely fun gameplay a lot more, in my opinion.

[AutomaticZen]

From my point of view, the general problem is that the MMO genre seems to have the potential for the really cool experience of creating a character in a world, and interacting with other characters.  Your story is created by what you do, the players you meet, and the interaction between the two.  Of course, this sort of idealized version of the sandbox MMO doesn't really exist as near as I can tell, even though I do admit I'm sympathetic towards that ideal.  As neat as it is to imagine having your character out in the woods for a month, scraping by, killing stuff, collecting stuff to craft, etc.  The reality is that MMO game mechanics don't reward this kind of behavior, you are encouraged to AoE grind mobs, or farm, or whatever, rather than attempt to live a "realistic" (by which I mean, realistic by the standards of the game lore, obviously it isn't going to be realistic). 

I think its that ideal that makes people long for something besides quests, which just railroad you to max level, or instances, which remove you from the game world where you can have meaningful interaction with other players.  The sad thing is, that kind of thing never happens anyway.  Its not necessarily a roleplay thing (at least from what RP tends to mean in MMOs these days, which is more about standing around talking, than really only taking actions that your character would take)  but hoping for a game that rewards behaving like a person living in that world would actually live.


Let me put it this way, its a really alluring idea, but i've yet to see it realized, especially in an MMO. (more in private persistant world servers in NWN maybe, or in RP muds, than anything in an MMO).  Theme parks aren't nearly so sexy in their design, but they do actually produce genuinely fun gameplay a lot more, in my opinion.

Quiet you!  I wish to gather 4 other people so we can run the Tomb of Exar Kun again so I can get my desired tanking weapon, Hardest Green Lightsaber Evar!

[eldaec]

There's still your UO, AtitD, EVE, if you want it.

Even FE.

Stop buying level based grind-em-ups if that isn't what you want.

[Malakili]

There's still your UO, AtitD, EVE, if you want it.

Even FE.

Stop buying level based grind-em-ups if that isn't what you want.

You miss my point.  In the context of that post, I was answering the question why do people get hostile towards quests and instances.  i think thats why, and I only partially agree myself.

Frankly, running instances in WoW with friends ends up being MORE fun than playing (actually PLAYING, not all the forum diplomacy, etc), EVE.  Which is why it tends to be the DIKU type stuff I end up playing, even while I sit here and complain that they aren't deep enough, for the simply reaosn that even the "deep" games would only give me the kind of experience I actually want if there was a community that supported that play style (hence my mention of smaller community games, like PW NWN servers).  

Hell, I'm playing CO right now, I can't be self righteous about this, I'm just trying to explain the mentality to whoever it was that asked that original question.  I don't mind "level based grind em ups" actually, but I can't help but feel the pangs of a wasted opportunity when I see something like SWTOR being developed (for a variety of reasons that do and don't have to do with this particular discussion).

[Fordel]

I'm honestly not sure why the animations are creating so much RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAGE.

They don't look like a dude holding a gun, they look like a dude pretending to hold a gun on a whose line is it anyway skit.

And that's probably insulting Ryan Stiles skill at improv.


That's putting aside the whole "My lower and upper bodies move totally independently of each other!" disease.

[tmp]

Ehh, the independent torso/leg thing certainly look weird but it's a result of giving people option to strafe. Animation-wise they do it very much like WoW does (check around 0:30) and i have yet to see someone seriously nerdrage about WoW animation quality...

The gun holding stuff doesn't look wrong to me either. At least in the sense the character does handle it like people generally do, and i figure that power armour thing helps to deal with recoil if there's any on a lorelol laser rifle to begin with.

[taolurker]

I'm honestly not sure why the animations are creating so much RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAGE.

I was actually thinking the running animations were stiff, and because I had watched the other vids of characters in action, I thought the animation overall was horrible, and extremely stiff. I also noticed the gun and stance transitions, warping and death animations on mobs.. along with the warping.

The warping and pathing was the worst thing IMO, and animation didn't bother me nearly as much as this. An alpha build, with animations this bad and warping on a demo version with popping? That's damned near everything a static mob instanced game doesn't need (see any of many examples dating back to EQ and AO).

They don't look like a dude holding a gun, they look like a dude pretending to hold a gun on a whose line is it anyway skit.

And that's probably insulting Ryan Stiles skill at improv.


That's putting aside the whole "My lower and upper bodies move totally independently of each other!" disease.

+ This.

[Fordel]

WoW torsos do not move independently of their legs. If you strafe left, the torso tilts and angles that direction as well. If you go the other direction, the torso follows. There is also a intermediate animation to fill the gap between left, middle and right.


In the SWTOR video, the Troopers torso locks onto its target, and tracks it no matter which way the legs are going.

[tmp]

WoW torsos do not move independently of their legs. If you strafe left, the torso tilts and angles that direction as well. If you go the other direction, the torso follows. There is also a intermediate animation to fill the gap between left, middle and right.

In the SWTOR video, the Troopers torso locks onto its target, and tracks it no matter which way the legs are going.

So how does WoW handle this exact situation i.e. target being on one side while the character is being moved in another direction? Say if you strafe left and the torso is tilted to the left but the target is ahead or to the right, do ranged classes shoot auto-guiding arrows that go in an arc to account for that, or do they tilt arms separately, or what?

[Fordel]

The shots just magically seek out the target.

Its far less jarring then super twisty torso powers, since half the time your shots are auto-seeking targets that ridiculously huge or just 'miss' due to the RNG mechanics of the game. You don't generally shoot more then one or two quick instants on the move either, so the character pops off the attack animation quickly and goes back to normal strafing.

[tmp]

I see. Hmm now i wonder if they decided to go the other way for SWTOR because (i'd guess) having shots bend and find their way to targets would be more noticeably jarring with these dense streams of laser bolts.

[pxib]

Sounds like an animation equivalent of the uncanny valley.

Once you start making nods towards realism you have to go all the way or folks get cheesed off at little errors.

[Fordel]

I see. Hmm now i wonder if they decided to go the other way for SWTOR because (i'd guess) having shots bend and find their way to targets would be more noticeably jarring with these dense streams of laser bolts.

I doubt that, since they already use magic shoot seeking for all their multi-target shots.


The shots aren't making huge sweeping comedy arcs in either WoW or SWTOR, they still just straight line it to their targets.

[Ingmar]

WoW shots do sometimes make silly comedy sweeps actually. I kind of think I prefer the TOR way on this, but I'd have to actually play it to know for sure.

[Fordel]

Only when you shoot someone zooming past with sprint or on a mount or something. That isn't dependent on the shooters direction. It's because the projectile animation is slower then the targets speed.

[Lantyssa]

No, in WoW if an attack animation has something shaking it's head/body, the projectile will weave and it will sometimes do weird things because of terrain.  I've seen it with many spells and arrows, but using a wand it is very noticable.

[Margalis]

The animations look like demo animations from an engine that lets you do independent lower and upper body animations and blend/layer them. That is to say functional, but the sort of thing that no actual programmer or animator has spent time on to make look decent as you would for a game rather than a basic feature demo.

[Yegolev]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but whenever MMO footage is released to the public, that's pretty much what you will see at release... statistically speaking and from memory.

[Ratman_tf]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but whenever MMO footage is released to the public, that's pretty much what you will see at release... statistically speaking and from memory.

When in doubt, WYSIWYG.

[schild]

I still want the original version of Tabula Rasa.

[DLRiley]

I still want the original version of Tabula Rasa.

Someone needs to buy that IP, remove 70% of the suck, and launch it again 1 year from now.

[schild]

That's not what I was saying and nor would I say something like that because its incredibly stupid.

[DLRiley]

Come now TR at least was trying to be successful. SWTOR is just insulting everyone while waving a used condom. No wait I meant light saber...

[Malakili]

Come now TR at least was trying to be successful. SWTOR is just insulting everyone while waving a used condom. No wait I meant light saber...

What the fuck are you talking about?

[schild]

Come now TR at least was trying to be successful. SWTOR is just insulting everyone while waving a used condom. No wait I meant light saber...

What the fuck are you talking about?

It's best to never ask him that.

[Ratman_tf]

I still want the original version of Tabula Rasa.

Isn't that just Aion without the fairy wings? 

[Lantyssa]

And Unicorns.  Everyone forgets the Unicorns.

[Yegolev]

Garriott betrayed the unicorns.

[Stormwaltz]

And Unicorns.  Everyone forgets the Unicorns.

The screenshot of the pink unicorn with butterfly wings was directly responsible for me tuning out Tabula Rasa.

On another tangent, SWG claims character transfer program a success, celebrates by shuttering 12 servers.

[Venkman]

From my point of view, the general problem is that the MMO genre seems to have the potential for the really cool experience of creating a character in a world, and interacting with other characters.  Your story is created by what you do, the players you meet, and the interaction between the two. 

This is where it started. Some might say it has "devolved" down to the L4D++ games that exist today. But that wasn't by accident nor because uncreative people got hired. It's because of 14 years of evolution not only figured out how to keep these things running past launch day, they also learned who exactly is going to show up and why.

It's not because of a massive roleplay immersive D&D-inspired adventure set against the backdrop of all the goddamned walking and singing in the LoTR trilogy. It's because they tap into a very basic gamer desire to acquire, and acquire again, along the path of measurable and obvious improvement and self-validation.

You don't need to have an open-world game to do that. You can, and it's fun to create self-aware weather-affected ecosystems that magically scale an area to the people who arrive to share quests and campfire stories within. But in the end, the gamer doesn't care beyond whether they had fun interacting with the mobile content in that area. Which mostly means killing it. Whatever they bring, whatever is added as flavor, it all just contributes to playing a game, not living a virtual life.

Maybe there's a mythical market of unfulfilled roleplayers numbering in the tens of millions. But after so many years of waiting them to show up first in UO then in Underlight and now in Eve, the market pretty much assumes they don't exist

[Lantyssa]

We're the ones who cried out at the NGE...

The problem is still that no competent attempt without some major drawback has happened.  Fallen Earth seems to be the first, and as an indie developer, probably still not sufficient to really push the market.  If they hold out long enough, maybe they can.

[Malakili]

Maybe there's a mythical market of unfulfilled roleplayers numbering in the tens of millions.

I'd concede that there isn't a big market for this type of game, in fact, I think I sort of hinted at that in my post, when I suggest that this type of MMO could only a work if the playerbase actually played that way, which I don't think will ever happen.

But I can still dream, can't I?

[DLRiley]

The problem here is very simple. Your asking video gamers to "live" in a virtual world which is about as likely as crafting being the reason for me to pay $15 for any game. The true potential of the mmo is to allow the video gamers to "play" in a virtual world. This is much different from simply meshing UO and WoW.