SWTOR

[tmp]

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.

If the player activity is "play" then what's the purpose of virtual world attached to it, let alone potential of such?

[DLRiley]

Playing a virtual world like you would a game is a lot different from playing a virtual world like your actively living it and simply calling it play because you lack a non geeky term. player activity should not be the primary agent of change in the former rather like it is in the latter.

[gryeyes]

Playing a virtual world like you would a game is a lot different from playing a virtual world like your actively living it and simply calling it play because you lack a non geeky term. player activity should not be the primary agent of change in the former rather like it is in the latter.

Thanks for clearing that up.

[Venkman]

All MMOs are virtual worlds. The difference is just how much you can effect it. The amount you can impact the world through your actions is generally inversely proportional to how much game play there is in it. The weakest virtual worlds are considered to have the most fun factor in the traditional sense. And they're also far and away the most successful.

There's no real solid universal definition for this though, just collective opinion. Best way to answer it is to ask another question:

Would you consider WoW a game in the same way Battlefield or Bejeweled are games?

[Slyfeind]

Would you consider WoW a game in the same way Battlefield or Bejeweled are games?

Ooo I know this one! I know this one! *bounces up and down with hand raised*

[Lantyssa]

Would you consider Bejeweled a game in the same way Battlefield is?

[UnSub]

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.

Everyone cried out at NGE. Even the unborn. It is just the thing to do despite the issue that if SWG had been truly successful, it never would have happened.

Second Life is about as world-y as you can get, with a lot of potential impact possible for each and every player. You can RP as anything you want. Sadly, some do. But it is pretty much completely ignored by the bulk of the MMO community for being, well, Second Life.

The hypothetical perfect RP MMO / world-y MMO is as realistic as the perfect PvP MMO: not possible. Despite several false starts that can be used as evidence about how certain MMO systems won't work - mainly because players are ruthlessly efficient and self-interested on the whole, even where it defies common sense and detracts from the game - there will always be those who believe that such things are possible "if done right", with no real consideration of what "right" would ever be.

Were I a game developer, I certainly wouldn't be aiming at RPers as a market. They tend to come to titles regardless as they grow and get incredibly excited that the latest patch included a ;happydance emote, so what is more important is attracting a larger set of players to your game.

[Malakili]

The problem here is very simple. Your asking video gamers to "live" in a virtual world..

I understand that this isn't popular.  My point is that it was the direction early MMOs went in, because that was what an MMO could offer that other games couldn't offer.  It turns out, people would much rather NOT play that way, you are right.   If you want to "play" a game that way now, you are best off getting a "realism" mod for Fallout 3 or something.

At least SWTOR isn't really saying they are trying to recreate the star wars universe.  They pretty much admit (even hype) that they are trying to give the players the experience of being a main character in the movies.   Thats not terrible in itself, i suppose, I just don't really see the point of doing it as a multiplayer game, other than money hats, of course. 

[Ratman_tf]

Bah. I don't mind directed gameplay, but I do mind it when The Formula becomes more important than entertaining subscribers.

[WindupAtheist]

Someone really needs to make a worldy game that amounts to "UO remade knowing what we know now" with the intention of getting a couple hundred thousand subscribers and keeping them forever. Something built from the ground up with the intention of being able to add things to the engine relatively easy, able to easily import updated graphics five or ten years after launch.

There may not be nearly as many virtual world types as there are game types, but once they've decided YOUR virtual world is "home" it's really hard to get them to leave.

[DLRiley]

The only problem I see is that those players don't leave and leaving other UO like games out to fail terrible. How many open world games can exist with EVE on the market, granted it is the only scfi-fi mmo but I highly doubt a high fantasy EVE won't be tugging at the same playerbase? At least with WoW you can assume the next big things will be better made and better designed games and there is always a market for great games. Even if those games aren't great being functionally sound like EQ2 and LOTR is generally good enough to net you a decent player base. Fallen Earth is apparently shooting for 50k players to be successful.......................

[Venkman]

Someone really needs to make a worldy game that amounts to "UO remade knowing what we know now" with the intention of getting a couple hundred thousand subscribers and keeping them forever. Something built from the ground up with the intention of being able to add things to the engine relatively easy, able to easily import updated graphics five or ten years after launch.

There may not be nearly as many virtual world types as there are game types, but once they've decided YOUR virtual world is "home" it's really hard to get them to leave.

Eve. For everything you just said.

But personally, I want UO2 too. I want everything UO was, in 3D, with all the customization, all the skills, all the open-endedness, just with a more directed front end to lower the barrier of entry and more compartmentalized PvP and Raids to keep the most-invested players as living proof of what others "could" get. UO had it already, they just didn't have very effective marketing and eventually lost the drive to compete once the rest of the genre went 3D.

Which sucks, because if I ever meet a future angel investor...

[Ratman_tf]

UO had it already, they just didn't have very effective marketing and eventually lost the drive to compete once the rest of the genre went 3D.

UO still has the rep as "That PeeKay game." I see it come up every once in a blue moon on other sites and blogs and whatnot.

[Ingmar]

Someone really needs to make a worldy game that amounts to "UO remade knowing what we know now" with the intention of getting a couple hundred thousand subscribers and keeping them forever. Something built from the ground up with the intention of being able to add things to the engine relatively easy, able to easily import updated graphics five or ten years after launch.

There may not be nearly as many virtual world types as there are game types, but once they've decided YOUR virtual world is "home" it's really hard to get them to leave.

Eve. For everything you just said.

That answer only works because WUA also forgot to add "and make it fun." 

[Venkman]

UO had it already, they just didn't have very effective marketing and eventually lost the drive to compete once the rest of the genre went 3D.

UO still has the rep as "That PeeKay game." I see it come up every once in a blue moon on other sites and blogs and whatnot.

Yep. That's why I said bad marketing. They spent too much time letting players parrot inexperienced opinions and it doomed them. Shit, I stayed away from UO until Renaissance specifically because of the "roving bands of PKs". And I'm sure back then I parroted that myself 

[eldaec]

Someone really needs to make a worldy game that amounts to "UO remade knowing what we know now" with the intention of getting a couple hundred thousand subscribers and keeping them forever. Something built from the ground up with the intention of being able to add things to the engine relatively easy, able to easily import updated graphics five or ten years after launch.

There may not be nearly as many virtual world types as there are game types, but once they've decided YOUR virtual world is "home" it's really hard to get them to leave.

Eve. For everything you just said.

That answer only works because WUA also forgot to add "and make it fun." 

While the eve = spreadsheet thing is a cool line to parrot, it only really applies to the newbie game, and the solo 'shut out the word' empire grinder.

I'm not saying the newbie game isn't important, and EVE could expand a lot if it ever solved that problem, but ccp are the one of the very few mmog devs who ever seemed to really figure out that fun comes from other players.

Someone really needs to make a worldy game that amounts to "UO remade knowing what we know now"

Also SWG v1.0, of course that introduced many amazingly stupid design concepts along with the UO remixed aspect.

UO had it already, they just didn't have very effective marketing and eventually lost the drive to compete once the rest of the genre went 3D.

UO still has the rep as "That PeeKay game." I see it come up every once in a blue moon on other sites and blogs and whatnot.

Yep. That's why I said bad marketing. They spent too much time letting players parrot inexperienced opinions and it doomed them. Shit, I stayed away from UO until Renaissance specifically because of the "roving bands of PKs". And I'm sure back then I parroted that myself 

Hey guys, I heard that expansion included something called 'Trammel', what do you all think of that?

[AutomaticZen]

Someone really needs to make a worldy game that amounts to "UO remade knowing what we know now" with the intention of getting a couple hundred thousand subscribers and keeping them forever. Something built from the ground up with the intention of being able to add things to the engine relatively easy, able to easily import updated graphics five or ten years after launch.

There may not be nearly as many virtual world types as there are game types, but once they've decided YOUR virtual world is "home" it's really hard to get them to leave.

Eve. For everything you just said.

With legs.  Perhaps if they add legs to EVE ships...

[Ingmar]

Someone really needs to make a worldy game that amounts to "UO remade knowing what we know now" with the intention of getting a couple hundred thousand subscribers and keeping them forever. Something built from the ground up with the intention of being able to add things to the engine relatively easy, able to easily import updated graphics five or ten years after launch.

There may not be nearly as many virtual world types as there are game types, but once they've decided YOUR virtual world is "home" it's really hard to get them to leave.

Eve. For everything you just said.

That answer only works because WUA also forgot to add "and make it fun." 

While the eve = spreadsheet thing is a cool line to parrot, it only really applies to the newbie game, and the solo 'shut out the word' empire grinder.

Eh that's not really the angle I'm coming from. The lack of 'fun' in Eve for me has a lot more to do with the soul crushing travel time and general lack of interactivity in PVE combat (orbit the little + and click a couple buttons) than it does with the somewhat-impenetrable character generation/advancement. I can get past the latter, I can't get past the immense amount of time you spend in that game essentially doing *nothing*.

[Malakili]

I can't get past the immense amount of time you spend in that game essentially doing *nothing*.

It is somewhat of a sticking point, but it has a lot to do with balancing things so that that the rest of the game is as good as it is. (especially re: travel times).  The combat is somewhat lackluster, I'll admit, and if you a miner, bring a book.   If you could make an EVE with more fun in the actual combat and such*, it'd probably be more of a hit, but given that the game isn't really aiming at an audience that is looking for twice or action oriented combat, I can't really fault them for it.


*By fun combat I mean something that is more action oriented, I realize that isn't "fun" to everyone.  I'm also not suggesting that they huge fleet battles and the like aren't fun, but rather than are fun for reasons other than the pulse pounding pace of the combat.

[Venkman]

Travel time and boring PvE ratting have actually much improved since the last time you've played. Depending on how long ago that was. And your definition of "improved"

Eve feels huge and sluggish, but the right group makes all the difference. It does have the same early-UO problem of not providing any real guidance to players, even with all the newbie enhancements they've made. And that's mostly because the sheer vastness of Eve is not something you CAN provide a lot of guidance on through the UI alone. What you do and who you become is 90% who you interact with in the game.

It's truly one of the only actual massively multiplayer games out there. By comparison, everything else is merely small group dungeon crawls writ large. And therefore Eve (and everything else) stands as direct proof of just what kind of "massive" people are looking for in their MMO. Or: a faster Eve with more twitchy combat alone would not radically increase the number of accounts that world retains.

Hey guys, I heard that expansion included something called 'Trammel', what do you all think of that?

Cute. But it didn't solve any of the problems with UO. Including the number of subscribers.

[Malakili]

Eve feels huge and sluggish, but the right group makes all the difference. It does have the same early-UO problem of not providing any real guidance to players, even with all the newbie enhancements they've made. And that's mostly because the sheer vastness of Eve is not something you CAN provide a lot of guidance on through the UI alone. What you do and who you become is 90% who you interact with in the game.

I definitely agree with this.  My time in EVE is on and off, but I am an industiralist, and I have a great industirial corporation that always welcomes me with open arms when I come back.  I think what we call MMOs these days barely fit the definition of the genre anymore.  If EVE Is what I call an MMO, then the other games are just MOs, and if WoW is what I call an MMO, than EVE is ...maybe a VW (virtual world?).   

SWTOR would fit, with no problem, into the "MO" genre.

[sidereal]

SWTOR would fit, with no problem, into the "MO" genre.

[Ashamanchill]

 

[eldaec]

EVE travel time is easily fixed. Don't travel.

You only need to even think about travelling if you choose to make a living by hauling shit about the place.



As for lack of interactivity, only really applies to pve (and only outside of wormholes). If you don't like it, don't pve.

[Malakili]

EVE travel time is easily fixed. Don't travel.

You only need to even think about travelling if you choose to make a living by hauling shit about the place.



As for lack of interactivity, only really applies to pve (and only outside of wormholes). If you don't like it, don't pve.

This is true, you really don't need to travel unless you have a really good reason to.  You can do fine selling things in your local economy, and why deal with jita unless you absolutely have to.   If you want don't want to go from place to place, just pick a home and work out of it.  A tiny bit of research and you can put yourself in empire space with good access to missions, and just a few jumps from a trade hub, and empty enough that you don't have to constantly worry.   The galaxy is a big place, but (or because of this) no matter what your playstyle, you should be able to find a place that suits your needs.


Anyway, what this has to do with SWTOR, I just can't remember.

[squirrel]

Playing a virtual world like you would a game is a lot different from playing a virtual world like your actively living it and simply calling it play because you lack a non geeky term. player activity should not be the primary agent of change in the former rather like it is in the latter.

Fuck dude, are you are ever going to post something that can be read?

EDIT: FWIW I agree with Lantyssa.

[Ingmar]

just a few jumps from a trade hub

See that's the problem, though. "Just a few jumps" is like 15 minutes of sitting there with your thumb up your butt. Or at least was, I'm not pretending to be really up to date here. I was never really able to find a good place that gave me lots of same-system missions, either, but I eventually got bored trying to find one.

[tmp]

See that's the problem, though. "Just a few jumps" is like 15 minutes of sitting there with your thumb up your butt. Or at least was, I'm not pretending to be really up to date here.

It got quite quicker when they put "warp to zero" option in, since the slowest part of the travel was usually crawling to the gate after the warp.

[eldaec]

just a few jumps from a trade hub

See that's the problem, though. "Just a few jumps" is like 15 minutes of sitting there with your thumb up your butt. Or at least was, I'm not pretending to be really up to date here. I was never really able to find a good place that gave me lots of same-system missions, either, but I eventually got bored trying to find one.

A jump takes maybe 20 seconds of warping and 6 seconds of jumping.

Maybe takes a little longer if you are in a freighter the size of a small moon, hauling cargo worth billions of isk, but that probably isn't what you meant. Also takes longer on autopilot (solution: don't use autopilot).

[Venkman]

Eve flying is basically like Gryphon flying in WoW except you stop at every point and choose the next hop of your journey. It's slow enough you think you can AFK it, but it only becomes unbearable when you actually afk it

Regardless, that's not the reason someone quits Eve. The whole world is paced so differently from any other get-in-and-mess-crap-up diku that it's hard to jump from DAoEQWoWion to pre-CU SWG on steroids and sans ground game.

[eldaec]

Eve flying is basically like Gryphon flying in WoW except you stop at every point and choose the next hop of your journey. It's slow enough you think you can AFK it, but it only becomes unbearable when you actually afk it

Regardless, that's not the reason someone quits Eve. The whole world is paced so differently from any other get-in-and-mess-crap-up diku that it's hard to jump from DAoEQWoWion to pre-CU SWG on steroids and sans ground game.

Outside of pvp ops, my entire world in EVE consists of one region (97 solar systems) that I move around looking for things to do; mostly, I hunt npc ships, I look for arbitrage opportunities on the markets, I talk bullshit on comms, and I join defence fleets to kill crazy Russians.

To get around I use a network of player maintained teleporters alongside regular jump gates; in extreme cases I can jump instantly between 4 clones I have scattered around the region. It is an extremely rare day if I have to go more than half a dozen jumps to get between any two systems I'm interested in, each one taking 30 seconds at the very most. If you aren't in game and doing whatever you plan to do in less than 10 minutes, you are doing it wrong.

If I wanted, I could run missions for pirate factions, or I could hunt down asteroids for minerals, alternatively, I could probe space for hidden treasure or wormholes. But no matter what I did, I would still have no earthly reason to want to perform more than half a dozen jumps to get anywhere.

In the very unlikely event of wanting something imported from Jita, you pay other people to haul your shit.



I really don't think it is about pacing.

It is just a different genre, you favour one kind of shiny over the other, you like level based advancement or you don't, you like the game to guide you with a sign saying 'monsters this way' or you value emergent gameplay and player drama.

[Venkman]

You used more bytes to say the same thing I just did  

I like Eve and mean it when I say it's one of the few actual "massively multiplayer" games that deserve the label. It just requires more thought as a game than I'm willing to invest most of the time. Button-mashing for flashy bangs is more my speed these days.

But question: teleporters? I remember back when I had a full set of warp-to-0 jump coordinates, and could clone jump. When did they add player teleporters?

[eldaec]

Jump Bridges - they've been in since before I ever got to 0.0, you build one at a POS, link it to another one 5 light years away, and they act like long range jump gates - only much safer because you get protection from your POS guns.

[Venkman]

Oh, wow, ok, so yet another part of the game I never knew was there. Cool.

[Sky]

It is just a different genre, you favour one kind of shiny over the other, you like level based advancement or you don't, you like the game to guide you with a sign saying 'monsters this way' or you value emergent gameplay and player drama.

You have to admit there is a steep learning curve and time sink involved with this game. Both the sink to level up your skills and to get to the point where you know the game systems as well as you do, to be able to pick and choose the activities you find enjoyable, just to know all the options that are there (like getting other players to do long hauls for you).

I don't think it's as simple as saying if you don't like Eve you want a sign pointing to the monsters.