Well. I fixed this problem.

[Venkman]

What you're saying though is the very essence of why MMOs are the way they are. If players don't want choice, then there's no reason to give it to them, there's no reason to write good story, and there's certainly no reason at all to spend extra buck on voice acting.

At the same time though, we wouldn't have gotten Fallout 3 if there wasn't a history of such games stretching back to the 1970s in which players could live out the results of their actions.

WoW probably makes more money per month than the combined unit sales of all Western RPGs in the last four years. But that hasn't proven to suck up the total will of all gamers everywhere into the one game to rule them all 

[Merusk]

Yet.

 

[IainC]

Darniaq, JRPG's have consistently proven that people don't give a crap about choice. What most of them want is bishies, boobs and lots of agnst, not choices. Angst = epic. Just look at most of Shakespeare.

Or it could be argued that people who like JRPGs don't give a crap about choice and just want bishies boobs and angst. Those of us who hate JRPGs generally hate them for the lack of choice they tend to give you - oh and the weirdness.

[amiable]

I think the argument that technology needs to progress for decent PvP is actually accurate.  The barrier that needs to be overcome is enabling several hundred to several thousand concurrent users play in the same area simultaneously.  That really is the elephant in the room with WAR, they cannot enable enough folks to be on a server to ensure a large enough population to create a viable PvP environment.  If they did the game would be a slideshow (I remember a few battles against Six Mouths being an excellent example. 

The state of technology now simply does not allow enough concurrent users for a large scale RvR/PvP game to be viable.  Developers are forced to heard players into scenarios/BGs because that is the only way to ensure that players will have a stable game experience.

Of course companies will never admit that... Why, I have no idea.

[waffel]

I think the argument that technology needs to progress for decent PvP is actually accurate.  The barrier that needs to be overcome is enabling several hundred to several thousand concurrent users play in the same area simultaneously.  That really is the elephant in the room with WAR, they cannot enable enough folks to be on a server to ensure a large enough population to create a viable PvP environment.  If they did the game would be a slideshow (I remember a few battles against Six Mouths being an excellent example. 

The state of technology now simply does not allow enough concurrent users for a large scale RvR/PvP game to be viable.  Developers are forced to heard players into scenarios/BGs because that is the only way to ensure that players will have a stable game experience.

Of course companies will never admit that... Why, I have no idea.

I see your point. However, technology isn't the only problem. I could run DAoC right now on my computer with 100+ people fighting at once and be fine. The problem is, is that as technology increases, there is more weight put on prettier graphics than there is for 100's of people being able to play in the same area.

Prettier graphics = more people look at the game and want to play it = more money. You can have this pretty graphic intense game on the front and simply say "play with hundreds of people in battles for cities and keeps!" on the back of the box, and while that's true, the fact is your computer is going to run like shit in order to do it. However, a new MMO that shows a game with 3-4 year old graphics on the front, but on the back says "play with hundreds of people in battles for cities and keep, SMOOTHLY" isn't going to sell nearly as well, even if it runs a lot better.

Nobody wants a 3-4 year old graphically dated game even if it runs smoothly in huge fights. People want pretty shit, even if it runs like dogshit in large fights. MMO are never going to change from this.


You can compare music, and MMOs in a very unique way.

30 years ago, before the advent of the computer, CDs, mp3 players, ect ect. listening to music was an experience. People that were big into music would hound around record shops, pick up the latest albums or pick up albums from bands they've never heard before. They would go home, sit in their room and listen to the whole album. They would look at the artwork on the vinyl packaging, read the lyrics, daydream, but they would sit there and actively enjoy the music.

10 years ago, before the advent of WoW and the mass-marketing of MMOs, playing a MMO was an experience. People would set aside hours of the their time to explore everquest, or UO, or any mmo out at the time. They'd use the chat in game, find groups, adventure into dungeons with the group, kill dangerous monsters without knowing how difficult they are. They would learn about items and quests from the players, and trade with tells. It was an experience and it was fun, not because of the next best item drop, or because they were rewarded for every action, but because it was an experience. They would hear about the scary Albion or Midgard realm, and how they were out in the RvR zones and taking keeps. People would band up and go out there and stop them? Why? Because fuck Albion or Midgard or Hibernia! They were your enemy! They should be punished and killed and stopped from taking your keeps!

Nowdays, music has almost become background for people. Nobody listens to full albums anymore. Everyone has thousands of MP3s on their ipods, and if you were to play a song at random they probably don't even know the band or the lyrics half the time. Artwork is all but gone. Packaging is non-existent with people buying mp3s online. People have music in their phones, with shitty tiny speakers, or ipods with shitty 128kbps transcode mp3s and crappy earbuds. Those truly in love with music are flooded by the retards that have multiple Ipods but whos whole music decisions come from MTV or other mainstream source.

MMOs are the same way. The market has been flooded with people not really playing MMOs for the experience, to explore, or group up and to share items and stories. Everyone's on their own now. Solo grinding to 50, having every quest marked out with circles, fucking arrows, and if that's not enough you can check websites to see the exact fucking /loc. Nobody does shit anymore unless there is a carrot and a reward in the form of a shiny new bullshit item they can show off. Christ, look what havok the scenario endgame scoreboard has caused. People pointing out class imbalance, tier imbalance, XP and renown imbalance. The "Waa he earned more XP than me but I played better!" bullshit. Everyone wants to win and win now. Nobody wants to open RvR because there isn't a big enough carrot out there for most people, and its not fun for the others. Instead of fixing the not-fun part, they decided to add more carrots to chase after.

Its frustrating to watch the MMO field deteriorate from what it used to be into what it is now and I never see it changing.

[Sheepherder]

Eh, not so much on the voiceovers. For one, listening is much slower than reading. For another, even EQ2 which launched with a large amount of voiceovers couldn't justify the expense of doing it for all quest givers at launch, and certainly couldn't thereafter.

Speed reading is fast, careful reading takes more time, listening is the longest of the three options.  But people with short attention spans might listen, and many would listen if your NPC granted them a small amount of experience for listening, or if you gave them a small buff to increase their grind time on that specific quest.  Beyond that, it's in the hands of your storytellers,  make of that what you will.

The state of technology now simply does not allow enough concurrent users for a large scale RvR/PvP game to be viable.  Developers are forced to heard players into scenarios/BGs because that is the only way to ensure that players will have a stable game experience.

Warhammer chose the most shitty engine possible to test large scale pvp on.  Seriously, when a engine publisher fails to fix a well documented CTD (Alt+Tab lulz) in 6+ years they have no right to be in business.

[waffel]

double post

[squirrel]

This patch has added horrid stability issues for me. Long load times, crashes. DC's, the client forgetting my keybindings (shit you not).

[Venkman]

I think the argument that technology needs to progress for decent PvP is actually accurate.  The barrier that needs to be overcome is enabling several hundred to several thousand concurrent users play in the same area simultaneously. 

Over the last year I've begun to wonder if the technology barrier is actually just a red herring.

• Let's say that barrier wasn't there. We're all on T3 connections, have Falcon boxes with 24" monitors and all live alone in a soundproof room so we can blast the audio to hear every footstep.
• Now imagine the user experience. A battle populated by thousands of random anonymous non-accountable webtards. Then scale that back to the most recent pickup raid you were on. 

I don't think we're far away from big-scale battles technically. PS could do it well enough, as could SB. Better UI and more engine-appropriately-styled graphics and they could have nailed it. And that was years ago.

Nah, where I see the real problem is that few people outside of Eve are addressing the Command and Control structures absolutely necessary to getting people to coordinate in a large battle. So instead we get games that compartmentalize battles whether onto separate servers with player-based longterm advancement goals or into separate zones where each battle roles up into an aggregate representation of your side's net worth/gain.

I'd wonder if this is the case not because of technology but rather because of the players.

[UnSub]

For those who haven't seen it, Massive Action Game looks to offer a number of things Darniaq talks about and up to 256 players a match.

I think one issue that that players like to feel important, but the larger the battle the less important they probably are. Also, the larger the number of players, the bigger the play area you need for some tactics, which in turn potentially leads to players using guerilla tactics / quick ganking. No-one likes getting killed quickly and people want a 'fair' fight (what fair is, of course, is up to the individual).

[Nevermore]

Who here believe anyone in an MMO reads the quest text, especially if you get red circles and arrows and a little guy on your shoulder shouting warmer, colder?

I've read every single quest dialogue/text I've encountered in any MMO(G/RPG) I've played since 1. january 1998 - though I might skip it if I'm on my 5th character, doing the same quests.

Me, too.  I'll readily admit I'm probably in the minority.

Strangely, it's part of the reason I don't like grouping.  I want to read everything, and I can be a bit slow at reading.  Everyone else is <click> <click> <head to red spot>.

Wow, I'm exactly like that, too.  Not only do I make a point to read all the text and dialog, I hate missing out on missions/quests so I specifically go out of my way to do as many of them as possible.  I'll actively slow down leveling so I don't miss missions, including avoiding grouping so I don't get too much experience and/or giving myself debt to cut down on the exp I do get.  I'm sure my in-game friends think I'm asocial or unfriendly or something. 

The best thing CoX ever added to their game was the whole Flashback system.  I group much more now that I can go back and do old missions whenever I want.

[tolakram]

That really is the elephant in the room with WAR, they cannot enable enough folks to be on a server to ensure a large enough population to create a viable PvP environment.

I don't think most really want this.  Every discussion of war always turns up something about zergs and imbalance and how people hate getting rolled.

Let's say the engine could handle 500 people in the same place.  What are the odds of that being a balanced number?  What are the odds of the skills or class balance being even?  What are the odds of one side getting rolled?  What are the odds that the rolled won't think it was fun?

[HaemishM]

The state of technology now simply does not allow enough concurrent users for a large scale RvR/PvP game to be viable.  Developers are forced to heard players into scenarios/BGs because that is the only way to ensure that players will have a stable game experience.

Warhammer chose the most shitty engine possible to test large scale pvp on.  Seriously, when a engine publisher fails to fix a well documented CTD (Alt+Tab lulz) in 6+ years they have no right to be in business.

It really is. I think part of the problem with the WAR engine is the goddamn particle effects. I run fine on most things, but the sheer plethora of eye-raping particle effects on every fucking character is frightening. Hell, the damn poof of smoke from the horse mounting and dismounting slows my machine to a CRAWL.

[eldaec]

EVE proves that large scale pvp is technically possible, so does daoc, SB, Planetside, and even UO & EQ for that matter. Neither are exactly cutting edge in tech terms.

Mythic are targeting 2k concurrent per server because that is what Mark believes is the maximum for community building reasons. Assuming he is right, Mythic need to do more to funnel the 2k into the same places.

Firstly they need more ways for new players to play with old players, basically they need something better than the chicken - they need proper sidekicking (and incidentally, why isn't proper sidekicking compulsory in all games?), and they need some more substantial way for lower tier realm objectives to feed through to upper tier outcomes.

They also need better ways for players to find each other within tiers. Moving closer to the daoc new frontiers realm war map and teleport supply line system would help in RvR. Having a single scenario queue starting random scenarios for each tier would help in sport-PvP.

[Tmon]

Speed reading is fast, careful reading takes more time, listening is the longest of the three options.  But people with short attention spans might listen, and many would listen if your NPC granted them a small amount of experience for listening, or if you gave them a small buff to increase their grind time on that specific quest.  Beyond that, it's in the hands of your storytellers,  make of that what you will.

I play with the sound off so I'd just hang out by the NPC till I got the little popup or whatever that told me I was now buffed and off I'd go.  Pretty much for me the lore of any of these games is meaningless, it either reads like Dirzzit fan fiction or something from the slush pile at  Cracked.  Every once in a while I come across something that is worth the time it takes to read through but it's pretty rare.  For me the story that counts in these games is mine, the rest is just background noise.

[ashrik]

I just don't think there is a desire for this kind of storytelling in the modern MMO.

I mean, the writing could be top notch in WAR. It could be really good. My character could have been face with issues of epic proportions.

But I skip it. Immediately. It's not that I read it and then dismissed it as not good enough or not on a scale of my liking. I never picked up the book.

I don't think any amount of amazing storytelling will make people want to pick up that book.

[Wershlak]

Mythic are targeting 2k concurrent per server because that is what Mark believes is the maximum for community building reasons.

I hope your joking or Mark was just lieing to cover up technical issues. I realize they must have nowhere near 2k per server now but they've split the playerbase up so much with their design that it feels like a ghost town. 2 sides * 4 tiers * 3 pairings * 2 zones per tier = lonely.

[Sheepherder]

It really is. I think part of the problem with the WAR engine is the goddamn particle effects. I run fine on most things, but the sheer plethora of eye-raping particle effects on every fucking character is frightening. Hell, the damn poof of smoke from the horse mounting and dismounting slows my machine to a CRAWL.

Sometimes I wish I had decided to not wait 90 days.  I love it when people who should know better cock up this badly.  On that note: how does the sound engine perform?  Is it like Oblivion where you can cut your framerate in half by mounting up and riding if you don't have state of the art sound hardware?

I play with the sound off so I'd just hang out by the NPC till I got the little popup or whatever that told me I was now buffed and off I'd go.  Pretty much for me the lore of any of these games is meaningless, it either reads like Dirzzit fan fiction or something from the slush pile at  Cracked.  Every once in a while I come across something that is worth the time it takes to read through but it's pretty rare.  For me the story that counts in these games is mine, the rest is just background noise.

Of course some people still won't care, but nothing a developer can do will make them care unless they actively punish them for not caring (sticking hints in the text to prevent player death).  But if you give the player the option of staying or going as they please, and then give out a small buff after the NPC has said it's piece most players will stick around if the buff is worth it.  Currently MMO's are built in such a way that actually paying attention to the story is detrimental to leveling time, which is a highly emphasized aspect of the game.  This would redress an imbalance, nothing more.  Actually making the narrative not suck is a different department than the game mechanics guys.

[amiable]

I think the argument that the EVE engine supports large-scale pvp is specious.  I know every 200+ battle I participated in either crashed the node or was lagged so badly I literally had no control over my ship.

Is there a single example of a game able to manage 200+ players in a small area without crashing or absurd lag?  If there is I haven't seen it. 

Until that barrier is overcome you will not see large scale PvP/RvR games that do not use a scenario/bg/mission model.  Community size/management has nothing to do with it (look at eve, they have 100k+ on the same shard and the large bumber of players have resulted in a very interesting community).

[Pringles]

I think the argument that the EVE engine supports large-scale pvp is specious.  I know every 200+ battle I participated in either crashed the node or was lagged so badly I literally had no control over my ship.

Is there a single example of a game able to manage 200+ players in a small area without crashing or absurd lag?  If there is I haven't seen it. 

I haven't done much pvp in eve lately, since I've been occupied with many new games (fallout 3, ra3, and previously warhammer) but supposedly they patched in stackless io so that it is less laggy now and playable with 200+ players.

I haven't experienced it, but there's a number of posts on the forum praising the changes.

Here is more info on the patch.

[Lantyssa]

Wow, I'm exactly like that, too.  Not only do I make a point to read all the text and dialog, I hate missing out on missions/quests so I specifically go out of my way to do as many of them as possible.  I'll actively slow down leveling so I don't miss missions, including avoiding grouping so I don't get too much experience and/or giving myself debt to cut down on the exp I do get.  I'm sure my in-game friends think I'm asocial or unfriendly or something. 

The best thing CoX ever added to their game was the whole Flashback system.  I group much more now that I can go back and do old missions whenever I want.

I really liked the flashback system for the little I played since they've implemented it.  With my duo character, we stayed in debt from 20 to 32 to be able to do all the stories, which put us mid-way through the fifth debt badge once they added those.

While I hate levels, I am appreciative CoX has done so much to reduce their impact when it comes to playing with others and not making old content useless.

[eldaec]

Is there a single example of a game able to manage 200+ players in a small area without crashing or absurd lag?  If there is I haven't seen it. 

EVE is fine with 200 players. DAoC was fine with 200 so long as your graphics card could take it or you had enough presence of mind to lower graphics setings, and obv so long as you weren't playing in Europe on an Opentransit day. Planetside is also fine with 200.

Those who played SB also report that SB was fine with 200. Or at least, it was no worse than it was with 20 players.

[Bismallah]

Eve is fine with 200 players as long as 20+ of them are not camping the gate with Motherships and Carriers with all their fighters assigned out... total lagfest.

DAOC was more then fine with 200, I barely had issues. I could even still land Perforate Artery with a 2h as a Shadowblade there was such minimal lag. WAR, no way... you have to have a screaming machine in order to get 0 lag like that.

Shadowbane would get a bit laggy but it wasnt anything that I couldnt handle. I had a mage/channeler so I just flew up above folks to stay out of the mess on the ground.

Either way, I think the end of DAOC most folks could see what WAR was going to do. Go way overboard trying to make their game look as shiny as possible losing most of their dedicated Mythic fanbois in the process. Hell some of the most dedicated DAOC people that moved over to WAR (from my old server) have already gone back just because playability issues.

[lac]

Eve is fine with 200 players as long as 20+ of them are not camping the gate with Motherships and Carriers with all their fighters assigned out... total lagfest.

Eve has gotten a lot better since then.

I have to agree that the low server population is their biggest game breaker at the moment.

[Sahrokh]

I think it's a tad too early to put this in the graveyard.  Even if it's certainly going down the drain, it's more poetic to put it in the day that WoTLK is released

It's not too early, because with patch 1.05 they demonstrate to be the same of Blizzard:
unable to give the classes the intended purpose, they start dicking with them making all equal and boring.

I.e. they designed a variety of casters niches (glass cannon, utility, defensive, with pet, hybrid pet-melee brawler), and FAILED HARD at anything non strictly damage related.
Now, you'd believe that someone borking on utility / pets etc would fix it.
But no, the obvious fix is to still leave everything broken but put all on the same (too high) damage done, insta-killing diversity, niches, flavour, everything.
This is why "early" was the time to move the sub forum and not at WoTLK launch.

For the most part, the in game benefits for CE/pre-order were shit to begin with.  The unique faces tended to look damn silly, the camp was on an hour timer, and I believe the trinket was a 5 minute buff on an hour cooldown as well

If I recall correctly, it got five charges.

Eventually, someone will actually innovate, and innovate well. A paradigm shift will be required to go to a better place that WoW cannot follow

Issue: the 10M or so "new playerbase" who WoW kind of made out of previous thin air, have a mindset to want such kind of gameplay.
Put something innovative and they'll just reject this and every time you'll see "but WoW did this feature like that and was fun => this new game sucks".

It's sadly why all go for WoW clones: you know you'll fail, but fail mildly by doing so. The CEO and his 4-5 friends will still keep their new Porsche in the end. No investor wants to have the current today's MMO insane expenses for 3-5 years and then fail HARD because you tried something new.
I have seen an overhyped-almost-vaporware MMO with EQ1 playerbase expectations go so fast down the drain that at launch it only got 35k subs and after 2 years there were 500 players left.

That being said, the next competitor needs to have a serious look at the conventions WoW has and ask if that's really needed. Do mobs REALLY need to drop trash? Should NPC's really be mindless pez-dispensers? Could we not implement real acting (think: Half Life 2's Alex) into quest givers? Do we really need dozens upon dozens of quests, or could we just do "mission" based gameplay? What about providing the SDK to actually allow user-created content? What would that look like? Are there other carrots beyond gear? Could we make gear and stats independent? Should end-game always be 10, 25 or 40 people picking on 1 boss, or could we provide epic encounters where you're actually outnumbered? Dramatic overhaul, and questioning every convention that exists.

They took a pragmatic approach at the imbued idiocy you get when you mess with millions.
It's why their game actually works for the millions. Basic-easy rules, inane carrots everywhere to corral the huge sheep.
While I hated the "everything-canned-and-guided" approach, this results in a game compatible with what humanity brings when you have to deal with the millions.

You want to go after WoW though, you'll need a few things:
- To map their exact launch strategy to hit all territories
- An already popular gamer-centric IP (optional: matching popular company name with an embedded audience of fans)
- 4+ years of solid development with at least a solid year of substantive end-to-end beta testing with real players
- A staff that's comprise of both development experts and those who play other games. Street smarts.
- $75mil+ minimum.
- Such strong confidence in being right you or your publisher have the patience to wait for you.

The big problems are:

- it's hard and costly to license a solid franchise (this brings lots of fans though and it's kind of required if your target are the millions).
- the non indie MMO makers with any hope, experience and budget are an handful at best, the indie developers tend to cater to "another" kind of player base instead.

If WAR were a PvP game at the core, PvE would be something you did WHEN THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE TO DO.  Instead PvE is the source of the best gear in game (granted, they put the pve in some contested zones... but meh). Something is wrong with this picture

Yes, and it's the fact THERE IS NOTHING ELSE TO DO.
I play on one of those former 700 queue players and right now when I meet an enemy in T4 I almost want to hug him for proving there's at least two idiots who CBA getting there.

Its frustrating to watch the MMO field deteriorate from what it used to be into what it is now and I never see it changing.

It's not MMO deteriorating, but the playerbase growing from 15-50k to millions.

Over the last year I've begun to wonder if the technology barrier is actually just a red herring

Technology does not matter, when someone with Quake1 graphics, canned grinds and "farm 10 boars x 1000", no world persistance etc. etc. can dominate everyone else by ten times the playerbase.
They "got it" where it matters to attract all those numbers. Where it matters is NOT just technology, but using technology as a means to leverage on that intangible something they got and none else does.

[Ratman_tf]

Brucetastic!

[Tarami]

I just don't think there is a desire for this kind of storytelling in the modern MMO.

I mean, the writing could be top notch in WAR. It could be really good. My character could have been face with issues of epic proportions.

But I skip it. Immediately. It's not that I read it and then dismissed it as not good enough or not on a scale of my liking. I never picked up the book.

I don't think any amount of amazing storytelling will make people want to pick up that book.

If WAR was a book, it would be published on gridded paper, hand-texted by five-year olds. The actual story might be intelligent and captivating, but it does absolutely zilch to promote reading it. It doesn't even lamely ask you to.

[Hindenburg]

They could solve a bit of that by allowing us to open the Tome during loading screens >_>

[Azazel]

MMOs are the same way. The market has been flooded with people not really playing MMOs for the experience, to explore, or group up and to share items and stories. Everyone's on their own now. Solo grinding to 50, having every quest marked out with circles, fucking arrows, and if that's not enough you can check websites to see the exact fucking /loc. Nobody does shit anymore unless there is a carrot and a reward in the form of a shiny new bullshit item they can show off. Christ, look what havok the scenario endgame scoreboard has caused. People pointing out class imbalance, tier imbalance, XP and renown imbalance. The "Waa he earned more XP than me but I played better!" bullshit. Everyone wants to win and win now. Nobody wants to open RvR because there isn't a big enough carrot out there for most people, and its not fun for the others. Instead of fixing the not-fun part, they decided to add more carrots to chase after.

Its frustrating to watch the MMO field deteriorate from what it used to be into what it is now and I never see it changing.

Some of the other points you said are fine, and I even agree with them. This chunk above though just seems to be a wistful tear for the days of Everquest 1.

I used to play EQ1. Loved it. Was very good at it. It was a horrible grind, but at the time, yeah I enjoyed it. Well, most of it. I didn't enjoy losing my level, or my corpse, or being LFG for long, peroids of time.

These days I'm no longer unemployed or a university student. I'm a professional in a full-time job/career. My relaxation time is far more valuable to me now. Gone are the days where I'd be willing to /hail every npc just in case they might have a quest to talk to me. I still read the quest text in WoW, because I enjoy it, but I'm no lonbger willing to tolerate much of what I tolerated in EQ. I like to play when I want to play. Fuck, in EQ1, I 2-boxed a druid/SK combo so I could log on and solo (being Australian, I played largely in non-peak times).

So yeah, as I've gotten older, the genre has matured and moved on. If you still like or prefer the older style of play, EQ1 is still there, with most all of the things you either loved or hated about it. I'm past that now though. My wife plays WoW with me, she was never interested in EQ, but when they gave us all the expansions and a month or so of free time earlier this year, I planned to show her the basics of how to play and give her a tour of the places I used to spend my time. Guk, PoJ, PoD, etc etc. I never got around to being bothered. I guess that illustrated to me more effectively than anything else that the old style of play doesn't hold anything for me anymore.

But if it's still your thing, you can always go back to it. All the older games are stil around for the most part. I just prefer the one that's currently the most polished, I can get home from work and get some stuff accomplished in a short time, then log off.

[Ratman_tf]

If WAR was a book, it would be published on gridded paper, hand-texted by five-year olds. The actual story might be intelligent and captivating, but it does absolutely zilch to promote reading it. It doesn't even lamely ask you to.

Reading text is something you do when you're not playing the game. I think there's got to be a better way of communicating story in a video game besides cutscenes and walls of text.

[BitWarrior]

Reading text is something you do when you're not playing the game. I think there's got to be a better way of communicating story in a video game besides cutscenes and walls of text.

I think we've found one of the few gamers left in the world who has not played Half Life.

[Azazel]

HL2 still had cutscenes. They weren't as bad as other games' ones but there was still al lot of you being locked in place while whatsername or her dad or the other scienticians babbled on and on.

[Slyfeind]

They didn't feel like cutcenes though; at least, not to me. I think it was because there wasn't a camera in control of your view, and you were free to wander around the room and look at things while the scientists babbled on and on.

Heh. Maybe it might be kinda cool if the story was interwoven into the game, while you actually played the game. Has anybody thought of that yet? Cuz I think that might be kewl zomgz.

[IainC]

Heh. Maybe it might be kinda cool if the story was interwoven into the game, while you actually played the game. Has anybody thought of that yet? Cuz I think that might be kewl zomgz.

"Stay awhile and listen...."

[Hindenburg]

HL2 still had cutscenes. They weren't as bad as other games' ones but there was still al lot of you being locked in place while whatsername or her dad or the other scienticians babbled on and on.

They were worse.
No way to skip it.