Author
|
Topic: A Catass by any other name... (Read 66822 times)
|
Zane0
Terracotta Army
Posts: 319
|
Pfft. Online achievement has no meaning, but at the same time it isn't fair that one can't have the same achievements as the ubers, time and/or commitment be damned.
At this point, most sane people shrug their shoulders and have fun with what they can find. For the rest, it is an endless war for a playstyle that no development team has been able to substain or realize.
|
|
|
|
shiznitz
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4268
the plural of mangina
|
If EQ2 can autoscale a player down as well as they do for mentoring, then the content should be easy to autoscale as well. In fact, The Splitpaw Saga adventure pack instances all auto-scale to the average level of the group/soloer from 20-50. This did not mean that the content wasn't fun, in fact. It was done well enough. The content was reasonable enough be defeated unless you made a big mistake. It could be gamed by having the higher levels mentor down, lowering the average level, entering the instance, then unmentoring.
|
I have never played WoW.
|
|
|
HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42666
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
|
In the end, is that really a bad thing? In my (admittedly) naive outlook, that means the casual gamer never runs out of content. You'd think that, but that's not what happens. What happens is they run out of patience, and either get burned out or bored and leave the game. This then makes the achievmanauts a larger percentage of the playerbase than they should be, and it's a self-defeating cycle. Sounds like the Holy Grail of MMOs. Sign me up.
Is the technology there to do that, and at what cost to the consumer? And what cost is the *average* consumer willing to pay to get it?
Instancing. City of Heroes already does this with missions to a certain extent, and even DDO has difficulty levels on its instanced dungeons. But you don't have to have instancing to do this, it just requires thinking beyond time-gated cockblocked content trains.
|
|
|
|
Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
|
I'd rather all content at all levels just auto-scaled to the level/item/power of the opponents at all times. The concern I've had with this idea since Diablo 2 (which scaled zones based on levels of group members, ala CoH) is that the game is never harder nor easier at any particular level. It can easily become always the same challenge, just with different flashes. There's no real persistence per se, no way for elders to pass down their knowledge, no way for players to share equipment, no real need for an economy of scaling-up equipment. Granted, if all ya ever do in WoW is Kill X for Y quests, the game is the same from 20 to 60. For people who can't or don't want to compete in that arena, those issues are non-issues. However, I believe in the heterogenious player society, one that has many different playstyles within. Each game has different types of people in them, regardless of the relatively few barking nutjobs on the game forums. This isn't about "Casuals vs Hardcore", it's about players who generally feel they have the same opportunity as everyone else... until they don't believe it anymore. An auto-scaling game feels too homogenous to me, something that could be sold on that feature alone but which doesn't really have a "massive" quality. Maybe that's fine. There's plenty of games where the massive is questionable, Diablo 2 included. But for those who want to leverage the presence of thousands or tens of thousands of other concurrent users, how can we balance the diversity of players that make up a more stable society against the rigors of a game development cycle decidedly focused on the warrior-elite class within it? To me, the answer is a diversity of experiences within the larger whole. We see that somewhat already, with the different-rules environments in most MMORPGs, and the newer games with even more compartmentalized sub-playgrounds (PvP+, PvP-, iPvP competitions, etc). Good environments for the integration of auto-scaling content. Maybe it's more of that, or maybe there's something else?
|
|
|
|
El Gallo
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2213
|
I'd rather all content at all levels just auto-scaled to the level/item/power of the opponents at all times. You level 60 and uber-geared up? You get the assfucking version of Vox. You have Auction House greens and only level 35? You get the version of Molten Core that gives you just enough of a challenge to be fun without holding you down and dryhumping your rotting corpse.
But then, devs would have to make content that was unique and interesting, instead of endless iterations of level +1, because the homogenity of the mechanics would just seem too transparent at that point.
The problem is that WoW encounters are too unique and interesting to make iterative in the way you want. It would be very easy to make iterative Vox or iterative Avatar of War. Iterative C'Thun, not so easy. Even an iterative Upper Blackrock would be tricky. Not utterly impossible like scaling those encounters for smaller or larger groups (another thing people often ask for as if it would be a simple matter of lopping off x DPS or y hit points), but still pretty hard.
|
This post makes me want to squeeze into my badass red jeans.
|
|
|
StGabe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 331
Bruce without the furry.
|
This conversation just seems to be proving to me that a lot of players will never admit that:
1) They really do want the shiny. And their problem is really that other people have it and they don't. Otherwise they wouldn't care if there was a mountain of content to plow through because that would just mean lots of play value. 2) Other games were made after EQ1. 3) Just because a consumer wants something doesn't mean that there is a market for it.
Most of these are just leftover arguments that people never gave up after they were killstolen from in EQ1 by an uberguild. Nevermind that even the most vanilla, DIKU games (WoW and EQ2) have moved on quite a bit from there.
And really what Haemish wants is a total sandbox world with no progression. And that's fine. It's just not something that sells very well. Even the vast majority of casuals want to feel that they were capable of things today they weren't capable of last week and for games that have players of all colors, and are expected to be played for months or years, that means a very long pipeline of content.
|
|
|
|
HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42666
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
|
An auto-scaling game feels too homogenous to me, something that could be sold on that feature alone but which doesn't really have a "massive" quality. Maybe that's fine. There's plenty of games where the massive is questionable, Diablo 2 included.
But for those who want to leverage the presence of thousands or tens of thousands of other concurrent users, how can we balance the diversity of players that make up a more stable society against the rigors of a game development cycle decidedly focused on the warrior-elite class within it? Massive and persistence are both HIGHLY OVERRATED. They are also the two biggest factors fucking up MMOG design, IMO.
|
|
|
|
Valmorian
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1163
|
1) They really do want the shiny. And their problem is really that other people have it and they don't. Otherwise they wouldn't care if there was a mountain of content to plow through because that would just mean lots of play value.
I see this claim a lot from people, but I'm not convinced it's really true. I, for one, don't care WHAT other people have in these games, but when I hit a brick wall in content that I can consume, that annoys me.
|
|
|
|
HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42666
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
|
This conversation just seems to be proving to me that a lot of players will never admit that:
1) They really do want the shiny. And their problem is really that other people have it and they don't. Otherwise they wouldn't care if there was a mountain of content to plow through because that would just mean lots of play value. Who doesn't want the shiney? Of course people want the shiney. But a mountain of content is NOT lots of play value, especially in PVE MMOG's when the variance between encounters is almost exactly the same from level 1 to level 60 (or 70, or 100 or 200) unless you manage to get 40 of your closest friends together. Bashing a wild boar at level 1 and bashing a murlock at level 60 in WoW isn't really that different. I will give WoW some credit for having instances that have some decent srcipted boss encounters like Deadmines. But the proportion of decent scripted PVE encounters compared to samey-same encounters is wildly out of whack. In short, repetition is not play value. 2) Other games were made after EQ1. Sure, but 95% of them have all been a reskinned EQ with features changed, lopped off or made easier. WoW really is EQ done right. Well, sort of right. Right-ER, I suppose. Most of these are just leftover arguments that people never gave up after they were killstolen from in EQ1 by an uberguild. Nevermind that even the most vanilla, DIKU games (WoW and EQ2) have moved on quite a bit from there.
Not really. See above. And really what Haemish wants is a total sandbox world with no progression. And that's fine. It's just not something that sells very well. Sure, it'll never sell WoW numbers. It may never even make EQ1 numbers. But that doesn't mean it can't be profitable.
|
|
|
|
stray
Terracotta Army
Posts: 16818
has an iMac.
|
Most of these are just leftover arguments that people never gave up after they were killstolen from in EQ1 by an uberguild. I didn't even play EQ. And my first exposure to a Diku game happened to be with an uberguild. One that dealt with a harsher environment than kill stealing at that. Even the vast majority of casuals want to feel that they were capable of things today they weren't capable of last week If that was true, then every game on the market would be an RPG.
|
|
|
|
StGabe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 331
Bruce without the furry.
|
ashing a wild boar at level 1 and bashing a murlock at level 60 in WoW isn't really that different. I will give WoW some credit for having instances that have some decent srcipted boss encounters like Deadmines. That is actually the argument against your proposed sandbox world. I agree that there is a sense in which WoW players never really progress although there are a lot of ways in which that is not true: -- at 60, you can kick the ass of whatever you fought at level 50 -- you can get items, learn techniques, etc., that make you better without increasing your level. And at level 60 that is the entire progression. -- the types of fights you fight tend to change over levels -- despite cries to the contrary, there is actually at least a modicum of skill in a lot of these games ... some players do get done in an hour what it takes others 5 hours to do ... some guilds manage to organize far more successful raids, etc. It may not be the sort of skill you are interested in but it is there and there are lots of others that are indeed interested. Your world, as you present it, is repetitive in a completely transparent manner which isn't really doing anyone a favor. And it's going to make it hard to prevent the feeling of repetition because the limitation of being able to scale content to any level is in fact quite restrictive on design. You don't even have the slight caveats above to the fact that the player is not progressing. While there is a sense in which WoW doesn't have progression, the progression it does have is presented well enough that players don't notice or care. And it does matter to them that they can kick the ass of whatever they fought 10 levels ago.
|
|
|
|
StGabe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 331
Bruce without the furry.
|
If that was true, then every game on the market would be an RPG. I thought it was taken for granted that this was all in the context of RPG's. So yes, my comment is just about RPG players. FPS's and other multiplayer games exist ... and yay for them ... but they're not what I'm talking about now.
|
|
|
|
Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
|
I agree almost completely with StGabe. However, I also need to point out that there is a market for non-standards. In fact, given the capping WoW has applied to the concept, exploration of the non-standard is all but a business requirement.
Lots of folks are not a big enough market, yet they're here anyway. Who the hell cares if their game "only" has 50k or 100k or whatever accounts. The amount of active subscriptions is only as relevant as the business model behind it, and CCP, Tepper, Linden Labs and so on are all doing fine. Unless you'e in one of the few uniserver worlds out there, everyone beyond your own server's population is academic anyway, a life you'll likely not touch.
Just like wanting the shiny, some people can't help but want to be part of the crowd, part of something "everyone" likes. That's where you get leaders, followers and the people who don't give a shit either way. If you follow the crowd, you're going to see the same shit you saw years ago with a bunch of people that weren't there, or who don't want anything different.
Make up your own damned mind. Instead of waiting for your playstyle to pop up on the radar of marketable relevance, see if there's any one of the dozens of other titles that already fulfill the need. Then you'll see why so many titles bear very little resemblance to EQ1.
Sure, 95% of the accounts may be in some knockoff. The 5% is no number to sneer at, and that assumes you care about an academic stat in the first place.
|
|
|
|
StGabe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 331
Bruce without the furry.
|
FWIW, I do agree that the future of MMORPG's for us more "specialized" players is in smaller, niche products.
I look at it like this: I don't care for McDonald's. I don't like Budweiser. I never wear what's in style. I read obscure fiction. I listen to lots of indie music and old jazz. Since when have I ever been mainstream? So it's not that surprising that mainstream MMO's aren't really satisfying my particular playstyle. WoW is really the McDonald's of MMO's. And I expect it, and games like it, to do very well for quite some time. Even though I get bored playing WoW, I feel that I can understand why others enjoy it. Sure, progression is kind of shallow. But it makes sense to its players. There's where you were at killing bears 10 levels ago. There's where are at now, killing murlocs, and there's where you will be at in 10 levels, killing scarlet monastary people. It may be a very simple (or to most of us on boards like this, boring) narrative but it's a very accessible, easy, consistent and working narrative. Not a lot of games have that.
My hope is in crazy, experimental, low-population games. I try to find time to try whatever is out there when I can. I've given up on Holy Grails, though, and I try to keep my expectations reasonable.
|
|
|
|
sarius
Terracotta Army
Posts: 548
|
My hope is in crazy, experimental, low-population games. I try to find time to try whatever is out there when I can. I've given up on Holy Grails, though, and I try to keep my expectations reasonable.
Is there a good tracker/list(s) of these games somewhere you'd recommend? Most everything on the market I disdain now, except Eve. Logging onto any of the regular MMOs to play with friends is even a chore. I fear I've been infected with the cynical anti-MMO virus.
|
It's always our desire to control that leads to injustice and inequity. -- Mary Gordon “Call it amnesty, call it a banana if you want to, but it’s earned citizenship.” -- John McCain (still learning English apparently)
|
|
|
Glazius
Terracotta Army
Posts: 755
|
The objective when playing golf is to hit the ball in the hole while enjoying a nice walk or golf cart ride in the open air.
For YOU it may be that objective. But not for me. I'm a competitive person by nature. ... I don't see the point in doing *anything* and not trying to be the best I can absolutely possibly be at it. Weeeeelllllll, here's the thing. A golfer with a 30 handicap isn't relegated to playing on Broken Glass Hills golf course, conveniently located next to the sewage treatment plant. In fact, the only time said golfer _can't_ show up at Posh Pines and tool around the verdant valleys in a golf cart is when there's a tournament on. Which is, what, every couple months maybe? --GF
|
|
|
|
edlavallee
Terracotta Army
Posts: 495
|
Weeeeelllllll, here's the thing.
A golfer with a 30 handicap isn't relegated to playing on Broken Glass Hills golf course, conveniently located next to the sewage treatment plant.
In fact, the only time said golfer _can't_ show up at Posh Pines and tool around the verdant valleys in a golf cart is when there's a tournament on. Which is, what, every couple months maybe?
--GF
Likewise, I don't need to shoot under par to "unlock" the back nine.
|
Zipper Zee - space noob
|
|
|
HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42666
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
|
Make up your own damned mind. Instead of waiting for your playstyle to pop up on the radar of marketable relevance, see if there's any one of the dozens of other titles that already fulfill the need. Then you'll see why so many titles bear very little resemblance to EQ1. Please to point me to these titles. They are few and far between right now. Off the top of my head I can think of: Planetside (FPS with EQ level treadmill) The Sims Online (blech with a treadmill) Eve (Boring Excel spreadsheet gameplay IMO) A Tale in the Desert (No combat) Ultima Online (Like having a date with my grandmother) Everything else has too much EQ in it for my tastes, if not a direct ripoff of EQ or a shittastic bugfest. I've made up my own damn mind, and it's that I don't like what the MMOG medium is giving me.
|
|
|
|
shiznitz
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4268
the plural of mangina
|
Planetside is not a levelling treadmill, although some might argue it can become a combat treadmill (same three contested continents 90% of the time.) You can re-cert every 6 hours. This means level 10 or 12 (out of 25) is fine for casual play and BR10 takes maybe 4-5 nights ina full squad on a contested continent.
|
I have never played WoW.
|
|
|
Hoax
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8110
l33t kiddie
|
Planetside is just boring after awhile, needs more world.
Tribes1 is free to d/l (full game) do yourself a favor and play that over PS.
|
A nation consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual's morals are situational, then that individual is without morals. If a nation's laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn't a nation. -William Gibson
|
|
|
Strazos
Greetings from the Slave Coast
Posts: 15542
The World's Worst Game: Curry or Covid
|
I tried to get into Planetside....I just couldn't do it.
|
Fear the Backstab! "Plato said the virtuous man is at all times ready for a grammar snake attack." - we are lesion "Hell is other people." -Sartre
|
|
|
Jimbo
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1478
still drives a stick shift
|
Planetside has allways been a great vehicle game for me. Nothing like seeing a combined arms group of prowlers, raiders, mechs, and aircraft rolling up against an OPFOR and letting the chaos of battle go nuts. When it switches to the inside game I go nuts as I don't care for it as much, which is too bad, since many fps types want that infantry/inside feeling to be the main theme.
|
|
|
|
Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
|
Planetside is great, without a fee. That they continue to carry a fee has always surprised me. I'd drop into and out of that game for weeks at a time every few months if I didn't have to pay for it. If that means making it all ad-enabled, fine. I don't care. It's an FPS I can play without getting steamrolled by jolt-nuts. Is there a good tracker/list(s) of these games somewhere you'd recommend? Most everything on the market I disdain now, except Eve. Logging onto any of the regular MMOs to play with friends is even a chore. I fear I've been infected with the cynical anti-MMO virus. There's two different lists I reference for stuff I may have missed, with the first being much better for the obscure, or at least, not-talked-about-here/at-lummies. - Virtual Worlds Online- this link is a list of them all by category. Some stuff in there I've never heard of.
- The list at MMORPGdot seems to have most of them. This way you can go through the list, compare to stuff you've heard about here, and decide to give something a shot.
Please to point me to these titles. First, do you want a different game or a better WoW (as in, one that doesn't suddenly become an oppressive timesink at a relatively easy-to-reach level cap?). And I ask because while your utopia has been defined (reads like non-competitive light-multiplayer auto-scaling content), that doesn't exist outside of the some features in Diablo II.
|
|
|
|
Hoax
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8110
l33t kiddie
|
Sadly onrpg.com is a great place to find lists of free games and usually they are buzzing about 1-3 titles that have recently come out. You get what you pay for 90% with MMO titles though so dont expect too much. Also stay out of the forums they are very vaulty.
|
A nation consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual's morals are situational, then that individual is without morals. If a nation's laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn't a nation. -William Gibson
|
|
|
stray
Terracotta Army
Posts: 16818
has an iMac.
|
I'll probably keep bitching about MMO's for awhile, I think. What can I say? I know what I want. Every once in awhile, a game comes along with a few neat ideas, but it's nothing to actually keep me happy.
Dream game, as I've stated elsewhere, is: Third person action set in the Wild West (i.e. Gun), PvP based around harsh losses and large territorial control, with Whorehouse/Railroad/Mayor/49'er mini-Tycoon metagames to boot. Details are sketchy -- But hey, if someone even attempted half of that, I'd totally be there.
|
|
|
|
SnakeCharmer
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3807
|
In the end, is that really a bad thing? In my (admittedly) naive outlook, that means the casual gamer never runs out of content. You'd think that, but that's not what happens. What happens is they run out of patience, and either get burned out or bored and leave the game. This then makes the achievmanauts a larger percentage of the playerbase than they should be, and it's a self-defeating cycle. If you're truly casual, why is the burnout factor so high? Instancing. City of Heroes already does this with missions to a certain extent, and even DDO has difficulty levels on its instanced dungeons. But you don't have to have instancing to do this, it just requires thinking beyond time-gated cockblocked content trains.
IMO, instancing defeats the purpose of an MMO. But it's a double edged sword: Achievers, who 99 percent of the time are min/max'd out, dominate the spawn/area, leaving no chance for casual gamers. But then again, why does a casual deserve just as much chance as a hardcore gamer? Just because they pay the same fee?
|
|
|
|
HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42666
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
|
In the end, is that really a bad thing? In my (admittedly) naive outlook, that means the casual gamer never runs out of content. You'd think that, but that's not what happens. What happens is they run out of patience, and either get burned out or bored and leave the game. This then makes the achievmanauts a larger percentage of the playerbase than they should be, and it's a self-defeating cycle. If you're truly casual, why is the burnout factor so high? Because the time commitment to feel like you are doing much more than spin your wheels is so goddamn high, and the repetition required is so well, repetitive. The gameplay in MMOG's, especially dikus, just isn't enough to keep casual players interested for years at a time without some stickiness like guilds (friendships), grinds (leveling treadmills) or never-ending new content. IMO, instancing defeats the purpose of an MMO. But it's a double edged sword: Achievers, who 99 percent of the time are min/max'd out, dominate the spawn/area, leaving no chance for casual gamers. But then again, why does a casual deserve just as much chance as a hardcore gamer? Just because they pay the same fee?
Yes, that's pretty much it. I pay the same $15 you pay, why SHOULDN'T I have the opportunity to tackle the same challenges? I'm not asking to have the stuff handed to me, I'm willing to fight the big, bad dragon. I just don't want to have to bash 50 bazillion helpless bunnies squared to do so. If you can give me a compelling reason why two players with differing play styles who pay the same fee shouldn't have access to the same content (without using the word work at all in your explanation), you'll get a virtual cookie. As in, the cookie will be in your mind.
|
|
|
|
StGabe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 331
Bruce without the furry.
|
I just don't think you want to play MMORPG's. You want to play at most 6-player games with chat clients that let you talk to all your friends. Seems like Trillian and Diablo II/Warcraft III/Halo/whatever is your optimal "MMORPG".
|
|
|
|
Hoax
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8110
l33t kiddie
|
Massive and persistence are both HIGHLY OVERRATED. They are also the two biggest factors fucking up MMOG design, IMO.
This statement should have made that obvious. There are more then one vision of where the "medium" should head, mine personally is towards more open-ended player-driven-content virtual world style offerings. That embrace persistence and massive, and get rid of shit like instancing. More pvp too kplzthx. Others seem to be looking more for MMO's to just become a natural extension of the RPG genre. Small parties, limited interaction with random players. Something like DDO with WoW's attention to detail and more content, CoX with less grind, WoW with less cockblocks upon hitting L60 if I'm understanding the other side correctly. In a few years were going to have to invent some new terms to define the two goals, but for now all we've got are halfassed versions of both side's wants with the current crop of DIKU-bullshit. Nobody wins.
|
A nation consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual's morals are situational, then that individual is without morals. If a nation's laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn't a nation. -William Gibson
|
|
|
StGabe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 331
Bruce without the furry.
|
Well it didn't make it obvious but yes, that goes right along with all of this (and I almost quoted that). The important bit to me though is that what's being asked for isn't an MMORPG anymore. Persistence (moreso than massiveness) is the core of the genre. Without persistence we're talking about stuff that already exists and all that you really want out of the genre is the chat channels.
And I'm trying to understand why it is important to yell at people who like Soccer when really your only point is: "I don't like Soccer, I like Baseball."
|
|
|
|
Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
|
Exactly. I understand the desire to be protected from the randomness of potential catasses and to have boutique experiences balanced for one's own lifestyle. But as discussed, there's not a huge marketshare for that right now when you look at MMORPGs in general.
However, we need to realized that immersive online games are still relatively niche when compared to ALL online games. There's a good amount of people paying a lot of cash to be immersed in massive time-sinky games. But there's a lot more, by orders of magnitude, seeking diversional entertainment, both alone and with friends.
I firmly believe the next big MMO will come from outside the current development community, and not be for any of us here :)
|
|
|
|
stray
Terracotta Army
Posts: 16818
has an iMac.
|
and not be for any of us here :)
Speak for yourself, bud My discontent stems from the genre not behaving or resembling all of the other fun games I'm playing/have played. I want to see these various ideas applied. From the first time I heard about MMO's, the "massive" part appealed to me --- There's a lot of potential in that. It just keeps getting thrown away in favor of molding all of these games into Massive RPG's -- A crappy form of RPG at that. Hell, I barely like polished, single player RPG's. And don't even get me started on just "fantasy" in general. [EDIT] Spelling. Yuck.
|
|
« Last Edit: July 18, 2006, 07:47:23 PM by Stray »
|
|
|
|
|
Xerapis
|
I like WOW well enough.
I even like it better if playing with RL friends.
What I don't like: I can't get the cool "end-game" gear without having to repeatedly group with a bunch of people I don't really know and mostly dislike.
If they could fix that, I'm all good.
|
..I want to see gamma rays. I want to hear x-rays. I want to...smell dark matter...and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me...
|
|
|
Merusk
Terracotta Army
Posts: 27449
Badge Whore
|
and not be for any of us here :)
Speak for yourself, bud My discontent stems from the genre not behaving or resembling all of the other fun games I'm playing/have played. I want to see these various ideas applied. From the first time I heard about MMO's, the "massive" part appealed to me --- There's a lot of potential in that. It just keeps getting thrown away in favor of molding all of these games into Massive RPG's -- A crappy form of RPG at that. Hell, I barely like polished, single player RPG's. And don't even get me started on just "fantasy" in general. [EDIT] Spelling. Yuck. I don't believe Darniaq means it won't be fantasy, or even that it won't be an RPG. He means it won't be an FPS, RTS, TBS, Hack&Slash or any of the other familiar game-types. Most traditional gamers probably won't even call it a game at all, as it'd be something more akin to Massivly Multiplayer Sudoku or Bejeweled or Boggle. Thus why he made the statement about a lack of appeal to anyone here. Also; while it throws me in with the 'rabble' of Gabe, Snake & Hoax I agree. It's pretty obvious that many folks here just plain don't like MMOs at all. It makes the discussion that much more pointless when one 'camp' is arguing for things already offered in SP games with Multiplayer options, they just don't want to play them for some reason. As someone else said, Massive & Persistant are the entire core of the genre. Remove those and you've got single player games. Back to the "Why shouldn't short-session-time players get access to lewtz like long-session- time players?" There's no good reason they shouldn't. Quests, 7-10 man content, whatever (in RPGs, which like Gabe I assumed the whole discussion was initially about.) to let them access the same stuff over-time. It just shouldn't take LESS time over-all than large-group (which in itself takes a long time.) or else why have large-group, and if you're not going to do large-group why try for Massive.
|
|
« Last Edit: July 19, 2006, 04:16:51 AM by Merusk »
|
|
The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
|
|
|
stray
Terracotta Army
Posts: 16818
has an iMac.
|
I don't believe Darniaq means it won't be fantasy, or even that it won't be an RPG. He means it won't be an FPS, RTS, TBS, Hack&Slash or any of the other familiar game-types. Most traditional gamers probably won't even call it a game at all, as it'd be something more akin to Massivly Multiplayer Sudoku or Bejeweled or Boggle. Thus why he made the statement about a lack of appeal to anyone here. Oh. I assumed he meant that when he said the next big thing won't come from the "current development community" -- Which, to my mind, meant those who come from and/or learned their lessons from MUDs. Darniaq, can you clarify?
|
|
|
|
|
 |