Sarcasm+Aticle/=/Good Atricle. Especially if the conent is just rehashed. Not to mention nobody on the internet getts sarcasm anymore and you're replies will mostly consist of 'NO!' and 'What is this guy smoking?'

I could see if you were replying to someone, that might make yor sarcasm witty but this is just poor littiture. Even more poor than my spelling. Wow, I think I have a new hobby out of flaming these editorials.

I can't count the ways this guy was wrong. 

In both Extremes.

I hope he is joking.

1. ·  Time Spent != Harder.
2. ·  Casual players Don’t want instant gratification.
3. ·  intuitive artificial intelligence, more realistic and immersive environments and more challenging mobs == More challenge Is absolutely correct.

Fighting a more intelligent mob for an hour (because of death) is way better than fighting a stupid one 40 - 50 times for 8 and still not getting what you are after.

The first part is just pure challenge, the second is tedium, mindless annoying, only there to waste your entertainment time, pavlov's abused dog, tedium.

Infact, if i could, i would report him fro trolling.

ROFL

I took his editorial as make games fun again.

In a couple years its doubtful you'll be talking to your friends over a beer and say remember when I ground to 60 in 3 days and didn't eat?

You might however talk with your friends about some fun encounter with a ganker that you overcame and killed, or the time you escaped some boss mob that wondered through your normal "grinding".

In the end its all pixels and its the real experience with friends that you will walk away with. Hopefully you don't look back and try to remember what you spent the last 2 years doing.

---

Originally posted by Zergor
In a couple years its doubtful you'll be talking to your friends over a beer and say remember when I ground to 60 in 3 days and didn't eat?

You might however talk with your friends about some fun encounter with a ganker that you overcame and killed, or the time you escaped some boss mob that wondered through your normal "grinding".

In the end its all pixels and its the real experience with friends that you will walk away with. Hopefully you don't look back and try to remember what you spent the last 2 years doing.

---

Agreed.

I tell my friends this time and again, but sadly none of them listen. They're so intent on "omfg epixxx" that they don't have time to stop and actually play the game. Personally, I'm not interested in loot, or levels, or quests, unless they are specifically different from the norm. No, after I play a game, when I walk away, I had better have a damn good story to tell my friends, else it's a waste of time.

I can only hope other players realize this guy was being sarcastic and facetious in demanding that developers allow players to skip straight to the "end-game," because that's exactly what he said. While I'm certain many players would jump for joy at seeing this feature, I imagine the majority of us would say "wtf?" None of us like level treadmilling, but if you skip it and go straight to the end, you've TOTALLY missed the point. There's nothing to brag about in having hawt lewt if you don't have the history to back it up.

In short, if you don't like level grinding, then go do something else. Nobody is forcing you to level, and there's a whole virtual world to explore. If there isn't, or if there's a level requirement to explore that world, then you're playing the wrong game.

It would be funnier if there werern't actually people like that...

Lets just hope developers don't listen to people like that. 

Love the sarcasm man.  "It's all about the journey"  Got it.

Lemme flip the coin on ya though.

How about they innovate me a way to level that doesn't involve me whacking these new supermobs you are talking about 18 million, gadgillion putrillion times.  Gimme something besides the go kill 14 of these, or loot 18 of those, deliver this pie, or escort this little chicken.  Innovate me a "funner" journey and I will be more than happy to level slower. 

People wouldn't be in such a tizzy to get to the end-game, if the end-game wasn't the only fun thing to do in the game.

 

Lukane,

Agree 100%. 

Perhaps its taboo to respond in a thread regarding an article I wrote, but....breaking taboo, i must explain.

The article is in response to a previous article exploring innovations in games that would add "fun".  No one likes work.  The resulting responses, believe it or not, are summed up in the current article you have just read.  An overwhelming number of people showed no interest in exploring how to increase the "fun factor" of a game and were primarily concerned with beating it. 

After reading many of the responses, I felt the urge to write this article.  Yes, it is laced with sarcasm on my part, No, it does not offer constructive ideas.  The intent was to expose a general feeling I get when playing games, which is, "Is anyone having fun or are we all just racing toward the end?"

Unfortunately, sarcasm is a lost art and often misunderstood.

---

Originally posted by kingslayer

Unfortunately, sarcasm is a lost art and often misunderstood.

---

Yeah! How dare you write an article like this. You are giving intellectual writers like myself a bad name with your foolery!

Rob,

The lightbulb just went on brother.

Instant Gratification has become the player drug of choice.

Genius, pure genius.

And that....is not sarcasm.

I agree with the article and Lukane. And frankly, a game that starts at the end and focuses on fun things that ultimately matter sounds like a good thing to me. And I really would like a game that is fun instead of work. Single player games have nailed this concept, why mmorpgs have such a hard time accomplishing this I don't know. 

Friggin' right ya!

Nice article.  :)  I gotta say though...even instant gratification gets old after a while...

*puts up his two artificially leveled WoW characters*

-G

I love sarcasm.

And I'm one of those people that enjoy the game along the way because for me, end-game is when it's time to quit or roll a new character because I just don't have time for raiding.  It might be because I'm a roleplayer and I like writing stories along the way of my character and her adventures, but it's my journey from the newbie yard up to endgame that I really, really enjoy.  It's one of the reasons why I like WoW, the journey has a lot of humor in it. 

 

Actually, the sarcasm was laid on too thick. To the point of being REALLY irritating. I don't mind the use of sarcasm to present a point from an extreme perspective, but dang...I just wanted to hit something after I read that.

But, personal writing craft opinion aside, point taken. And a good point at that. MMORPGs are made "online" so lots of "people" can play "together" and form "friendships" in the game. Grinding as quickly as possible to be the first person in the game to hit max level just to finish the game in a MMO is like buying a box full of beaded necklaces for Marti Gra, handing them out as quick as possible so as to miss every "show" for each necklace, going back to your buddies and saying...

 "Look, I handed out all these beads!"

"Wow, you must have seen a TON of boobies!"

"What?...no, actually I just handed them out as quick as possible so every girl got enough to go home happy! Thats the point of it, right?"

"...WHAT!?"

P.S. If your so committed to these ideals how do you feel about this site running ads for services that caters to these kinds of people and mindsets (Powerleveling, gold farming, etc.)?

 

Great post ! As usual :)

So much describes the "joe" mentality.

 

I remeber watching "Willow" for the first time at my pals house , on vcr. Given the new power or fast forward (early days of vhs) he was just ffw all the boring dialogues and we were watching only the awsome fight scenes!

Should i say that Willow was ruined experience for me?

 

Anyway your perfect game was allready written long time ago.

It was also called the "best game of all times" by many gaming magazines.

When you install it , and run it - all you get is a black screen with bold white text saying :

 

YOU WIN!

first of all i saw the sarcasm and i liked the article comparing it with other forms of entertainment.
in game i dont get tired to tell anyone that level dont matter but the time and expirience you spend in the game should matter.

but i see the motivation behind why gamers would want that on various levels

1. keeping in touch with your friends
Problem: how do you get your real life friends to play a game you alreaddy put month or years into if that game builds up power by the hour. you cant party high level friends and sometime if you take a 2month holiday from the game you will find your virtual-social network (one main reason many player play mmo) is broke since you cant share the same content anymore. this is like coming late to a movie that your friends watched for an hour.
Sollutions:
a. dont let the gap between new and old players widen to much => old players get frustrated
b. make a system where the old player could lower himselve to those he fights with for a limited time

2. open competition
Problem: no1 likes to be the n00b especially not if the game allows high lvl ppl to grief lower levels. 2years into lineage 2 the "endgame" is pvp and sieges amongst players with incredible abilities. its an open map and these "godlike" players fight not only over high end content but over all content (castles). if you lack 10 levels (in higher lvls thats a year of grinding for casual gamers) you could us well skip that content since you get killed in 1 blow.
Sollution: contentestet content needs a upper limit as well as a lower limit to ensure that people find competition their own level. no1 has pressure to lvl up fast as long as theres good content and competition on a lvl he can play with.

3. open competition with limited time
Problem: as a guy having a family and working you cant keep up with the highschool kid that plays 4times as much hours then you.
Sollutions: limited time/ relaxed servers, diving servers into leagues like sports league. i wouldnt have a problem competing with ppl that have the same time/ budget then me.


Most of the sollutions arent that hard to implement and seeing the market grow i expect the next generation of mmo to develope things like (sports)leagues allowing all kinds of players to have more fun with their content rather to spend their time in a race to catch up.

Looking at the market:
i would guess that in a game like ddo where the content is the fokus and where there isnt much confrontional competition the urge to bypass that content to be high lvl is far less then in a game like lineage2 where its open pvp at minimum content all over the map where every level counts.

There is only one thing i can say, this has got to be the saddest artical i have ever read, people like this feed people like Goldsellers, A game is no work even thou it might seem that way in a MMO cause a MMO should be a online WORLD !!!, isn't a world a place to do work regardless if this is real life or a game a "world" ill always be a world, if you want fast past games cause of your time limit (as i also have time limit in gamplaytime) then pickup singleplayer game cause the way i see you want to play you also do not have time to socialize so really you state it before now people will think why you play MMOrpg and that is something i do want to know cause you artical is very bad for the likes of real gamers that enjoy every ecpect of the game and most real gamers can look byond the words "grind" for me there is no such thing , you might ask why , well because lucky for me i still can use my own fantasy and why would i be as stupid to get at the end of the game as i feel the game is ever entertaining in between lvl's why is so many people complkain about the games they play, really those people that say " i playing X game for over 2 years and it still sucks, i really do not understand people that play a game over 2 years that they feel is a bad game, are they missing small parts in their brain for reasoning that they can not make their own desisions to end or stop playing a game they constantly give a bad rap to.

No i think if people consider themselfs gamers then that is what they should be, All this complaining is only proof that among the many people that play games not many people actualy play games cause they have a limited capacity of fantasy so therefor if they miss something in a game they can not fill that blank in themself and start to ramble nonsense about a game saying its stupid, boring and what else you non gamers can think of.

Afcourse i do understand that some people like to play serten games and that there might not be enough time to be able to play those games but is that the fault of the gaming company's or is it really you that so called yourself a gamer wich to me you are far from being a reall gamer with a artical like this.

People WAKE UP !! if you feel a GAME IS BORING stop playING! maybe its time you think to yourself " is it the game thats horrible or am i just such a terrible gamer without any fantasy and can only game with the elements a game has to offer and have no time for the content of a game cause you wanna be end lvl, if the last sentence is the one closest to how you feel then in my vocabulary you can not and never will be a gamer.

 my grammar isn't perfect as this isn't my main langauge but i hope i made clear what it is i was trying to say/type ;)

 

*puts on flame suit and prepares to go against what seems like 90% of the people that post comments on this site*

If people are buying into it already, why spend more money on it?

More content?  More interesting content?  More fun, less grind?  That content costs more money to make.  How are they expected to keep you paying them nearly as long if they spend more money for content that'll take you less time to get through?  Do you see the picture here?  As far as MMO developers and publishers are concerned, they've got a good thing going here.  Someone's footing the bill for all that development.  As long as there's more money coming in than going out, they're happy.  They don't care if you wish there were more interesting content.

The avg single player game has 80 hours of game play?  I think I'm being fairly generous with that, unless you start talking about games with massively repetitive content.  How far is that going to go for the average MMO subscriber?  Would you say 8 hours a week, maybe 4 hours on 2 days or 2 hours on 4 days, is pretty average?  10 weeks.  2.5 months.  Why would anybody fund a project like that?

People frequently complain about the content of single player games, even.  So, better content and another full game's worth of content every 2.5 months, which still won't keep the power gamers happy.  But let's just leave them out of the picture, since they're pretty much never happy.

Oh, but wait, they're a large chunk of what foots the bill for an MMO publisher/developer.

Bah, I could go on and on about this, but really....

It's all about dangling a carrot in front of somebody and promising that if they just keep paying the monthly dues, they'll eventually get the carrot.  If by chance you do give them the carrot, you'll already have another one prepped to keep them moving quickly thereafter.

Call it sad if you want, but this is the way the business works.  Carrot on a stick, profit in the pocket.  Why would you (as a business) do anything else?

If you would like to argue this, please provide your reason(s) why you think your ideas would make players happier AND allow the developers/publishers/financial backers to make as much money as they already do or more.