Originally posted by InFaVilla

Cubists such as Picasso did not do it for the sake of beauty. Yet the thought-provocation can very well improve the quality of life. 

Sure, but the point is the effort was appreciated in some capacity.  Unlike the million nameless artists who've produced art over the centuries which had no real redeeming value.

(Which isn't to say that only well-known artists improve life, although they certainly enjoy a wider impact.)

when did games adopt this crappy principal of more time = automatic win? if i challenge the chess champion of the world he doesn't start with all Queens and I start with all Pawns because i don't play chess.

we start with the same pieces, he doesn't need that extra advantage to beat me ... or at least he shouldn't.

Originally posted by Ecoces

when did games adopt this crappy principal of more time = automatic win? if i challenge the chess champion of the world he doesn't start with all Queens and I start with all Pawns because i don't play chess.

 

we start with the same pieces, he doesn't need that extra advantage to beat me ... or at least he shouldn't.

When was time not a significant contributing factor to power in an RPG?

Originally posted by midmagic

Originally posted by Ecoces

when did games adopt this crappy principal of more time = automatic win? if i challenge the chess champion of the world he doesn't start with all Queens and I start with all Pawns because i don't play chess.

 

we start with the same pieces, he doesn't need that extra advantage to beat me ... or at least he shouldn't.

When was time not a significant contributing factor to power in an RPG?

well shouldn't that tell you that RPGs are backwards when every other Comptetitive game/sport genre out there is NOT based on time spent?

Originally posted by Ecoces

Originally posted by midmagic

Originally posted by Ecoces

when did games adopt this crappy principal of more time = automatic win? if i challenge the chess champion of the world he doesn't start with all Queens and I start with all Pawns because i don't play chess.

 

we start with the same pieces, he doesn't need that extra advantage to beat me ... or at least he shouldn't.

When was time not a significant contributing factor to power in an RPG?

well shouldn't that tell you that RPGs are backwards when every other Comptetitive game/sport genre out there is NOT based on time spent?

 

Because RPGs are not esports dude. They are role playing games.

I'm sorry OP. Your use of the word "Period" as some final, all knowing, elevated existence term has disqualified your post from further consideration. Have wonderful day.

Originally posted by tyrannis

I'm sorry OP. Your use of the word "Period" as some final, all knowing, elevated existence term has disqualified your post from further consideration. Have wonderful day.

You are wrong. Tiny filled circle.

Originally posted by Cuathon

Because RPGs are not esports dude. They are role playing games.

But again, the point isn't that RPGs shouldn't involve time investment, but that time investment shouldn't be so important that it completely drowns out quality gameplay.

If a game is going to be a shallow Time Investment Meter, may as well not invest much development into it at all and just produce another light Progress Quest.  Because if time investment drowns out the interesting decisions the rest of the game is going to be sort of a waste anyway.

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by Cuathon

Because RPGs are not esports dude. They are role playing games.

But again, the point isn't that RPGs shouldn't involve time investment, but that time investment shouldn't be so important that it completely drowns out quality gameplay.

If a game is going to be a shallow Time Investment Meter, may as well not invest much development into it at all and just produce another light Progress Quest.  Because if time investment drowns out the interesting decisions the rest of the game is going to be sort of a waste anyway.

Games with persistant progression are inherently based on time spent.

A standard RTS game is also based on time spent. If you only start playing 10 minutes in, the other guy is gonna kill you no matter how well you play. So in a persistant dynamic virtual world which is essentially a giant RTS game, if you don't play you lose. I made the PvE enemies so that you only had to play a certain amount of time not to die, provided you aren't an idiot. But since some players play more than others they will have more stuff.

All of the games you refer to do not have an aggregation of resources. Sports, chess, even WoW. There is a tiny journey in WoW and then a cap. Its a single player or co op rpg with raids and instanced battlegrounds tacked on at the end. Indeed the parts of the game which fit your criteria ARE NOT RPG ACTIVITIES. The "balanced PvP" is just a MOBA tacked on to the end of an RPG.

And raids are at best diablo style action rpg coop lobby features. So while technically they vaguely qualify as RPG, which emphasis on G and not RP they are certainly not features on an MMO.

So the only conclusion I can come to is that you desire to play coop RPGs and MOBAs and are willing to pay a box price plus 15$ a month to play a coop RPG with a MOBA in it.

I prefer to play LoL for free with far superior PvP and no grind to get to the PvP  and then pay like 20$ for a single player RPG.

So I pay 20$ or 60$ if I buy Skyrim, as my total price and you shell out an extra 15$ a month for a hacked together srpg and cooprpg where both the coop aspect and the MOBA aspect are inferior to what I get.

You act like you are really smart, but that seems like a pretty dumb choice to me.

And at no point are either of us playing MMOs.

Originally posted by Cuathon

Games with persistant progression are inherently based on time spent.

A standard RTS game is also based on time spent. If you only start playing 10 minutes in, the other guy is gonna kill you no matter how well you play. So in a persistant dynamic virtual world which is essentially a giant RTS game, if you don't play you lose. I made the PvE enemies so that you only had to play a certain amount of time not to die, provided you aren't an idiot. But since some players play more than others they will have more stuff.

All of the games you refer to do not have an aggregation of resources. Sports, chess, even WoW. There is a tiny journey in WoW and then a cap. Its a single player or co op rpg with raids and instanced battlegrounds tacked on at the end. Indeed the parts of the game which fit your criteria ARE NOT RPG ACTIVITIES. The "balanced PvP" is just a MOBA tacked on to the end of an RPG.

And raids are at best diablo style action rpg coop lobby features. So while technically they vaguely qualify as RPG, which emphasis on G and not RP they are certainly not features on an MMO.

So the only conclusion I can come to is that you desire to play coop RPGs and MOBAs and are willing to pay a box price plus 15$ a month to play a coop RPG with a MOBA in it.

I prefer to play LoL for free with far superior PvP and no grind to get to the PvP  and then pay like 20$ for a single player RPG.

So I pay 20$ or 60$ if I buy Skyrim, as my total price and you shell out an extra 15$ a month for a hacked together srpg and cooprpg where both the coop aspect and the MOBA aspect are inferior to what I get.

You act like you are really smart, but that seems like a pretty dumb choice to me.

And at no point are either of us playing MMOs.

No, games with persistent progression involve time spent, they don't have to be predominantly driven by it.

Standard RTSes aren't about time investment at all.  At the start of the match everyone is on completely equal footing and based on the quality of their decisionmaking (their skill) they will either succeed or fail.  No significant advantage carries over between matches which isn't part of the player's own skill. That's what makes the genre fun -- your decisions are everything.

If time investment carries an advantage beyond the 15-60 minute match, however, then decisions stop being everything and time investment begins to be more important. The more potent the advantage gained, the more watered down and useless decisions become.

So while an RTS match ends after 15-60 minutes, allowing the next match to return you to super-important decisions, a persistent game doesn't end, causing decisions to be more and more meaningless.  So when it comes to a given play session, an RTS match is nothing about time spent -- whereas a persistent game becomes predominantly about time spent.

The fact that you call MMORPG PVP a "MOBA" really betrays lack of PVP experience, as they're very different.  The only MMORPG PVP remotely close to a MOBA was AV, and the majority of it is much more like a FPS.

Originally posted by Cuathon

Do you think you are hardcore? What's the most hardcore thing you've done in a game?

Everytime I die in a MMO I chop off a finger. I'm down to my index fingers which makes it really hard to play. I figure with this rate I'll be playing with me feet before too long. When that happens I think I'll pick up WoW. It will probably be the only game I can play by then

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by Cuathon

Games with persistant progression are inherently based on time spent.

A standard RTS game is also based on time spent. If you only start playing 10 minutes in, the other guy is gonna kill you no matter how well you play. So in a persistant dynamic virtual world which is essentially a giant RTS game, if you don't play you lose. I made the PvE enemies so that you only had to play a certain amount of time not to die, provided you aren't an idiot. But since some players play more than others they will have more stuff.

All of the games you refer to do not have an aggregation of resources. Sports, chess, even WoW. There is a tiny journey in WoW and then a cap. Its a single player or co op rpg with raids and instanced battlegrounds tacked on at the end. Indeed the parts of the game which fit your criteria ARE NOT RPG ACTIVITIES. The "balanced PvP" is just a MOBA tacked on to the end of an RPG.

And raids are at best diablo style action rpg coop lobby features. So while technically they vaguely qualify as RPG, which emphasis on G and not RP they are certainly not features on an MMO.

So the only conclusion I can come to is that you desire to play coop RPGs and MOBAs and are willing to pay a box price plus 15$ a month to play a coop RPG with a MOBA in it.

I prefer to play LoL for free with far superior PvP and no grind to get to the PvP  and then pay like 20$ for a single player RPG.

So I pay 20$ or 60$ if I buy Skyrim, as my total price and you shell out an extra 15$ a month for a hacked together srpg and cooprpg where both the coop aspect and the MOBA aspect are inferior to what I get.

You act like you are really smart, but that seems like a pretty dumb choice to me.

And at no point are either of us playing MMOs.

No, games with persistent progression involve time spent, they don't have to be predominantly driven by it.

Standard RTSes aren't about time investment at all.  At the start of the match everyone is on completely equal footing and based on the quality of their decisionmaking (their skill) they will either succeed or fail.  No significant advantage carries over between matches which isn't part of the player's own skill. That's what makes the genre fun -- your decisions are everything.

If time investment carries an advantage beyond the 15-60 minute match, however, then decisions stop being everything and time investment begins to be more important. The more potent the advantage gained, the more watered down and useless decisions become.

So while an RTS match ends after 15-60 minutes, allowing the next match to return you to super-important decisions, a persistent game doesn't end, causing decisions to be more and more meaningless.  So when it comes to a given play session, an RTS match is nothing about time spent -- whereas a persistent game becomes predominantly about time spent.

The fact that you call MMORPG PVP a "MOBA" really betrays lack of PVP experience, as they're very different.  The only MMORPG PVP remotely close to a MOBA was AV, and the majority of it is much more like a FPS.

Any game where the world is persistent and there is any sort of progression inherently becomes about time spent.

You still haven't addressed this:

If you don't play an RTS for the first 10 minutes and your opponent does than your decisions don't matter.

In fact decisions made in the first match of my game DON'T MATTER  TO THE NEXT MATCH EITHER. But the game itself has a significantly extended duration. 5 years as opposed to 60 minutes.

Imagine a starcraft game so large that it takes years to finish. Obviously no one can play all the time. A perfect example would be OGame or WF as they are MMORTS games. How long you play absolutely determines how powerful you get.

But people still play it and find it fun.

Please explain to me how this work if a time factor as the most important ruins the game? Why do millions play the game and pay lots of money to do so?

Every time I ask this you just ignore it, most likely you feel dumb because I found a perfect real world example to counter your theoretical argument.

You always fuck up everyone's analogy. Every time you do it. You change it to argue against something the first person was not using it to argue for and act like you've proven something.

Originally posted by Ecoces

Originally posted by midmagic

Originally posted by Ecoces

when did games adopt this crappy principal of more time = automatic win? if i challenge the chess champion of the world he doesn't start with all Queens and I start with all Pawns because i don't play chess.

 

we start with the same pieces, he doesn't need that extra advantage to beat me ... or at least he shouldn't.

When was time not a significant contributing factor to power in an RPG?

well shouldn't that tell you that RPGs are backwards when every other Comptetitive game/sport genre out there is NOT based on time spent?

No, RPGs are just different and cater to the players that like character progression (in particular power based progression). There are some RPGs and MMORPGs where time is less of a factor which are always an option.

I also imagine we will see some MMORPGs in the future (near future even) where progression is less of an issue in PVP.

Did you actually purchase and play some of the MMOs that tried to go the limited power progression route to help shift the model in the direction you want because debating about it on the forum really isn't going to help.

Originally posted by Cuathon

Any game where the world is persistent and there is any sort of progression inherently becomes about time spent.

You still haven't addressed this:

If you don't play an RTS for the first 10 minutes and your opponent does than your decisions don't matter.

In fact decisions made in the first match of my game DON'T MATTER  TO THE NEXT MATCH EITHER. But the game itself has a significantly extended duration. 5 years as opposed to 60 minutes.

Imagine a starcraft game so large that it takes years to finish. Obviously no one can play all the time. A perfect example would be OGame or WF as they are MMORTS games. How long you play absolutely determines how powerful you get.

But people still play it and find it fun.

Please explain to me how this work if a time factor as the most important ruins the game? Why do millions play the game and pay lots of money to do so?

Every time I ask this you just ignore it, most likely you feel dumb because I found a perfect real world example to counter your theoretical argument.

You always fuck up everyone's analogy. Every time you do it. You change it to argue against something the first person was not using it to argue for and act like you've proven something.

Except that's not true.  Planetside had persistent territorial control and persistent progression, but it was lateral progression, not vertical.  This means you become more flexible, not more powerful (except the small amount of power that comes with having more flexibility than your opponents.)  A MMORPG could be created with a similar progression system, where leveling doesn't increase one's power very much, only one's flexibility.

If you AFK during a RTS match, that's called "playing badly".  You exhibited no skill, so you lost.

But again my entire previous post covers why you can't just say "It's an RTS that lasts 5 years" and hope that it magically works out for the best.  Towards the end of a 60 minute RTS match, the victor has usually already been determined and decisions at that 60 minute mark can feel rather irrelevant because prior decisions have already caused you to either be winning or losing.

That's just 60 minutes!  Extend this to 5 years and all you have is a shallow, meaningless Time Investment Contest.

So a Starcraft game so large it takes 5 years is automatically going to suck because it's going to turn a game about dense, important, meaningful, deep, interesting decisions into a Time Investment Contest.

Why does a game like Ogame "work"?  Well they don't work well -- after all how many people do you think recognize Starcraft vs. Ogame?   But the reason it works is because it's casual PVP, as I stated when this conversation began.  Don't have skill?  No problem!  Just keep investing time into the game and you'll win the Time Investment Contest!

It's a shallow mechanic, and that shallowness is why those games never do all that well.

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by Cuathon

Any game where the world is persistent and there is any sort of progression inherently becomes about time spent.

You still haven't addressed this:

If you don't play an RTS for the first 10 minutes and your opponent does than your decisions don't matter.

In fact decisions made in the first match of my game DON'T MATTER  TO THE NEXT MATCH EITHER. But the game itself has a significantly extended duration. 5 years as opposed to 60 minutes.

Imagine a starcraft game so large that it takes years to finish. Obviously no one can play all the time. A perfect example would be OGame or WF as they are MMORTS games. How long you play absolutely determines how powerful you get.

But people still play it and find it fun.

Please explain to me how this work if a time factor as the most important ruins the game? Why do millions play the game and pay lots of money to do so?

Every time I ask this you just ignore it, most likely you feel dumb because I found a perfect real world example to counter your theoretical argument.

You always fuck up everyone's analogy. Every time you do it. You change it to argue against something the first person was not using it to argue for and act like you've proven something.

Except that's not true.  Planetside had persistent territorial control and persistent progression, but it was lateral progression, not vertical.  This means you become more flexible, not more powerful (except the small amount of power that comes with having more flexibility than your opponents.)  A MMORPG could be created with a similar progression system, where leveling doesn't increase one's power very much, only one's flexibility.

If you AFK during a RTS match, that's called "playing badly".  You exhibited no skill, so you lost.

But again my entire previous post covers why you can't just say "It's an RTS that lasts 5 years" and hope that it magically works out for the best.  Towards the end of a 60 minute RTS match, the victor has usually already been determined and decisions at that 60 minute mark can feel rather irrelevant because prior decisions have already caused you to either be winning or losing.

That's just 60 minutes!  Extend this to 5 years and all you have is a shallow, meaningless Time Investment Contest.

So a Starcraft game so large it takes 5 years is automatically going to suck because it's going to turn a game about dense, important, meaningful, deep, interesting decisions into a Time Investment Contest.

Why does a game like Ogame "work"?  Well they don't work well -- after all how many people do you think recognize Starcraft vs. Ogame?   But the reason it works is because it's casual PVP, as I stated when this conversation began.  Don't have skill?  No problem!  Just keep investing time into the game and you'll win the Time Investment Contest!

It's a shallow mechanic, and that shallowness is why those games never do all that well.

Except it does do that well. OGame makes a lot of money and has like 50 servers and it opens new ones and starts new games all the time. Travian and OGame are very popular.

And actually long term games do have a skill value. You have to invest a lot of time, but you also have to play smart. If you play poorly you lose.

Sure, its not as dense every second as starcraft. Because that is impossible when you have a game that lasts longer than an hour. But that doesn't make it bad.

People love to spend 12 hours a day playing Warring Factions colonizing hundreds of planets and building 50000 ships and gathering billions of resources and exploring the 100000 systems and setting up surveyors nets with hundreds of nodes.

Not everything has to be about dense decision making.

The original statement I made was:

Hardcore, in regards to gamers, doesn't have much to do with direct time investment.  Time investment is more of a side effect of using any and all methods, in and out of the game, to improve themselves or group members.  A hardcore player may use or create spreadsheets to optimize his characters build and find the most efficient rotation for his gear/stats.

Hardcore players tend to play more hours but that, in and of itself, is more a way for people to passively insult someone who puts more into the game.

To which I followed up with:

You guys need to stop equating time spent to any one stereotypical playstyle.  Casuals may play less but it's more likely due to the fact that they may play when their friends are on or don't find that playing the same game repeatedly for hours on end to be fun - maybe that's because they don't feel like putting as much into the game as Hardcores.

Time is just an easy way for one group to insult or belittle the other group.  Hardcores use the "you didn't invest the time so you shouldn't get it" when speaking to casuals and casuals use "I don't have all day to play a game like you" when speaking to Hardcores.

Yes, they probably both play the game for different amounts of time but I've known plenty of people who are Hardcore who play far less than some casuals who play all day but lounge around in a main city for a couple of hours chatting in a general channel.

Because in my opinion, I felt that too many people were getting the impression that Hard-core people were only hard-core because of the time they spent on the game.  While I agreed that most hard-core people do play more, I dissagreed with the premise that Hard-Core somehow was a label you could redily apply to a player who spent x number of hours in a game.

To hard-core players, it's not the amount of time spent, it's what they do to improve themselves or their group.  As stated above, "A hardcore player may use or create spreadsheets to optimize his characters build and find the most efficient rotation for his gear/stats."

I still believe that people love to use the labels such as Hard-Core and Casual as a passive agressive way to insult one another because they feel they are getting the short-end of the stick due to {gamer playstyle}.  It's disengenuous to insist that one group of players is getting the short-end because of the amount of time a player puts into the game because that's not truely the case.

Which leads us to another point stated by Loktofeit, "'hardcore' is such a nebulous term" because it only exists so that one group can label and accuse the other for ruining their playstyle or what they perceive as a loss due to that playstyle.