All Posts by Yukari_Momma

I'm with Solrek on this.  There just aren't many games that support role play.  Maybe Age of Conan and Chronicles of Spellborn would be nice, but AoC never struck me as female friendly and I've never reacted well to decapitations..  Spellborn's character art style..  makes me a little sick somehow.  A little twisted.  Good style, just not good for me.

Amathe, this is not most other companies.  This is a small company and it is summer, the time when even developers take vacations.

Maybe some rpers show a strict elitism, but it is mainly because of the same reason a beaten cat might scratch up even the kindest person's arm.  They're defensive.  It used to be that, yes, rpers welcomed other in with open arms, but now they have been bitten so many times that they no longer wish to give that helping hand and just want the nuisance that is making it harder for them to enjoy the game to go away.

I've heard all the arguments..  Role players require too much.  Role players are too little of a minority to cater to.  Role players bring it on themselves for being snobby.  Role players are too unwilling to teach newer, curious people how to rp.  As usual, it's all in perspective, so I'll give an rpers perspective of all of these arguments..

Role players require too much attention.-  While it is true that roleplayers require more attention of GMs, they actually require less actual programming within the game to keep happy.  Many can be happy without graphics at all, or quests outside of maybe a few class centered things.  This is prooven by the MUDs made by Simutronics, DragonRealms and Gemstone.  Role players, while loving new content, are more willing to wait for far off things because they already have things going on in the hear and now.  They have their stories to keep them preoccupied.  If a company can keep it so they can play out their stories without harassment, they gain a loyal set of gamers that stay just because their character already has developed a life within the lore and they don't want the story to end.  Now, roleplayers will be towards this in varying degrees, but they are normally more like this than just plain PVE or PVPers that are looking for only fun in the here and now in the form of maybe a little socializing while mainly playing for achievement.

Role players are too little of a minority to cater to.-  Saying this is like saying super markets shouldn't sell fish because people like chicken and beef more.  There are plenty of rpers, more than what people believe still exist.  Many rpers just have either gone into hiding with a small group, waiting for their haven in gaming, or given up entirely and moved on to being purely PVE due to the inability to do what they love.  Because they hide, or are forced into hiding by harassment, there is less and less new blood coming in since the mmorpg community is beginning to forget what role playing means.  Just look at this forum!  It says "Role Playing Discussion", but it is mainly turned into discussion on any game with "rp" in the genre title.  It is not like this because there aren't enough people wanting to talk about role playing, it's like this because of lack of understand what just role playing means.

Role players bring on the harassment themselves by being snobby to non-rping players.-  I love my pvp too, so that's why I'm going to use pvp as an example here..  If I went to a pvp server and refused to land a finger on anything in it, even after being killed, what would someone think?  Well...maybe at first they'd think I was a bot, but if I answered their question of "Why?" with "Because I don't believe in killing other players", what would the first thing the person who asked me would think?  Most likely something along the lines of "Why is this person on a pvp server?  She must be an idiot.."  A nice person would describe to me that it is a pvp server and I might be happier on a pve server.  If I still said no, they would most likely begin avoiding me.  This is what happens on an rp server.  The only difference is that most rpers really don't know when it's a lost cause.  I know I don't.  That's why I'm still replying to these threads.  The rper continues to try to inform everyone that is not rping on the rp server of what the server is for, how to do what it's for, and where to go if the person isn't there for the rp.  After a while, the rper gets annoyed because there's just too many and no one is listening.  Frustration is a normal thing and takes two sides to keep it down.  We'd really rather not have to ignore most of the game to avoid getting frustrated.

Role players are too unwilling to teach newer players how to rp.-  This one I have very personal experience with.  I used to try to help people being ooc on rp tagged servers learn how to rp, or offer at least.  Most of the time, I was shot down, laughed at, stalked for a while after, and generally harassed.  Reporting does little good with this sort of thing.  I have tried, and it rarely gets taken care of.  Just another rper whining.  I could come back on days later, and some take up the chase even after all that time gone if they see me in a town and recognize my name.  All I did was say "This is a roleplaying server.  If you do not yet know the rules, they are shown at this address-<insert policy web address here>  .  If you have any questions on how to go about rping, I will ne glad to help you."  Perhaps I was asking for it, but if that is considered "asking for it", the view here is a little skewed.  Most rpers have indeed stopped this offer of teaching and such because of the harassment.  It is all a two way street, and once a dog is beaten badly enough it wont be too willing to be patted on the head.

A nice game.  Decent graphics along with emotes that actually involve other players!  A male character can carry a female character, two people can ride a horse, two people can actually kiss instead of just blow kisses and hug a person instead of just hugging air.  These are things I have been waiting to see for a long time in mmorpgs!

It is just too bad it is going to be in a game that wont have roleplaying on the front lines.  Ah, well.  Maybe it means more companies will have it in the future.  Good game that makes me think of .hack.

Originally posted by Scorchien

  Yea HJ was being 1st developed in 99 i believe was 1 year after UO release 1st engine was very Diablo like.. this is the 3rd engine .

That's not quite fair to say.  I think the project you are talking about is the scrapped one that shares nothing but the same title with this version which was started in the 2000s.

We keep having GameMasters in here say outright that it's still going.  They aren't allowed to say much else and I actually think it's smart for the company not to say much else anyhow looking at how saying things hype people up for disappointment when something goes wrong (as things always do).

The game is still alive!  Shhh!

In terms of ability to make your character look different form everyone else's, WoW's character creation is better than FFXI's.  I'm talking about at the character screen, looks wise when I say that.  If someone considers jobs and such, I suppose they get more evened up with FFXI having multiclassing and WoW having talents.  Personal preferences would say which is better at that point, but WoW has more character look combinations at the character creation screen than Final Fantasy XI.

But we aren't here to talk about a game that has nothing to do with HJ.  They're not alike in any way I can think of so there isn't a reason.  Different company structure, different engines, different starts, different thinking..  They will attract different people (and no, I'm not sorting out the human population by brain cell count).  Who they attract doesn't make anyone bad or anything, it means people, thankfully, think differently and want different things.  It's what keeps niche things alive and viable and I will continue to talk to game design classmates about WoW and HJ on equal but unique terms.

Now!  I know all these people are getting antsy because of no Hero's Journey coming out and other games saying they will be soon...  But I have this strange feeling some of these other games will be getting delayed to next year and they'll all be released around HJ closer than people think.  Maybe I'm wrong, but my intuition says it.

They most likely just plain were not invited.  If this is the way E3 is deciding to go, they will have to realize they will most likely be getting less popular as well.  There are many gaming conventions within the US to replace it for the Americans, and it will give over seas conventions their chances to shine more than E3.  Might spread things out..but it will bring eyes to otherwise over shadowed places.

Originally posted by Amathe

This is rather funny. I point to the most successful mmo in history, that has 9 million players, and you say it's complete crap (not to mention totally misrepresenting its features). Then you say that a game that isn't made yet will be perfect and superior in every way. Ok, I admit I can't point to a real game that is better than the one in your imagination.  So HJ will be perfect, won't need a beta, and will be deeper than any mmo before it nothwithstanding its shoestring budget and glacial progression, if any. Got it!

It's alright to dislike a game.  It's alright to want HJ more than any other game.  The fact is though that insulting another game with exaggerated facts wont make anyone listen to the fans of Hero's Journey.  It will just get he partially justified stigma of "they are a bunch of blind sheep" into people's heads.

Originally posted by ragnar1965

How about a game that ISN'T a World of Warcraft knockoff? I don't want to be pidgeon-holed into questing to level. For the last 15 months, it seems like every game that comes out starts with WoW. They rename it, redress it, and charge us to play it. How about leaving the form of levelling up to us? After all, we're the ones paying to play the game. If I want to quest, I should be able to. If I want to go kill stuff and level that way, I should be able to. And if I want to quest part of the time and grind the rest of the time, then I should be able to do that as well. Also, how about not having an arbitrary level up. Show us an experience bar. Let us know how close we are to levelling. Give us experience points for everything we do (that's worth experience, of course). Just my opinion.

WoW also gives you different ways to level.  You just can't level for something like roleplaying, crafting, or picking flowers.  You can either raise by killing, questing, or pvping.

Saying budget doesn't help a case on "it taking too long" either.  Lower budget equals longer time to take because of less resources.  However!  It is not as if Simutronics has no income, and it does have plenty of free help.  The only problem with the free help system is that you can't quite force those people to work harder than they want.  At least the free help is skilled as they all have to pass tests and interviews.

Information and updates would be nice..  Simutronics really does need to work on its pr, but as is it is non-existent.

Screaming "it's never coming" or "stop it, it is" wont help anyone.  Why don't we all just wait and let time tell?  If it bugs someone waiting, then move on to another game and come back later.

I know I switched around a bit there.  Mind seems to always move from one statement to another!

Really, it's being about like any other game, and any other gaming company..

Amathe is being like the average negative side of the fanbase watching the game.  There will always be a possitive side and a negative.  Admittedly, because how things have gone, it feels like they've been working on the game twice as long as they really have.  However, Steph is not part of the gaming engine team and we can see she is not out of a job on the HJ team yet, so it is not quite vaporware.

Technically not, actually..  People do build muscle and become better able to defend themselves and do things even without equipment.

The trick to making a "just right" character from something that offers a lot of options is to, first, try to get something "close" using as few sliders as possible.  Then mess with the little sliders by first seeing what the extremes look like.  Ultimately, if you don't like them you barely have to touch on them.  It's just an option so in the end it is a good thing, but only just as much as choosing the topic of an essay you might be writing would be a good thing.

It means it's all a free download now.  Bundled up and ready to go.

Apartment buildings in cities along with player housing available outside of them.  It would be nice if these buildings only had a set number of rooms and room numbers..  And the player houses had more than just one big room

Most buildings have a purpose (an npc's home, shop, apartment building..) and are not just empty warehouses instead of most buildings being empty place markers and only some having a use.

Otherwise, agree with most other things said!

If you're interested in checking out the rp of Vanguard, I really suggest going here.

Otherwise..  I wish I could help better.  I'm waiting for Hero's Journey for the same exact thing.  If you do not mind going without graphics and going by text, the Simutronics MUDs are rather nice games.  I hear there's a 90 day free trial going for trying out their premium servers on DragonRealms right now.

Darn!  I have to get out of RPGs!?  Oh, well then...

Survival horrors normally have a fantastic story to me, but they're a bit on the shoulder of RPGs..  Stuff like Resident Evil, Echo Night..  Oh, especially Echo Night (and Echo Night Beyond)!  You don't know creepy until you're running from a little girl who's crying for her mommy. 

But to get entirely out of the realm of RPGs, I've been known to delight in finding out the stories of the characters in Twisted Metal Black through the game play.  The stories are deffinately..well..twisted, but they show some thinking and creativity.  Twisted Metal may just be one of those car shooter series, but it has to be one of the more thought out car shooting series out there in terms of stories with the backgrounds of the drivers and showing what they wish for the most out of all the killing they are causing.

Evil Zone, although unoriginal, kept me playing to see all the character stories as well.  It is just a simple fighting game, but it interested me to see how the stories were interlinked with each other.  Some of the characters were actually friends, in a relationship, or truly hated for reasons outside just having the same goal as the other character.

And I'm sure someone has to have thought of the Soul Calibur series by now.

I really started my gaming with RPGs if you don't count my childhood ones of Bubsy and Sonic though.  The game that drew me into the genre was Saga Frontier with Final Fantasy 7 being my second game and Suikoden being the third.  I just had a lot of great games at my hands and they all charmed me.    One game I've always thought would be interesting to get the feel of in MMORPG form is the Suikoden series.  The story in all the games is set in the same world, actually giving it a feeling of having "lore".  Amazing series with over 108 unique personalities that aren't just 2D NPCs every game.