the question is: why not hate the player ?

1. in real life terms if you are an idiot that likes to beat up kids and lough about it a lot of people with clear minds would hate you

2. in game if you like to play a thief, a murderer a griefer there will be others that play paladins, avengers, holy men that have a justified (rpg) hate fiuling them to oppose you

in both cases hate for the player/char is justified imho

either you are an asshole or you play an asshole but hating an asshole either ingame or irl are positive traits of humanity. to be an asshole and expect not to be hated is the real screwed up thing imho.

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Originally posted by Amathe

I don't accept Serinity Now's rationaliziation that they "did it to encourage PvP." You can attach an agenda to any outrageous behavior. For example, there is a group of people who show up and cheer at rl funerals these days and hold up signs expressing how glad they are that the person is deceased. They have some screwed up "agenda" they claim to be promoting too. But all they are really promoting is hate and the sick thrill they get from being hated.

There was no excuse for these kids' behavior. Perhaps someday when they are old enough to experience the loss of a close family member they will recognize how wrongly they acted. The problem with people who aren't old enough to care about anything is that they oftentimes don't respect anything for that reason.

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i 2 wonder why some games are called heroic fantasy when u have to spend years finding even 1 hero (justifying that name by behaviour and morality) under thousands of griefers, thiefs and murderers ?

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Originally posted by kingslayer

Lunar - I actually have no opinion regarding this site running adds for PL companies.  The companies will exist with or without this sites advertisments.

I agree that the community is what drives a game.  If the community, in general, approach a game as a race to the end, then  that is what it will be. My question to the posters here is " What suggestions, ideas or innovations do you think could be implented in a MMORPG to make the journey more important than the destination?"

 

you have to look at 2 different games (or maybe aspects of the same game)

1. the story driven game (ddo):
you have a very small part of the community that actually wants to race because by winning the race you cut yourselfe of from the story wich is the motivation in itselve. playing ddo is not about leveling your char as fast as you can but experiencing the stories/quests the game has to offer.
possible improvements:
- more quests
- increased complexity of quests
- including some "rare" or "uncommen" quests that you cant just browse up on a website/questguide
- some variables in quests that can change so a walkthrue is worthless and a quest can be interesting a 2nd time

2. competative/pvp games (lineage2)
you have the mayority of the community to race to highest level to pwn someone. to often time spend and not skill matters, to often quests are repetitive grind and the story is ignored. without encouraging competition in the same lvl (char lvl/ time budget) the char lvl is the motivation behind the game
possible improvements:
- split competition into "leagues" of players so cometition happens on equal terms. it would lessen the lvling pressure if you would mostly fight ppl your own strength trying to be the best in your lvl range
- split servers into hardcore/ limited time servers so you know what you have to invest as a casual gamer.

3. mixed games (wow):
well i dont really know if they should try to bring the improvements from both the story and competitive games or just decide to put their fokus on 1 aspekt only.

 

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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.

i play lineage2 for almost 3 years now

over this time i have seen many ppl to leave for wow and many people return from wow.
i agree on all 3 points with the editorial but would make the following distinction:

pve content is like a (good) book or movie
you dive in and experience it. this imho appears to be the replacement for tv.

pvp content is like a (good) sports match
theres a ruleset and a field but most of the time its the contest that matters and not the shape of the stadium.

good pvp content (grp vs grp quests....) is yet to be devoleped but may be seen in the next
gen of mmporpgs like warhammer and aion. 

playing lineage2 my world has only contested content to offer.

im ok with it because it gives me a much more realistic feel instead of a 100 mirrored pockets.

what i miss is:

1. ingame-mechanisms to prevent power concentration
there are to few ingame mechanics that prevent those power-guilds to happen and in term it is the high lvl guild(s) that controlls the content in a non-instanciated world.
if the guilds/fractions would be more equally powered fighting over the content would be more fun.

2. exploration, randomness
with a raidtimer of 24h (+/- maybe a few) people can easily keep up a scout at the fixed location a raid spawns.
this should be replaced by:
- much more random timers when the bosses appear
- much more randome locations where the bosses appear
- boss movement thrue the land
- variations in what powers/weaknesses/loot a boss may bring to the raid table

3. suspense and adventure
the raids became like a resource in my game. you go to a webpage, look up the raids strength and find the raids location and loot table. fighting a scourge to the land in an epic battle becomes a farming operation

i hope  to see both in the next generation where game mechanics spread power (high lvl/high active players) more even thrue guilds and static content is replaced by dynamic content with explorationand hunting