Originally posted by Beatnik59

Originally posted by teddyboy420

As an adult, if you don't do your research, and due dilligence, then you get what you deserve if it fails. If, after that, it doesn't meet your standards than by all means don't contribute. But if it does, and you feel good enough about putting your hard-earned money into a project you support, more power to you.

What "research" do you think one ought to do?  Even more to the point, what constitutes "due dilligence" in your book?

Because I'm rather sure that unless a person has a lawyer on retainer, an accounting firm specializing in audits on speed dial, a risk assessment consultant and an insurance firm willing to underwrite the investment, a person has no ability to do "research" or perform "due dilligence."

A responsible adult would understand that.  Then again, a fool and his money are soon parted.  It'll part more frequently with Kickstarter.

Sometimes you fail when you do twice the research of everyone else and twice the dilligence.  Did you deserve to fail?  

I don't agree that this laundry list of things is necessary for many kickstarter efforts, although some are essentially blind leaps on unkown.   But many are not.  The two KS projects I have spent VERY modest amounts of money on were both done by people who have a long track record and former customers to get feedback from.   Sure if I was spending more than the $30  Ispent on an Adonit product I would dot all i's and cross all t's.  But in the end its all about risk management and while you might get a risk assessment specialist for buying a bearing company, human are hard wired to perform 100's of risk assessments everyday of their life.  You do it everytime you drive.  For $30 I don't need a specialist.

Funding something is a speculation, you only deserve two things: jack and shit; and jack left town. 

If you do your research and due dilligence you should have a good CHANCE to get something you think is valuable.

If you randomly go funding anything that strikes your fancy; you are just a fucking fool.  This applies outside of KS as well.

Now as to what a fool deserves in life I leave that up to you, dear reader.

The flaw in the OP, and this doesn't mean he turns out wrong, is that he is assuming a one way street.

Funders affect the people who get funded and vice versa.  This should NEVER be glossed over.  Its extremely important.

Now there will most likely be pump and dump schemes.  These happen all the time.  There will be bag holders.  There always are.

The mistake is to believe that people will not adjust to such things or make demands for reliable assurances etc.  There are 1000s of years of normal everyday people coming up with workable ways to do these things.  None of them stop out right crime of course.  But people generally have come up with ways to make things reliable enough to do business.

No.

But it certainly needs some new ideas and/or better fleshed out old ideas.

Originally posted by Iselin

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Iselin

Originally posted by Alaya_AngelSoul

Originally posted by Hedeon

Originally posted by Destac

So about 90% of you don't know what an investment is. When you invest in a business you are hoping for a payout to get more money. Well on Kickstarter  you are donating to that company and then you can continue to pay more unless they offer you the game at release, but look at the facts people. 

 

If a game needs kick starter to be successful then you should probably avoid putting your money into it. NOT ALL GAMES but most of them.

 

I don't believe in using kick starter for mmos but if they want to continue using it then go ahead I can't stop you.

I think you are the sort of person who would call 90% of other people stupid, who didnt care to understand what sort of background other people made their answer from...ofc more than 90% understand what an investment is...dont be absurd...

 

I do understand what an investment means, and I am not trying to offend anyone or attack anyone. I am simply offering my opinion for a "gaming" standpoint (which is exactly what is being offered by the game founders) They are trying to bring their dream into reality And offering you a chance to be a part of that reality (if you believe in the idea of their dream) If we were talking about tradable stock options we wouldn't be attaching a game title to it, or the process for funding (which incidentally is from a gaming standpoint as well)

 It's a dream and a game to you. It's a money-making enterprise to them.

Unfortunately you are both wrong.  Although you are also both right.

For some funders its a dream.  For some getting funding its a dream.  For some getting fuding it is about making money.

Currently for crowd sourced funding there is no Return on Investment (ROI) in a monetary sense for funders.  Thus the funders are essentially buyers getting in on the product at a low price.

Theoretically you can make money on crowd soruced funding as a funder by doing the following:

1) become a funder in a project that gives you a large number of products at Y price with the speculation that Y will increase.  They do this to attract funders.  I.e funding is partially based on a low buy on the product.

2) When the product increases in value sufficiently due to its success,  you then sell your units and make a profit.

 

Not that many people are getting into crowd sourcing in this way although some do.  I assume this will grow over time as in reality this is how investing has worked for 1000s of years.  Modern stock markets etc made it more rare for a while but we are seeing the inevitable clogging up of the works and conentration of power/capital into smaller and less real hands that always occur.

Crowd source funding is not actually anything all that new per se.  It adds the new wrinkle of the modern age of very quickly going directly to the masses.  But beyond that we are also seeing the creative destruction of over-weight top heavy infrastructure that alwasy eventually happen.  Notice I didn't say "in a capitalistic society".  No this always happens.  Its unstoppable like the tide.  Capitalism was just a system that attempted to make capital more free.  Its been slowly dying for decades.  Capital has always flowed whether we are talking about the Mercantile age of the 1700s or the Capitalistic/laissez-faire age of the 1800s and early 1900s or the neo-Mercantile age we have been in for a number of decades (notice I made no mention of socialism, that is because socialism is simply mercantalism taken to an extreme which is why its a complete con-game).

 

In the end funders believe in a product.  Those who wish to also make money on the venture also simultaneously believe that a significant number of people will agree with them such that it will drive the price up because the value is percieved to be high.

 

As to why you are both wrong its because you have all combinations currently going on and its not an on or off things.  You have people persuing dreams and trying to make a lot of money.  You have people persuing dreams and just tryign to break even.  You have people purely trying to do a business.  You probably have cynical con men as well.

Brian Fargo is not making Wasteland 2 to maximize his money making, but he is also not trying to go poor either.  He is making it because he wants to do so but has enough chops in the industry that he could probably make more money making some game with a publisher.  The team Fargo has setup could completely evaporate as soon as WL2 is out. 

On the other hands outfits like Adonit have launched multiple kickstarter products to make money.  They are doing what they like (making innovative products) but are in it as a real business.

 

Its a vast smorgasbord just like well everything else.

Nice hstorical primer, although it would have been more effective if you hadn't strayed to take a shot at the form of government that attempts to protect the little people from the abuses and excesses of the wealthy

There may be a mix in KS projects but in that mix I'm not seeing any MMO projects offereing a percentage of profit in their extensive lists of perks. But I admit, I haven't looked at every single one of them.

There could be someone out there offering an honest investment opportunity instead of using their cache as a known good developer and all around good guy plus promises of giving you special gamer status to separate you from your money.

If some of those do exist, please send me the links.

KS cannot offer a percentage of profits.  I am pretty sure doing so would make their system illegal in many countries.

I am not taking a shot a socialism per se, I am merely pointing out that its nothing new.  The econmic model of socialism is basically the same as the mercantilism persued by monarchs and oligarchs.  These tend to concentrate capital in a few hands much like currently exist with game publishers.

When people get into the bullshit political tribalism that dominates today's society they start to think things like oh well publishers are private businesses therefore its not the same if capital is conglomerated up to a small number of people who don't actually give a shit about games.

No it doesn't matter.  We are not in a laissez-faire system anymore we have not been in one for a quite some time.  There is price fixing all over the place.  Capital is concentrated in a small number of hands and you are now seeing the consequences of that.  And yo uare seeing many attempts to allow capital to not have to be passed from the hands of the many into the wise-hands of the few.  Whether its Bitcoin or crowd funding a large number of people are attempting to circumvent the monopoly on the allocation of capital.  Will it be successful?  I have no idea.

I will leave the debate as what type of bullshit political ideaology will remedey which social ill better, I don't care because at the risk of being redudant its all bullshit.  They are politicans; they are every bit as venal as a 5 year old and half as smart.   But make no mistake, when it comes to capital allocation socialism is absolutely no different than an autocracy or an oligarchy.  Perhaps it is more benign, perhaps its worhwhile price to pay.  I don't know and I don't care.  But the consequences are essentially the same. 

Unfortunately due the feedback mechanism of these things the nature of their capital allocation regime directly affects their ability to enact political goals as well.  This is probably the reason we constantly shift back and forth historically.

There are reasons why we vacilate between the two paradigms of distributed capital allocations versus centralized capital allocation.  Some reasons are good-intentioned, some are for pure tyrannicaly greed.  Neither of those are confined to public or private areas and both have serious consequences for both good and ill.  And under certain circumstances one be even be obviously advantageous over the other (such as during war time).   But be assured the maxim of "Follow the money" is one of the pillars of understanding the world.  And that how it flows is constantly changing while also following certain cycles.  Central planning of capital allocation eventually clogs up and becomes completely in-bred.

In the context of gaming as long as people simply keep buying games at $60, or alternatively as long as the price fixing is allowed by the law, per game irregardless of quality then you are essentially guaranteed all the types of things you would see in a heavily mercantile, centrally planned country.  The difference is the publishers are not countries, they just need to sell stuff and pay for the production.  But due to the price fixed model you are getting assmebly line production.  They spit out X amount of money at Y amount of games and hope 10% of them sell a lot of copies because they have no idea nor do they care which games are good.

This is already breaking down as people can now get quite decent games for $15 on steam and other downloading services.  The KS games can come out with all sorts of prices and will probably vary wildly.

On many levels people realize the capital allocation and therefore the development is completely in-bred and top heavy.  This does not mean capital allocation will not eventually consolidate into the hands of a few publishers.  I guarantee you even if all the main publishers go down in flames the paradigm we see now will happen again in some form.  This is the natural way of things.  We are seeing the "house-cleaning phase" that occurs in all dynamic natural systems as they vacilate between two paradigms accumulate too much of a resource in a certain place perform creative destruction and shoot off to the other pole of the dynamic tension. 

Don't get too caught up in the tribalism of it all.  Both sides are wrong.  Both sides are right.  The trick is to realize what the consequences are of the current dynamic and how you want to swim through the currents.

KS is one of a large number of things in a large number of markets that is attempting (can't tell you if it will be successful) change the tension in the dynamics of one the Great Powers of human society.  One of the pillars upon which everyone's life is based. 

This is a serious thing.  If KS were to seriously impact the publishers how long would it take a law to appear to kill KS's business model on the grounds that its a hot-bed for con-men and we need to protect the consumer?  Anyone who think a multi-billion dollar industry does not have serious lobbyists is a naive fool.  This would happen very quickly. 

In some respects it would be correct.  There is no reason there can't be many con-games in KS.

So pick your poison.  A wild west where capital is much more freely allocated and fabullus things get created along with amazing failure and crooked operations.  Or the slow steady plodding of vaguely, and sometime overtly, shady publishers. 

There are no pat easy answers and societies get tired of one and move to another and then back as they tire of the problems of the other.  But in the end this is not about the venality of publishers or the awesomness of one person with a dream.  Its just about how capital gets allocated the natural consewuences  that system produces.

It occurred to me this can all be explained one rather simply question:

Why are all games bascially selling at the same price?

Normally a poor quality product is cheap and a high quality product is expensive in a relative sense.  In games this only happens in the secondary market.

We have a name for this.  Its called price fixing.  When all publishers sell a product at a particular price this is normally considered collusion.  In fact such behavior is often illegal.

Now draw your conclusion about the way capital is being allocated based on the fact that price has nothing to do with quality and therefore its wort as an allocation of capital ...

You should start to realize something is not right ...

Originally posted by Iselin

Originally posted by Alaya_AngelSoul

Originally posted by Hedeon

Originally posted by Destac

So about 90% of you don't know what an investment is. When you invest in a business you are hoping for a payout to get more money. Well on Kickstarter  you are donating to that company and then you can continue to pay more unless they offer you the game at release, but look at the facts people. 

 

If a game needs kick starter to be successful then you should probably avoid putting your money into it. NOT ALL GAMES but most of them.

 

I don't believe in using kick starter for mmos but if they want to continue using it then go ahead I can't stop you.

I think you are the sort of person who would call 90% of other people stupid, who didnt care to understand what sort of background other people made their answer from...ofc more than 90% understand what an investment is...dont be absurd...

 

I do understand what an investment means, and I am not trying to offend anyone or attack anyone. I am simply offering my opinion for a "gaming" standpoint (which is exactly what is being offered by the game founders) They are trying to bring their dream into reality And offering you a chance to be a part of that reality (if you believe in the idea of their dream) If we were talking about tradable stock options we wouldn't be attaching a game title to it, or the process for funding (which incidentally is from a gaming standpoint as well)

 It's a dream and a game to you. It's a money-making enterprise to them.

Unfortunately you are both wrong.  Although you are also both right.

For some funders its a dream.  For some getting funding its a dream.  For some getting fuding it is about making money.

Currently for crowd sourced funding there is no Return on Investment (ROI) in a monetary sense for funders.  Thus the funders are essentially buyers getting in on the product at a low price.

Theoretically you can make money on crowd soruced funding as a funder by doing the following:

1) become a funder in a project that gives you a large number of products at Y price with the speculation that Y will increase.  They do this to attract funders.  I.e funding is partially based on a low buy on the product.

2) When the product increases in value sufficiently due to its success,  you then sell your units and make a profit.

Not that many people are getting into crowd sourcing in this way although some do.  I assume this will grow over time as in reality this is how investing has worked for 1000s of years.  Modern stock markets etc made it more rare for a while but we are seeing the inevitable clogging up of the works and conentration of power/capital into smaller and less real hands that always occur.

Crowd source funding is not actually anything all that new per se.  It adds the new wrinkle of the modern age of very quickly going directly to the masses.  But beyond that we are also seeing the creative destruction of over-weight top heavy infrastructure that alwasy eventually happen.  Notice I didn't say "in a capitalistic society".  No this always happens.  Its unstoppable like the tide.  Capitalism was just a system that attempted to make capital more free.  Its been slowly dying for decades.  Capital has always flowed whether we are talking about the Mercantile age of the 1700s or the Capitalistic/laissez-faire age of the 1800s and early 1900s or the neo-Mercantile age we have been in for a number of decades (notice I made no mention of socialism, that is because socialism is simply mercantalism taken to an extreme which is why its a complete con-game).

In the end funders believe in a product.  Those who wish to also make money on the venture also simultaneously believe that a significant number of people will agree with them such that it will drive the price up because the value is percieved to be high.

As to why you are both wrong its because you have all combinations currently going on and its not an on or off things.  You have people persuing dreams and trying to make a lot of money.  You have people persuing dreams and just tryign to break even.  You have people purely trying to do a business.  You probably have cynical con men as well.

Brian Fargo is not making Wasteland 2 to maximize his money making, but he is also not trying to go poor either.  He is making it because he wants to do so but has enough chops in the industry that he could probably make more money making some game with a publisher.  The team Fargo has setup could completely evaporate as soon as WL2 is out. 

On the other hands outfits like Adonit have launched multiple kickstarter products to make money.  They are doing what they like (making innovative products) but are in it as a real business.

Its a vast smorgasbord just like well everything else.

Because I like those guys I have never seen or met before and I hate those other guys I have never seen or met before.

But honestly I pledged to Wasteland 2 because I played Wasteland 1 and Brian Fargo et al have made many excellent games I want to give them a chance to make another one.  If its not that great of a game then that is fine life is not certain.  But I have always wanted another game like Wasteland and no publisher would do it, so I am fine with doing it.

Secondly the InExile folks are extremely open with their supporters, because well they already have our money.  This sounds strange, but see we can't pull out.  InExile is free to be completely honest because they kind of have us by the balls.  They have their budget and their timeline and unless they are grossly incompetent they will meet it.  They have the supporters money and even if they deliver 6 months late they still have that money.  So why not tell them 6 months ahead of time that they will be 6 months late?  Whereas a traditionaly publisher will just lie to you or release a crappy game.

Other side to that is a less morally savory company could just fold up and run with your (really their's now) money. 

Its a gamble and like Fargo has mentioned the crowd source funding is likely now in a phase where the euphoria has worn off and the people who invest will want certain guarantees.  There will be failures.  There are always failures.  And so some people will get their money wasted.  Nature of the beast funding is not buying.  Its a speculation.

I am speculating that I will be proud to have my name in the credits of Wasteland 2 and I will enjoy the game.  But I know I am speculating until I see the finished product.

Buying a game and funding development of a game are not at all the same thing.  If you go in thinking they are you will be disillusioned and are probably stupid or foolish as well.  I didn't used to say stuff like that but I have come to the realization that it is necessary.  If you think funding = buying then you are a fool.  And fools are soon parted from their money.

Don't be a bag holder.  In today's circumstances in the world this bears repeating.  Don't be a bag holder.  To balancce that out; don't be a coward either.

The amazing things about threads about Garriot is in variably like 50% of people are under the misguided apprehension that his main contribution was to MMORPGs.

No Garriot is one of the top 5 FOUNDERS of the CRPG as a genre this includes all MMORPGs and everygame you have played or seen with RPG attached to it that is not a pen and paper game.

Without Ultima 4 there would be no Fable1-3.  Without Ultima Underworld 1&2 the action RPG genre would barely exist.  I don't even need to mention Ultima Online even though it was the first major MMORPG and still has some of the deepest game design in the MMORPG genre.  Every single MMORPG every made is so heavily influenced by the single player Ultima series that it pointless to even bother.

You think games like Everuquest had the depth they did because of Brad McQuaid?  I mean yeah he did legwork on it, but  many of those ideas got fleshed out in Ultima 4 and adopted by later CRPGs.  Even games like Nethack were very much influenced by the sheer depth of Ultima 4 and the cascading consequences of actions.

Criticisze him all you like for not being a great business man (although don't bothering citing Tabula Rasa, that was complete clusterfuck absolutely no one could have made that work out well).  But seriously people need to realize UO was the tip of the iceberg.

Originally posted by FromHell

Originally posted by platonicx

The animation are fine and what i would call realistic.

Sadly we have a crowd of "If its not spewing fireballs and lighting its not good enough" people around here.

 

And the part about the dodge being lame compared to GW2? You cant get any more ridiculous in my eyes.

 

+1 double thumbs up for this post

 

Yep, TSW doesn't exactly cause epilleptic seizures not being all crazy flashy like the asian type MMOs but that's what I enjoy about it.

No the animations are not "realistic" at least not when performed in an organic fashion.  Many animations are ok when you stand there hit a button and examine that animation in isolation. 

But as soon as you start chaining things together and moving or jumping while doing them someone who has done year worth of grappling and martial arts like myself start insticntively wincing and saying "Egad he is both missing vertebrae and the ones he has are made of rubber."

Its not about wizbang effects.  Sure the Chaos claw spin around and full circle animation looks fairly fluid.  Put it together with other stuff and its   fluid-> wtf the model lost half its joints and had arthiritis and how hell can you be that stiff in mid air?

I would hazard a guess that one of the main problem, whether people realize it or not, is that since your bar is limited to 7 things you need at least a 2 or 3 or those things to do something dramatic.  Yet due to the way the wheel works out most everything does fairly modest things.

Now  I realize the word "dramatic" is highly subjective.  I also realize that a properly built guy can layer many modest synergistic things together to make something powerful.  But it powerful while not being dramatic.

Compare the combat to GW1 or GW2.  I suggest these solely because they have a limited skill bar as well. Many normal attacks build up to something dramatic.  There are serious heavy hitters.  Dramatic excapes etc.

Now TSW has a few long CD defensives but beyond that it mostly pecks away at things or just straight up blasts them.  When you limit the skill bar to 7 or 8 things you (as a designer) really need to make the, I guess you can call it, emotional impact of those things really stick.

I believe this was one of the fundamental reasons ANet choose to get rid of secondary classes.  They wanted to really make the a class build "pop".    And one the reasons TSW combat winds up the way it does.  I like the wheel system but a natural consequence of such a system a tendency to genericsize the individual combat actions.  In the end most attack are just either a heavy hit or many small hits, damage or tank/utility oriented, and may or may not add some debuff or buff.  You may say well yeah but that all RPGs really, sure but that ALL there is to TSW ie. it lacks the extra umph of that drama.  It stripped down to the Pen and Paper RPG part.  Fine for an old school PnP person like me but lacking for many normal people.

Any good RPG should have, among others, the major design goal of "No no-brainers".

The problem with the combat resource system is not that exists but that it does very poorly in this department.

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by gestalt11

TSW addesses this to some degree with nightmare mobs but in this case since its a 50% solution its no real solution.  To kill nightmare mobs you must adjust your rote actions, your rote pre-planned build.  But the gameplay itself is still just as rote.  Once you have determined an appropriate build its business as usual.  Thus you cannot use the same skill build on all  content so the game is not completely rote.  You must occasionally say "Hold on what is this mob types syngery profile?".  But the answer is select build XYX then hit 1 2 3 1 2 3 5 1 2 3 during combat and you just run around and do the same standard MMO tactics you always do while in that area.  You may have 5 sets of rote actions but it still all rote actions. 

I still disagree that you need to do rote actions with a particular mob -- simply because someone has determined build X works in this case doesn't mean it's the only answer to that scenario.  I regularly use all 7 of my abilities in combat, so I'm still puzzled why so many of these examples show only 3-4 selections in these rote rotations.  And given the number of possible builds (77,258,540,228,633,700,000,000 in TSW -- see: http://karl3d.wordpress.com/2012/08/03/tsw-builds-final/), I think that perhaps it's lack of player imagination (coupled with narrow-minded leet nightmare group demands) rather than some shortcoming of the ability wheel system.  

That said, cookie-cutter rotations are a disease of most MMOs, and if TSW has been infected with it (I don't think that it has), it is in good company.

No its not necessary, but its effective especially when you get a chain of syngeries going which is typically the optimal in effectiveness.  Its not truly necessary for 80% of normal world content.

The issue is not the you HAVE to do it.  The issue is that its always effective.  Doing the same sequence over and over should get you killed eventually.   Like the game should actively try to kill you if it figures out you keeping doing the same thing over and over.  If for no other reason than simply to preserve fun.  That way sound backwards because its kind of a sadistic thing to say, but its true because unpredictability is a major aspect of fun.

And yes this is true of almost every MMORPG currently its just that since TSW encourages such freeform building and essentially creating your class (which is a good thing IMO) its more apparent in  a sort of ironic way.

Hmm, I'm not sure I want a game that simply changes the rules to make itself harder.  I see where you are coming from, though.  Not knowing exactly what to expect everytime you encounter a mob would make for a challenging game for sure.

But I would think that most mobs are going to have cultural/biological aspects to them that keep them fighting using a particular style and using similar abilities, magic and weapons.  There's lots of room for variation with the bosses and elite mobs, of course, who are more likely to switch up their tactics.  Giving a boss completely different abilities every time or switching out the boss each time would be challenge to program, but more again, you also have to think about the game from a lore aspect; I don't know that I'd want a completely random set of traits each time.  

Now I could see bosses using very different TACTICS every time, intelligently switching up their abilities to match the challenge of the party.  Not blindly attacking the tank every time, when it's obvious the dps'ers are causing the worst damage.  Or intelligently targeting healers.  That's something I could get on board with.

Yes  I understand and my statement wasn't mean to be a good design or implementation so much as to make a point.  I don't know that the best way to get a decent effect of this in the context of a single shared static world.  It may not really even be practical.   But you get the main overarching point.

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by gestalt11

TSW addesses this to some degree with nightmare mobs but in this case since its a 50% solution its no real solution.  To kill nightmare mobs you must adjust your rote actions, your rote pre-planned build.  But the gameplay itself is still just as rote.  Once you have determined an appropriate build its business as usual.  Thus you cannot use the same skill build on all  content so the game is not completely rote.  You must occasionally say "Hold on what is this mob types syngery profile?".  But the answer is select build XYX then hit 1 2 3 1 2 3 5 1 2 3 during combat and you just run around and do the same standard MMO tactics you always do while in that area.  You may have 5 sets of rote actions but it still all rote actions. 

I still disagree that you need to do rote actions with a particular mob -- simply because someone has determined build X works in this case doesn't mean it's the only answer to that scenario.  I regularly use all 7 of my abilities in combat, so I'm still puzzled why so many of these examples show only 3-4 selections in these rote rotations.  And given the number of possible builds (77,258,540,228,633,700,000,000 in TSW -- see: http://karl3d.wordpress.com/2012/08/03/tsw-builds-final/), I think that perhaps it's lack of player imagination (coupled with narrow-minded leet nightmare group demands) rather than some shortcoming of the ability wheel system.  

That said, cookie-cutter rotations are a disease of most MMOs, and if TSW has been infected with it (I don't think that it has), it is in good company.

No its not necessary, but its effective especially when you get a chain of syngeries going which is typically the optimal in effectiveness.  Its not truly necessary for 80% of normal world content.

The issue is not the you HAVE to do it.  The issue is that its always effective.  Doing the same sequence over and over should get you killed eventually.   Like the game should actively try to kill you if it figures out you keeping doing the same thing over and over.  If for no other reason than simply to preserve fun.  That way sound backwards because its kind of a sadistic thing to say, but its true because unpredictability is a major aspect of fun.

And yes this is true of almost every MMORPG currently its just that since TSW encourages such freeform building and essentially creating your class (which is a good thing IMO) its more apparent in  a sort of ironic way.

Wheel system - good, complex and not entirely balanced but interesting so good

Animations - they are pretty bad.  If you actually moved that way you would throw out your back

Builder - its ok I guess.  I mean it adds an extra layer but its really not that interesting.  Only thing I liked about it was how different sets did their build up different and you have two things going on at once

Originally posted by Randayn

Originally posted by Roxtarr

I admit that I got pretty confused as far as what to do.  In order to try new weapons/combos I spent a crap ton of time in the starting zone.  Finally when I thought I was ready to move on, I got my arse handed to me by every other mob.  I hate to say it, but this game needed levels.  (not every game needs them, but this game does).  Even at Q level 4, I felt massively under powered with nearly any weapon combo.  

I did like the first dungeon though.

build, build and build.  I had the same issue....got out of the first area and got mowed down.  Deleted that toon, went back to the drawing board and came back to the 2nd area with a vengeance....

Great avatar, wish more people read Bastiat.

Yeah I spent quite a bit of time I guess you could call it grinding but really I was testing things our for my own curiosity and wind up with a decent spread of skills and good builds.  I killed alot of those water zombie guys near the shaodw bug things right before entrance to the next zone.  So  I went in the next zone having kicked the tires on my skills and had both a heavy defense and heavy offense and a build with a bit of both using a few different startegies (passive heals from procs, active heals from rifle, avoidance from chaos, crit procs etc.).

I both looked for good synergies and also had various things I wanted to figure out.  I settled on a build that synergized with have as many attacks possible to get my procs working quickly.  It took me a number of hours searching through the skill tree etc to settle on chaos/rifle but I also had stuff from a number of other sections and had starts chaos/blade.

It made the rest of the game way less problematic than for many people.  But it was like I dunno a good 5-10 hours of extra work and my motivation was mostly curiosity.  Simply power hungeriness would not have gotten past 1 or 2 hours.

Originally posted by Ortwig
I'm looking for information on Crawl, gestalt, and not finding anything. Can you give a link?

dev site

http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/

wiki

http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Crawl_Wiki

online webtiles (shared player ghosts)

http://crawl.akrasiac.org:8080/#lobby

LearnDB

http://crawl.develz.org/learndb/index.html

I warn you this game is not for the faint of heart.  I used it for comparison only, most MMO players would run away crying from the game.  Here are some learndb entries:

what is that will it kill me

Yes.

 

winrate

This doesn't matter.

 

singing

It's just like talking, except louder, and longer, and you move your voice up and down.

 

skills

Here is how you train skills. First you train the skills that you use to kill dudes. Once you are killing dudes well enough, then you train the skills you use to not die to dudes. If you later run into problems killing dudes, you switch back to killdudes skills.

 

sigmund

1. A yellow @ with a shiny scythe, a magic wand, and a necklace of player skulls. A notoriously lethal early-game unique human wizard. Typically generated with a wand of lightning, draining, or paralysis when you get a really good character started. Spells: throw flame, confuse, invisibility, magic dart.
2. sigmund haters: whoever buffed grinder
3. Sigmund fan club: ##crawl
4. Proof that Crawl hates you and wants you to die.
5. Sigmund :D Zermako the Chopper (L5 HOFi), slain by Sigmund (a +1,+2 scythe) in D:4, with 285 points after 2293 turns and 0:06:29. FUCK!!

 

 

xom

1. thinks this is hilarious!
2. Xom cannot be prayed to, has no conducts, and accepts no sacrifices. He is not so much worshipped as he is experienced.
3. Xom does not use piety or gift timeouts like other gods. Instead, Xom has an attitude and an interest level. See http://chaosforge.org/crawl/index.php?title=Xom and please proofread it.
4. When Xom is in a bad mood he gives you random mutations and when he's in a good mood he gives you good mutations. As a result Xom worshippers will typically have good mutation sets or be dead.
5. 0.5: You hear Xom's avuncular chuckle. Erolcha evaporates and reforms as a giant lizard!
6. Yes, his mutations override an amulet of resist mutation (but not the mutation resistance *mutation* or Zin). Sometimes his potion effect will give you a potion of mutation, and you can resist THAT, but you won't resist the direct hand of Xom changing you. (Except by being undead.)
7. see rec.games.roguelike.misc usenet post: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.roguelike.misc/browse_thread/thread/da06166064699cf0
8. why am i death channeling
9. * orb of fire (inner flame)
10. xom gave inner flame to ogre and then berserked it
11. Xom welcomes you! _You feel sick.
12. Poncheis the Chiller (L5 OgIE) became a worshipper of Xom on turn 2142. (Temple) wait it isn't veh
13. huh, I just realized that was a balrug and not an inner flamed reaper

 

Originally posted by fallenlords

Originally posted by AdamTM

Originally posted by fallenlords
Any good RPG should allow a player to be as involved as they choose to be overall.  If it forces a player to get involved beyond their comfortable level, then as an RPG game it has fundamentally failed.

Where did you read that? Your RPG Bible? Did the RPG pope declare the fundamentals of an RPG to be accessibility?

I must have missed so much since the days of ADnD and Ultima.

 

Please, do go on and enlighten us peasants with your superior knowledge and wisdom.

It's common sense.  You pitch an RPG game at a certain level - you have it wrong from the start.  You want to accommodate players of all levels.   People learn at different rates and have different requirements from the game.  Single player games 9/10 times offer an easy, medium, hard - or even very easy, very hard.   They do that in order to accommodate people of different game tastes and levels of skill   You can enjoy a game as much on easy mode if you are more interested in say the narrative.  In essence you need tiers for your gamers from casual to hardcore.    The idea should be to turn a casual gamer into a hardcore gamer by pulling them more and more into the game.  But ultimately what type of gamer you want to be should be your choice. 

 

OP mentioned TSW 'seems like work' - this is suppose to be a form of entertainment.   TSW is hampered by it's learning curve, also the fact nothing very interesting happens at the start.  It's boring and mundane, no decent character customisation, no storyline, no interesting NPC's, naff gear, no loot, poor weapons and combat.  So I agree with the OP it needs a dumb/easy mode.  It's pitched too high from the start.   Probably a major reason it has no appeal to the casual gamer.

You are not capturing the fact that most MMORPGs are shared, static worlds.

In the case of single player RPGs such as  Baldur's gate or Mass Effect or whatever I can select a gameplay profile in the settings. 

In the context of MMOs there are one with instances that have difficulty settings (DDO, Champions Online, CoH, etc).  But in all cases you get more reward for doing these.  Whereas in Single Player games you are almost never punished for selecting the difficulty you like to play.

And because of this more reward for more "risk" (there is no real risk of course, that is all BS) the people who play higher diffculty winding up becoming more effective yet clearly they did not need better rewards since they won at a higher diffculty.

In the end this whole concpt of yours, while not inaccurate, is undermined by the inhereently greedy mentality of the MMORPG genre as its currently implemented. 

When I choose the hard setting on a Single Player game I do so because Easy is not that fun, because its too well easy.  In an MMO people will choose the Easiest (ie. fastest route) that rewards with the best loot.

The difference in the mentality (which follows implementation) is the source of many perceived ills in the genre.  Both player elitism and lack of real subsstance in gameplay/gameworld can be traced to this dynamic at least partially.  Its not 100% due to this but its something.

Unfortunately I am unsure there is a real solution to this.  You can say well make rewards the same for all difficulties and let people who want a challenge do it that way.  But in practice 90% of people will do the easiest difficulty then.

Perhaps what is needed is something like what Path of Exiles does with Leagues.  Have a League "shard" per diffculty.  You can freely transfer between the leagues, but your equipment stays in the league.  Thus you have an equipment set per difficulty, but can freely go back and forth between Leagues to play with friends of any sort.

This way everything within that league is kept on a 1 to 1 basis except for player skill and even player should 80% of the time be on par.

Of course that is not a perfect solution but its perhaps more along the lines of a decent than what currently exists.

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by gestalt11

Well there is more to it than just tooltips and such.  This becomes quite evident when you fight some nightmare mobs.  Nightmare mobs usually have some sort of buff that needs to be counters such as "mob heals when you miss them".  Thus you need to know the mob and you need to come up with some way to not miss or reduce healing.  If you don't you just can't kill the mob even though its not necessarily lots harder than a normal.

The only way I figured this out in part of egypt was by scoping out the buffs and I did it rather by accident after me and another guy tried to DPS em down earlier and were getting nowhere.  So  Iwent back and tried to figure out what was the deal and I noticed it said the mob was nightmare which I assumed just meant elite so  I hovered over the nighrmare icon expecting the typical "This mob is much tougher bring some friends" type blah blah.  Instead if specced this heal when the attacker misses thing and I specced out a high accuracy build and soloed those mobs.  Once I figured that out I made sure to check in transylvania and there are many alternate types of buffs.

IN the end you need a pretty large number of alternate things in Secret World you really do need to swap between many builds.

Edit:

Forgot to add that this is really the sum total of the analysis of the game outside of how to actually do a quest or dungeon.  You basically analyze what a mob does or is weak to what synergies it may have then you select a build for that then go through whatever rotation of skills that build would do.  Now this is not abnormal of MMOs.  But this is kind of the problem in general with MMOs is basically this dynamic makes them robotic and arcane.

What I'd really prefer is more ingame items that are character building tips in disguise.  Why not find a tome talking about a particular mob or boss, and ways they are more easily defeated, but do it in story form, so that it actually becomes part of the lore.  WoW did a little bit of this recently with the Dungeon Journal (I think that's what it is called), but I'd almost prefer you find it somewhere in the world as an item that you can pick up and possess -- make it part of your library or something. So in preparation for said boss, you can a bit of in-game investigation (as opposed to reading spoiler sites).  Trial and error works too I suppose, but finding clues as part of the storyline fits with the theme of the game anyway, so why not work it in?

Yes I think you are on a decent track here, but I think its important to recognize the source of the disease rather than treating symptoms.

This is a fine idea but in the context of a game where people rush about and killing everything as fast as possible and expect to win 99.9% of the time without doing much tactical planning it becomes problematic.  Now I am not accusing TSW of being a no-brainer in that with nighmare mobs it throw a wrench into that equation.

But we must all recognize that in basically all MMOs you are basically doing massive amounts of slaughter in a regular basis and the main "challenge" is how efficently you slaughter things to gain xp/loot so that you may continue to efficently mass slaughter your enemies at roughly the same rate.

This is why I was contrasting this to Crawl.  In crawl almost every ecounter is something where you must ask yourself "Am I gonan die here?".  You have to ask yourself that for two reasons:

a) perma death is such a severe penalty that is demands constant vigilance 

b) the game itself is designed to make the encounters dangerous and uncertain.  It is a tenant of the devs that Out of Depth monsters are perfectly fine and even good, ie. a hill giant can spawn on level 5 (can one shot most characters).  If you procude too much noise you may attracts way too many things.  Stuff can cascade out of control quickly or you just get unlucky and be too close to something that can 1 or 2 shot you and you may not be able to run.

This is one reason people play the online version.  When you die past level 3 that characters stats get stored in a ghost file and there is a chance that a player ghost will spawn on that level.  Player ghosts in crawl are strong and dangerous.  people actively play online just to get this extra bit of "Oh holy shit this game is seriously trying to kill me".  I had a rather nice character that had 5 runes and could ahve got 15 probably ceratinly could have won the game.  But I wnet to pandemonium and one of the maps kept spawning fiends it eventually wore my char down and I thought I could hide in a corner and heal up but the frigging game just kept coming at me over and over frigging over and I got one shotted by a fiend using unressitable hellfire when I had like 15% health.   Looking back on it I should have used an emergency power I had from my god.  I should have been extra super cautious.  But I thought I could eck out some healing.  I was wrong and I lost a pretty badass naga transmuter.

So yes in the case of something like Crawl your idea has alot of merit as it can be the difference between winning and losing.  But in a typical MMO its basically just a matter of time.  Is it worth it to spend all this time figuring things out?  Every second i waste is a second I could spend grinding for gear ...  Maybe its really just better to power through it all anyway? 

Note I am not a proponent of the harsh death penalties of a game like EQ (keep in mind when I played MUDs our DPs were WAY harsher than EQ).  I understand why they exist and the reason behind them is sound but they also suck in the context of an MMO.  In the context of a grinding game based on character investment the permanent loss of stuff is just annoying.  Its not real loss its time punishment.  And games like EQ are designed to kill you anyway.

See EQ (and its progeny) and Crawl are fundamentally different.  In Crawl escaping and bypassing encounters is expressly part of the balance of the game and it is costed as very advantageous and probably a tactic that most good players would say its almost impossible to win without utilizing.  Whereas EQ is designed to kill you when you screw up.

In Crawl you can die when you get unlucky or when you screw up, but you should basically have a number of tricks up your sleeve to escape being unlucky or even a screw up (assuming your screw up was not about not figuring out when to run).  In EQ when you screw up (say the tank messes up his taunt and the healer dies) you basically all die (raid party whatever) and you are meant to die.

Thus the DP in EQ is kind of stupid as you are punished without any real ability to avoid.  Crawl punishes you far far harsher than EQ ever could, but its punishment is fair.  EQ's punishment is not fair, its just a fact of life.  Its just sadism to add some spice to life.  Crawl is far crueler than EQ but more fair.

The prupose of EQ style DP is to provide a reason for people stop and think.  To put some breaks on the headlong rush to grind for phat lootz.

As I said I do not like the EQ and MUD style DPs.  But they do serve a purpose.  In the absence of something that forces players to stop and take stock of what is the nature of  their character and what is the nature of the gameworld,  I would suggest your idea will gain little traction. 

But not because its a bad idea.  Rather why would it ever gain traction in a game that is made on the premise of:  Kill kill kill to get moar moar moar.

I mean the first reaction of most MMO players to a mob is to immediately kill it.  In Crawl (turn based game) I have literally walked into a room after opening a door and thought about what I am gonna do for 1 minute then closed the door and snuck away.  This was the right decision and it took 10 deaths(and some save scumming of local games for testing purposes) of other characters for me to comfortably be able to make this decision reliably.

So when we analyze your idea why would the MMO mentality spend time reading about how mobs work?  Wouldn't they just charge in like Leroy Jenkins and just figure it out through trial and error.  And wouldn't doing so in the end make their grinding more efficient since only a very small percentage of mobs are ever any real threat?

In my opinion this all comes back to the rush in and kills literally bajillions of mobs styl;e game play of MMOs in general.  Some people look back at EQ with rose colored glasses and say its "harsh" DP addressed that, but that is clearly false when you look at the camp and kill gameplay of that game.  People sat there for hours doing rote actions to kill stuff.

And that phrase right there is the heart of the matter "rote actions".  When your gameplay and game world encourages fast mechanical predefined actions for hours on end I would say you will never be able to achieve the goal of your idea via this implementation or any other.  Its simply not advantageous in the context of the game.

TSW addesses this to some degree with nightmare mobs but in this case since its a 50% solution its no real solution.  To kill nightmare mobs you must adjust your rote actions, your rote pre-planned build.  But the gameplay itself is still just as rote.  Once you have determined an appropriate build its business as usual.  Thus you cannot use the same skill build on all  content so the game is not completely rote.  You must occasionally say "Hold on what is this mob types syngery profile?".  But the answer is select build XYX then hit 1 2 3 1 2 3 5 1 2 3 during combat and you just run around and do the same standard MMO tactics you always do while in that area.  You may have 5 sets of rote actions but it still all rote actions. 

You need more than just something makes finding all this out a deep and interesting experience.  You need for the gameplay and gameworld you actualy make it mean more than a simple memorized formula of actions.

Note that in all three games mentioned you kill things and get loot and xp (two are skill, one is class based).  In all three games it is possible to grind for some numerical advantage (although Crawl is specifically designed to not be grind based and will attempt to kill you it thinks you are grinding a level's respawns and eventually kill the respawns if you survive).