Originally posted by Nanfoodle

Originally posted by xSh0x

Originally posted by WellzyC

 

In real life there are rules..

 

In games there are rules..

 

Race limitation, Faction locks are rules..

 

Rules make games fun, without rules there is no game..

 

 

Quit complaining about race limitation, and faction lock,... rules have been around since you were 7 years old playing candy land.. get over it.

 

 

Thx, have a great day.

Why not let the players make the rules?

Ok and then in RL lets let anyone make new laws? Most people would need to lock their doors and never leave their homes. Someone needs to make the rules that heads in a direction of their vision. Thats how you have order and goals to work towards for our greater good.

Anyone can try to make new laws.  That's how they come in to being in the first place.  And what separates the fantasy dedication and roleplaying ability of a developer versus a gamer?  

Developers are few, but the gamers are many.  Its the massive collection of "visions" that separate an MMORPG from a single player game.

Originally posted by WellzyC

 

In real life there are rules..

 

In games there are rules..

 

Race limitation, Faction locks are rules..

 

Rules make games fun, without rules there is no game..

 

 

Quit complaining about race limitation, and faction lock,... rules have been around since you were 7 years old playing candy land.. get over it.

 

 

Thx, have a great day.

Why not let the players make the rules?

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by WellzyC

MMOs of today do not require you to form a community in order to progress because the games systems have bypassed that requirement through “innovative” features.

So? Obviously communtiy is not requierd to have fun .. and the innvoations you described recognize that.

I like all those features. No ninja-loot system is great. LFD is great. LFR is great .. for me, of course.

The OP basically posits a very simple premise: its more fun to game with friends and rivals, than with strangers.

I think the broader point is, the quality of community does matter.  Sadly, most of those innovative features exist because of poor communities making game progression difficult.

I just don't understand why a game that puts so much emphasis on a seamless world with faction-driven questing, decides to instance all the meaningful PvP and bracketise it.

Get rid of the e-sport crap, and put the warplots in the seamless world, in a PvP zone that affects faction status in the seamless world. 

AA isn't going to be the perfect game everyone wanted.  But its still going to be great compared to its competition this year.

I expect it to fix many of its glaring issues; toning down CC, adding many more housing spaces, shrinking ocean safe zones, creating the potential for more asset loss, expanding the player city zones, and fixing and reimplementing the siege system.  All of these things can be done before release, especially at the rate XL games dished out content in its CBs.

Those are the big things.  Fix those, and you have a genre dictating MMO.

The problem with perma-death isn't the "grief."

Its a matter of balance.  There is no value in killing someone, weighted against the cost of the death, across a large scale.

With this in mind, the presence of a massive cost, will coerce players into survival and avoidance of death at all costs.

Why allow a 1v1 when the risk outweighs the reward.  Always outzerg your opponent.  Why risk events when someone could be accidently killed in a duel or town.  Why leave your guild city?  Why kill mobs when you can harvest and craft and avoid the risk of death.

Unless the lionshares of asset value is not on the character's progression, but the ecosystem progression, and the player has some method of ownership over his portion of work put into that ecosystem, the equilibrium will always fall towards efficiency in survival and not roleplaying and fun.

MMORPGs are not about realistic and visceral survival.  They are about roleplaying.

The primary problems with AoW are the translations.  This game has a wide variety of highly complex features.  Unfortunately, it is difficult to understand any of these, and they are not as well balanced as they could be.  The skill system is very abstract and "the seven winds summon the light chi heavenly attack" combat explanations leave the competitive PvPer confused.  Very very few people will be able to min/max gear in this game or have a complete numerical, not nominal, understanding of the massive amount of skills and social abilities.

The same can be said of crafting and social dynamics.

The game is seemingly very mysterious and I feel the potential for imbalance, which is extremely important in a PvP centric game, could really hurt it.

Regarding settings, they are interesting.  I don't like the overt realism.  It has nothing to do with it being Asian.  That said, if you are a fan of pseudo-realistic martial arts games, this may be the game of the decade for you.

After a year or so of solid translations and localization, it may be a great hit for any player.  Although, I think with Blade & Soul and ArcheAge later this year, it will shine dimly in comparison.

Originally posted by DSWBeef

I have been arguably a huge skeptic of TESO. Hell back at announce I started the FB betrayal page. Ive cooled down but I still have some concerns.

 

1. Faction Lock. Now I know the PVPers will come in here and say its necessary for pvp but I ask you wouldnt 3 OPEN factions which you have the chance to join net the same thing? Hypothetically, what if there was 3 factions who are all race mixed but wanna rule Tamriel for different reasons? Why cant I as a Bosmer pick one of those three instead of being forced into one? Also this is terrible for a lot of guilds mine included, none of us can agree on which faction to roll.

2. If I remember correctly in one of the videos a dev said once you get to 50 the game really opens up. This implies that leveling isnt really all that important. Why cant leveling be jsut all relevent as cap? This is why I now support level less games.

3. What if RVR sucks? This is a PVP focused game after all and what if the RvR is abysmal?

4. Classes, now I know they are loose classes by why have them to begin with? Why cant you be like Skyrim allowing you to level up skills and mixing them together?

5. Announcement seemed more like Damage Control for the incoming Shit storm. If I remember correctly they said Player housing wasnt possible and neither was true action combat. Even though weve seen both work and work well.

6. Obvious wow clone worries. The western dev market has been pretty bleak the recent years. With either devs releasing to early or releasing blatant wow clones.

 

What do you guys think? What are your concerns? Now please be constructive with any feedback you have. I dont want this turning into a fanboy vs hater thread.

I concur.  I just don't see this game being anything more than a 2013 version of Warhammer Online with another solid IP.

Its not going to compete well with Blade & Soul and ArcheAge later this year either. 

Originally posted by chaintm

This game is basicly a remake of my beloved Dark Age of Camelot, if you brought factional servers in I would be there for life!

1. Easier to identify sides

2. Alliances will sprout more quickly

3. Random ganks, fun, but get old and sometime annoying, can still happen in factional with people jumping the border, but more people will work togather in their own lands.

4. More boarder wars then just random battles, making for more organized pvp!

5. I think the biggest draw to the factional idea for me is like daoc, you just get a great community when you are at the start semi pre-determined ... "ok these guys are my buds! all of them!".

6. Settlements and defenses would forge more togather for defense etc, I can imagin some nice boarder walls etc ;)

7. Easier for starting players to get into and not rage and quit.

8. Opens up for a more friendly community just by the server rules.

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add to the list or argue if you like, I just think factional would rock in this game.

 

 

Their are three factions in AA.  Two comprising two sets of races, set on two different continents.  If you kill your own faction, you get sent to court, and then sometimes to prison.  If you get sent enough, you are forced into the pirate faction, which operates off an island with its own set of special faction NPCs and traders.  You will be banned from NPC cities and NPC trade on the main faction continents.

Originally posted by Xiaoki

 

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Originally posted by InFlamestwo
Only 10 abillities?

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"Abilities" isnt really the right word but thats what they call them.

 

Theres 10 skill trees and each skill tree represents a God and has a list of spells/abilities.

Heres a partial list:

http://archeagewiki.com/Ability

http://archeagescandinavia.se/skillcalc.html

The only significant downsides to ArcheAge are the 50v50/time limited sieges.  And some skill balance issues. 

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by Uhwop

Originally posted by DavisFlight
Considering there have been just about no successful themepark MMOs in the last 8 years, I'd say it's neither all of a sudden, nor is it just this MMORPG.com community.

 Exactly. 

It's staring us right in the face.

Plane as day.

When most of the AAA themeparks released can't sustain themselves under a subscription model, then the genre is speaking very clearly.  They'll play crap when it's free, but not when you've got to pay monthly for it. 

And still people insist no one really wants to play a sandbox.  Just because devlopers keep trying and failing, obviously it's the players and not the games themselves. 

Except that isn't true at all.

Themeparks that are not doing well and can't sustain a subscription aren't doing well just because they are themeparks or have a subscription.

 

That's not the bigger picture though.  We can fault any war's outcome in history for the error of man, but that doesn't mean war would achieve much more value without any error.  The idea of war is a weak concept.  Its a dead end theory.  Just like themeparks in MMOs, are a dead end.  The idea pool just doesn't fit well enough with the idea of a massive fantasy role playing game.

When the first AAA sandbox MMO releases globally, ArcheAge, people will get a taste for just how far sandbox inspired games could take the genre.  Well beyond the range of a themepark.  Developing features outside of simply combat, and character progression.  A sandbox can do that effectively.  Resource and asset economies, ecosystem progression, and freedom limited only by productivity.

People claim: it won't be popular with the "jump in for quick fun" types of gamers.  They would be correct, if the goal of sandboxes was simply character progression, like a themepark.  The sandbox inspired MMO will allow anyone to jump into any role they want, and progress the environment they play in at the same time.  There is no need to master all, which would take significant time and knowledge, a turn off for the "casuals," because the environment has no endgame or level cap.  It would be impossible, and miss the point of a massive online game.  The sandbox ecosystem makes your role productive in its own right, you can simply have fun at the start.  Ultimately, more roles and more methods of progression will make it more fun for people to come back and try something new.  Its the evolution of D&D.  The idea pool is completely untapped and underdeveloped.

Most upcoming asian MMOs are sandbox inspired.  And that is the fastest growing market, by far.  Many are using CryEngine3, an engine designed with the intent of building sandbox environments with relative ease.  F2P is quickly taking over as the competitve pricing model, allowing players a more "on-off shopping experience," original features and wild concepts will attract more middle tier F2P spenders.  Easier to do when your game is sandbox inspired.  You don't have to focus strickly on character progression or combat, two concepts that most themeparks begin and end with.  You can focus on resource ecosystems, and asset destruction, other kinds of progressions. And, you can focus beyond combat, to exploration, puzzles, experimentation, building, breeding, gathering, community management, politics, and other features that are sorely, sorely underdeveloped in MMOs.

The reason why the themepark MMO is failing, as it should, is simply because its part of single-player game theory.  That's how WoW brought so many players in, are created that market almost single-handedly.  Now people are realizing that the cutting edge single player games are outpacing themepark MMO's, and they die faster every year.   They're dying because the idea, in a massive scale, has hit a dead end.  They've extracted everything they can out of the themepark MMO pool of thought.  Its still a good idea, for small groups of people or a single individual.

There has never been a AAA sandbox MMO.  UO was indie.  There have been FFA esque PVP games, with themepark constrants, but that's it.  ArcheAge will be the first, and it does look very impressive.  It will be a success around the world, especially because it doesn't have full loot, it does run CryEngine3, and is well balanced and truly massive in scale.

People are curious to see what a true fantasy ecosystem could be like.  In a massive scale, with balanced roles, community involvement, resource and asset economies, and freedom only limited by productivity.  There isn't a dead end in that idea pool.

I'm developing a community website to act as an information hub for DP.  I'll announce it around next week.  There is a wiki in the works by other fans as well.

A small wealth of information is coming out of TW, and an early alpha is on-going, or in the near term.  But primarily, it will be for fans.  This game is flying under the radar.  But SOE grabbed this F2P before the usual crowd for good reasons: with raiderz styled combat, flying mounts, an intricate pet system, city and home building, a class branching system, open world styled maps, RvR, higher end graphics, and a political system; it will be a F2P unlike any other in 2013.

I enjoy it for the same reason I enjoyed GW1.  The PvP strategy and game balance.  And the mesmer.  One of my favorite classes out of any game.

Anyone feeling underpowered, having problems soloing vets, or any other "capability" issues are simply behind the curve.  Its not a fault of the game design.

It'll probably be overshadowed by Arche Age, but its one of the better games of the past 10 years.  Only because the MMOs of the past 10 years have been easy to beat.

Its gonna be a great single player game with coop and multiplayer features.

The players haven't changed. Most new people just don't know what they want. Not yet at least. MMO's used to be about building worlds. An escape from reality in the purist sense. It wasn't about winning or losing. It was far bigger than levels, itemization, classes, and graphics. It was about creating stories that you couldn't just read, you could actually live them. That's the closest thing to a fantasy experience any of us can get, or ever will get. That was the original vision.

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Originally posted by Kyleran

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Originally posted by Grahor

>>I AM saying that many concepts in newer MMORPGs actively discourage community.<<
They don't force it upon you. You still can be a member of a community, waste your time trying to play only with selected group instead of random set, etc. You just don't have to.
I will not play a game that will force me to actually waste countless hours on fitting in a community. There are more people like me than people like you. Ergo, cater to us or be broke.

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Ergo, modern MMO's are doomed to have poor communities. Case in point here.
 

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But we can't spend our entire lives in the virtual world, there has to be design mechanics that allow any kind of community to be productive, otherwise everyone will collapse into one group. That was why UO failed, and so many other sandbox games. We can't get perfection, but we sure as hell can get closer to it than we have in the past.