Originally posted by Hagonbok

 

Then we have games like Darkfall, where apparently the company bought into the rhetoric of the wannabe gaming intelligentsia at various sites (including this one at times), and on the various forums/blogs on a lot of those sites (including this one at times), about having the games hearken back to the early days. The problem is that all these flapping lips seem to forget, or conveniently fail to mention, that there was a good reason why most of those elements fell to the wayside eventually. Most people didn't like them back then, and just because these people remember those things fondly isn't going to make enough others like them now.

I think that we are going to again see some big numbers for some upcoming games, but it'll be the games that make darn sure they have a full game experience at release that's relatively bug free, and offer the players what they are showing they like in what they're playing already. As opposed to thinking they know better what players will like.

Absolutely agree. 

One of the interesting things about veterans (and I'm talking RL military veterans) is that over beers at the VFW hall they seem to remember the good times and not the bad.  Which is understandable.  They don't talk about how half their platoon was cut in half but they'll talk about the celebration of the victory and forget the cost of it.

So it is with PvP nostalgia for old time MMO players.

SOE in particular is unwilling to examine why WoW was such a success, because SOE doesn't do polish and relatively bug free gameplay.  They're not publishing games and making some money at it, they're trying to make money by publishing games.

I think the most interesting thing about the "No Russian" scenario is that it calls into question the priorities of your off screen superiors.

What is your primary mission?  Why are you an agent in the first place?

Is it to protect and serve the innocent?

Or is it to "play the game" and infiltarate the organization, no matter what the cost...to include your soul?

What is the cost in blood to keep your cover?  Is there a limit to how many civilians can die before too many have, and the cold cost/benefit analysis reverses itself?

That's the moral dillemma here that isn't being examined by the mechanism of the game...which simply tells you that if you don't go along with the terrorists, you've failed.

Real life doesn't work like that.  The pixelation distorts the moral issues involved.

One of the problems with MMOs in general is that when you've got PvP, there are all sorts of rulesets and artificialities put into place in an attempt to regulate player behavior.  Temporary enemy flags provide an example of one of these ruleset "solutions" that don't exist in reality.  Also the fact that the consequence of your life being over, as in permadeath, doesn't exist in MMOs,  This fact alone changes the dynamic considerably.

IRL, PvP is turned on all the time.  There are no game master imposed rulesets that regulate it.  Well, except for the ultimate one, of course.  Permadeath.

Originally posted by svann

Originally posted by metalhead980

 

Certain things shouldnt be easily seen. Things like faction standing, passed achievements should be totally private because that stuff is used by elitist assholes to refuse people groups and just generally hate on other players with less experience.

 

 

 

Wow.  You play with some real jerks.  I never heard of such thing happening in 10 years of mmos.

WoW, being WoW, is filled with jerks who announce in the city trade chat channel, while looking for warm bodies for a PUG, that they WILL inspect your armory page before they deign to offer you an invite to their Naxx PUG or whatever.  Also they'll need to see your achievements (probably because they want to know if you've done the raid before).

Every so often I'd just fire off into trade "LF grey geared 10s for Hogger group, must not know fight, we're looking for wipes!" to parody these loons.

I've been in PUGs where it was announced that if you don't DPS up to the "proper" level on Patchwerk you'll be kicked from the raid and we'll find someone who does.

Plenty of jerks about.

I really don't mind armories and inspections and people comparing achievements.

What I do mind is people jumping on me because my gear isn't "up to date".  Let me give you an example.

I take my level 73 DK to the Ebon Hold for training.  Some other DK is there as well.  He starts in on me about my gear, which was at the time blue mid-60's stuff from BC...fairly decent gear for a 65 DK, but of course, I'm a 73 now, so as good stuff, if not a shade better, is available from WotLK questing.

Assuming that the instant you hit 68, you're off to Northrend to get the quest gear.  Stupid assumption, IMHO.  I don't powergrind any of my WoW toons...I like to take my time, see the sights, run some quests, just enjoy being in the world.  I'm funny that way.

The gear I've got is perfectly OK, fine stuff for solo questing in Northrend.  The leveling game doesn't require uber gear in WoW, you all know that.  There are only two circumstances where you really need to be obsessed about gear; if you PvP a lot, or if you're raiding.  Well, I'm not really that much into nonstop PvP, and you're not going to be doing any raiding until you hit 80 anyways, so why obsess over gear before then?

But this guy does not let up.."Oh, that stuff is fine for questing in Nagrand, but you should have better stuff".   Only if you're playing this ridiculous keep up with the Joneses mentality of being obsessed with your gear when there is very litte reason to aside from pure potlach reasons of passing the inspections of people who are obsessed with gear as you're leveling up a toon.

Which I am not.

Ironically, back when my 'lock was a mere 49, some guy gave me a tell and asked if this were a twink toon.  I said no, I just happen to be at 49 atm.  He then proceeded to tell me I was better geared than most  twinks - which is why he thought I might be one.  I took this as a compliment, which was as it was intended.

So inspections can work both ways. 

My guidlies have offered friendly tips on what I should be looking for on various items from examining my toons in the armory, so it's a helpful thing, especially when you're not as stat obsessed as some.  Helps with raiding, and I appreciate the advice from players more knowledgeable than me about that, particularly when everyone in a raid needs to be sporting their best gear to support the raid group, to do what it is they're supposed to be doing, tanking, or DPS, or healing.

But I can definitely appreciate the OP's take on this.  Sometimes you get unwanted attention that is at a minimum annoying.

"It's just a game"

The ultimate excuse for acting like a dick to another person in an MMO.

Let's look at how you advance your Jedi in SWG...regardless of the "era" of the game.

By killing.  The only way to do it is by massive death.  All those piket corpses lying around the spin group's mission lair.

Somehow I don't think Yoda would have approved of such a mechanism for becoming more in tune with the Force.

Interestingly, this very point was highlighted in KOTOR II.  The Exile's path is one of massive killing.

There would be a lot of preconditions for this to be possible.

One, and this is non-negotiable, is the head of John Smedley on a platter.

A very good read, as others have said.

I think this is a key passage, because it tells us something about the MMO industry, such as it is:

These days, companies tend to take a short-sighted view of the MMO subscription lifespan, and if a game isn't a hit right out the door, they are quick to slash the live development team to a skeleton and they begin considering the right time to sunset the service.

This is not dissimilar to how TV series that fail to instantly become a "hit" are abandoned at once.  To provide a historical example of how stupid this mentality is, Cheers finished its first season at the bottom of the ratings, yet went on to become a classic series in continuous syndication making money for the studio, creators, writers, actors, composer of the theme song, the works, for decades.  It was allowed to find an audience.  TV series nowadays are not allowed to find an audience over time, they're abandoned if they fail to be an instant success.

Nowadays MMOs are not allowed to find audiences.  EVE has, and is prospering, albeit not with WoW numbers.  But if it were published by SOE, it would have been sunsetted quickly for failure to be a hit.

WoW, the 800 pound gorilla, has altered the landscape in countless ways, to include the standard of whether or not an MMO is considered to be a success, and as a result of the short term mentality (one that plauges American business in general) it stifles games that, if allowed, would find niche markets were they'd make some money for someone.  Perhaps not oceans of benjamins like WoW, but some money and keep some developers employed and some players entertained.

The problem with almost any "mature" MMO is that there are fewer and fewer noobs to band together to group, and SWG is particularly brutal in penalizing XP for those who group with people too far above or below your level.  Fortunately only XP for killing mobs is affected by this, so while you're using the one quest line for leveling (the legacy quest) you can get others to help you take out overly difficult mobs along the way without losing the XP from the quests themselves.

With a couple of exceptions where you have to deal with elites that are overly difficult, the legacy quest line is quite soloable for combat toons; it's of no use at all to those who are entertainers or traders.

Originally posted by Elikal

Sitting down and waiting for your mana regen. I mean who the F*** is enjoying sitting down and doing nothing? If I wanted to relax, I'd join a granny's knitting circle!

You're an SWG dev who didn't get why camping was fun, aren't you?

Originally posted by RealmLords

WoW's phasing as applied in the Death Knight starting area.

One minute you and your buddy are talking, next thing (after a quest turn-in) he's off your radar and there's no way back to him to help him catch up.   Sorry Joe, tough-luck...  WoW won't let me help you drop that elite.

 

Ken

Phasing, period in WotLK has a lot of drawbacks.

Especially given the solo nature of quest chains up to the climax, which then switches over to the "you need a partner or two" to take out the elite.

Originally posted by Daffid011

Other developers getting gold fever and trying to replicate the wow and not replicate blizzard how blizzard made wow.  That statement may not make sense at first glance, but it I think it is the single biggest problem in the genre right now. 

Developers wanting the riches of blizzard, but continue to follow the business practices of 1999 and not understanding how things turned sour so fast. 

DING DING DING DING DING

Nail.  Hammer.  Hit.

Blizz takes the long view.  They actually delayed an expansion publish until AFTER the holiday shopping season so they could get it right.

Lucas Arts doesn't do those things.  Push the box of bantha poodoo out for the holiday shopping season, or for the marketing blitz of the release of Episode III.  Whether it's ready or not, it ships.

Originally posted by Rayx0r

The "Holy Trinity"

I'm afraid the "Holy Trinity" is a function of how MMOs deal with combat.

MMO combat is ritualized combat...much like sparring in martial arts is ritualized.  In a real fight, it's over fast.  It is not prolonged.  MMO combat has to be ritualistic in nature.

It would be nice to find another formula besides tank/DPS/heals, but the entire genre is built on that basic trinity from D&D onwards, and honestly, if you do something different nowadays, you'd better be perfect the first time or the marketplace will stomp you.

I think if we ever get a game world that accurately replicates real terrain, you'll see a change, but taking cover behind a rock just does not work in MMOs right now...the virtual environment can't be that realistic yet.

So you've got ritualized combat...nothing at all like the real world, where it's more often than not one shot and you're out of it, dead or unable to continue to fight.  Which, after all, is NOT FUN.

Originally posted by Beatnik59

Lockout timers.

When I saw SWG instituted them post-NGE, I almost died laughing.

I mean, they get rid of an entire 1/3 of the game by getting rid of decay, wounds, and BF in an attempt to get people to the action faster, and then make it so you can't re-enter a dungeon for a set amount of time.

In other words, they took away all the elegant and interesting mechanics for limiting combat, only to replace it with contrived gimmicks to force downtime.

Well, the entire idea was to make SWG more of a game and less of a simulation of reality.

All those old mechanisms were not "fun" because they were too much like real life.

Artificial ways to force downtime are "fun" because they remind you you're playing a game.

Also, there's less reading with a game.

Originally posted by Ruyn

Lack of harsh death penalties. 

followed by a close second, instances.

By all means.  Impose a harsh death penalty on yourself.

Reroll your toon.  I dare you.

You will of course not do this.

Originally posted by Phry

pvp is a battle of the buffs rather than actual skill.

seriously though, its a scifi mmo and they still seem to think you can inject 'magical abilities' into it without it affecting gameplay badly

Star Wars isn't SF.

It's fantasy with an SF skin.

I mean, "The Force".  Mystical energy field that envelops all living things.  Binds the universe together!

Back in the old days, of course, before the dark times...before the CU and NGE...heals were not magical, except Jedi heals.  You had to have a healing canister in your inventory to heal damage or wounds, and you had to have invested skill points to be able to use them.  Of course, now there are no wounds anymore, there are no black bars...

I agree with you though about PvP being all about the buffs, because the classes have been so watered down to be "balanced" that the only differences are with how many buffs you've got stacked, particularly the magical medical buffs.

I pity the fool who disrespects the Night Elf Mohawk!

Originally posted by Vaedur

Can't u just change your class at will?

No, not really.  Every time you change class (after the first time, and if you don't have a class change tool) you have to pay more and more credits to do so.

Not that this stops people from doing it, mind you, but there is a price for changing your class.

Furthermore, if you switch from a combat class to trader or entertainer, you'll lose whatever level advancement you've got up to that point, as traders and entertainers have different types of XP for leveling.  Same vice versa; you can level up to 90 on an entertainer and then switch to say Commando, and you'll be reset back to level 1 when you do so.

You should try it.  Judge it for yourself.

Get past Tansaari Point station, though (the n00bie island of SWG) and see the real game you'll be playing in long term.  You can level up to 10 on Tansaari Point station, then ask Han Solo for a ride, he'll dump you off in front of the Mos Eisley starport and you'll be able to explore the real game world on foot, with some quest provided ground transport, and with the single seat spacehip you should have picked up at the station.

The problem is that in order to make it seem "faster" in combat, they screwed up the combat system to run five times as fast which overloads the data transport system so that specials and heals misfire due to that one decision, which makes combat clunky and frustrating next to say WoW's combat, where your special attacks, buffs, and debuffs actually work as advertised.

The game used to have gorgeous animations that were remarkable to watch, but the speeded up system has broken all that.  All for the illusion of "faster" combat.

So, that's what makes SWG bad.  Along with the very poor copies of so many WoW graphical features.

The wailing and whining of those who felt their games didn't get proper recognition is hilarious.  Sorry, guys, but they're just other games.  They did well for a time, they might have tossed out a few new concepts, but they ran their course and they're bascially done.

Some of the games on Jon's list (Sims Online and Toontown, for example) are there because they were much anticipated, based on ideas that were established in non MMOs, and they failed to take off as MMOs.

If WoW had flopped, it would STILL be on the list, becasue it was an established gaming franchise outside of MMOs that  had a solid fanbase (like the Sims, like the entire Toontown concept) that could not recapture the magic of the original franchise.  Reality is it took the IP to new heights, and really aside from the IP itself.   The IP was a springboard to bigger and better things, really.  It massively expanded the market for MMOs.

Darkfall is there because it was dismissed as vaporware for years...always not quite ready to launch.  Then it actually did!

EVE is there because it's the little franchise that could...something that started out small and is still relatively small yet prospers and thrives, despite being overshadowed by the raw numbers of other games, and it's a sandbox...the supposedly impossible to market subgenre of MMOs.

The impact of these games isn't just within the genre...it's outside of them, too.  That's what makes them noteworthy in this context.