-- Carolyn Koh needs to work on her writing a bit.  She shows promise, but there were some very awkward sentences in there, and she hasn't mastered flow.

-- My principal worry is that releasing for both the PC and PS-whatever will require dumbing down the game so that it can be played with an ordinary game controller.  That places severe limits on how the game can be played--that is, what players can do, how they can interact with the environment and each other.  Console games, limited by their input devices, aren't very good at MMO games for that very reason.  I might just have to take a pass on this as well.

I'm glad to see there's some life in the franchise still.  I beta'd the game and played for four years.  I've moved on to other games now, but AC1 will stick with me for a long time.

Originally posted by thorwood

I think the the Asian games that are grind fests are like that because they are similar to the early Western games that were also grind fests.

I have an idea: let's just go ahead and design "Grind Fest."  I'm sure I can find a programming team for it, and it's sure to find a publisher.

Then we can just sit back and watch that ol' money roll in.

Originally posted by Jimmydean

This is a terribly racist thread. That's like asking why black people like watermelon so much.

Here's a news flash: they also like fried chicken and barbecue a lot, with rare exception.  And the crazy, nutty why of it is that all those things taste good.  As it turns out, Jews also favor chicken soup.  Why?  Because it tastes good.  Norwegians like herring.  Why?  Because--believe it or not--herring taste good.  (I know this because I've had some Norwegian herring dishes.  Herring in tomato aspic is very good.)

It's hardly racist to suggest (or simply observe) that racial or ethnic groups prefer one thing (or group of things) over another thing (or group of things) .  This is simply the result of social evolution over history (or perhaps necessity--land-locked desert-dwelling cultures don't eat a lot of seafood, generally, for what I hope are obvious reasons; they would tend to prefer all sorts of foods over seafood, all other factors being equal).

Any racist aspect to the line of question comes out of two lines of thought.  The first is that, for example, watermelon was considered at one time to be trash food--food for the poor.  Having watermelon, or rice, or other inexpensive foods as dietary staples was considered an indication of low social and economic status.  That was then.  Today there's no special stigma attached to eating any particular sort of food--and choosing to eat lower-cost foods is actually laudable from a budgetary and dietary standpoint.  (One has to except scrapple from that.  That's not good for you no matter how little it costs.)

The second line of thought is that blacks, for example, eat nothing but watermelon, fried chicken, and barbecue.  That's stereotyping, which is generally useless.  (Although, as a good Southern boy, I could tolerate that diet for a long, long time with the small addition of grits, greens, and gravy.  Nothing wrong with it, although it's a little high in fat and cholesterol.)

So, had the OP asserted that Asians only play grinding games, and that the fact indicated that Asian gamers were somehow an inferior sub-population of the entire gaming population, I could see some validity to your comment.

But....

Wanting to know if ones impression of fact is true is valid.  Given statistical data showing that a particular trend exists and asking why that would be so is valid.

Denying that differnces exist between populations is naive, and also racist (it's called the "everyone thinks/acts like I do" fallacy).  That differences exist is not bad.  Noticing that differences exist is not bad, because exploring differences leads to new and valuable information for everyone involved.

So, asking why, in general, the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans currently appear to prefer one sort or style (or a small range of styles) of game over another is a valid question.  Certainly game publishers need this sort of information.  Game designers hoping to break into that market need that sort of information.  One can't sell what people don't want to buy.  Building games is an expensive proposition these days, and those putting up the money would like a decent ROI.

As such, at the end of the day, I don't see your assertion of racism as valid.  Sorry.

(It bothers me that I may have just spent 45 minutes replying to a troll.)

Originally posted by Sain34

The above poster is correct. Instant gratification is a western invention.

Yes, but it's a very good invention.    ;)

Originally posted by tkobo

Its not hard to see what bad design choice they are going to follow (at this point),in a failed attempt to fix another they now finally see as wrong.

-------------

[quote]The Champions Online end game isn't just about large teams, raids and guilds. If you don't want to do that, there's still content for you. I'll admit that we haven't put the finishing touches on the Omega System, but I can tell you that we are designing and developing with the solo player in mind.[/quote].

---------------

Its the standard bandaid approach.They keep the insanely wrong terms and philosphies of raid and content access limited by participant size,and throw in some "busy work" to hopefully keep the "soloers" pacified.

What they need to do, is scrap the entire dinosaur design.Get rid of designs based on failed concepts like forced grouping,raids,etc..

They need to make ALL content experienceable by all players at all times regardless of the amount of OTHER people with them at a given time.

Take the standard monkey raid content design.

Make the same map and same mobs accesible by everyone by scaling the encounter and the goal.So, your standard 40 followers killing a single mob can be done that way if so chosen,AND that the soloer can defeat the same mob thru a different mechanism and even a different goal if chosen.

The soloers access to the area can be defined goal wise differently.Instead of rounding up 40 people to help him gang up on a single foe,he could instead have a goal that allows access to the area that asks him to posion (eqaulizer)said mob,or steal something from its treasure,or arrange a deal,or any myriad of different possible reasons and ways to "get the best of"/defeat the mob,allowing acces to content.

it isnt that people havent told the dev teams for years now that the designs they cling to are wrong,or that the solutions havent been given.

Its that the monkeys are unwilling and unable to accept they are wrong, and even more so to accept the fixs.

Im hard pressed to think of a single product in the known history of man, that the customers have tried and worked so hard,gone so far out of their way, FOR FREE no less,to help the product makers get their product right.

And still the monkeys do almost everything in their power to blow off the imput and cling to throwing the same waste product out the door each time.

 

Well, I got as much as I could out of your text there, after I stumbled over, around, and through the various spelling, grammar, and punctuation issues in your breathless prose, and I think I have another hypothesis:

 The developers have to be able to finish programming the thing in finite time.  What you're suggesting veers in the direction of NP-complete.    I'm sure that the customer-monkeys have spent nigh-infinite hours telling the developers this and that and the other thing--and none of what they are saying can be programmed into any sort of game that will be remotely playable from a technical standpoint.  Translating one's whims and whimsy into manageable and performant computer code isn't as easy as the customer-monkeys believe it is.  (I've been writing software for over 27 years now, man and boy, and I currently manage a team of developers at a rather large corporation you might have heard of--but I'm not going to drag their name into this.)

Your palpable arrogance (if I may be so bold) doesn't really help matters any, because at the end of the day, you have no idea what you're talking about.  You just want what you want because you want it, and everybody else is wrong.  (When everybody else is wrong, that's a sure sign you're wrong.)  Let's face it, if you had the chops, you'd be producing your "perfect game" right now.

Instead, you're sniping way on a forum somewhere, in barely-readable fashion.

Dude, dig yourself.  Get real.  Please--if only to save yourself further embarrassment.

What would happen if WoW ended is simply this: innovation would come back into the market.  WoW is inhibiting innovation because every game that intends to survive even minimally has to copy WoW.

That's the nature of the commercial entertainment beast (3D-animated talking animal kiddie flicks--seen em?).  Once Wow dies a timely death (which it likely won't for years, mind you, because it's very, very strong), then something new will be allowed to happen.  That is to say, investors will be willing to part with cash because the risk of failure will be somewhat lower.

WoW, in and of itself, is not a bad thing, but it has palpable effects on the industry, and not all of them are good.

Originally posted by Kryogenic

 

Originally posted by Deathstrike2

The way some people act about in game ads, I wonder how they're even able to watch television or drive down a main street in town.  They're just ads, and they don't bite. 

What I'd like to see is for the billboards and other in game ads (pop machines, etc.) to be destructible so we could destroy them.  After a few minutes, they could reappear.  Now that would be cool, and it would also catch the attention of the target audience. 

Anywho, more money = good for the game.

 

On a side note...     The ADS ARE COMING!!!  RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!! 

It's not a question of being subjected to ads. It's being subjected to ads in a game with a monthly subscription fee.

 

They want to add "optional advertising", well then they need to make an optional payment plan to go with the adds.

Sure I'll turn on some ads and be spammed with Power Drink and McDonlads ads, but it's taking a slightly corrupt concept, like paying to play every month, and adding some extra smarmy super sauce to it.

There are some great articles on Gamespot and Gamespy with some industry insight as to how some professionals feel about the fact that with the increase of in-game advertizing, the prices of the games haven't gone down.

CoH is showing it's age and I'm willing to bet that they aren't going to add anything major to the game. This is a ploy to get some add revenue to fund the company. Mark my words, there won't be any major additions to the game. Sure they'll port over power sets that work for different ATs and maybe throw in one or two sets that have been getting developed for awhile, now, but don't be foolish... it's not gonna suddenly breath new life into an old game.

But as long as we have blind little fanbois out there that are more than willing to bend over and take one in the rear, companies will continue to do these kinds of things.

Originally posted by Thunderous

I played CoH at launch and for a while after and the game was/is too limited by its design.  Simply, there aren't new things to do and the game has no, ZERO, zilch for depth.

Unless he can design the game to support my in-depth simulation then this game will be nothing more than CoH with a different skin.

YOUR in-depth simulation?  Got ego?

Originally posted by Fion

Anyone who's been playing CoX since launch knows that while initial CoX was very fun (and at this time is also great fun.) Emmert, while he was in control of the game post-release, really messed the game up multiple times with terrible choices and changes that nobody liked, but he thought needed changed because HE didn't like the way some things turned out, no matter how much the players disliked the change.

So now that he's clearly trying to make CoX 2, will he screw the pooch this time from the start, or will he learn that players matter.

Players matter, but they don't own the game.  Unfortunately, most players are in an age range where they'd prefer no challenge at all--they just want to rip up the pavement on their way to terminal level.  They don't want the game--they want the end-game.

The joy is in the journey, not the destination.  I, for one, think that making the game a challenge (which does not necessarily equate to "grind"), is a good thing.  Giving the players immediate gratification is a bad thing (if I have to listen to another teenager complaining about how slow a game is or how they aren't "uber" enough, I'm going to vomit).

Originally posted by salvaje

"Mactrotranscams" are the new FOTM amongst developers now.

The subscription model is "failing" because failing publishers like SOE and NCSoft want MORE than $15 a month from you.

The RMT model will die soon as players realize it is a scheme to get even more money from you.  Last year the WOW clone was the FOTM, now it's RMT.

 

Any chance of getting this in English?  Real writers aren't afraid to spell out abbreviations so the less hip can read the entire message.