Originally posted by stux

It is rather obvious when someone is trolling on this site.

If you go to about any negative post on the site and look at the author 9 times out of 10 the person has very very few posts and more often then not just created the account in the last few days. 

A lot of times you see them posting positive about one game and negative about one or more others.

I don't get it.  Do these people think we are all idiots and we are going to believe they didn't just create an account to troll a game(s) they don't like.

I think the majority of them haven't even played the game they are trolling and if they did for any length of time.

Are these trolls made by competing companies to drive down the competition?  Or just idiots trying to keep their game's population higher?

OR WHAT?

You tell me...

What matters is that they cause effect whether you like it or not.

Most of the players discussing on this forum know much, but much more than most developers.

Anyone could be a developer.

Developers dont become Developers based on merit. They show their merit when their games have success, but most games fail.

They simply end up knowing someone on the industry here, then one thing connects to another, and then voila, they are working on the industry. ive seen it happen many times.

Some of them are just programmers who happen to like to play games.

Some of them are designers that happen to like to play games.

If you read the job boards there is nothing there besides "experience on the industry" that might lead to anything indicating how good you would be as a "game designer".

Any idiot can be a game designer, he just needs to be the guy with the money or the guy with the publisher connections.

And in a certain sense, you can say that PUBLISHERS are taking the place of the actual designers in many opportunities, or limiting their functions.

They made games being all about power and then they cap it to two weeks and they call it an MMORPG

They make their games being all about power. To get power you do combat. To be better at combat you need power so you have to do more combat. There are quests - combat related: kill 100 rats.  Kill wolfs untill you drop 10 wolf teeths.

They call it MMORPGs.

MMORPGs are not about combat.

Its all about freedom of choice and changing the story and world around you, living in a community.

When the hell things became all about being a mass murderer obsessed with power a MMORPG?

Then since the games are all about power, and they discovered the obvious: peoples time and effort spent are not balanced because... some play while others are logged off (yeah, because in persistant world, it doesnt stop or wait for you) they decided to cap progression (wich is a no no in MMORPGs), for the sakes of balance.

AGAIN

if the game is all about power, and power is acquired through time and effort spent in the game and some players do it more than others, we have to make it so those who dont play as much are somehow balanced, so they can compete, or else they quit and stop paying subscriptions.

In order to balance, or else people quit, they changed the whole design of MMORPGs, re-structuring everything around Balance, they had to create a panoptic system of controling peoples power, eliminating peoples freedom, using levels as objective measuring tools, classes to limit peoples powers at determined points (levels), etc and etc... Everything in MMORPGs sucks nowadays BECAUSE THE FUCKING BALANCE. They had to make it linear, so they could control it. The more linear, the less player freedom, the easier it is to control/balance everything happy happy. MMORPGs are about FREEDOM, stop the stupid balance paranoia, start making games that are not about power (vertical progression), games that are not about combat.

Reading all those Diablo 3 design decisions changes the "balance paranoia" comes to mind.

People think Im talking about different subjects, its because they are brain dead and cant understand how its a never ending cycle that is crippling our genre. Thats why suddenly all the games are the same, they all suck, we are all bored, everything in the future sucks and will fail, etc...

The argument about people not being able to learn anything holds in REAL LIFE. In the settings were MMORPGs take place its questionable.

But its an exageration to counter an argument for infinite progression. Its not about infinite progression, its about MMORPGs taking 2-3 weeks to reach level cap wich simply shreds the insides of the genre. Akin to static single player games.

I dont want a power progression that last forever, or that takes 20 years to reach level cap. That is ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is counter arguing that as if it was the point.

Instead of defining a cap that can be reached in 2 weeks wich breaks the genre nature, instead of a cap that blends with what the MMORPGs genre is about (living breathing world, organic, persistant, always changing, always evolving, etc... read other posts) takes atleast around 6 months to a year to reach (180 - 360 days playing around 5 hours per day.... taking 900 hours-1800 hours).

Regardless of how many exact hours I use as an example, the essence of the idea is that people dont think about it as if they could manage it, as if it was their right to reach level cap, their right to experience end game, they whole point is that people dont rush it anymore, so they experience the world without that anxiety and certainty of having to reach level cap "oh my god, how come I didnt reached level cap in two weeks yet durr".  For example, if it is to rush a 900 hours investment to reach end game, people wont do it. Because it will be stupid. Thats just changing the design, you change peoples behaviour. Think about it.

The whole point is making players not think that its possible to reach a cap, thats a world, the world is yours, its massivelly huge, you live on it, you are free to do what you want, here are the tools, have fun. Just live the game, enjoy the experience as you make it as you shape the way you want to play and your own goals. And if people come with the linear brainwashed mentality that they "have to reach level cap to play end game" and try to do it, it will be like hitting their heads against the wall due to the cheer stupidity of rushing 900-1800 hours.

Just stop making games focused on combat for power progression and removing the linear "follow the script" nature of "progression, threadmill, levels, content, quests" and you will see people doing their stuff at their own time, eliminate those concepts of everyone is a hero, balanced happy happy and the problem vanishes.

So what that someone plays 16 hours per day while you just play 2 hours. He spends more time than you, he progress while you are logged off, the world doesnt stop, face it, if your time and effort spent are not balanced, your powers wont be balanced either.

People cant see that because most of the games they know are combat oriented themeparks whose only goal is follow the scripted path and reach end game to pvp.

Change the game design, solve the problem of capping progression (static) in dinamic worlds.

People dont understand how the current games design are the problem.

They think its normal to play focused on combat, following the script

"first you start killing rats at level 1, then do the quest 1, then you kill wolfs at level 2 and do the quest 2, untill after 2-3 weeks you reach the end game and you can pvp, isnt it an amazing MMORPG?!"

And they, they suddenly dont realize how progression, the core element of MMORPGs has been bypassed/countered/destroyed/nerfed for the sake of a "balance" we dont need. What we need is a total different game design and the balance problem goes away without sacrificing the progression, because peoples behaviour and notions will change.

Like the power progression in WOW is based on time and effort spent to get better gear ends up pleasing Elitist Scam and the level cap is just an ilusion to please Bobs?

WOW is formed majorly of Bobs afterall ?

My main complaint against games nowadays is the combat oriented vertical progression.

In essence, its Power vs Balance. If I have power, I have progression. If I have balance, I dont have progression.

Balance being an impossibility due to players time and effort spent being different.

One player plays all day, while another one just one hour per day.

This is a natural limit to balance.

To counter that, developers create artificial power limits, and since power is the essence of progression, or its most strong facet in combat oriented vertical progression games, we end up with progression caps to artificially limit a naturally unexistant balance.

Its impossible to have both power and balance. And if you make the balance a core element in your design, you will have to limit power progression. Some players consider the power over others rate in MMORPGs a vital element of their entertainment/satisfaction/needs. In games where such power progression is awarded with time and effort spent, those players who invest more time and effort will evaluate it more than those who dont do it. In free to play games, where the companies main profit comes from cash shop, selling power progression shortcuts is their way to go, therefore their designs focus tend to shift more on power than in balance. In games where power progression shortcuts are not sold in cash shops, the design decisions not necessarily weight heavier on the power progression. There seems to be an feeling that in subscription based games, the balance is the core element in the design, even though there is power progression, it is artificially limited with "classes", "levels", "requisites", so eventually the power progression stops, in detriment to a chronological balance bootleneck.

This goes against the essence of MMORPGs, wich are persistant worlds where multiple characters live and progress, and the world never stops for those who logged off, the world and the other characters doesnt wait/stop.

So a chronological balance bottleneck, such as a power progression level cap, like in WOW, for example, is a aberration mechanic to the genre.

Eventually the comunities will realize the power vs balance design of games yet in development and see them for what they are and be able to choose their games based on their preferences for either power or balance.

In another note, your public audience might never not know if your game is structured on balance or power, for example, WOW.

The power progression in WOW dont come from levels, the balance come from levels, wich are reachable very easily, with the chronological balance bootleneck, the power progression from WOW, comes from a different concept: gear.

While some are led to believe the game is structured in balance based on some hypocrital and mainly marketing gimicks, the real factors of power progression comes from gear, wich is not chronologically balanced artificially like the levels. The player power is the consecution of their time and effort spent in the acquisition of power derived from gear. Those who spent proportionally less time and effort (the paradigm of impossible balance) acquire less power derived from gear.

So, with the example of WOW, a solution/alternative should be fool your player base that prefers balance (casual players) into believing your game is structured into balance, while in reality satisfying your player base that prefers power (hardcore players) with a system in place that only show its true face after the period of time only that player base will spent on the game to discover.

Off course, some people might try to spoil your strategy on the communications nets, but that wont come close to preventing your game market strategy from causing the desired effects.

We dont see in interviews questions being asked or answered regarding "power progression, balance and the ammount of time where power progression is chronologically artificially limited or not" Thats the core question developers dont talk about that takes weeks or months for players to discover from first hand experiences.

"How many hours of power progression do I have untill I reach artificial caps?"

If people knew the answer for this, be they casual or hardcore players, they wouldnt bother playing.

Casual players want a power progression cap at maximum of lets say... 200 hours or less. Hardcore players want no power progression caps, or a power progression cap that lasts for 500-1000 hours.

MMORPGs, by their original concepts and definition, never stop. So those games games where power progression caps are reached in less than 200 hours... wich means... 2-3 weeks are not living up to the genre. In MMORPGs you are supposed to live in the living breathing organic persistant world where characters progress/evolve regardless of your presence and the whole experience lasts for months or years, definatelly not 2-3 weeks.

Those 2-3 weeks of time and effort spent required to reach the artificially (chronological balance bootleneck, to the point where others can start catching up) created power progression cap are just there for the sake of balancing up the players who spent less time and effort: the players who were logged off from the virtual persistant world that supposedly never stops/waits for them.

As long as the games remain being linear with strict focus on combat for progression PLAYERS WONT ADDAPT TO A DIFFERENT CONCEPT THAN

The concept of vertical progression: power progression... wich means "power over others"

For we to start discussing horizontal progression of characters in the "living breathing virtual organic persistant world", the MMORPGs have to start being more of that and less of "linear combat oriented games".

Once we restart making MMORPGs as they were meant to be, we will be able to surpass this "balance vs vertical progression" paradigm. Untill them, its just games of mindless rushing of "content" in a repetitive grind to for more vertical power (or reach "level cap" in those games with a cap) and be able to play "end game" or "pvp".

Noone wants to PVP untill they are sure they have the maximum possible power over others, because they can. Noone cares about the journey, because there is no journey, when you only have combat combat for more power, more power, it doesnt matter what you are doing now, it matters once you reach the cap.

My short term solution would be to remove the cap, or make it extenuatingly unreachable (over 1000 hours), then people would calm the fuck down. If you make it so everyone can reach it in 100 hours, everyone will rush those 100 hours, but if you make a thousand... people will addapt to it. That is what Free to Play games present, they have this design, but offer shortcuts in their cash shops. People dont quit because they reach level cap and get bored, they never get satisfied in F2P games (unless they spend a lot of money), but they do rage quit offended by the cash shop practices. In subscription based games, people reach the power progression cap in their first subscription month, then they quit, bored.

I prefer the time when "balance" didnt existed. Like when there wasnt levels, classes, races. Everyone could do everything whenever they wanted, so we didnt had to have progression caps, people could reach a cap in one branch of power, but there was dozens of branches, everything you learned would help and be usefull and people wouldnt get bored after one month, because in one month they barelly reached a fraction of their maximum power progression. Thats was the golden age of MMORPGs.

Very good topic.

My main complaint against games nowadays is the combat oriented vertical progression.

In essence, its Power vs Balance. If I have power, I have progression. If I have balance, I dont have progression.

Balance being an impossibility due to players time and effort spent being different.

One player plays all day, while another one just one hour per day.

This is a natural limit to balance.

To counter that, developers create artificial power limits, and since power is the essence of progression, or its most strong facet in combat oriented vertical progression games, we end up with progression caps to artificially limit a naturally unexistant balance.

Its impossible to have both power and balance. And if you make the balance a core element in your design, you will have to limit power progression. Some players consider the power over others rate in MMORPGs a vital element of their entertainment/satisfaction/needs. In games where such power progression is awarded with time and effort spent, those players who invest more time and effort will evaluate it more than those who dont do it. In free to play games, where the companies main profit comes from cash shop, selling power progression shortcuts is their way to go, therefore their designs focus tend to shift more on power than in balance. In games where power progression shortcuts are not sold in cash shops, the design decisions not necessarily weight heavier on the power progression. There seems to be an feeling that in subscription based games, the balance is the core element in the design, even though there is power progression, it is artificially limited with "classes", "levels", "requisites", so eventually the power progression stops, in detriment to a chronological balance bootleneck.

This goes against the essence of MMORPGs, wich are persistant worlds where multiple characters live and progress, and the world never stops for those who logged off, the world and the other characters doesnt wait/stop.

So a chronological balance bottleneck, such as a power progression level cap, like in WOW, for example, is a aberration mechanic to the genre.

Eventually the comunities will realize the power vs balance design of games yet in development and see them for what they are and be able to choose their games based on their preferences for either power or balance.

In another note, your public audience might never not know if your game is structured on balance or power, for example, WOW.

The power progression in WOW dont come from levels, the balance come from levels, wich are reachable very easily, with the chronological balance bootleneck, the power progression from WOW, comes from a different concept: gear.

While some are led to believe the game is structured in balance based on some hypocrital and mainly marketing gimicks, the real factors of power progression comes from gear, wich is not chronologically balanced artificially like the levels. The player power is the consecution of their time and effort spent in the acquisition of power derived from gear. Those who spent proportionally less time and effort (the paradigm of impossible balance) acquire less power derived from gear.

So, with the example of WOW, a solution/alternative should be fool your player base that prefers balance (casual players) into believing your game is structured into balance, while in reality satisfying your player base that prefers power (hardcore players) with a system in place that only show its true face after the period of time only that player base will spent on the game to discover.

Off course, some people might try to spoil your strategy on the communications nets, but that wont come close to preventing your game market strategy from causing the desired effects.

We dont see in interviews questions being asked or answered regarding "power progression, balance and the ammount of time where power progression is chronologically artificially limited or not" Thats the core question developers dont talk about that takes weeks or months for players to discover from first hand experiences.

"How many hours of power progression do I have untill I reach artificial caps?" 

If people knew the answer for this, be they casual or hardcore players, they wouldnt bother playing.

Casual players want a power progression cap at maximum of lets say... 200 hours or less. Hardcore players want no power progression caps, or a power progression cap that lasts for 500-1000 hours.

MMORPGs, by their original concepts and definition, never stop. So those games games where power progression caps are reached in less than 200 hours... wich means... 2-3 weeks are not living up to the genre. In MMORPGs you are supposed to live in the living breathing organic persistant world where characters progress/evolve regardless of your presence and the whole experience lasts for months or years, definatelly not 2-3 weeks.

Those 2-3 weeks of time and effort spent required to reach the artificially (chronological balance bootleneck, to the point where others can start catching up) created power progression cap are just there for the sake of balancing up the players who spent less time and effort: the players who were logged off from the virtual persistant world that supposedly never stops/waits for them.

As long as the games remain being linear with strict focus on combat for progression PLAYERS WONT ADDAPT TO A DIFFERENT CONCEPT THAN

The concept of vertical progression: power progression... wich means "power over others"

For we to start discussing horizontal progression of characters in the "living breathing virtual organic persistant world", the MMORPGs have to start being more of that and less of "linear combat oriented games".

Once we restart making MMORPGs as they were meant to be, we will be able to surpass this "balance vs vertical progression" paradigm. Untill them, its just games of mindless rushing of  "content" in a repetitive grind to for more vertical power (or reach "level cap" in those games with a cap) and be able to play "end game" or "pvp".

Noone wants to PVP untill they are sure they have the maximum possible power over others, because they can. Noone cares about the journey, because there is no journey, when you only have combat combat for more power, more power, it doesnt matter what you are doing now, it matters once you reach the cap.

My short term solution would be to remove the cap, or make it extenuatingly unreachable (over 1000 hours), then people would calm the fuck down. If you make it so everyone can reach it in 100 hours, everyone will rush those 100 hours, but if you make a thousand... people will addapt to it. That is what Free to Play games present, they have this design, but offer shortcuts in their cash shops. People dont quit because they reach level cap and get bored, they never get satisfied in F2P games (unless they spend a lot of money), but they do rage quit offended by the cash shop practices. In subscription based games, people reach the power progression cap in their first subscription month, then they quit, bored.

I prefer the time when "balance" didnt existed. Like when there wasnt levels, classes, races. Everyone could do everything whenever they wanted, so we didnt had to have progression caps, people could reach a cap in one branch of power, but there was dozens of branches, everything you learned would help and be usefull and people wouldnt get bored after one month, because in one month they barelly reached a fraction of their maximum power progression. Thats was the golden age of MMORPGs.

The clicking macros can be solved easily.

Just make it so people have to move the mouse in random patterns and speeds, being somewhat precise.

Mix it up with keyboard controls and there we go.

Random and complex, macros cant be made for that. In a way that only a human being with non artificial inteligence would be able to do it.

Yeah, add verification codes too haha.

All those games sucks.

Some of them are even old!

And Earthrise and Mortal Online, the ones I actually would care to test, wont be released in December!

Its just a way to kick the bucket and expose the ridiculousness of what games came to be...

Role Playing Games....  most of them you are a mass murderer. Its incredible hard to find one game where progression isnt tied to mass murdering.

Oh, but they are... uh... monsters.... they are... indians... they are uh... orcs... they are uh.... infidels... they are... animals... they are from another race... whatever excuse or lack there off is present doesnt change the fact.

It doesnt matter what it is, as long as they give xp and loot or help me complete quests it seems.

Check Mate

I remember of a guy trying to extort people into planting mass ammounts of linen for him.

It was amusingly pathetic.

Originally posted by Scot

I never play a mass murderer in any MMO I have been in and I don’t think any MMO asks you to do that. If fighting beasts or humans that attack you on sight is your idea of murder then it is an odd one.

So, what do you think of the Holocaust?

So much ignorance on this thread. Im going to puke.

*closes thread*

Dude,

we are always the evil side.

Just think about what we do in our day by day MMORPG activities.

We are mass murderers with hypocrite morals

"we are the heroes, the monsters are bad, kill them all, all of them!"

What makes our characters different then religious fundamentalists.

Any MMORPGs where we dont roleplay a mass murderer?

I played this game some months ago, its awesome.

New features and systems are constantly being implemented, have a very active community and the 2 developers are very in touch with the community.

Dont be fooled by the graphics or animations.

This game offers what 90% of the Market cant.

Even if it doesnt caught your eye, I recommend you try it out, its free and there isnt a sizeable download, I think the client is like 5-10 mbs. Yeah, laugh all you want, but the depth of this game is amazing.

Cut a tree and it disappear, you can cut all the trees in a forest.

You can make a boat with the wood, you can make a palisade with the rest of the wood and some people can come and destroy it. You can make a house, wherever you want. You can plant grass, after days some Cows or sheeps or chickens might appear, if the foxes dont eat them first, you can milk the cow, you can make cheese, or muffins, but to make muffins you have to have an owen, but to have an oven you have to make some bricks, but to make some bricks you have to get some clay and burn it on a kiln... but you have to find a riverside with good clay, but you have to explore the ridiculous insanely huge world for a spot with very good quality clay, to make high quality kilns and bricks, and owens... You have to fuel the kiln and or owen with wood...

The game complexity of what you can do is RIDICULOUS. I could post many pages just going into detail the ammount of things you can do and how awesome, addicting and entertaining it is.

Its has a bit of Harvest Moon and Ultima Online mixed in.

Dont like the graphics, go play Aion. Hahaha. If this little game had the graphics of Aion, or one of those million budget MMORPGs had the depth of this little game... there is your "wow killer".

I also like Ace Online/Air Rivals/Flysis/Space Cowboys

Mothership Battles!

The whole preparation for the fight, the leader role, people strategizing what they are going to do, when, avoiding spies, who is going to do what. It was very realistic how the whole nation came together under a leader or group of leaders and worked together following a battle strategy, lots of epic situations like:

"HOLD... HOLD... HOLD..."

"NOW! GO GO GO! "

Hundred gears would fly through the gate and initiate the invasion and the other nation side gate would have a complete defense camp.

I know you can find that in other games, but in Ace Online the gameplay was in your hands (keyboard+mouse) and visceral gameplay pace was only matched by Freelancer on its golden age on some PVP mods.

But the action overall is an interesting mechanic itself. It makes people blood boil. Pump adrenaline/testosterone non stop.

"Kill that M-gear, he is going to COH!"

"There is tank below the gate! There is a tank below the gate!"

"B-gear quick he is going to... big boom... ahhhhhh!"

The whole player communication using teamspeak and ventrillo was like watching a Top Gun movie. People would go crazy: "There is someone on my six! Someone on my six!"

Saga of Ryzom ability not only to have all the skills (be able to do everything, even if it took over an year) AND CUSTOMIZE your skills.

Like: increase damage, range, area of effect, duration and multiple other variables of your skills. You could increase or decrease certain variables to make skills for different situations, needs.

LOTS OF STRATEGY AND FREEDOM.

Even for an Ultima Online fan, their system totally blew me away.

Here is an historic video of one of the best WOEs we had on Ragnarok Bro (Brazilian Ragnarok) in 2005.

The servers were excelent (pay to play), the ping was low, we had thousands of players in that WOE, and what you are about to see is just the action in ONE of the many castles of the War of the Emperium.

It was so fun back then, mass PVP. People who never played, its a shame guys, game was awesome. Builds complexity, a topic with over a thousand posts just discussing about what would be the best hybrid knight build... LOL.

Man, I sold so many blue potions in that weekend.

"Best Ragnarok Woe"

www.youtube.com/watch

The epicness of the strategies involved. People who look  and never played have no idea what is going on.