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To Daeandor: And I think you missed mine, a belief I don't need to defend with sarcastic cliches. Dead argument for me. This is one of those areas where it's hard to establish facts so people's beliefs of the matter are probably entrenched quite deeply in their personality. I wouldn't expect anyone to overhaul their mentality just to accomodate a hard-to-substatiate argument, so I doubt any progression will be made here. It just suprises me that people who damn 'conspiracy theorists' claim to hold sovereignty over the truth but are as unable to justify this position as their antagonists are theirs. It's as if they have a conspiracy theory that their is no conspiracy... and so goes a circular argument. |
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Originally posted by buddhabeads Sexy thinking! Respect. Keeping my philosophical thoughts on the nature of reality to myself and instead going for the jugular of the orginal question: I quit MMOs about 9 months ago, but I do occasionally dip my toes in the pool of WoW to blow my unspent Gs on crap and pimp my twinks. I now play CoD4 daily until RSI sets in or my hand goes numb or both. I'm useless at it too, but I have fun and I mention these facts in the same breath simply to illustrate the depth of my loathing for games like WoW atm. Roll on AoC and WAR and please don't be sh.t. |
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Why don't devs offer raiding and non-raiding servers?
General Discussion « Age of Conan 3/06/08 5:13:05 AM
My thoughts:
I like the idea of scalable dungeons – scalable down to solo.
Problem is, people will always take the easiest option. Why bother forming a 50-man raid when you can get the same reward as a 5-man? The previous poster and others with similar 'long-quest' suggestions are spot-on.
Raiding does seem like a lot of fun. Even keen raiding friends I have say it’s stressful and repetitive “but that’s all I have left to do…”
As a raid group grows in size, so the management and coordination activities increase. I think big raid groups should get better rewards assuming the dungeon scales not only in mob HPs, etc, but also in the level of strategy required to ace it.
I like the idea of a solo server, but I think scalable dungeons or long quests would negate the need for this.
From what I understand and believe, raiders are a minority and should not be fawned over by devs. Once a dev comes along who breaks this mould, I think the pops of games like WoW will plummet.
Raids are only made ludicrously difficult to buy time for the devs to knock-up new content, which imo is lame. I look forward to the day when my 10 quid sub gets me new content on a regular basis as opposed to timesink grinds that I don’t even qualify for.
End-game PvP in WoW is the biggest pile of sh.te ever! |
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Why don't devs offer raiding and non-raiding servers?
General Discussion « Age of Conan 3/05/08 4:53:17 AM
I’m inclined to agree with the OP on this and I have some thoughts of my own.
Many people play these games for a sense of achievement, something which is often defined by comparing oneself with others.
Raiders may extol the virtues of teamwork, strategy and so on in their quest to conquer a dungeon or whatever but I’m quite confident that none of this would count for squat if they didn’t get a nice phat reward at the end of it.
Same applies with PvP. Players can claim to be Ichi the Killer but a sodding great sword glowing a myriad of colours says a lot more than a few lines in the chat pane.
Ultimately, players want something to show for their accomplishments, something that sets them apart from the dross (as many of them perceive less hardcore players). They don’t want to spend 300 years grinding in a pit to wield an axe that every other Joe on the server has!
So split the servers up and these guys are gonna be gutted.
As mentioned by someone else, another problem might be the standards in endgame PvP/E-specific servers. Because everyday players wouldn’t be able to just ‘have a go’ at either raiding or endgame PvP, the playerbase on these servers may become so hardcore that a casual wouldn’t even get a look-in. Being a PvP freak with limited playtime, I don’t give a rat’s about my kit, etc just so long as I am competitive. However, I’d probably be a whole lot less competitive if I was ‘trapped’ in a server with PK maniacs who raped my butt every single game. Less able players inject the viability, better players provide the challenge. Eitherway, my ability is defined by both.
One thing that’s been raised on forums a few times is players not being able to see the dungeon content and feeling somewhat cheated that just because they can’t get together with a legion of other players they never get to see such content.
One suggestion I have to remedy this is to open up dungeons as soloable, with certain prerequisites. To solo a dungeon you would have to be max level, you’d need to buy a key each time you enter (for a nominal in-game currency fee) and you wouldn’t stand a chance of getting any of the eplix that raiders get. However, you could still get some sh.thot items. You simply have 2 item tiers per dungeon – solo tier and raid tier. Getting items from either one would suggest you’re a badass: either a solo one or a team one.
As for the “WoW doesn’t do this and has bilions of subs, so how can there be a problem?” statements, think of this. Necessity is the mother of invention. Before someone invented the car, people didn’t sit around think “Yay, horses are the best! We will never ever need any other mode of transportation.” People lap-up WoW because it’s the most accessible MMO out there. It is the closest thing to a perfect MMO for the masses, but it is still far from perfect and just because WoW doesn’t do something, it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. |
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Crafting turned out to be a joke, so I'm off to find a new game...
General Discussion « Age of Conan 2/28/08 3:44:53 PM
Originally posted by miagisan
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Crafting turned out to be a joke, so I'm off to find a new game...
General Discussion « Age of Conan 2/28/08 6:52:48 AM
As a casual gamer (from the perspective of attention span and time available) this is positive news to me. I see crafting as a means to and end, not the end in itself and I find it annoying when I have to log into a game and spend 2 hours of my time producing an item when I could be doing something I actually enjoy, like PvP or an instance. I have a lot of respect for Funcom and their efforts to remove the timesinks from AoC and focus on the things players tend to enjoy. If you're a crafting fan, I guess this news sucks but I feel and hope AoC is pitched at a casual majority playerbase and I doubt there are legions of crafting fanatics. When exclusivity enters crafting you start getting the same snobbery entering the game that timesink raids generate. Players feel they should be considered special just because they have invested hours into doing something. God knows why this should be the case and I feel quality (i.e. skill) rather than quantity (i.e. time invested) is more important. I can never understand the fascination with in-game crafting either. If I was that way inclined, I'd take up woodwork or something genuinely skilled IRL since the option exists. Unfortunately, there's no RL alternative to killing giant monsters or seige battles... |
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Originally posted by windstrike1 Perfect retort windstrike1. Unfortunately, the sheer lack of will to think outside the box is what concerns me about so many of the posters on here. And they're so dramatic in their exposition of the truth, shrieking "Damn you to hell for holding an opinion different to mine"! Why are you so concerned that someone has an idea that differs from yours? Afraid the worldview you have built your life around might not be as robust as you had hoped? To the posters that disagree with the OP, perhaps many of you would afford your opinions more credibility if you learned to formulate a logical rebutal instead of screaming like an infant whose parents have told them they are wrong. Lack of tolerance for the ideas of others, let alone comprehension and consideration, is indicative of such a large percentage of the modern Western world. And since 99% of Westerners are now just cretinous drones with egos so frail they are unable to tolerate criticism or challenges, I say let them rot in their own faeces. I'm sure they'll deny that's happening too, as their daughter is raped, their son mugs a senior citizen for heroin money, their boss fires them for racial intolerance, their local authority places convicts it can't fit into it's jails in the home next door, they're given a 6 year sentence for evading excessive taxes (the same as a convicted paedophile) and their wife runs off with the media's flavour-of-the-month ethnic minority sports star. Bring the pain, they've earned it! |
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A lot of people seem to be flaming the OP for his opinions and the quality of information he is using to support them.
I don’t necessarily agree with his opinions and his info might well be nonsense, but I do appreciate the fact that he HAS an opinion and has taken the time to question and challenge the status quo.
From the standpoint of most people, his postulations (or perhaps the postulations he supports) may well be as hard to prove/disprove as the existence of God, depending on what form it is suggested such an entity may or may not take.
I would be inclined to agree with the OPs premise. In complex systems of any nature the likelihood of a specific control organ eventually evolving is quite high. This is particularly so if you liken a social system to a biological system, considering social systems have biological components.
Consider this: Do you think a single skin cell that forms part of your small left toe has any jurisdiction over the decisions made by your brain? Now if your whole foot was rotting off, that may influence the actions of your brain. But the perspective of that one skin cell, it has no way to affect whether or not the brain will make a decision it will find favourable. |
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The political systems of most Western nations are broken and corrupt to the core. I can’t believe anyone still falls for the democratic illusion that exists in the States and the UK. The fact people do simply demonstrates that a significant percentage of the population of both nations are too ignorant and/or unintelligent to be allowed to vote in the first place.
When both countries underlying policies and direction have remained unchanged since WWII despite evident failures, it makes you wonder whether the respective societies will eventually revolt against their capitalist oligarch rulers. Maybe instead, the welfare systems that reward retards for reproducing will successfully breed nations of mindless, obedient and dependent drones before ‘the people’ realise how little their governments actually benefit them. Or maybe they already have. |
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I like the combat system and look of AoC more, but if it turns out to be another bloody PvE-grinding, item-orientated raid-fest I'm off! I've done WoW and now I totally hate it! So if AoC lets me down, screw the innovations and a interface that looks very promising, it's WAR all the way for me. I love PvP so even though I doubt it will be a huge leap in terms of game format, I think the PvP enjoyment will crush the cack offered by WoW. |
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Please define "grind" as it is used on these forums
The Pub at MMORPG.COM « General Discussion 2/18/08 7:49:38 AM
First off, I’d define a grind as anything that offers little to no challenge and stands in the way of a player achieving their in-game goals.
This leads me into my second point: What’s the point of grind?
Most games, MMO or otherwise, are about goals and achievement. MMOs are games set in a social environment in which players can directly compare themselves with one another. I feel this serves to make the need for achievement far more important to the MMO gamer than say, someone who plays an obscure offline Tetris clone.
MMO structure mimics real life quite closely. You grind away (work) to achieve in-game goals (money) and claim your reward (car, house, holiday, etc). As a real life example, some people will channel their efforts into work to get money to buy themselves a fancy-ass sports car. They don’t need such a high performance car, nor will it particularly make their life much easier or more comfortable. BUT it does mean they can show-off to their friends and neighbours and get their ego flattered left, right and centre. Now this just wouldn’t work if you could pick up a brand spanking new Aston Martin, Porsche or Ferrari outside Tesco for the price of a Skoda. Offset against the running costs, the car would longer be ‘special’ and certainly wouldn’t afford nearly as much prestige to the owner.
Same goes in MMOs. Mr Benefits King and Ms Under Grad who have oodles of time on their hands want to be able to set themselves apart from the crowd with blinging kit. They don’t want too much skill involved in getting this kit, in case they don’t have the particular skills required. What they certainly do have is time. So in terms of gaming time spent, they want the best kit to be as far away in hours from the normal kit as possible.
So, grind seems to serve 2 primary purposes:
a. It enables a developer to pad-out a game with content which is easy to develop and requires little maintenance. This in turn keeps subscribers paying and playing for longer without the developer doing much, increasing revenue.
b. Grind makes reaching in-game goals more prestigious, by the fact that they become harder and harder to achieve.
Making a grind-free game sounds great but what will be the goal(s) of the game? I have some ideas but player generated content isn’t one of them. Most players simply cannot be bothered or aren’t inspired enough to create something unless some form of template (usually a fairly complete one) already exists for them to work with.
Something I’d like to see is a game which combines the gameplay of a FPS with the skill of… err, something else! It would need to require more than just good reactions. Total PvP (because that’s what I like). Do away with levels and allow the player to select their stats as they see fit, changing them to suit playstyle for say a couple of gold. Let them craft weapons to suit their need using gems/runes/fruit/whatever then go steaming into battle with a ton of other players. Achievements would be trophies, heads, medals, cakes, etc which you can hang on your belt or guild building. You’d need to kill a ton of other players to get them but the short term goal would be the current battle so you’d still feel satisfied even if you just won that. Throw in about 5 battle types across 100 battle zones with random map generation in there for good measure. A bit like GW + AoC + WAR – WoW. I struggle to think about how you could make a PvE game non-grind. I guess mainly because I don't like PvE all that much in all the forms I've experienced so far. |
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Devs, Enough with the FPS attempts already...we dont want em
The Pub at MMORPG.COM « General Discussion 2/17/08 4:20:45 PM
Let's say you can divide MMO gamers into 2 types:
And finally...
The OP is basically suggesting that cat. 2 players don't deserve to play MMOs because "they're not nerdy enough". There's a number of ideas I just don't buy. How does auto-attack, auto-target, auto-take-the-kids-to-school make for an 'intelligent' game? Secondly, investing time to develop your skill in something is fine, but past the initial learning curve there really isn't a gigantic amount of extra skill required in lots of the 'classic' MMOs, If you're equating skill to strategy, I can buy that, but I can't see why strategy can't come into an FPS-style MMO. As for kit, skill trees, levels, etc all that can be put into an FPS-style MMO or a standard FPS game for that matter. Ok, so no-one has developed a successful FPS-style MMO - big deal. It'll happen eventually and thats what I think is p*ssing you off. I think you hate the idea of someone having fun, doing all the same stuff you like doing but not having to invest 6-months of their life into a game to get it. If you're so slick with your toons, why do you need to put 6 millions hours of gameplay between you and a casual player to feel like the daddy? Surely, if you've got all the skills you should whip the level 50 testosterone kid easily. I get the feeling those players who really love to pour their lives into hours of MMO fun like it because time is the one thing they've got that separates them from the rest of the gaming community and humanity. The MMO companies love it too, because you pour your money into their bank accounts religiously. Skills? Intellect? Reflexes? Strategies? I don't think that really comes into it. This isn't a doctorate, this is simply learning to press a handful of keys on a keyboard. Don't paint it to be rocket science because it isn't. Other players play for hours coz they have nothing better to do and/or they want to enjoy the game, but they don't go bigging themselves up over it. This is the irony of MMO elitism: you can almost guarantee Mr In-Game L33T is 100% not L33T in the real world, even though he's prolly burning that candle at both ends with 2 industrial strength blow-torches. So with all that investment. he's gonna be wanting something to show for it, even if he has to fabricate it himself! |
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Will you lose interest if the game is delayed again?
General Discussion « Age of Conan 2/17/08 5:22:08 AM
I'm in dire need of a suitable replacement for WoW so I'm going to give whatever comes out first a go - either AoC or WAR. If they release on separate dates, it could be good in a way because it means I'll get to spend a bit of time on each one before making a decision as to which one to stick with. Personally and from what I've seen so far, I prefer the look of AoC to WAR but I'm a big PvP fan so it'll be a question of which one suits me best. I am getting somewhat fed-up with the delays to AoC though, to the extent I don't really bother checking the official website or posting on it anymore. |
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Godammit! Yeah, Starcraft II is prolly next. Bugger |
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Originally posted by Vincenz
I disagree that WoW isn't making any mistakes. I think WoW is simply making the least mistakes. The general formula is far superior to any other MMO I've experienced and it is truly in a league of it's own. But it isn't perfect and it only gets away with its quite glarring flaws due to the serious lack of viable competition. The OP highlighted many key issues with the WOW game model, issues which I feel affect a significant number of players, myself included. On release, WoW was miles ahead of other games in terms of the overall package but I think other companies have identified elements of WoW they could refine and enhance. My feeling is WoW's playerbase will be eroded by a range of games all offering improved combinations of select elements of WoW. Technological considerations aside, games will be released which offer a significantly better PvP experience (perhaps WAR)... and there go a percentage of the WoW PvP crowd. Another game will offer a better storyline or control system (AoC maybe)... and there go the hands-on and RP guys. I feel the hardcore gamers will be the first to leave, along with bored players who can go no further. Casual gamers will hang in there the longest but will eventually be lured away by a prettier game as technology advances. By the end of 2008, I'm expecting (and hoping) WoW to look like a 'Jack of all trades, master of none' with a good chunk of the more demanding players lost to more focused games. I still think it'll be top dog for a while longer though, just based on rep and casuals who can't be bothered to leave. It'll be interesting to see what Blizzard introduces to retain it's market share as other games are released, if anything. Assuming attack is the best form of defence and WoW is already and old weapon, perhaps they'll inevitably hit back with a completely new game when the time comes and simply maintain WoW. If it was Diablo 3 I'd errupt with joy! Finally, the hundreds of iterations of this discussion only exist because frustrated players have nowhere else to go. Writing this crap isn't something I relish, but it's either sleep, type or play WoW at this moment in time for me. If I had an alternative to WoW I wouldn't even be typing this. |
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Originally posted by safwd
I like the idea of skill based games, but there is a lot to be said for having classes. It gives you a framework within which to define your character. If you could choose any 25 skills from a pool of 100, things could go very wrong and it may take ages and masses of experimentation to develop an effective character. I think this sort of thing would appeal to people who twink in WoW, etc (like me) but most players would probably find it annoying.
Perhaps the choice of either selecting a pre-defined class from say a list of 10 or building one from scratch could be an option - a bit like when you build a PowerPoint slideshow, you can either choose a layout or start with a blank slide. You could either use a pre-defined skill pool and skill tree set, or choose a restricted selection of skills from the total skill pool and up to say, 3 trees of any type allowing you to mix and match.
Having said that, I have no idea if this suggestion would be at all manageable or would just throw the balance of the game out the window. |
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I guess most projects start with grand ideas which gradually have to be curtailed to make for a game that is practical. The facts that Funcom is amalgamating classes rather than re-speccing them suggests to me they are actively trying to push for release and want to minimise delay. Persoanlly, I'd always take quality over quantity anyday, something that doesn't appear to be particularly encouraged in western society where the more is better mantra reigns supreme. There are hundreds of possible class combinations you could develop using just the following options: Range and/or Melee Magic and/or Physical Damage and/or Heal Instant or DoT effects Minions or not Shapeshift or not Stealth or not I personally like the idea of either getting to select all my options and skills (but never getting them all) so I define my own class or having pre-set classes that feel good to play. If Funcom achieves the latter thats fine with me. Of course, having a raft of good classes is definitely going to be great and if that's what WAR achieves, that'll really be exciting and could certainly enhance the longevity of the game. But as expansions seem inevitable with MMOs, Funcom still has time to implement more classes in future. |
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Originally posted by fantaros
In fact, I agree with you and feel you are correct on all three accounts but think you are countering something I wasn't actually implying. |
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Returning to my previously suggested definition of twinking (punctuation error fixed)…
Attempting to build a character that is perceived by it's creator to be optimal in terms of attributes, abilities and skills at its given level.
Blizzard no doubt implemented PvP level ranges in Warcraft battlegrounds so players could reach a certain and PvP as an alternative to questing/grinding (which is where twinks found there niche). Once they were bored, they could then return to questing. This served to break-up the monotony of questing with PvP, but also created alternative playstyle for casual PvPers who couldn’t afford to kill day-and-night to achieve Gladiator or Raid sets. It opens-up the game to a wider range of players and allows for replay value, but there are issues because a) the impact it has on gameplay is subjective and b) if Blizzard identifies the overall financial effect to be positive/neutral (i.e. it encourages/attracts more players to the game than it causes to leave), there would be no business case to change the system.
Optimising a character within its level bracket should only raise issues in the following instances:
1) Twinking as an option is not equally available to every player in terms of prerequisites, i.e. you MUST have a character of a certain type/level to be able to twink.
2) The extent to which you can enhance your character has such an impact on overall game mechanics that it becomes almost a mandatory option, hard to avoid or devalues other in-game achievements significantly.
3) The player of the game is not prepared to put in the required effort at that level and resents others for their commitment to playing the game in a way that doesn’t fit within the aggrieved players expectations of ‘what the game is about’. However, if criteria 1 and/or 2 are met, the player has a genuine reason to be unhappy about the state of the game.
What some posters are suggesting is something akin to demanding every fly-weight, banter-weight and middle-weight boxer stuff their faces with food so they gain mass and must then fight in heavy-weight bouts, because they assume heavy-weight bouts are the ‘pinnacle’ of boxing and what every boxer must aspire to. /deepbreath
Not every MMO player has the time or inclination to see the game through to the end; most certainly do not wish to repeat the process ad-infinitum once the storylines has become familiar. To force subscribers to play the game in this manner will only serve to drive away a significant player-base of people who don’t have the time for power gaming or simply don’t have the attention span/dedication to see the games storylines through to conclusion.
As driving such a market away doesn’t make business sense, it’s likely all gaming companies will tolerate or even encourage twinking to capture and retain the aforementioned audience. |
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Hi I'm looking to join an AoC guild ready for the launch of the game. I'll bullet this for simplicity: About me...
What type of Guild I'm looking for...
If I sound like the sort of member you'd like, please let me know. Thanks, Aryas |
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wierd huh?