Profile: mrudis
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• • The pay to play paradigm - its time has passed

  • I see nothing wrong with paying the $15 a month for a continually updated, good MMO.  And of course people will say, "but there are no good ones... blah, blah, blah"... then don't buy it or stop paying for it.  Would you waste your money on a normal game?

    Think of it in terms of normal games.  They are $50 ($60 for console) a pop and keep you entertained anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months (depending on how you play).  We'll say you are a slow player and really enjoy a game for a while so you're buying a $50 every 2 months... that's $25 a month... more expensive than the $15 a month subsciption fee you are paying. 

    Edit:  Oh... forgot about the expansion packs you have to pay for.  I do think those are ridiculous unless they are really huge and game changing.  That $15 a month you pay should be covering updates.  Espeically since expansion packs are far more necessary for MMOs than for regular games, they should at the minimum only put them out every 2 to 3 years... not every year.

  • Posted: 5/16/08 10:36 AM
    General Discussion
• • Raiding... why is that a staple of MMOs now?

  • I can understand from the dev's side why raiding... think of the amount of time to beat the content and how many people are occuppied by the content.  I can also kind-of (not really, but I'll buy it for aurguments sake) see the argument of trying to satisfy this 'hardcore' element because fighting in a bigger group requires more coordinatetion to be an efficient fighting force.  But that's not my question... the question is why is it actually fun?

     A lot of what I'm reading is that people raid, not because it's fun for them, but because it's considered 'elite' and that is where the best gear is (people wanting the gear because it's both good and because it's their 'badge' of completing it).

    What if the best gear wasn't there... would you (those that do) still raid?  I guess that's my real question... do you raid because you enjoy some challenge from raiding (what challenge is that then... just coordinating numbers?), or because that's where the gear is and it's considered 'hardcore'?

  • Posted: 5/14/08 8:42 AM
    General Discussion
• • Raiding... why is that a staple of MMOs now?

  • Seriously.  What is so fun and rewarding about raiding that it is now considered a basic element of any new MMO?  Why is that usually the big "end-game" and why is raiding something lower-levels demand be open to them as well?  Is it because that's the only thing companies can think of for an "end-game"?

    I remember in EQ1 it just seemed to eventually happen.  I don't think it was anything originally formulated really.  Just people got so high, so fast (relatively fast... compared with what Verant thought was fast, not compared to WoW), so they created "impossible" enemies.  They turned out not to be so impossible when faced with 10 groups of 6 players each all informally linked. 

    I just thought of this reading through a bunch of unrelated posts... none of them having to do with raiding, but raiding was brought up as something that absolutely must be accomidated for.   Why is that? 

  • Posted: 5/12/08 2:44 PM
    General Discussion
• • Crafting in most games sux

  •  

    Originally posted by Brenelael
    

     

    Originally posted by CDCosta
    
    

    without crafters, there wouldnt be a lot of good gear in the game.

    This is the basic principal that most games of the WoW era of MMOs just don't get. Crafting has to have a real purpose or its pointless for people to invest time in it. In my opinion all gear except the very basic noob gear should be player crafted only. The game that does this will be a crafter's paradise as they will be in high demand. This would also promote a very healthy player run economy as the prices for everything would be set by the players and competition would keep the prices reasonable.

    Bren

    
    The rub is that those people who don't care about crafting HATE that they can't quest for the best gear.

    Horizons gave a real good effort at that.  In questing, you got the important components for crafting (not the actual item).  The basic components would be gathered/mined/etc.  Crafting would combine the two.  Not a lot of people, other than crafters, liked that system too well... Horizons is not exactly a hit game.

    But you are right... for good crafting to exist, it has to have a real purpose otherwise its a non-profitable grind (nothing worse than making useless trash to sell to some no-name NPC merchant for a lose).  Maybe the real deal is going back to a time when rare items were actually rare.   Then have most of the good equipment be crafted (non-loot) items.  And I think you need some kind of item decay to help recycle items through the economy... but again... most non-crafters hate decay and think of it as a money-sink.

  • Posted: 5/12/08 2:31 PM
    General Discussion
• • Why are there not more skill based games?

  • Two main reasons I don't think skill-based is as prevelant now:

    1)  Balancing.  As said before in this post it has to be harder to balance out a skill based game vs a level/classes based game.  Just think about it... with classes, you have at most something like 5 different basic classes (Tank, DPS-melee, DPS-caster, Healer, and maybe Buffer) and maybe 3 variations of each for 15 total combinations that you need to balance.  In a skill based game the number of combinations that can be made is in the hundereds.  It's just tough

    2) Ease of understanding.  I think this is a big one too.  Companies making MMOs what to get as big a market as possible... so like WoW, they want to be able to cater to all.  A skill based MMO requires a lot more thinking of what skills to pick, what to pursue, how much of each skill.  Classes is easy... I want to be a Tank... of there is my class that nice dwarven warrior.  For a skill based game that same person who wants to play a tank actually has to think about what makes a tank a good tank... what skills will get me there.  And that is in the simple case that the person just wants to be a tank... hybrids are even harder.

    I, personally, would love a good skill based system... but a balanced one and that's tough.  If Darkfall actually happens like it claims it will, they sound like they are going to have a pretty good system (again, if it's like it's described).

  • Posted: 5/09/08 9:18 AM
    General Discussion