Broken Toys

Lum, can you please make the hurting stop, admit that we (as a site) aren’t smart enough to handle geldon ( ), and cleanse by fire? Thanks. Its getting to the point where I am afraid to open any thread on this site, because the horrible buzzing will start again.

Geldonyetich, I don’t think anyone could ever be interesting enough to match your self indulgent flirtations with the Jesus complex.

@Brask Mumei
Lets see: a complete lack of understanding of the fact that developers in The Everquest really didnt know any better and they learned stuff of the developers of the 80s who, as somebody that plays emulators enough time could tell you, really hated the players (see: MUDs and BattleToads). Seriously, you are still dragging grudges of an MMO that launched almost a decade ago? The only guys that ive seen doing that is the guys that got ganked in Despise.

@Amaranthar
And, when somebody dont know how to counteract the fact that they dont look cool when they point the obvious, lets see, start with the offenses again. Nobody its insulting you, besides telling you that you are wrong and how your comments makes you look (Hint: Not good). Perhaps somebody run out of ideas? And sorry, your UO fanboyism dont touch anybody that reads this particular site. Besides, “UO without the flaws” its way more difficult that it looks. If it werent UO wouldnt have said flaws.

So far, nothing new.

Gx1080 :

@Amaranthar
And, when somebody dont know how to counteract the fact that they dont look cool when they point the obvious, lets see, start with the offenses again. Nobody its insulting you, besides telling you that you are wrong and how your comments makes you look (Hint: Not good). Perhaps somebody run out of ideas? And sorry, your UO fanboyism dont touch anybody that reads this particular site. Besides, “UO without the flaws” its way more difficult that it looks. If it werent UO wouldnt have said flaws.
So far, nothing new.

Actually, if this is your opinion of me, then I’m feeling good about this.

First of all, I outlined what the grind is to stress how and why it’s boring. If I’m going to try to make a case for something, I’m going to lay out the basis first.

“You did move on to try to bend this in support for how oldskool Ultima Online will abolish the evil levels and save us all from the drudgery of the grind.

The sentiment was not completely invalid… but the thing is, it had crossed our minds before. Like, years ago. Then we found out it wasn’t such a hot idea – a lot of it having to do with that being baseless nostalgia.”

You’re assuming it’s based on nostalgia. This is a problem that’s spread wide within the developer culture. It’s not. It’s based on desire and expectations of playing in a massive online world. I believe completely that most gamers, without realizing it, have this expectation in the back of their minds. The backdrop offered them in these “level grind” games leaves them feeling empty, yet it’s hard to put a finger on it since most have not experienced it. World simulation elements. And the fact that players liked these kinds of features so much in Morrowind and Ultima7 seems to prove this out.

“The thing is, levels aren’t the grind. Repetitively performing the same activity that you’re bored of is the grind. It happened in skill-advancement mechanics just as easily as it happens in level-advancement games. It happens in risky griefer-friendly PvP gankfests as easily as it does in carebear-friendly PvE games.”

This is where you are not getting it. No, it’s not the grind per se. It’s what the level grind forces the game to become. Furthermore, it’s not really the choice of using classes and levels, it’s the choice to make them so important by making them such leaps forwards. If you took UO and substituted that system for the skill system, and IF you kept the level spread within the same 100 percentile that UO used, and IF you separated the basic class abilities from general abilities, it would play the same way.
In other words, for each character, allow a class choice of warrior, archer, mage, thief, etc., then also offer a choice of trade skill sets such as Lumberjack/Carpenter, then also allow basic actions such as starting campfires and camping and cooking and fishing…freely. This is a hard example to make because it can be done in any number of ways.
But the point is, if you offered a class/level based system that still allowed a lot of freedom, and stayed in the much narrower range of separation, it would be largely the same thing as UO had.

If you stay in the narrower range of abilities, then players can stay together instead of being divided up by level ranges. And the game world doesn’t have to be divied up in level ranges, also allowing players to stay together.

This leads to much greater possibilities in social aspects that could be added. Player built cities would be much more viable for every player, not just the top hardcore elite. Trade and every other social aspect become much more viable for all players. Friends can play and stay together instead of falling behind.

You know all this, as you no doubt will point out to me. But if you know all this, why do you not want this change as much as I do? Problems with social interactions? They can all be solved. If you think not, then give me an example and let me try to show you how, and explain why. Human nature isn’t that hard to figure out. You see this in the problem stage, but maybe not in the answer stage. We’ve been talking in circles, lets get to the meat.

@Amaranthar
Thats a cute thought, but even in a game when the skills are designed for working that way (EVE Online), thers still a gap between new players and older players : player skill. Lets face it: Players want the most skilled players for beating the hard content and other players instead of grinding the easy content.

You can eliminate the power difference between the newbie and the old timer, but the old timer its going to be more skilled. How you are goint to make that player skill dont care, huh? Making your game content easy? A game when player skill its meaningless its boring.

Theres mentoring systems, theres skill based system that wide the breath and not the depth, but at the end, you want the skilled, experienced guys at your side. You cant change that. Theres exeptions to the rule (IRL friends, family, significant others), but the player skill its stil going to matter. So, nop, players are not going to stay together, they are going to go with others with the same skills. Unless they want to carry people though content.

I don’t think anyone wants to make player skill irrelevant, at least I hope so. Obviously people who play more have an advantage, but I think the overwhelming character level/equipment power focus of most MMORPGs is pretty disappointing

I gotta agree with Amaranthar that evening out the levels would bring people together, but most of them are probably going to gravitate towards whatever area is the most profitable at the time. Would be nice to see more people trying that kind of thing out, though.

@Amaranthar
Yeah, it worked. It didnt worked because was awesome, mind you. It worked because everybody macroed and hacked the fuck out of that game mainly because nobody should click as much without a paycheck, and as a result skill advancement was meaningless.

Well, except the GMs that got characters with full skills and super powers from the get go.

Im sure that most old timers can describe it better for you.

Gx1080 :
@Amaranthar
Yeah, it worked. It didnt worked because was awesome, mind you. It worked because everybody macroed and hacked the fuck out of that game mainly because nobody should click as much without a paycheck, and as a result skill advancement was meaningless.
Well, except the GMs that got characters with full skills and super powers from the get go.
Im sure that most old timers can describe it better for you.

I AM an old timer. I’m a little tired of these accusations that I’m some young punk that doesn’t know squat. Let me set that record straight. I was one of the first players to log into UO when it released. I saw no one else in that city, but who knows who was first. I played UO through Trammel and much more, for a total of around 9 years.
Furthermore, I’m 56 years old. I was playing and fine tuning D+D and other paper and pencil games before many of today’s MMO gamers were even “a twinkle in their father’s eye”.

Now back to the subject. UO’s harvest and trade skills were a pain for most players. So fix it. Starting with UO’s system, the first thing you do is take away the need to click each and every time. Set up a running script.

After that there are a lot of ways you can go, depending on how the rest of the game works and what it offers. You also want to consider cities and guilds and how that all ties together. One option that could include all this would be work camps built by the social organization (guild or city, or perhaps temple or other). In the case of lumberjacking, you’d have a lumber mill, and the surrounding area would become part of a built in script with pathfinding where the character goes from a set of trees and back the the mill, repeated. If you can’t beat scripting in this part of the game, incorporate it. This is basically what SWG did, and other games. You can have small mills for single player houses, and larger ones for bigger organizations. Depending on the game and it’s features, what you are doing here is not only “fixing” this problem, but enhancing what guilds and cities have to offer players to make them more attractive to belong to. There are a lot of things you can do here, too much to go into now. The same for mines, fishing coves, etc. But for the newbie player, they can make use of these social mills, and pay rent or taxes in the form of a cut of the take. Or they can take their packie and go it alone. Their choice.

@Geldon

You should probably not be so quick to dismiss F13’s assessment of Vanguard failed, particularly the interviews and such. Likewise, a decade of trolling and utterly ancient game design aside, it’s important to distinguish between “The Vision” and “Brad MqQuade’s Vision”. One last point:

“If you think there’s something wrong with that, ask yourself: how boring would life be if everybody liked the same thing?”

In the world of MMOs that would be awesome. Having solo play is nice, but if you play MMOs for the solo experience you are a broken individual. A large part of the fun of MMOs is the ability to play with others. A developer should work at both ends: attract as large a crowd as possible, and remove limitations on people getting together and doing stuff (mentoring). WoW has cornered the market on the former, but has utterly neglected (and worsened with the higher level caps) the latter.

Not trying to condescend here, just connecting the dots.

@Amaranthar
Man, hasn’t @geldonyetich told you yet about how this is the place where PUNDITS reside, so when hoi polloi swine (http://www.answers.com/topic/hoi-polloi) like you or I offer opinions, of course we are dismissed out of hand, or some such elitist bullshit like that?

geldonyetich :Says the guy whose head was so big as to wander into a popular MMORPG burnout hangout and be so blind as to where he was as to painstakingly explain to us what a grind is, prefacing it with, “*groans* I don’t think you guys get it yet.”

Pundit, MMORPG burnout. Close enough. He still knows better than you, and it’s still elitist bullshit.

One thing I’ll say for @geldonyetich , he’s consistant.

I tried SP. But when they decided to just give out (what was it, 1k?) gold I figured it wasn’t so hard core. So I went back to my regularly scheduled program. Then, a few years later when I was ready to hit the “quit” button, I tried it again. I was very impressed with the player base there at this point. Roleplayers or those who just played and let you RP, and when PvPers back off of you because they realize your a newb there (obviously not PKers), it says something. But the over simplified way they set up that shard and my overall distaste for what they were doing to UO left me just hitting that button anyways.

Owain :The way I view this pissing contest, it looks once more like the sand-box let me make my own game school vs. the quest-centric run you on rails, here have another cookie school of game development.
Give me the sand box, any day. Keep your damn cookies.

You’ve nailed it.

I’m fairly sure we’d throw shit at your face if it wasn’t already covered with the shit that comes out of your mouth. How now, brown cow?

Gx1080 :@AmarantharThats a cute thought, but even in a game when the skills are designed for working that way (EVE Online), thers still a gap between new players and older players : player skill. Lets face it: Players want the most skilled players for beating the hard content and other players instead of grinding the easy content.
You can eliminate the power difference between the newbie and the old timer, but the old timer its going to be more skilled. How you are goint to make that player skill dont care, huh? Making your game content easy? A game when player skill its meaningless its boring.

This is true in online FPS games, particularly the older ones like BF1942 that didn’t have the rank systems and weapon unlocks that newer FPS games have. Everyone goes into that game with the same characters, and the players who have played longer and know the ins and outs of the all the maps will dominate newer players at first. But it doesn’t take long for a newer player to get the necessary experience and familiarity with each map and the experience advantage evens out, and ping becomes more important than experience. In that way, even relatively new players can interact with more experienced players.

The difference between a level 20 player (reasonable experienced) and a level 80 player in WoW on the other hand, is enormous, both in terms of gear and skills. They may as well be on different planets. A game can still provide content that gives easy challenges for beginners, harder content for groups or very skilled solo players without making the differences between beginners and veterans so extreme. That prevents the common syndrome on many modern MMOs where the vast majority of the game world is unusable to players at either end of the spectrum. Beginners can go most places because they would be annihilated, and the players with the highest skills don’t want to visit most of the world because the content is trivially easy. A little flattening of the skill curve would go a long way towards keeping players entertained in larger areas of the game world. For that to work, however, you need more of a sand box type game where the players make their own game rather than a quest centric game where you are always limited by supplying a never ending series of new quests and expansions.

I @Amaranthar has done a pretty good job of suggesting a variety of way to implement that, and in a cooperative PvE rather than in a free for all PvP environment as used in other current games that shall remain nameless (at Scott’s request since this isn’t a *mumble* related thread).

Owain, “it” is an all encompassing effect on almost all aspects of a game design. Everything affects everything else in one way or another. That’s why we call it “it”, because it’s hard to capture the whole thing in a few words.

But generally speaking, it’s the massive social possibilities that could be built into a game. All the things involved in that…and the unspoken expectation avoiding our mental grasp that a massive online game would have this.

It’s missing because these games have been built like single player games, with small groups of friends and the rewards are the level and item “dings”. This is something that EVE got right, in the framework of their own game*. And if you look at EVE, this is why it’s a successful game.

*Speaking of EVE, and I don’t know if I’m right because I’ve never played it nor spent a lot of time following it, but I wonder about something.
If in EVE players played an Avatar, instead of one of their ships, would PKing matter more? And reversed, if in these fantasy/sci-fi games, if you played a castle, and what you lost in PKing was merely one of your inhabitants, would it matter less? Does an Avatar that’s a being, does it represent “us” so much better that we form a stronger bond in game play?

Hey, it’s been two days and I’m hopped up on caffeine again. Lets throw away any pretense I might have some class by coming up with some replies.

Schild
I’m fairly sure we’d throw shit at your face if it wasn’t already covered with the shit that comes out of your mouth. How now, brown cow?

Hmm. I guess that method of speaking makes you look pretty good where you live. From here, it just sort of reinforces your reputation of being a douche.

But then, in my mind from our dealings in the past, you’re probably pretty comfortable with that by now. You wake up every morning and think, “okay, I’ve got a cool website where I write edgy things by coming off as a douche. How can I be more douche-like today?” You appoint moderators primarily on the understanding that they, too, are douches, and this helps to reinforce the factor that keeps your site interesting amongst all the other ones out there.

And who I am to judge? I’m not judging at all. I’m just saying that, considering where I’m sitting in perspective to what little I know about you, why should I care about anything you have to say? You’re, like, working towards being a professional douche. You’re just pursuing the dream.

Owain
He’s not only a pompous asshole, he’s an intolerant asshole.
He’s a game bigot.
He’s a self appointed expert who knows far less than he thinks he does, but lacks the self awareness to know that he’s a dimwit.
He’s a bully who tries to shut down discussion with personal attacks when the argument fails to go his way.
He’s intellectually dishonest. Don’t waste your time with him.

As an open-minded, conscientious, individual, I would normally take a lot of this personally and maybe do a bit of soul-searching to understand whether or not there may in fact be some gravity to what you’re saying here.

But the thing is, anyone who has seen you defending Darkfall Online knows that you’re hardly the open-minded, honest, non-bullying individual you’re making yourself out to be. You largely took everything we were saying to you about why we found the game to flawed, waved them off as non-problems, and called us lairs an fools to believe otherwise. Apparently, you’re still doing that.

Thus, if you’ve seen in me any of these characteristics of this incredible combo-attack you’ve written to me in the block quote above, I’m betting a good deal of it was reflecting off of me from your own conduct. Meditate on that possibility a bit, if you can.

Granted, my behavior towards Amaranthar was fairly unforgivable. I respect my elders. If he’s 56, perhaps he possesses wisdom I do not that makes him understand why it is that Ultima Online is, indeed, the answer. I was just cheesed off because (a) I was full of caffeine and (b) my synapses are so raw ground from the grind that they were a hair trigger.

I said what he wrote was like going into a burn victim ward and applying a napalm face mask… but it’s really more like going into a burn victim ward and saying, “you don’t get it, do you” and then describing the sensation of burning. I don’t think he intended to do this, but it did set me off…

Which was wrong. No matter how irritated I was, I’m 32 years old and should have more of a brain in my head than to let my little pet peeves to cause me to condemn anyone. I’m sorry about that, Amaranthar.

So, basically, my detractors are idiots in their own little way, and so I am I.