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What is fun?
DMEnoc
Member Posts: 153
All I keep seeing on these boards is that the game isn't fun. Well that is totally a matter of opinion but I would like to know what you all think is fun and what isn't.
Please when replying do not use cliches such as 'grinding sucks'.
Comments
play god of war 2
play console games beat it move to the next...u will never get stuck in the same world doing the same thing ever again....
but vanguad was a great game...i played it and then jsut stopped not because of bugs and stuff like how every other whiner was complaining about, but because there was lack of people and i found myself doing the same thing over and over and over again so i jsut got boring...then i moved to console games....
man u guys should try shining force 2 (part 1 is not as good as part 2 they basically have the same storyline but part 2 just seems to be better) for the sega genesis console haha grab the emulator and rom...that was a classic RPG game...
try lufia 2 (part 1 is not as good as part 2 same story as part 1 kinda but better) for the super nintendo console that's another classic game...
another good classic game was albert odessey for the sega saturn console
damn talking about those games makes me wanna go and play it again lol...i love playing old school style RPG's for consoles than the new 3d graphic ones out for the ps2-3 and nintendo gamecube and xbox...the old school ones were harder to figure out the puzzles etc...
The ingame community, is one of the best for me if seen for a long time, Let me be clear not THE BEST, but i havn't seen this type of mature community since early days of SWG, helpfull, chatfull, meaningfull. Besides a good ingame community i also feel that some gamers don't have what it takes to play a mmorpg aslike those questions about where to buy a camel or shadowhound. Let me explain i feel that mmorpg's should be explored and discoverd, asking for such things brings down some of the adventuring and discovering spirit these games have (again for me personaly). Do not get me wrong i'm not saying that i feel that everyone should play like this, but its pure how i feel mmorpg should be played, doesn't make someone that play's it different a fool, it only makes another player play the game different that i would play it.. These are mainly my own personal standards when playing a mmorpg
Crafting, really enjoy crafting at the early levels, sure we need to do some workorders in order to lvl up, but the items that we can make pretty early are well worth it, and very diverse from the norm we see in MMO's. Do wish that harvesting was both quality instead of only quantity, meaning similiar like it was in SWG (yeah yeah i know me and SWG)
Exploring is really fun for me as my adventure's take me across the land seeking many new dangers, i truly (mind sound wierd) but love it when i'm lost in a gameworld.
Timing, also a great factor that whether you login for 1 or 2 hours or play 6 or 8 hours (somethimes in the weekend) it all is meaningfull, aslong if you plan you play sessions and not jump like a single player game online with no plans what to do.
The hugh ammount of quests, what i find really really strange sometimes when people ask where to go for some lvl's as the first popup window we all get to see at the beginning of the game "EXPLORE YOUR SURROUNDING" I'm lvl 15 but for now know where i can go untill atleast lvl 40, not by asking but pure by exploring, getting lost, dying and ending up in to high lvl territory.
Another factor which might sound strange to some people but the fact that Vanguard has no grind, but like every other mmo out there all games have grind if you let it. You do not have to in Vanguard. Sure we have those that jump online creat 8 characters, jump into all 3 spheres, start with all crafting profs and then they complain about the game feeling like a grind or is boring or feels like work, well DUH don't play the freaking game like a job, for those that feel that way learn to game please
.
Only grouped in the first 2 months, lately not grouped so actualy not much experiance in the things being told about group bugs, but when i grouped i had really fun with my team mates, i try to find a group thats diverse and not the basic group setup, that does not make much sense in Vanguard and loses some of the challenge factor, again pure a personal opinion and should not be read as law or that my way is the right way. Each his own way of fun but this is just how i persieve fun within Vanguard.
Fun for me is achievening something. That could be a level, an item, a quest , a title, conquering the world (europa universalis ftw
). The reason why I prefer MMORG's over single player games is that you can help people achieve things also and share the experience with them. Fun is also seeing the world evolve around you. Every MMORG is like a little community. It has drama , friendship's, emnities, etc. You see guilds rise and fall, the game evolve, people coming and going and coming back again. The human factor on these games is what is fun for me.
What is not fun for me is when everything is simplified. When everyone is doing the same things, have the same things, the same titles etc. PvP is also not fun for me. At least in the games I have played so far. Sitting in a revive point and killing every lower level you see is simply not something I find fun spending my time doing.
For me fun is:
Being able to fight against monsters and challenges in game, without having to fight against lag, bugs, or stupid UI wich won't let me easily make the action wich I want to make.
After a fight, being able to tell what I could have done better.
Being part of a world with other players. The world itself doesn't have to be dynamic, but the game has to force me to sometimes alter my actions based on what others, even those not in my group, are or are not doing.
A game where it's worth it to take on hard challenges and sometimes die while doing it, instead of just playing it safe all the time.
For me, fun is:
--entering an immersive, engaging world that has its own soul, and its own identity and trying to find your place in it among the other players. That world should feel truly alive, with ambient sounds and creatures, real NPC interaction, and with its own unique feel.
--finding other players of a similar playstyle and forming a guild, adventuring together through said world. Soloing is incredibly boring, IMO, and being able to find players that you can hang out with for long stretches of time while you make your way through quests and dungeons, or fighting a big boss battle is fun.
--a real sense of accomplishment when playing. Don't just randomly send me to go kill 50 rats, or pick 100 flowers. Give me something to do that offers something more, whether it advances a story arc that leads to a major battle, or if it leads to a reward that greatly benefits my character. I don't mind working for something provided it's worth it.
--trying something different instead of playing the same game you've been playing since 1999, but with a different coat of paint. The game should offer more than just the same old same old, because truthfully, World of Warcraft is the logical end of the original EQ game design. Developers should strive for something more than just a new version of EverQuest.
--a stable, polished game that works out of the box, and which doesn't require a degree in computer programming in order to get it to work properly. Love it or loathe it, WoW has raised the bar. People expect games to work as soon as they install and patch, and they expect to be able to do it on the machine they currently have, provided they meet the specs on the box. Telling them to spend another $2,000 on a new rig when only one game out of all the ones they're currently playing gives them any problems is foolish.
In the end, fun is, of course, entirely subjective. But all of those qualities I've listed matter, at least IMO.
I liked alot about Vanguard. I think the classes are done incredibly well. Very rich and enjoyable in and of themselves.
I love crafting, and the crafting system is interesting here, but imo, tedious. Just my opinion, mind you, but after the initial excitement over a 'rich' crafting system, I realized there was only a lot of button clicking. Timeconsuming without any real skill. I still liked it a bit at a time, but overall not fun, and crafting is usually one of my main joys in a game. I like a balance of adventuring and crafting.
I like to adventure and feel I am really building my character. I enjoyed the classes so at first I really loved V. Then I realized that while I was doing a lot of quests and grinding, I didn't feel ANY growth other than level. You finish quests in an area and move on. No feeling of reward or achievement. You say don't say grinding, but yeah, I did feel like I was mindlessly grinding. Aside from level, what do you get? Any feeling of accomplishment? If so, I'd love to know because I didn't feel any.
I would love to love V. I miss the bard and druid, and the healers are incredibly well done. Not just heal monkeys, but capable in many areas and fun to play. I would just like a meaningful fun playground where I enjoy levelling and feel a tie to the character and the world. For all it's grand plans, adventuring itself is just empty. I hope they add some kind of goals for the characters development.
you need to know what the definition of fun is?
Ok...Ill start
Fun is when you log onto a game and have a good time playing it.
You enjoy your time online
You dont have to grind your ass off for one level with stupid, unimaginative, bugged quests and then start all over with the next level.
You feel emmersed in the world you are playing
Your character animations are fluid and your combat actions and spells are enjoyable to see as you attack your opponents. It wont be see a toon with minimal animation ability to whip his sword around or produce little tiny cloud spells with lighning bolts.
Fun is when you see a world and almost all of the characters look different from you
Fun is when you get lost in your story arc and it doesnt end at lvl 9.
Fun is when you can log on to the game without having to go to Sigil's tech forums and learn how to alter your config.ini file
Fun is when you can log on and play with people on your server and not having to run an hour in any direction before finding another.
Fun is when you do enter a seamless world, its really a seamless world versus a "chuncky world"
Fun is that you can have meaningful quests that are solable as well as group quests.
Quests are fun and not "Kill 12 Soothsayer Hounds for their teeth and return to me and then to my friend because he needs dirt from the clypsus tree near that lvl 99 dragon"
Fun is when you craft ONE item without having to click your mouse 72 times
Fun is when you actually get xp for making things with your own recipes versus going to a taskmaster again and again and again and again and....
Fun is when you lvl to 11 or 21 or 31 or 41 or anywhere in between and you get armor that looks different than your noob armor other than the color
Fun is when you have multiple designs of weapons and not just the same design but with a different hilt.
I could really go on and on but the list would be rather long.
That's what my opinion is of what fun could be in this game
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
http://jenovachen.com/flowingames/designfig.htm
It's worth reading for anyone wanting more than a subjective opinion.
To sum it up, it defines fun as being a perfect balance of challenge, and players ability to meet that challenge. If there's too much challenge and not enough of a player's ability, then anxiety is felt. If there's too much player ability and not enough challenge, then boredom is felt. If you have just enough challenge and player ability, then there's fun.
In my own personal opinion which you can completely disregard in relation to the theory, challenge in MMOs is nothing more than timesink. Too much of a timesink and you get the anxiety of the "grind", because a player's ability to meet the "challenge" of an MMO is little more than having enough patience.
If an MMO has too little "challenge", then rewards come quite quickly without a large time investment. It's why you have some people saying features like mini-maps hold your hand and make things easy, because it reduces the amount of time you spend accomplishing something. The same goes for quest indicators, teleportation, etc.
The Flow Theory even has room for the "hardcore" and the "novice". Again, "challenge" in MMOs is timesink, "player ability" is patience. So it's easy to see why some "hardcore" are against faster experience curves and so on, while "novices" in the industry who've joined World of Warcraft en masse have a wonderful time in it. Neither is better than the other, but in a subscription based environment, games that incline more towards the "novice" gamers are going to do better.
Of course with the same theory, inclining towards "novice" gamers kind of means you risk boredom. That's true, and it's exactly why you see people post on these forums saying they quit WoW. Most say they were bored...and that's fine. That's ideal in the MMO world, much better than what Vanguard is facing which is people quitting out of "anxiety".
I won't ramble on, but I believe if you were to read that article and apply it to your MMO experiences when it comes to attempting to understand your own sense of fun, and others, it'll open you up to a few things.
I like these two points especially. One of the problems I had in Vanguard was that I did not come over with a ready made group of players from another game, and found the lfg mechanism actually wasn't helpful in finding a like minded group. There were to many inbred barriers to effectively finding players that shared my playing style.
The sense of accomplishment critique I also find right on point. One of my favorite EQ 2 dungeons was Runnyeye. in which you start off going after a quest, find another quest that leads you deeper, than another, and another, and the next thing you know you've swallowed the bait hook, line, and sinker. And you can't wait to keep coming back for more. One day in Runnyeye I especially remember, I called one of our group members sarge, and he asked how I knew he was a sergeant. Turns out not only was he a sergeant, but two of the other players were sergeants. We ended up sitting down there in the dungeon talking about military life. These are the things I remember about a game, not that I killed 300 snakes, ran 30 Fed Ex quests, and killed the boss to get the sword of super nerdiness. I just didn't see that happening in Vanguard.
Vanguard quests seemed just kind of out there, finish one up and move onto the next, with no rhyme, reason, or relationship between most of them. You never felt like you were part of a continuous storyline, just a hodge podge of disfunctional quests. I never felt that I was part of a community, players were running around from continent to continent doing whatever struck their fancy with no method to track who was where.
point / counterpoint
you need to know what the definition of fun is?
Ok...Ill start
Fun is when you log onto a game and have a good time playing it.
You enjoy your time online
enjoyment is subjective
You dont have to grind your ass off for one level with stupid, unimaginative, bugged quests and then start all over with the next level.
I have played EQ, EQII, WoW, CoH, DDO, DnL, and I have very much enjoyed the 'stupid, unimaginative, bugged quests', while some are bugged, in my definition of fun in this VG is doing just fine.
You feel emmersed in the world you are playing
immersion in the world will come when people come the more populated the world the more ability for immersion, but that's just me
Your character animations are fluid and your combat actions and spells are enjoyable to see as you attack your opponents. It wont be see a toon with minimal animation ability to whip his sword around or produce little tiny cloud spells with lighning bolts.
again, subjective, some people do like the graphics, some don't....
Fun is when you see a world and almost all of the characters look different from you
I have made three characters that look like people i know, one of which being myself, unless the game designers had me as a template (i'm honored), and if not there is lots of customizability to allow that level of detail (*once they add more hair, that is*)
Fun is when you get lost in your story arc and it doesnt end at lvl 9.
I have 4 characters, 3 of which are on different continents and each story line has a different feel to it and does continue past lvl 9
Fun is when you can log on to the game without having to go to Sigil's tech forums and learn how to alter your config.ini file
kk, can't argue this one.
Fun is when you can log on and play with people on your server and not having to run an hour in any direction before finding another.
The devs are actively backpeddling on transportation options in the game as we speak....
Fun is when you do enter a seamless world, its really a seamless world versus a "chuncky world"
again, can't dispute this one, but it has actively improved slowly .....
Fun is that you can have meaningful quests that are solable as well as group quests.
Quests are fun and not "Kill 12 Soothsayer Hounds for their teeth and return to me and then to my friend because he needs dirt from the clypsus tree near that lvl 99 dragon"
every starting zone has a quest that is very far from kill X... examples are in Halgarad a quest to retrieve lost dogs, and in the Dwarven starter zone to protect Griffin Eggs.
Fun is when you craft ONE item without having to click your mouse 72 times
fun in crafting is purely subjective, my wife loved crafting in EQII, others hated it, some like the click and done template of WoW, others don't.
Fun is when you actually get xp for making things with your own recipes versus going to a taskmaster again and again and again and again and....
not fun is the flooding of the market that happens in crafter heavy games without some means to not have 1500 of X item in game because everyone made them to lvl up.
Fun is when you lvl to 11 or 21 or 31 or 41 or anywhere in between and you get armor that looks different than your noob armor other than the color
every other patch they have done has been art patches. this will develop as the game does.
yes, the game came out too early, yes the game still needs lots of work, yes, they may have bitten off more than they could chew, but there are people playing, and dare i say it, enjoying, or even ~gasp~ having fun in the world that Sigil has created.
but again, what do i know i'm just a vanbois, or so i'm told.
"We aren't going to ... Period. End of statement."
ya. ok. whatever.
but what do i know, i'm only a vanbois i'm told.
Fun is so subjective for some, but then it's not.
There are lots of things that are considered universally fun.
I'm not so sure MMO's are always fun and played because they are fun in the traditional sense.
I think addiction and dependance on social contact are more important factors why people play MMO's.
In VG forced grouping and the lonely feeling you get in a big world take these things away, so only addiction is left, that's not much and certainly not enough for me.
I miss DAoC
For me fun is exploration.
1) Exploring a new world with exotic terrain.
2) Exploring new game systems, like crafting, and trying to figure out what works and what doesn't.
3) Learning the lore of the world by talking with NPC's rather than reading about it on a web site.
4) Exploring the political relationships between races and factions through role playing with other RP'ers.
My first days in VG have been very fun indeed. But I need to find a guild if I am to enjoy it for the long term.
Right now I think fun is (for me):
- A game where I do not have to grind/farm a lot. If I manage to kill a boar 3 times I have proven that I can do it. I do not want to do it again.
- Player skill should be the main factor. Fights should be based on my, the players, skill. I do not want time invested or items to be the main factors for win or loss. If I play well, I can kill 5 boars at the same time. If I suck I cannot win against one boar with the same character. Thats the way it should be.
- Individuality. I want to do what I want to, develop the way I want to and fight the way I want to. I love to try out new combos. Its fun to experiment on new builds, find a new game-breaking play style, be the first one to do something because my individuality has led me on to the road needed to do that task.
- Exploration. I love to explore and find out new things. In most games it is: Find out the game mechanics, look once at the style of the landscape, do a bit of crafting, fight against a young boar, a normal boar and "supertusks", the elder of the boars, and you have seen it all. Most games provide no dynamics, nothing new, just the same old fantasy game world with the same old landscapes, the same characters and the same game mechanics. Nothing to find out. Boring.
- NPCs should be a challenge. I do not like killing 100 boars in a row. How about 5 boars and each boar is as strong as 20 of those stupid 2-line-scripted-AI noob-boars ? How about creating zones full of dragons but with some safe zones. Fighting is near suicide except if you have specialized in killing dragons. Its up to the players to somehow get to the safe zones and put up portals for others to follow. How about adapting npcs? Those boars should get fire resistant if every noob uses a fireball to kill them.
- A player driven market with pvp based high end resource acquisition to keep up the prices. The items are crafted via an experimentation and modification system. Example: Experimenting on combining different sorts of crystals to create a specific effect (freeze gun / lightining gun).
- free pvp and player looting. Of course there will be ganking but overall it creates a lot of dynamic content. If players have the power the game is a lot more alive. The guild wars, the hiding/running, the hunting, the politics, your heart rushing in a battle, the ambition to get better. Only with such a "hardcore" rule set you will find this.
Ok, now I have written quite a lot. Overall the game I want does not exist yet. Eve delivers parts of it. SWG pre-CU delivered others. Right now I am sticking with Eve and writing my opinion on mmo boards with the hope of a dev reading it and creating such a game. (do NOT destroy my hope!)
---
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Well...but grinding DOES suck....
Anyway : it's imposs forme to discribe it.Fun can be all sorts of things and it's about the amount and mixture of different fun things that makes a game an overall succes or faillure for yourself.A good communtiy without good gameplay depht is crap....or a good depth in the game but a lot of bugs.It's the overall amount of good things that makes the game fun or not....and that is undiscribable.