If you can't see the obvious bias of this piece toward the "uber" gamer or the "hardcore" then.. well... you're funny. I really like the comparison between sheep / cattle being led toward the slaughter and players of MMORPGs like WoW. I find that offensive. I've been playing MMOs since Pre-Trammel UO, and I like the fact that MMOs are trying to remove pointless time sinks and the griefing/ganking and other immature player behavior that was abundant back in those days. But, like I said to the forum moderators, this piece was written to cater to a certain audience. The kind of audience that is all too prevalent on this website. And that's fine, what journalist/entertainer doesn't "spin" their work to fit the audience? However, by creating such an article, I feel that the OP (staff writer) is purposefully "egging on" the WoW/care-bear crowd into a conflict with the "hardcore" crowd on this site. Which, by it's definition, is trolling. But, I've already argued this enough. Enjoy the "debate." Before you mock me, think.
Well, part of the problem are older players like you. You've seen how bad it can be so it obviously messed up your mind. You say think before mocking you, but can you be more of a hipocrit if you don't think yourself.
You went so far as to take that article as a personal attack on you and your kind, by the writer and so called majority MMORPG.com members.
If there was any logic in this discussion, older, expirienced players should be the first to point out the flaws and ideas how to solve them, but no, all we hear from you is how it didn't, can't and won't never ever ever work...
Why do I always get a feeling that carebears that post here are like paladins in WoW, run into a whole crowd of people dueling infront of Orgrimar, banzai and stuff, then buble and HS out of there!?
This weeks article (As always, I use the word loosely) is dedicated to all the gamers that love MMORPGs on easy mode. You can’t be bothered with complex game mechanics or challenging tasks and you can’t bear the thought of losing something once you’ve acquired it. You, my friends, get all my love this week. Enjoy.
Any of us MMORPG.com users would be flagged for flaming/trolling for this statement.
In case you were never a fan of farm animals, the first word in the title is pronounced “MOO!” and has always been a popular phrase among mindless animals led to the slaughter. Sometime early in history we figured out that these animals were slow, dumb and really tasty. Not only were they really stupid, but would also eat all kinds of cheap grass while they stood around in pens waiting to be killed and eaten. Sheep also fit into this category and like cows also serve a useful purpose besides food. Most MMO gamers would also fit quite nicely into this pigeonhole as they prefer to simply follow the path of least resistance along a gradual path to l33tness.
Once again this is offensive. Mocking the intelligence of your viewers is not a good way to gain popularity. Notice how it says "Most MMO gamers" i.e. the majority of gamers like enjoy games like WoW and EQ2 and LOTRO etc.
All the while throwing their money into the rotten cesspool of companies who did nothing but make a game a six year old could play with graphics to match.
A direct shot at the graphics engine of WoW. Hey, Vanguard fanboi, at least it runs!
When was the last time someone made a nice sweater or jacket from your skin?
Why is a game that requires something more than an epic time sink and a parade route area advancement such a terror?
How is endless grinding, losing your level/equipment when you die, and being constantly ganked by PK's any better?
It seems we have devolved as a species to the point were even instant gratification isn’t fast enough.
True.
We have become so used to having everything handed to us on a silver platter that the mere concept of a game that we aren’t guaranteed to win is abhorrent.
Not at all true, we just don't like pointlessly tiresome and tedious game play.
Genres that used to challenge us have become so watered down that the only way to ensure that the game takes some time to complete is to put tons of artificial roadblocks and unclimbable hills to make sure you don’t cheat anymore than necessary. This kind of sideways development is not only confined to MMOs either.
Paying 50+ for a game (even single player) that promises even 10 hours of great game play is still 5+ dollars an hour of enjoyment. That's cheaper then a movie.
Consider Freespace with its promise of a sandbox “be who you want” design. What you don’t figure out until later is that you can’t get out of the main system even by using pirate jump-holes until you’ve done the mandatory plot missions to ‘unlock’ the next system. Try spending a couple hours gaining faction with a pirate group only to see it completely reversed by a stunning turn of events. What you have is a game that provides you with the illusion of choice but can only challenge you by throwing dozens of craptastic AI enemies at you with every turn. Neverwinter Nights 2 decided that players shouldn’t have to go through the ‘tedious’ process of raising your slain allies when it would be much simpler to have them just stand right back up after the fight!
True, that is ridiculous and far too "easy-mode."
What makes a game challenging you ask? Lots of things can contribute to tough yet rewarding game play, but the main principles are based around a few simple concepts:
- Risk vs Reward: This refers to the idea that to gain something valuable you must also put yourself in a comparable amount of danger to gain it. If you can earn the most powerful/valuable items without a chance of being attacked or losing something valuable then what’s the point? Risk also does NOT mean difficulty. Swarms of mobs with huge DPS guarding epic treasure is all fine and dandy but is meaningless if you lose nothing if you fail/die. How much fun is a game of poker if you can get endless free do-overs?
- Emergent Systems: Yeah, it’s a smart person phrase, but what it really means is that complex systems can develop from very simple interactions. An easy way to think of this would be the overused phase “Easy to learn, hard to master.” It involves making a game that is relatively easy to enjoy at a basic level, but has enough depth to keep even hardcore players interested for years. Great Fighting games like Tekken have been using this for years. It is not an easy task but very important for an MMO that wants to have any kind of staying power.
- Player Driven Content: This one is so important is should have been first. Any game that doesn’t create ways for players to shape the economy, politics and warfare of the game in a meaningful fashion will always be shallow. I’m not taking about crafting or powerful guild tools here. What matters is that players must be able to make their mark using guile, wit or brute force. A game that lets NPCs merchants, guards and mobs dominate the content is missing the whole point of a persistent virtual world.
These three points I actually agree with 100% and I think are the only thing the posters in the thread remember reading. No offense guys, just stating what I see.
This isn’t to say that every game has to be some epic contest of skill. Some games will always be for those without hand-eye coordination and half a lobotomy in the same way that bowling and golf are popular among ‘athletes’ who are too old to drive their own cart or tie their shoe without help.
That's why single player games have difficulty levels. Hard to do in a MMO. Solution? That's the real question now isn't it?
If you want a simple game that won’t make you cry or get you *grrrr* angry when you lose you will always have a large selection of ‘linear clickfests’.
Because everyone will feel great when they die and lose everything on their corpse. No one will get *grrrr* angry when THAT happens, they appreciate the risk vs. reward and "difficulty" of the experience and learn from it… Not scream and cuss at their screens…. /sarcasm off.
Just do us a favor and don’t try and turn a complex game into Romper Room because you aren’t any good at it. Kthxbye
Niche games will always be just that. PLEASE stop trying to bring down everyone else in the process with your elitist "I'm hardcore!" attitude. It's even MORE annoying then Barrens chat.
I’ll be merciful now and end my little rant. Take this chance and bash out an equally harsh retort on the forums. Keep fighting the good fight and I shall rejoin you in seven days. Farewell
This is a call for flaming, thus by definition, a troll. That's all I'm saying, that I expected more from a staff piece.
I may get banned for writing this, but I felt I needed to. If the MMORPG staff cannot accept a valid arguement, even after asking for us to "bash out an equally harsh retort on the forums" then I'm sorry for trying.
My e-mail keep sending me back here to read this thread, alot of the posts here are by far more interesting and better written than the op's artical.
Im pretty much with Heerobya's pov, the only way to not take some offence on the whole thing is to stick your tounge firmly in your cheek, like I said before its not the worst thing iv read here but it reads poorly, like it's been rushed, I suspect its a personal thing the op has wanted to get off his/her chest.
Only thing I took from the artical is extremes, no one wants a game where you pick up a full set of uber armour on each kill or lvl up on each swing but at the other extreme no one wants perma death or deleveled to -1 by the first npc you see out of the tutorial, we all want something in the middle, the fact that the the artical says im a minless cow if I think otherwise is ....... well its just trolling
so my last word in this thread guys is not, goodbye and have fun, it's ...
Originally posted by streea I thought I'd bring up that your concept of Risk vs Reward and being able to really leave a mark on the world are great ideas... and nothing more than great ideas. Throw people into the mix and anyone would quickly realize why games don't utilize these features. For Risk v Reward, when you're playing all alone against the AI, if you mess up and die, it's your fault (unless the game sucks, but then it's still your fault for buying/playing it). In MMOs, to take down the big bosses, if even one person, say, gets an emergency phone call in the middle of a raid, everyone dies/fails/etc. This is true if one person makes a bad pull, griefs a group, etc etc. The Risk vs Reward concept is ultimately compromised by the fact that you have to work with others and everyone has real life stuff going on. And I'm not going to even go into the MMOs that are no longer bringing in new players because all of the hardcore older players have nothing better to do than camp newbies as they first log in, or the player 40 levels above another who ganks someone just to steal their stuff and spit on their bodies. Having meaningful interactions with an MMO world falls prey to the same thing: stupid people act even stupider in MMOs where there are no "real" concequences. Would you really want to enter an MMO and learn that the city you're in, since it's being controled by someone else, is Yousuck City (but add vulgarity). That's why most games don't utilize these two functions... and I'm glad for it. I steer clear of games that really punish people for things like death. There's nothing fun about being punished for deciding to play a game that another idiot also wants to play.
Amen to that, why are these concepts so hard for the so called "PvPers" to grasp? It's not that many of us don't want some form of PvP, we do. But we also know better and you illustrate the point very well when describing the griefers and gankers who honestl have absolutely NO life.
Originally posted by lorenzo111 Great topic had me crying in my car reading it. Carebears are the people who messed up my beloved SWG. A year and a half of grinding just so some ten year old can be a Jedi day one complete garbage.
Lead all the lambs to the slaughter!!!!!!!!!!!! Play WOW instead!!!
Comments
You went so far as to take that article as a personal attack on you and your kind, by the writer and so called majority MMORPG.com members.
If there was any logic in this discussion, older, expirienced players should be the first to point out the flaws and ideas how to solve them, but no, all we hear from you is how it didn't, can't and won't never ever ever work...
Why do I always get a feeling that carebears that post here are like paladins in WoW, run into a whole crowd of people dueling infront of Orgrimar, banzai and stuff, then buble and HS out of there!?
This is a call for flaming, thus by definition, a troll. That's all I'm saying, that I expected more from a staff piece.
I may get banned for writing this, but I felt I needed to. If the MMORPG staff cannot accept a valid arguement, even after asking for us to "bash out an equally harsh retort on the forums" then I'm sorry for trying.
My e-mail keep sending me back here to read this thread, alot of the posts here are by far more interesting and better written than the op's artical.
Im pretty much with Heerobya's pov, the only way to not take some offence on the whole thing is to stick your tounge firmly in your cheek, like I said before its not the worst thing iv read here but it reads poorly, like it's been rushed, I suspect its a personal thing the op has wanted to get off his/her chest.
Only thing I took from the artical is extremes, no one wants a game where you pick up a full set of uber armour on each kill or lvl up on each swing but at the other extreme no one wants perma death or deleveled to -1 by the first npc you see out of the tutorial, we all want something in the middle, the fact that the the artical says im a minless cow if I think otherwise is ....... well its just trolling
so my last word in this thread guys is not, goodbye and have fun, it's ...
MMMMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!11!!!
Amen to that, why are these concepts so hard for the so called "PvPers" to grasp? It's not that many of us don't want some form of PvP, we do. But we also know better and you illustrate the point very well when describing the griefers and gankers who honestl have absolutely NO life.