I understand. You feel that you are willing to know as much as can be known in order to create the best character possible and you should be rewarded for that. And the less you need to know the more you feel that your willingness to know is gone to waste. And so the more any scrub can come off the street with no knowledge or care about the game and perform at your level the more pissed off you get. You want reality - strong survive the weak die. Unfortunately for you, corporations don't want that. As long as they're getting the same amount from you and the peon you're both considered equal. So there you are 6'11'' with your dunkin and jump shots and you're put into a type of basketball game that gives migits just as much of an ability to perform as you. Your abilities dont give you much of an advantage, the only thing that matters is how much time you're willing to dedicate. Its an attempt to make life fair for the migit at the expense of your skills. So consider the easier-to-understand actions taken by Funcom as affirmative action. Affirmative action for noobs. --edit whether this fact makes you more understanding of funcom or more distasteful towards AA, im glad
QFT. Are most gamers so casual they refuse to spend time with research into a game's mechanics? Games with very shallow/simple systems like WOW are popular, go figure.
Personally I think Anarachy Online was just right in complexity. Very rewarding character development. For me AO's level of complexity is what an MMORPG should strive for. And it wouldn't hurt to go further.
There IS a time and place for casual games, but I don't think it is in RPG's.
As a side note, Diablo 2 still has the best item/skill/stats system of all games ever created. So many choices, and still rather balanced. And above all - this makes for FUN and it rewards research. Casual players can always look up guides written by less lazy people.
The D&D dorks stick out like a hole in the head in this thread. The fact is, in UO and AC, with all the options of stat distribution and skills, everyone basically ended up with the same few templates. MOST people don't want to bother MIN/MAXing every tiny little detail esspecially when the balance of the game suffers greatly for it. UO and AC were NEVER even remotely balanced. There were templates that were far too powerful and when the nerfs came, the trickle down effect crippled everything. Skill based systems have never worked and never will. Too many variables. Let the developers work out the kinks. In skill based systems the developers let the players figure it all out for them. No thanks. I prefer to play a sem-finished game, not one in a continuous state of beta.
AC was still fun because of the community there tho. I was a complete gimp and I NEVER had a problem finding a group and going to have fun; I played that game for nearly 4 years until SWG (which was also awesome and innovative).
The systems in those games all broke the mold and let us screw up and we loved it. Old school AC1 players (in my experience) never really found another game that made them happy (save for maybe pre CU SWG) and you still see flame wars for people wanting another pre CU SWG 2 years after it got destroyed. SWG had what 300k+ people in its heyday even tho it was broken to shat because it was fun and the classes were the best in any game still (IMHO).
Oh well, here’s hoping someone makes a niche game for those 400k+ possible SWG+AC1 players.
of course devs are going to hear the carebears and the loud but ill-advised and ill-informed people who yell groan and moan about things they see as issues or problems
Take a look at protests, why do you think nobody listens to protestors? they get on tv saying "look how many of us are against this, our country is against this" what they fail to realize is the true reason the group/company doesnt care is because the Country isnt against it, it is a group of annoying one-sided close-minded people that are having such a personal problem with the issue that they start yelling and screaming and throwing rocks, just because the rest of the country doesnt stand up and say they are For it doesnt mean they are against it, they just dont care as much as the loud people do, the difference here is only in the group/company, game developers are basically little girls when it comes to dev decisions and the weight that comes down on them from the people in the high-chairs that really dont understand the workings of the game or dont understand that the people making all the noise are the select 1%-5% that make the loudest noise and that only 1% of the people against the loud ones will ever say anything and the other 94%-98% dont consider it enough of an issue to Defend it
"Sometimes, things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. People are basically good. Honor, courage, virtue mean everything. Power and money, money and power mean nothing. Good always triumphs over evil. Love, True Love Never Dies." Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
I would call it dumbed down from the likes of Anarchy Online. But from what we've seen, it's still quite a bit more 'advanced' then WoWs. You've got (according to Athelan,) partial attribute adjustments, skill points to spend on skills like stealth, perception, climbing, bandaging, and 3 feat trees that are each 4x as complex as WoW's talents.
So yea, dumbed down compared to the old days and AO or Eve. But still quite a bit more customizable and advanced then WoW and LotRO.
IMO... We know too little to draw that conclusion.
Partial Attribute Adjustments - He couldnt say for sure (infact I got even more worried after reading those responses, they sounded more like excuses then explainations... but that might just be me )
Skill Points - This depends really on how many skill points we get... can we max out all skills? or do we have to spend them carefully?
Feat Tree - Meh, Feat - talent - traits, call it what you want, the class is still laid out for you.
Lets leave gear and mounts out of this even though Prestige classes sound interesting. (must admit I havent reseached even a tiny bit on prestige classes, going to now)
You wrap AoC character development into a very nice looking package, but im still worried. Maybe its just all those recent letdowns im getting from the AoC front: classes based on stealth, heavy zoning, limited character devolopment, another heavy quest based game. Some of these might not be true, but it still gives me a niggling feeling...
WTF? three skill trees per class? where have i seen that before? ooh i can't remeber *cough* WoW*cough*
man that pisses me off. inescapable wow cloning going on everwhere!
i can totally see Aoc's battle plan for sub victory over wow, and war. wow=wow war=wow+advanced pvp AoC=wow -fantasy races+advanced pvp+titties = >all other wow clones todate.
wtg Aoc!! *begins to pray that darkfall may actually exist... and is as they say.*
Hmm, I find it amazing how you can take 1 aspect of a game and draw a curtain completely around the entire games structure and rubber stamp a label.
Its got swords? OMGWTF!!!!!! its a wow clone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Doh, beat me to it.
As I was reading this that was th 1st thing that poped into my head,
<sarcasm>After all, wow was the 1st mmo ever made and every other game must be a clone,</sarcasm>
Comments
Personally I think Anarachy Online was just right in complexity. Very rewarding character development. For me AO's level of complexity is what an MMORPG should strive for. And it wouldn't hurt to go further.
There IS a time and place for casual games, but I don't think it is in RPG's.
As a side note, Diablo 2 still has the best item/skill/stats system of all games ever created. So many choices, and still rather balanced. And above all - this makes for FUN and it rewards research. Casual players can always look up guides written by less lazy people.
AC was still fun because of the community there tho. I was a complete gimp and I NEVER had a problem finding a group and going to have fun; I played that game for nearly 4 years until SWG (which was also awesome and innovative).
The systems in those games all broke the mold and let us screw up and we loved it. Old school AC1 players (in my experience) never really found another game that made them happy (save for maybe pre CU SWG) and you still see flame wars for people wanting another pre CU SWG 2 years after it got destroyed. SWG had what 300k+ people in its heyday even tho it was broken to shat because it was fun and the classes were the best in any game still (IMHO).
Oh well, here’s hoping someone makes a niche game for those 400k+ possible SWG+AC1 players.
of course devs are going to hear the carebears and the loud but ill-advised and ill-informed people who yell groan and moan about things they see as issues or problems
Take a look at protests, why do you think nobody listens to protestors? they get on tv saying "look how many of us are against this, our country is against this" what they fail to realize is the true reason the group/company doesnt care is because the Country isnt against it, it is a group of annoying one-sided close-minded people that are having such a personal problem with the issue that they start yelling and screaming and throwing rocks, just because the rest of the country doesnt stand up and say they are For it doesnt mean they are against it, they just dont care as much as the loud people do, the difference here is only in the group/company, game developers are basically little girls when it comes to dev decisions and the weight that comes down on them from the people in the high-chairs that really dont understand the workings of the game or dont understand that the people making all the noise are the select 1%-5% that make the loudest noise and that only 1% of the people against the loud ones will ever say anything and the other 94%-98% dont consider it enough of an issue to Defend it
"Sometimes, things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. People are basically good. Honor, courage, virtue mean everything. Power and money, money and power mean nothing. Good always triumphs over evil. Love, True Love Never Dies."
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
If AoC's character devolopment is going to be dumbed down like Lotro and WoW, then im not going to be able to hide my disapointment.
As for stats devolopment - I couldnt care less about stats, remove them for all I care...
Partial Attribute Adjustments - He couldnt say for sure (infact I got even more worried after reading those responses, they sounded more like excuses then explainations... but that might just be me
)
Skill Points - This depends really on how many skill points we get... can we max out all skills? or do we have to spend them carefully?
Feat Tree - Meh, Feat - talent - traits, call it what you want, the class is still laid out for you.
Lets leave gear and mounts out of this
even though Prestige classes sound interesting. (must admit I havent reseached even a tiny bit on prestige classes, going to now)
You wrap AoC character development into a very nice looking package, but im still worried. Maybe its just all those recent letdowns im getting from the AoC front: classes based on stealth, heavy zoning, limited character devolopment, another heavy quest based game. Some of these might not be true, but it still gives me a niggling feeling...
Hmm, I find it amazing how you can take 1 aspect of a game and draw a curtain completely around the entire games structure and rubber stamp a label.
Its got swords? OMGWTF!!!!!! its a wow clone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Doh, beat me to it.As I was reading this that was th 1st thing that poped into my head,
<sarcasm>After all, wow was the 1st mmo ever made and every other game must be a clone,</sarcasm>