I have played it, but not very much, and not as a crafter. I play a LOT of games, and rarely get very far into any given one. It's extremely unlikely I would ever get to the levels of crafting that you need in order to find this bug. And I do not have time to participate in the communities for every given game, not even close. I have never seen a Skyrim forum. Over the Xmas holiday I played over 40 games to catch up on what has been going on in console gaming, because I do not get the chance during the regular work week.
My point there was that Skyrim is everyone's poster child for immersion right now, and yet what are people paying attention to? Counting the stacked bonuses. This bug wouldn't even be found without people min-maxing in the first place.
Now, it's not that I don't expect people to mix-max. It's more that min-maxiong and "gaming it" is the default approach, and pretty much everything encourages us to look at it that way.
I think the games are actively training us that way, these days, via the non-fictional feedback they give, and the nature of the game systems they tend to use.
It's interesting that with each subsequent Elder Scrolls game, Bethesda has moved further away from stats, classifications, and numbers, in favor of fictional context. They've caught quite a bit of flak for it over the years, from some of us oldschool fans of the series, but I think they've been rolling in too much money to care.
While that does make the game more immersive, on one hand, I think on the other, complexity helps immersion. Complexity doesn't have to mean stats, min/maxing, and all that, but realistically, we're still not at the point where the same level of info can be conveyed contextually. Not realistically, not all that well. So games get dumbed down, as they strive to become more immersive, which for some, is a contradiction.
Complexity begets depth, which in turn, begets immersion.. while too much emphasis on representing the fiction by sight and sound tends to be just the opposite. Shallow. Or is there another method of conveying fiction that I'm overlooking?
depth is not complextiy.
The game of Go is not complex but it has more depth than most games I know.
I think Bethesday is very much on the right track. Instead of getting mired down with bean counting they are trying to create a world. Where they fail is that they never go quite far enough.
The depth in an Elder Scrolls game is more about the detail of the world and its inhabitants. Now all they have to do is reign in some of their overpowered decisons and allow some of the story arcs to go slightly farther. Such as the Civil War questline or the Bardic college questline.
Heck, even the mage guild quest line.
I realize there are people who like stats and numbers and percentages but that's not what an immersive world is about. That's about something else and scratches a whole other itch.
The mistake you are making is that the real world is based on math. So putting math in the game is everything. Math is what lets you interact with the game. Math is the game. If you hide the math which I would say would be good, is people pitch a hissy fit.
You know what games have no math? FPS games.
Actually that's your mistake.
It's like all the people who say there is math in music so knowing math will help with music. But it realy doesn't. In analysis, one can see the "golden section" (1.618 etc) in a piece of music or art or even apply it to literature if you want. But the creators of these things didn't necessarily sit down and plot out this place in the work. It happens because it's sort of how we are wired.
I say "necessarily" because there are people who sit down and apply all sorts of mathmetical concepts to their work or whatever complex system they are using (total serialism) but that's because their work is based upon those concepts "on purpose".
You are confusing the awareness of mathmatical concepts that occur naturally as opposed to works that have them inserted deliberatley.
and I would bet dollars to donuts that there is "math" in fps games. You are just not looking hard enough or just not willing to look.
There aren't hard and fast numbers that the player can exploit right there in the open like stats and perks and dps stuff. Its more like real life where you aim by feel.
And while people aren't using conscious calculus for music they are certainly using some kinds of math. And they are using the musical scale which is built on some math. Might be as simple as incrementing scales, but the *++; is used quite a bit in game design so
I have played it, but not very much, and not as a crafter. I play a LOT of games, and rarely get very far into any given one. It's extremely unlikely I would ever get to the levels of crafting that you need in order to find this bug. And I do not have time to participate in the communities for every given game, not even close. I have never seen a Skyrim forum. Over the Xmas holiday I played over 40 games to catch up on what has been going on in console gaming, because I do not get the chance during the regular work week.
My point there was that Skyrim is everyone's poster child for immersion right now, and yet what are people paying attention to? Counting the stacked bonuses. This bug wouldn't even be found without people min-maxing in the first place.
Now, it's not that I don't expect people to mix-max. It's more that min-maxiong and "gaming it" is the default approach, and pretty much everything encourages us to look at it that way.
I think the games are actively training us that way, these days, via the non-fictional feedback they give, and the nature of the game systems they tend to use.
It's interesting that with each subsequent Elder Scrolls game, Bethesda has moved further away from stats, classifications, and numbers, in favor of fictional context. They've caught quite a bit of flak for it over the years, from some of us oldschool fans of the series, but I think they've been rolling in too much money to care.
While that does make the game more immersive, on one hand, I think on the other, complexity helps immersion. Complexity doesn't have to mean stats, min/maxing, and all that, but realistically, we're still not at the point where the same level of info can be conveyed contextually. Not realistically, not all that well. So games get dumbed down, as they strive to become more immersive, which for some, is a contradiction.
Complexity begets depth, which in turn, begets immersion.. while too much emphasis on representing the fiction by sight and sound tends to be just the opposite. Shallow. Or is there another method of conveying fiction that I'm overlooking?
depth is not complextiy.
The game of Go is not complex but it has more depth than most games I know.
I think Bethesday is very much on the right track. Instead of getting mired down with bean counting they are trying to create a world. Where they fail is that they never go quite far enough.
The depth in an Elder Scrolls game is more about the detail of the world and its inhabitants. Now all they have to do is reign in some of their overpowered decisons and allow some of the story arcs to go slightly farther. Such as the Civil War questline or the Bardic college questline.
Heck, even the mage guild quest line.
I realize there are people who like stats and numbers and percentages but that's not what an immersive world is about. That's about something else and scratches a whole other itch.
The mistake you are making is that the real world is based on math. So putting math in the game is everything. Math is what lets you interact with the game. Math is the game. If you hide the math which I would say would be good, is people pitch a hissy fit.
You know what games have no math? FPS games.
FPS has just as much 'math, in particuar dynamics' in its game as any others. If anything, FPS defines this world's math better than any other games because processing it based on the skills and abilities of the individual player. It is the reason why some understand the mechanics and dominate and the others can't comprehend and call hax to the people that do.
e.g. WTF HAX! I am 500 yards aways, on the move, and his gun isn't pointed straight at me to the point that I can see down the nozzle, yet he got a headshot. WTF? HAX
What MMORPG's math do is allow ALL players have an equal playing field, no matter their knowledge level. Inorder to achieve max out put, follow procedure X and obtain goods Y, rinse, repeat. It showshow well a person can follow instructions, rather than their display of skills. It's only the gameplay that allow skills to be added, such as if a person can follow instructions while not standing in the bad...
I am deeply sadened that Raph Koster doesnt share my deep despise for the i-word. In my experience, the only people using the i-word are those who confuse realism with fun.
Also, are you kidding me ? I can log into Vanguard, do some little things and leave after a quarter hour with no problem. Doesnt mean that game cant suck you in.
Vanguard certainly supports casual gaming, although for real progress you need to have longer sessions once in a while or you wont be able to group and really learn your class (they ARE designed around grouping, after all).
A miniature on a game map, yes. A visual representation of your D&D character.
Which is exactly what your MMORPG character is if you RP: it's a visual representation of a character you're role-playing. With like-minded players, RPers act out all sorts of stuff and fabricate an imaginary existence with others in a MMORPG -- much like tabletop RPing.
Point being that those players are able to experience a lot of immersion because their attitude creates the immersion. Whereas a player who wants immersion but isn't willing to have that attitude and actually put forth the effort to make the game immersive for themselves; that player isn't going to feel like the game is immersive at all in most cases (although with games like ToR you can come pretty close.)
Well of course to be immersed you need to want to be immersed or maybe even better what you used have certain 'attitude' or character maybe. Some people are not interested / don't care about immersion at all or care very little. That's ok. Everyone have their own things that they like and don't.
Still how game is done matters if / how many players gonna be immersed. While players that really want to be immersed may be immersed even in product that does not 'make it easy' and players that don't care about immersion will not be immersed even in product that is specifically created to be immersive. That's true but still that does not change much. That's just shows that there are people with diffrent priorities and attitude and that two 'categories' of players are not only ones. There are players that are between those theoretical player categories.
Same with Swtor - there are many people that will get immersed into it , cause of movie-like dialogues experience, but at same time there are many people who like to be immersed but will find TOR totally unimmersive because TOR experience is railed, game world and experience very streamlined and game allow player to direct watched story a bit instead of create a character / story.
So for same exact reasons certain people will be immersed in TOR and other people for same reasons will find immersion very hard to achieve.
For example some people will find TOR very immersive and find let's say Skyrim totally not immersive, - cause those games use diffrent ways to immerse a player. (or allow player to immerse himself / herself more easily).
Then there is another group that won't be immersed cause they are simply not interested in that.
I think that's one of reasons why game devvelopers don't care that much about immersion lately. This is not something you can measure easily or make that most people will achieve imersion. Creating combat system that many players will like is easier than create a game that many players will find easy to immerse into.
Problem with current games is that they are trying to find one receipt to please as wide playerbase as possible , when people are diffrent and that is risky. Streamlining provide bigger accesibility but at same time make game one-dimensional and harder to keep diffrent players playing.
Players made the immersion ... with the new gen of players and trolls, are you really shocked games feel more like a facebook social chat than a virtual world.
Everything I say is my opinion or personal preference. You may or may not find it useful to your cause but regardless I am entitled to it.
There aren't hard and fast numbers that the player can exploit right there in the open like stats and perks and dps stuff. Its more like real life where you aim by feel.
And while people aren't using conscious calculus for music they are certainly using some kinds of math. And they are using the musical scale which is built on some math. Might be as simple as incrementing scales, but the *++; is used quite a bit in game design so
Actually the musical scales aren't based on math so much as how we as humans perceive music. Having said that, what we perceive as math in music or art or even literature (again, going to the golden mean/golden section) is what we are noticing after the fact. Our brains are wired "just so" that they even create a distinction between ticks of a clock when in reality there is no difference between one tick and another tick assuming a standard clock mechanism. or the leading tone in a scale and use of the tritone to create tension. And of course applying the golden section to a novel to find significant places of interest, same with art.
As far as fps, I would agree, there aren't mathmatical bits that a player can exploit but I would be very curious to analyze the map and see where most of the action happens and what ratios appear in conjunction with how fps players perceive the space they are playing in. I wonder if it's possible to even skew where the player goes or avoids based on how the map is designed and "what feels right"" to the player.
The important point is that there are people out there who are sheer math whizzes as well as complex computer programs that could come up with extremely intricate mathmatical logorhythms that could be applied to any game world. Whether or not that equates an immersive and fun experience is another thing.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
He should have been preaching this stuff years ago, like some of us have been doing. Just saying...
It really started going downhill years ago, I agree. The signs were there, back in '05 IIRC, and other players talking about it were thought of as "Tin Foil Hats." But as the years went, it became very real. The genre's f*cked, and the way the new, big name titles have gone / are going, it's not going to change. You can see which direction the genre has taken, and I don't see it changing course at all, not even in the long term. I used to think there's a chance it could years later, but not anymore.
The MMORPG genre needs a "Dinosaur Killing Meteor" to hit if you want any variety.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Well of course to be immersed you need to want to be immersed or maybe even better what you used have certain 'attitude' or character maybe. Some people are not interested / don't care about immersion at all or care very little. That's ok. Everyone have their own things that they like and don't.
Well my point is we have players claiming to want immersion, but almost certainly not seeking it for themselves.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
He should have been preaching this stuff years ago, like some of us have been doing. Just saying...
It really started going downhill years ago, I agree. The signs were there, back in '05 IIRC, and other players talking about it were thought of as "Tin Foil Hats." But as the years went, it became very real. The genre's f*cked, and the way the new, big name titles have gone / are going, it's not going to change. You can see which direction the genre has taken, and I don't see it changing course at all, not even in the long term. I used to think there's a chance it could years later, but not anymore.
The MMORPG genre needs a "Dinosaur Killing Meteor" to hit if you want any variety.
Well of course to be immersed you need to want to be immersed or maybe even better what you used have certain 'attitude' or character maybe. Some people are not interested / don't care about immersion at all or care very little. That's ok. Everyone have their own things that they like and don't.
Well my point is we have players claiming to want immersion, but almost certainly not seeking it for themselves.
I don't think it's the players fault. I may want to be immersed on something, but that thing really not letting me to.
Not to take sides really, but from my perspective, I fall in line with those who claim there was never any true immersion to begin with and therefore it's impossible that mmo's are no longer immersive, in the sense that any particular qualities have changed over the years. The reality is that the newness of the medium was largely responsible for the immersion people felt. It also explains why people who have only played WoW for 6+ years are feeling the same way some of you who have been playing mmo's for 12+ years are feeling....it's just not new any more.
Not to take sides really, but from my perspective, I fall in line with those who claim there was never any true immersion to begin with and therefore it's impossible that mmo's are no longer immersive, in the sense that any particular qualities have changed over the years. The reality is that the newness of the medium was largely responsible for the immersion people felt. It also explains why people who have only played WoW for 6+ years are feeling the same way some of you who have been playing mmo's for 12+ years are feeling....it's just not new any more.
Yep, I agree. And that's why many old games are considered classics (in all game genres) but we don't feel the same way if replay them. It's also a little bit of nostalgia.
He understands that human nature requires we have diversity or we will loose interest. I'm not a hardcore follower of koster, but the man speaks the truth on this subject.
when you log in to a virtual world, you're fully expecting you can have an effect on that world. we are less able to be affective in MMOGs then ever before. Plus we have no connection with the our avatars anymore.
You don't feel like you can change anything in current MMOs you simply are there and the trail you want to blaze has already been made for you. mind you if you try to follow your own path, you will soon learn that the mountain over the hill has an invisble barrier to stop you from deviating from predefined content.
This is 2012
MMOGs now should have almost an endless amount of variables you can choose from to define the avatar you are creating. you should be very different then everyone else in-game because we are in real life. you should be able to start a buisness in-game and be able to affect each server your on. it should have all the tools you need to create the type of play you enjoy.
Advancement should be about the type of activitys you enjoy, not what developers think you should enjoy. AI should be way ahead of former MMOs. Monsters should no longer just execute a well defined list of abilitys and stick to a tank. they should possibly be able to think a little by now. maybe they see this group will kill me, so i need to light the tires and hit the nearest zone to save myself! lets see if they can hit a fleeing target who's will to survive just made him hijack random players and use them as shields. or maybe he jacks someones mount and the chase is on to stop him while he sets fire to every NPC building in his haste.
lets see a game that lets you define your class name and allows you to mix and match abilitys or design child abiltys off of several spells to create something different no other player has yet created.
Allow players to procreate and create offspring. allow all animals to be pets if you have the will to tame them. allow for fully equipable NPC hencmen that worship you and you train them your skills.
Allow for full loot PVP RvR all out full scale tactical war. if your a wimp and are afraid to play it? stay neutral or off duty.
We should be able to steal anything thats not nailed down. it's a game a virtual world we should be able to become the lich king and rule the server and the undead other then defeat him on a weekly basis. and we loose that title once the best raiders on the server can take me and my guildies who are now raid trash down. we should be able to create guild events involving as many NPC actors and props as they allow us to have.
We are going backwards. and thats sad. 200 million could buy a developer all he needs to make the above with ease and cash to spare.
Instead we get blingy artsy worlds with lifeless zones and no way to affect that. it's almost over we will soon be playing atari 2600's again for realism if it keeps going this way.
Comments
There aren't hard and fast numbers that the player can exploit right there in the open like stats and perks and dps stuff. Its more like real life where you aim by feel.
And while people aren't using conscious calculus for music they are certainly using some kinds of math. And they are using the musical scale which is built on some math. Might be as simple as incrementing scales, but the *++; is used quite a bit in game design so
FPS has just as much 'math, in particuar dynamics' in its game as any others. If anything, FPS defines this world's math better than any other games because processing it based on the skills and abilities of the individual player. It is the reason why some understand the mechanics and dominate and the others can't comprehend and call hax to the people that do.
e.g. WTF HAX! I am 500 yards aways, on the move, and his gun isn't pointed straight at me to the point that I can see down the nozzle, yet he got a headshot. WTF? HAX
What MMORPG's math do is allow ALL players have an equal playing field, no matter their knowledge level. Inorder to achieve max out put, follow procedure X and obtain goods Y, rinse, repeat. It showshow well a person can follow instructions, rather than their display of skills. It's only the gameplay that allow skills to be added, such as if a person can follow instructions while not standing in the bad...
MMOs are not the i-word ? How good for them !
I am deeply sadened that Raph Koster doesnt share my deep despise for the i-word. In my experience, the only people using the i-word are those who confuse realism with fun.
Also, are you kidding me ? I can log into Vanguard, do some little things and leave after a quarter hour with no problem. Doesnt mean that game cant suck you in.
Vanguard certainly supports casual gaming, although for real progress you need to have longer sessions once in a while or you wont be able to group and really learn your class (they ARE designed around grouping, after all).
Well of course to be immersed you need to want to be immersed or maybe even better what you used have certain 'attitude' or character maybe. Some people are not interested / don't care about immersion at all or care very little. That's ok. Everyone have their own things that they like and don't.
Still how game is done matters if / how many players gonna be immersed. While players that really want to be immersed may be immersed even in product that does not 'make it easy' and players that don't care about immersion will not be immersed even in product that is specifically created to be immersive. That's true but still that does not change much. That's just shows that there are people with diffrent priorities and attitude and that two 'categories' of players are not only ones. There are players that are between those theoretical player categories.
Same with Swtor - there are many people that will get immersed into it , cause of movie-like dialogues experience, but at same time there are many people who like to be immersed but will find TOR totally unimmersive because TOR experience is railed, game world and experience very streamlined and game allow player to direct watched story a bit instead of create a character / story.
So for same exact reasons certain people will be immersed in TOR and other people for same reasons will find immersion very hard to achieve.
For example some people will find TOR very immersive and find let's say Skyrim totally not immersive, - cause those games use diffrent ways to immerse a player. (or allow player to immerse himself / herself more easily).
Then there is another group that won't be immersed cause they are simply not interested in that.
I think that's one of reasons why game devvelopers don't care that much about immersion lately. This is not something you can measure easily or make that most people will achieve imersion. Creating combat system that many players will like is easier than create a game that many players will find easy to immerse into.
Problem with current games is that they are trying to find one receipt to please as wide playerbase as possible , when people are diffrent and that is risky. Streamlining provide bigger accesibility but at same time make game one-dimensional and harder to keep diffrent players playing.
Players made the immersion ... with the new gen of players and trolls, are you really shocked games feel more like a facebook social chat than a virtual world.
Everything I say is my opinion or personal preference. You may or may not find it useful to your cause but regardless I am entitled to it.
Actually the musical scales aren't based on math so much as how we as humans perceive music. Having said that, what we perceive as math in music or art or even literature (again, going to the golden mean/golden section) is what we are noticing after the fact. Our brains are wired "just so" that they even create a distinction between ticks of a clock when in reality there is no difference between one tick and another tick assuming a standard clock mechanism. or the leading tone in a scale and use of the tritone to create tension. And of course applying the golden section to a novel to find significant places of interest, same with art.
As far as fps, I would agree, there aren't mathmatical bits that a player can exploit but I would be very curious to analyze the map and see where most of the action happens and what ratios appear in conjunction with how fps players perceive the space they are playing in. I wonder if it's possible to even skew where the player goes or avoids based on how the map is designed and "what feels right"" to the player.
The important point is that there are people out there who are sheer math whizzes as well as complex computer programs that could come up with extremely intricate mathmatical logorhythms that could be applied to any game world. Whether or not that equates an immersive and fun experience is another thing.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
It really started going downhill years ago, I agree. The signs were there, back in '05 IIRC, and other players talking about it were thought of as "Tin Foil Hats." But as the years went, it became very real. The genre's f*cked, and the way the new, big name titles have gone / are going, it's not going to change. You can see which direction the genre has taken, and I don't see it changing course at all, not even in the long term. I used to think there's a chance it could years later, but not anymore.
The MMORPG genre needs a "Dinosaur Killing Meteor" to hit if you want any variety.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Well my point is we have players claiming to want immersion, but almost certainly not seeking it for themselves.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Where can I sign for that meteor? XD
I don't think it's the players fault. I may want to be immersed on something, but that thing really not letting me to.
Not to take sides really, but from my perspective, I fall in line with those who claim there was never any true immersion to begin with and therefore it's impossible that mmo's are no longer immersive, in the sense that any particular qualities have changed over the years. The reality is that the newness of the medium was largely responsible for the immersion people felt. It also explains why people who have only played WoW for 6+ years are feeling the same way some of you who have been playing mmo's for 12+ years are feeling....it's just not new any more.
Yep, I agree. And that's why many old games are considered classics (in all game genres) but we don't feel the same way if replay them. It's also a little bit of nostalgia.
He understands that human nature requires we have diversity or we will loose interest. I'm not a hardcore follower of koster, but the man speaks the truth on this subject.
when you log in to a virtual world, you're fully expecting you can have an effect on that world. we are less able to be affective in MMOGs then ever before. Plus we have no connection with the our avatars anymore.
You don't feel like you can change anything in current MMOs you simply are there and the trail you want to blaze has already been made for you. mind you if you try to follow your own path, you will soon learn that the mountain over the hill has an invisble barrier to stop you from deviating from predefined content.
This is 2012
MMOGs now should have almost an endless amount of variables you can choose from to define the avatar you are creating. you should be very different then everyone else in-game because we are in real life. you should be able to start a buisness in-game and be able to affect each server your on. it should have all the tools you need to create the type of play you enjoy.
Advancement should be about the type of activitys you enjoy, not what developers think you should enjoy. AI should be way ahead of former MMOs. Monsters should no longer just execute a well defined list of abilitys and stick to a tank. they should possibly be able to think a little by now. maybe they see this group will kill me, so i need to light the tires and hit the nearest zone to save myself! lets see if they can hit a fleeing target who's will to survive just made him hijack random players and use them as shields. or maybe he jacks someones mount and the chase is on to stop him while he sets fire to every NPC building in his haste.
lets see a game that lets you define your class name and allows you to mix and match abilitys or design child abiltys off of several spells to create something different no other player has yet created.
Allow players to procreate and create offspring. allow all animals to be pets if you have the will to tame them. allow for fully equipable NPC hencmen that worship you and you train them your skills.
Allow for full loot PVP RvR all out full scale tactical war. if your a wimp and are afraid to play it? stay neutral or off duty.
We should be able to steal anything thats not nailed down. it's a game a virtual world we should be able to become the lich king and rule the server and the undead other then defeat him on a weekly basis. and we loose that title once the best raiders on the server can take me and my guildies who are now raid trash down. we should be able to create guild events involving as many NPC actors and props as they allow us to have.
We are going backwards. and thats sad. 200 million could buy a developer all he needs to make the above with ease and cash to spare.
Instead we get blingy artsy worlds with lifeless zones and no way to affect that. it's almost over we will soon be playing atari 2600's again for realism if it keeps going this way.