In the GW2 Beta, you had to actually force yourself to realize you can like being around other people now. You can be generous, patient, and enjoy the company of fellow adventurers. They cannot kill steal, ninja-loot, or bogart your nodes. All they can really do is help you. and increase your enjoyment of the game.
This made me wonder: what kind of malicious, sadistic, anti-social misfits have been programming MMOGs up until now? Why make it so that other players could steal your kill in the first place? Why make it so that resource nodes and loot was open to ninja stealing? Why program the game to force formal grouping and ultimately reward only those wiling to sacrifice their real lives for the game? Why set up a system that formally kept most of the players out of the top content and rewards?
The GW2 beta event was a real eye-opener. It's almost like Arenanet has broken some conspiratorial, secret set of MMOG development rules that, before now, we all just accepted as a necessary part of the genre. A lot of us were experiencing a kind of abused spouse syndrome, where we were expecting to get sucker-punched or slapped every time we turned around, and were instead shocked at the generosity and kindness displayed by our fellow adventurers, and the welcoming empowerment of the game-mechanics. Many of us had to work to discard bad habits that were necessary to cultivate in other MMOGs.
Once we realized the game really did embrace us, and that there was no game value in being an asshole (and lots of reason to not be), and that the game wasn't going to exclude us or force us to play some way we didn't want to play, there was this huge sense of relief and euphoria, like being set free from the harsh, unnecessary and unjust shackles of prior MMOGs.
Now there's a realization, much like when I read an interview with some Verant (EQ) developer who said that the player base enjoyed being the victims of GM vs Uberguild events: we casual players been lied to and used, suckered into playing games that had no intention of treating us with respect or consideration for the express purpose of populating those games as victims, 2nd-class citizens, and scrubs for the ego-amusement of others - including the developers themselves.
this post is win
There are times when one must ask themselves is it my passion that truly frightens you? Or your own?
"OP, you make developers look like bad guys. its ultimately the players choice"
Because players have a choice to play the game or not doesn't change the nature of what the developers have created the past 15-20 years. Perhaps I was a little harsh - developers are just people trying to earn a living, but it's not like the player base hasn't been letting them know that they wanted a friendlier, less elitest, more inclusive and diverse game all this time. Every tiny step forward towards a more casual, friendly, and less exclusive, elitist MMORPG has been met with ranting, raving and derision from the harcore players, and always- always - with a bait-and-switch "new" game from developers.
"Without fear, it's pointless."
All I can say about this attitude is good riddance.
One thing that I LOVED was when a poster on the GW2 beta forums complained about not being able to create an actually evil character; even a street-gutter thief only had noble (or semi-noble) responses in the personal story bits. The ANET rep said, to sum up: "Other games have that. This isn't that kind of game."
I was talking about me feeling the fear, not causing it... but once again, it;s your way or the highway. This is a very common stance on both extreme sides of this coin, and I am not about to waste time challenging the extremists here.
You have apparently missed the essence of my post, that for the past 15-20 years "the fear" is all we have had to choose from. You are the one saying that "without fear, it's pointless" as if MMOGing is pointless without artificially induced fear and distrust between players, which is no doubt the same kind of perspective that has been driving the development of these games ever since they first came out. I would have no complaint, nor any negative commentary to issue about MMOG developers had they offered us something other than this exclusionary, elitist, griefing, ninjaing, kill-stealing. play-like-it's-your-professional-obsession tripe for the past couple of decades through scores and scores of titles.
Yeah, you bet. I hold the developers accountable for their share in perpetuating this.
All this time,it's been your way or the highway - their way or the highway, fear and distrust and exclusivity and only-pros-need-apply or the highway, casual players are invited to be our scrubs and peasantry - or the highway.
Now that there's a game that actually changes this, actually puts something together that fosters an entirely different dynamic and perspective not based on fear and distrust, and I tell you and your fear-addicted ilk "good riddance" because I finally have ONE MMOG I can relax and have fun in that isn't at anyone else's expense, nor their's at mine, and I'm the one saying it's "my way or the highway"?
It's not "my way" or the highway, it's GW2 or "your choice of about 1000 other MMOGs" that share your "fear and distrust" perspective of why one should play an MMOG "or it's pointless".
Then you get to end game and realize it is all about 5mans instances and zerg vs zerg vs zerg. Nice post, but Rift was doing this as early as February of last year and got the video to prove it posted on youtube.
You're in super bitter mode arn't you? I used to read what you replied in threads ... I'm not sure what game ruined you so.
+1, it is strange how some people can apparantly enjoy being miserable and try to encourage negativity. this diseased attitude is destroying gaming discussion communities.
The assumption that somehow GW2 created huge groups of people doing stuff is pure idiocy or a SEVERELYYYYY narrow minded view of mmorpg's. Sorry I have to be the one to give the reality check here.
Was there a auto group feature? Could you press a button and be in a raid group??
I don't know which game was the first to encourage ninja looting, but that was probably just carelessness on the part of the game developers. The next several dozen were probably mostly just copying what previous games had done.
But Guild Wars 2 is hardly the first game to stop ninja looting. For starters, there is Guild Wars 1.
It's the same story with kill stealing. It probably started with careless game design and continued with copycat developers, but Guild Wars 2 isn't the first game to stop it. For example, in Champions Online, if two players aren't grouped and both participate in killing a mob, both get quest credit for it.
Well stated OP. Your exactly right. IMO its this simple fact alone that makes GW2 a next Gen MMO.
In fact I really think we need to have a new acronym for the type of gameplay presented by GW2. They have already renamed thier RvR to WvW. I really think thier PvE should be called WvE. As it is one of the first games that really does make it a "All of Us" vs "The Enviroment" complementing or supporting the "Our Server" vs "Thier Server" PvP aspects.
"OP, you make developers look like bad guys. its ultimately the players choice"
Because players have a choice to play the game or not doesn't change the nature of what the developers have created the past 15-20 years. Perhaps I was a little harsh - developers are just people trying to earn a living, but it's not like the player base hasn't been letting them know that they wanted a friendlier, less elitest, more inclusive and diverse game all this time. Every tiny step forward towards a more casual, friendly, and less exclusive, elitist MMORPG has been met with ranting, raving and derision from the harcore players, and always- always - with a bait-and-switch "new" game from developers.
"Without fear, it's pointless."
All I can say about this attitude is good riddance.
One thing that I LOVED was when a poster on the GW2 beta forums complained about not being able to create an actually evil character; even a street-gutter thief only had noble (or semi-noble) responses in the personal story bits. The ANET rep said, to sum up: "Other games have that. This isn't that kind of game."
I was talking about me feeling the fear, not causing it... but once again, it;s your way or the highway. This is a very common stance on both extreme sides of this coin, and I am not about to waste time challenging the extremists here.
You have apparently missed the essence of my post, that for the past 15-20 years "the fear" is all we have had to choose from. You are the one saying that "without fear, it's pointless" as if MMOGing is pointless without artificially induced fear and distrust between players, which is no doubt the same kind of perspective that has been driving the development of these games ever since they first came out. I would have no complaint, nor any negative commentary to issue about MMOG developers had they offered us something other than this exclusionary, elitist, griefing, ninjaing, kill-stealing. play-like-it's-your-professional-obsession tripe for the past couple of decades through scores and scores of titles.
Yeah, you bet. I hold the developers accountable for their share in perpetuating this.
All this time,it's been your way or the highway - their way or the highway, fear and distrust and exclusivity and only-pros-need-apply or the highway, casual players are invited to be our scrubs and peasantry - or the highway.
Now that there's a game that actually changes this, actually puts something together that fosters an entirely different dynamic and perspective not based on fear and distrust, and I tell you and your fear-addicted ilk "good riddance" because I finally have ONE MMOG I can relax and have fun in that isn't at anyone else's expense, nor their's at mine, and I'm the one saying it's "my way or the highway"?
It's not "my way" or the highway, it's GW2 or "your choice of about 1000 other MMOGs" that share your "fear and distrust" perspective of why one should play an MMOG "or it's pointless".
Well I sincerely hope that you get many more games like GW2 that cater to your playstyle, that's something I have have wished for since day 1. Both styles of games for both style of players
I wouldn't dream of wishing GW2 to change their game to suit me, or any other game for that matter. I simply bypass the ones that have been heavily restrictive imo and I play the ones that create an atmosphere that I enjoy, where I have to very careful who I trust and they have to be very careful who they screw.
To you though, I dont think "good riddance" from my types of games, I simply wish you the best in your game.
everything that I am trying to convey in my posts in this thread, can be summed up in this sentence.
Not everyone who enjoys the freedom that allows a griefer to grief, is a griefer himself (or herself).
You don't even have to defend a dog-eat-dog MMO on those grounds, imo. (edit: by that I mean, it's not necessary to move your defense of a predatory game environment to grounds of personal taste). If a game is designed so that its basic mechanics revolve around survival, then there is no such thing as 'griefing', just choices between individual and mutual survival. Griefing comes into existence when the game suggests to the player that it is about one thing, and it is possible for players to game the mechanics and create a sub-game where making that suggestion out to be a lie is the game for them. There's nothing wrong with 'griefing' on a billiards table. But it's generally not cool to bump a pinball machine while someone else is playing.
The assumption that somehow GW2 created huge groups of people doing stuff is pure idiocy or a SEVERELYYYYY narrow minded view of mmorpg's. Sorry I have to be the one to give the reality check here.
Was there a auto group feature? Could you press a button and be in a raid group??
You didn't need to. Aside from having your own private chat and being able to see people's health bars through another means there was no benefit to grouping up. Aside from that everything you could do inside a group you could do out, from buffing other people, sharing (poor wood for it since you get FULL credit no matter how many hit it, unlike in other MMOs) EXP, using cross profession combos, healing, and partaking in events. You could also see nearby corpses to revive whether they are in your group or not on your map and other nearby players would be visible on your map as green dots also.
You could request to join others groups if you absolutely needed to group up.
everything that I am trying to convey in my posts in this thread, can be summed up in this sentence.
Not everyone who enjoys the freedom that allows a griefer to grief, is a griefer himself (or herself).
You don't even have to defend a dog-eat-dog MMO on those grounds, imo. (edit: by that I mean, it's not necessary to move your defense of a predatory game environment to grounds of personal taste). If a game is designed so that its basic mechanics revolve around survival, then there is no such thing as 'griefing', just choices between individual and mutual survival. Griefing comes into existence when the game suggests to the player that it is about one thing, and it is possible for players to game the mechanics and create a sub-game where making that suggestion out to be a lie is the game for them. There's nothing wrong with 'griefing' on a billiards table. But it's generally not cool to bump a pinball machine while someone else is playing.
^ Thank you! Much better said than I did
Which is pretty much what I was also saying, in a certainly more confusing way
Respect, walk, what did you say? Respect, walk Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me? - PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
Then you get to end game and realize it is all about 5mans instances and zerg vs zerg vs zerg. Nice post, but Rift was doing this as early as February of last year and got the video to prove it posted on youtube.
You're in super bitter mode arn't you? I used to read what you replied in threads ... I'm not sure what game ruined you so.
+1, it is strange how some people can apparantly enjoy being miserable and try to encourage negativity. this diseased attitude is destroying gaming discussion communities.
The assumption that somehow GW2 created huge groups of people doing stuff is pure idiocy or a SEVERELYYYYY narrow minded view of mmorpg's. Sorry I have to be the one to give the reality check here.
Was there a auto group feature? Could you press a button and be in a raid group??
No but there is a button for awesome fun when you press the login button! Geez you guys all just pick each other apart. Point out what you like about your game and not what is bad about the other.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
And for the record, I am quoting my exact paragraph instea dof simply the one sentence that keeps getting quoted. Because the "for me" that immediately proceeded that statement is kind of important to my point.
"The fear is a massive part of that freedom for me. Without fear, it's pointless. I'm talking about me feeling the fear, no causing it."
what kind of malicious, sadistic, anti-social misfits have been programming MMOGs up until now?
HAH!
A good jest my friend.
Apparently people have forgotten that a GAME is about Competition.
I got nothing against GW2, looks to be a good game, but damn more than half the GW2 fanboys on these forums have been mindwashed into believing GW2 is the father of their babies...what the hell is wrong with some people??
FYI, anyone can be a good person in an online game. I used to play Lotro and people were very helpful if they wanted to be and could be assholes if they chose to. GW2 dint "invent" happy gaming. So I say this from experience in an MMO themepark and not some bullshit analogy. All GW2 is doing is removing one aspect of MMO gaming that people have gotten used to and expect in a competitive hobby that is online gaming.
In Lotro I too gave out free stuff to newbies in starter areas, ran lower level dungeons for newbie groups on my capped toon, threw nearly Everyone who passed me by a free buff (since I had a buff character) and was happy to do it. I dint need someone to force me to do this, GW2 might be player friendly but it is in essence Forcing players to be friendly whether they like it or not. But I wouldnt buff a player who I personally disliked (ie purposefully spoke BS on world chat/glff, tried hard to grief other players any way possible or was in general an asshat). Not saying that I wouldnt be able to Not throw such people a buff in GW2 but to have some asshole constantly talk smack about me while hitting my mobs and getting rewards is something that puts me off about GW2.
Its the Players who build a community in a MMO, NOT the developers. How can you ascertain a genuinely helpful player from a leecher who wants to kill Your mobs for whatever reason? As a player I would like to know who I am playing with rather than be thrown into a foam padded kindergarten rec room and forced to play nice with potentially annoying people.
The world isnt only filled with rosy coloured goodies as some fanatics might think, GW2 wont be any different. There will also be the asshats in GW2. Same reason why malicious, sadistic, anti-social misfits have been programming MMOGs according to your POV is the reason why people play MMOs to PK other players.
But after all this goody 2 shoe hand holding they Actually make you KILL players from another server?! Man that must have been such a blue balled buzz kill to you OP, goddamned snot nosed pansy princess of a man-brat.
Dont take offence, I am just kidding. But what if someone was really mouthing you off like this in game while stalking you around the map and was attacking your mobs and you were helpless to stop him from profiting off it? Reading this post I Hope something new is Revealed to you OP
Oh and GW2 is a really good game, just in case some fool wants to mindlessly tag me a "Hater" since I said something that was less than +10 'awesomesauce' about GW2.
I didnt need GW2 to come out to help people around me......if i wanted to help i did....no matter the game......i helped people in UO, AC2, WOW, EQ2 and plenty more.
IF people realy need the mecanics of the game to actually ( almost) "force" you into helping people in your realm then that says alot about you as a person imho
It is nice that GW2 tries to take some of the good points from FF11/14 and use them to help form a better community i always liked it in the FF games and hope GW2 will be able to build a good helpfull community by taking this parts from the FF games
In the GW2 Beta, you had to actually force yourself to realize you can like being around other people now. You can be generous, patient, and enjoy the company of fellow adventurers. They cannot kill steal, ninja-loot, or bogart your nodes. All they can really do is help you. and increase your enjoyment of the game.
This made me wonder: what kind of malicious, sadistic, anti-social misfits have been programming MMOGs up until now? Why make it so that other players could steal your kill in the first place? Why make it so that resource nodes and loot was open to ninja stealing? Why program the game to force formal grouping and ultimately reward only those wiling to sacrifice their real lives for the game? Why set up a system that formally kept most of the players out of the top content and rewards?
The GW2 beta event was a real eye-opener. It's almost like Arenanet has broken some conspiratorial, secret set of MMOG development rules that, before now, we all just accepted as a necessary part of the genre. A lot of us were experiencing a kind of abused spouse syndrome, where we were expecting to get sucker-punched or slapped every time we turned around, and were instead shocked at the generosity and kindness displayed by our fellow adventurers, and the welcoming empowerment of the game-mechanics. Many of us had to work to discard bad habits that were necessary to cultivate in other MMOGs.
Once we realized the game really did embrace us, and that there was no game value in being an asshole (and lots of reason to not be), and that the game wasn't going to exclude us or force us to play some way we didn't want to play, there was this huge sense of relief and euphoria, like being set free from the harsh, unnecessary and unjust shackles of prior MMOGs.
Now there's a realization, much like when I read an interview with some Verant (EQ) developer who said that the player base enjoyed being the victims of GM vs Uberguild events: we casual players been lied to and used, suckered into playing games that had no intention of treating us with respect or consideration for the express purpose of populating those games as victims, 2nd-class citizens, and scrubs for the ego-amusement of others - including the developers themselves.
You didnt play rift DE? or Warhammer online PQs? right?, guess not. People really believe that gw2 is new and revolutionary, wake up guys, it getting really annoying tbh.
Apparently people have forgotten that a GAME is about Competition.
I've always prefered to compete against the enemy, and not against my own side. And that's the kind of competition promoted in GW2.
Originally posted by hikaru77
You didnt play rift DE? or Warhammer online PQs? right?, guess not. People really believe that gw2 is new and revolutionary, wake up guys, it getting really annoying tbh.
Neither Rift supposed "dynamic" events which are only mob spawn points, nor Warhammer's public quests which were badly designed and didn't scale to the number of participant, come even remotely close to what was done in GW2. Not only the events are scaled to the number of players, which will make them playble in 6 months by new players just as well as by the massive influx of players at release, but they really durably change parts of the world (beside the newbie zone ones, which are intentionally simplified).
Respect, walk, what did you say? Respect, walk Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me? - PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
everything that I am trying to convey in my posts in this thread, can be summed up in this sentence.
Not everyone who enjoys the freedom that allows a griefer to grief, is a griefer himself (or herself).
You don't even have to defend a dog-eat-dog MMO on those grounds, imo. (edit: by that I mean, it's not necessary to move your defense of a predatory game environment to grounds of personal taste). If a game is designed so that its basic mechanics revolve around survival, then there is no such thing as 'griefing', just choices between individual and mutual survival. Griefing comes into existence when the game suggests to the player that it is about one thing, and it is possible for players to game the mechanics and create a sub-game where making that suggestion out to be a lie is the game for them. There's nothing wrong with 'griefing' on a billiards table. But it's generally not cool to bump a pinball machine while someone else is playing.
Extrodinarily well said. What I think a lot of people have trouble understanding is the vast difference between intended gameplay by the designers and the actual programmed game mechanics. These very often differ and by a large margin. It's whole reason exploiting exists. And the reason: translating intention into code (programming) is really really freaking hard. There is reason it's taken 5 years and an entire team of enigineers to get even this far.
And then the players come along and do something no one on the team ever imagined they would do. And then players take a philosophical approach of "if the game mechanics allow it, it must be ok" which couldn't be further from the truth.
This is also why I think it was such a fantastic idea for Anet to very specifically define thier game design intention with that manifesto. It not only provided a spectacular foundation for thier team but also for the community of players.
And for the record, I am quoting my exact paragraph instea dof simply the one sentence that keeps getting quoted. Because the "for me" that immediately proceeded that statement is kind of important to my point.
"The fear is a massive part of that freedom for me. Without fear, it's pointless. I'm talking about me feeling the fear, no causing it."
And good riddance to the mentallity that MMOGs are necessarily about producing and feeling fear (without it, it's pointless", shared, I'm sure, by most developers over the past 15-20 years) because, IMO, it has been a prison MMOG design has only recently started escaping from.
I didnt need GW2 to come out to help people around me......if i wanted to help i did....no matter the game......i helped people in UO, AC2, WOW, EQ2 and plenty more.
IF people realy need the mecanics of the game to actually ( almost) "force" you into helping people in your realm then that says alot about you as a person imho
My 2 copperz.
I think most of us have helped people ingame. Maybe not every day, but a good amount of times.
The game mechanics for most newer games, though, make it a disadvantage to help others in some cases, though. That's really the problem.
The games you mention (UO, AC2, WOW, EQ2) all required people to play together for a while. Even though WoW was soloable, when it first launched you had PvP to worry about, and you had to find groups to dungeon w/ etc. Same w/ UO (though in a different way). Trying to be a lone wolf (unless you were a rogue) in many cases got you killed, or made it harder to get through the content.
But look at WoW now. Dungeon finder, gearscore, personal ranks.. there's no incentive to help others, and in many cases others are there trying to take the very things you need. While not everyone will play it this way, it doesn't change the mechanics.
Take a look at the Milgram experiment sometime. It pretty clearly shows how good people can be driven to do some pretty terrible things, when you start to put up barriers and force them into acting a certain way. It's got nothing to do with whether or not your a good person. Whether we choose to accept it or not, people have been demonstrated to be very susceptible to conditioning. For better or worse.
I didnt need GW2 to come out to help people around me......if i wanted to help i did....no matter the game......i helped people in UO, AC2, WOW, EQ2 and plenty more.
IF people realy need the mecanics of the game to actually ( almost) "force" you into helping people in your realm then that says alot about you as a person imho
My 2 copperz.
The mechanics aren't forcing you to help anyone, it's just unlike previous MMOs they aren't PENALIZING you for doing so.
Ressing someone in another game for example took time and mana. For example in EQ some the things you had to do to "help" people were quite expensive too or time consuming too, such as summoning a corpse with a necro spell (consumed a very expensive regeant), helping to retrieve corpses of a group that wiped deep in a dungeon (including possibly a raid dungeon), summoning people who were stuck as a mage or succoring them out as a wizard/druid (consumed a regeant), teleporting others (again, consumed a regeant). Not to mention the numerous activites you could do that rewarded you for the opposite of cooperative play (controlling progression based bosses even when your guild was way past needing them), ninja looting, kill stealing EXP, etc. A number of mechanics were in the game to grief players too: dropping modulating rods in newbie zones, training newbie zones, summoning players in your group to areas they couldn't get out of normally, etc.
As far as I know no other game to date has really REWARDED cooperative play as GW2 has. The key word here is rewarded. You aren't forced to do anything.
Extrodinarily well said. What I think a lot of people have trouble understanding is the vast difference between intended gameplay by the designers and the actual programmed game mechanics. These very often differ and by a large margin. It's whole reason exploiting exists. And the reason: translating intention into code (programming) is really really freaking hard. There is reason it's taken 5 years and an entire team of enigineers to get even this far.
And then the players come along and do something no one on the team ever imagined they would do. And then players take a philosophical approach of "if the game mechanics allow it, it must be ok" which couldn't be further from the truth.
This is also why I think it was such a fantastic idea for Anet to very specifically define thier game design intention with that manifesto. It not only provided a spectacular foundation for thier team but also for the community of players.
I very much disagree.
You are right on a few points, but it all comes down to base human psychology. Before I get into that, I also want to point out that these games take so long to program because they are extremely complex, not because of programming intent. It is difficult to take a creative idea and make it a tangible thing, though, but it's not because of intent. It's because artists & programmers typically operate on a completely different set of rules. Programmers basically have to figure out how to take that creative ruleset and fit it into technical language / limitations.
As for intent, & exploiting game mechanics, games are a system. Especially when it comes to MMOs. It's basic human nature to try an advantage a system, in order to achieve the best outcome. I.e. the path of least resistance. I wish I could remember the name, but an economist did an experiment on his 6 yr old daughter. He started out basically bribing her with M&Ms to try and get her to do chores, or various other tasks. She would happily go along w/ it, being as she really liked M&Ms. However, over time, she began to find out more efficient ways to get M&Ms, started bargaining, and it became harder & harder to make her do the same amount of chores within the current system. MMOs are no different.
Yes, some people grief just to be dicks. However, much of the time it's people finding a loophole in the system, and realize it's the best way to achieve what they want. Either it's camping the best mobs in the game to gain control of the best loot, or capitalizing on the endgame dungeons, forcing people to work w/ your guild, PKing entire areas for control over the best resources, etc. It falls on the game designers to try and make their games in such a way where this is either minimized or impossible.
And I'd agree on your last point. It was a great idea for Anet to release their design manifesto. Not only did it make it abundantly clear what they were trying to accomplish, but it also gave them a really solid reason NOT to include certain features that would harm their overall goal. There's been quite a few games that have implemented features over the years, because players asked for them. However, I think some of us know that most MMO gamers would make more terrible designers. They don't think about how it would effect the game as a whole, it's more about 'this sounds like an awesome feature, why don't they do this!?'.
Wau! So many nice emotions and holding hands together, happy jumping on the fields and kissing enemies. No more bad ninja boys, it is real dream and hideout for people who want to make some cyber friends. Well -BORIIINGGGG! In my life i have many friends and i don't want you to be my game pal, that is the reason why i play eve online, so i can cheat, kill, exct..... But it is nice to see that most of you have found heaven and peace in this game. To OP - THIS IS GAME and if i kill or cheat anyone it is because of fun, don't take any game to serious. You know at the end you do kill in this game!! So stop with flower power crap
Comments
this post is win
There are times when one must ask themselves is it my passion that truly frightens you? Or your own?
You have apparently missed the essence of my post, that for the past 15-20 years "the fear" is all we have had to choose from. You are the one saying that "without fear, it's pointless" as if MMOGing is pointless without artificially induced fear and distrust between players, which is no doubt the same kind of perspective that has been driving the development of these games ever since they first came out. I would have no complaint, nor any negative commentary to issue about MMOG developers had they offered us something other than this exclusionary, elitist, griefing, ninjaing, kill-stealing. play-like-it's-your-professional-obsession tripe for the past couple of decades through scores and scores of titles.
Yeah, you bet. I hold the developers accountable for their share in perpetuating this.
All this time,it's been your way or the highway - their way or the highway, fear and distrust and exclusivity and only-pros-need-apply or the highway, casual players are invited to be our scrubs and peasantry - or the highway.
Now that there's a game that actually changes this, actually puts something together that fosters an entirely different dynamic and perspective not based on fear and distrust, and I tell you and your fear-addicted ilk "good riddance" because I finally have ONE MMOG I can relax and have fun in that isn't at anyone else's expense, nor their's at mine, and I'm the one saying it's "my way or the highway"?
It's not "my way" or the highway, it's GW2 or "your choice of about 1000 other MMOGs" that share your "fear and distrust" perspective of why one should play an MMOG "or it's pointless".
The assumption that somehow GW2 created huge groups of people doing stuff is pure idiocy or a SEVERELYYYYY narrow minded view of mmorpg's. Sorry I have to be the one to give the reality check here.
Was there a auto group feature? Could you press a button and be in a raid group??
I don't know which game was the first to encourage ninja looting, but that was probably just carelessness on the part of the game developers. The next several dozen were probably mostly just copying what previous games had done.
But Guild Wars 2 is hardly the first game to stop ninja looting. For starters, there is Guild Wars 1.
It's the same story with kill stealing. It probably started with careless game design and continued with copycat developers, but Guild Wars 2 isn't the first game to stop it. For example, in Champions Online, if two players aren't grouped and both participate in killing a mob, both get quest credit for it.
Well stated OP. Your exactly right. IMO its this simple fact alone that makes GW2 a next Gen MMO.
In fact I really think we need to have a new acronym for the type of gameplay presented by GW2. They have already renamed thier RvR to WvW. I really think thier PvE should be called WvE. As it is one of the first games that really does make it a "All of Us" vs "The Enviroment" complementing or supporting the "Our Server" vs "Thier Server" PvP aspects.
Well I sincerely hope that you get many more games like GW2 that cater to your playstyle, that's something I have have wished for since day 1. Both styles of games for both style of players
I wouldn't dream of wishing GW2 to change their game to suit me, or any other game for that matter. I simply bypass the ones that have been heavily restrictive imo and I play the ones that create an atmosphere that I enjoy, where I have to very careful who I trust and they have to be very careful who they screw.
To you though, I dont think "good riddance" from my types of games, I simply wish you the best in your game.
^ Thank you! Much better said than I did
You didn't need to. Aside from having your own private chat and being able to see people's health bars through another means there was no benefit to grouping up. Aside from that everything you could do inside a group you could do out, from buffing other people, sharing (poor wood for it since you get FULL credit no matter how many hit it, unlike in other MMOs) EXP, using cross profession combos, healing, and partaking in events. You could also see nearby corpses to revive whether they are in your group or not on your map and other nearby players would be visible on your map as green dots also.
You could request to join others groups if you absolutely needed to group up.
Which is pretty much what I was also saying, in a certainly more confusing way
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
No but there is a button for awesome fun when you press the login button! Geez you guys all just pick each other apart. Point out what you like about your game and not what is bad about the other.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
And for the record, I am quoting my exact paragraph instea dof simply the one sentence that keeps getting quoted. Because the "for me" that immediately proceeded that statement is kind of important to my point.
"The fear is a massive part of that freedom for me. Without fear, it's pointless. I'm talking about me feeling the fear, no causing it."
Well then my apologies for my misunderstanding
I am easily confused in my old age! 
HAH!
A good jest my friend.
Apparently people have forgotten that a GAME is about Competition.
I got nothing against GW2, looks to be a good game, but damn more than half the GW2 fanboys on these forums have been mindwashed into believing GW2 is the father of their babies...what the hell is wrong with some people??
FYI, anyone can be a good person in an online game. I used to play Lotro and people were very helpful if they wanted to be and could be assholes if they chose to. GW2 dint "invent" happy gaming. So I say this from experience in an MMO themepark and not some bullshit analogy. All GW2 is doing is removing one aspect of MMO gaming that people have gotten used to and expect in a competitive hobby that is online gaming.
In Lotro I too gave out free stuff to newbies in starter areas, ran lower level dungeons for newbie groups on my capped toon, threw nearly Everyone who passed me by a free buff (since I had a buff character) and was happy to do it. I dint need someone to force me to do this, GW2 might be player friendly but it is in essence Forcing players to be friendly whether they like it or not. But I wouldnt buff a player who I personally disliked (ie purposefully spoke BS on world chat/glff, tried hard to grief other players any way possible or was in general an asshat). Not saying that I wouldnt be able to Not throw such people a buff in GW2 but to have some asshole constantly talk smack about me while hitting my mobs and getting rewards is something that puts me off about GW2.
Its the Players who build a community in a MMO, NOT the developers. How can you ascertain a genuinely helpful player from a leecher who wants to kill Your mobs for whatever reason? As a player I would like to know who I am playing with rather than be thrown into a foam padded kindergarten rec room and forced to play nice with potentially annoying people.
The world isnt only filled with rosy coloured goodies as some fanatics might think, GW2 wont be any different. There will also be the asshats in GW2. Same reason why malicious, sadistic, anti-social misfits have been programming MMOGs according to your POV is the reason why people play MMOs to PK other players.
But after all this goody 2 shoe hand holding they Actually make you KILL players from another server?! Man that must have been such a blue balled buzz kill to you OP, goddamned snot nosed pansy princess of a man-brat.
Dont take offence, I am just kidding. But what if someone was really mouthing you off like this in game while stalking you around the map and was attacking your mobs and you were helpless to stop him from profiting off it? Reading this post I Hope something new is Revealed to you OP
Oh and GW2 is a really good game, just in case some fool wants to mindlessly tag me a "Hater" since I said something that was less than +10 'awesomesauce' about GW2.
I didnt need GW2 to come out to help people around me......if i wanted to help i did....no matter the game......i helped people in UO, AC2, WOW, EQ2 and plenty more.
IF people realy need the mecanics of the game to actually ( almost) "force" you into helping people in your realm then that says alot about you as a person imho
My 2 copperz.
Don't tell me...
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
It is nice that GW2 tries to take some of the good points from FF11/14 and use them to help form a better community i always liked it in the FF games and hope GW2 will be able to build a good helpfull community by taking this parts from the FF games
You didnt play rift DE? or Warhammer online PQs? right?, guess not. People really believe that gw2 is new and revolutionary, wake up guys, it getting really annoying tbh.
I've always prefered to compete against the enemy, and not against my own side. And that's the kind of competition promoted in GW2.
Neither Rift supposed "dynamic" events which are only mob spawn points, nor Warhammer's public quests which were badly designed and didn't scale to the number of participant, come even remotely close to what was done in GW2. Not only the events are scaled to the number of players, which will make them playble in 6 months by new players just as well as by the massive influx of players at release, but they really durably change parts of the world (beside the newbie zone ones, which are intentionally simplified).
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
Extrodinarily well said. What I think a lot of people have trouble understanding is the vast difference between intended gameplay by the designers and the actual programmed game mechanics. These very often differ and by a large margin. It's whole reason exploiting exists. And the reason: translating intention into code (programming) is really really freaking hard. There is reason it's taken 5 years and an entire team of enigineers to get even this far.
And then the players come along and do something no one on the team ever imagined they would do. And then players take a philosophical approach of "if the game mechanics allow it, it must be ok" which couldn't be further from the truth.
This is also why I think it was such a fantastic idea for Anet to very specifically define thier game design intention with that manifesto. It not only provided a spectacular foundation for thier team but also for the community of players.
And good riddance to the mentallity that MMOGs are necessarily about producing and feeling fear (without it, it's pointless", shared, I'm sure, by most developers over the past 15-20 years) because, IMO, it has been a prison MMOG design has only recently started escaping from.
I think most of us have helped people ingame. Maybe not every day, but a good amount of times.
The game mechanics for most newer games, though, make it a disadvantage to help others in some cases, though. That's really the problem.
The games you mention (UO, AC2, WOW, EQ2) all required people to play together for a while. Even though WoW was soloable, when it first launched you had PvP to worry about, and you had to find groups to dungeon w/ etc. Same w/ UO (though in a different way). Trying to be a lone wolf (unless you were a rogue) in many cases got you killed, or made it harder to get through the content.
But look at WoW now. Dungeon finder, gearscore, personal ranks.. there's no incentive to help others, and in many cases others are there trying to take the very things you need. While not everyone will play it this way, it doesn't change the mechanics.
Take a look at the Milgram experiment sometime. It pretty clearly shows how good people can be driven to do some pretty terrible things, when you start to put up barriers and force them into acting a certain way. It's got nothing to do with whether or not your a good person. Whether we choose to accept it or not, people have been demonstrated to be very susceptible to conditioning. For better or worse.
The mechanics aren't forcing you to help anyone, it's just unlike previous MMOs they aren't PENALIZING you for doing so.
Ressing someone in another game for example took time and mana. For example in EQ some the things you had to do to "help" people were quite expensive too or time consuming too, such as summoning a corpse with a necro spell (consumed a very expensive regeant), helping to retrieve corpses of a group that wiped deep in a dungeon (including possibly a raid dungeon), summoning people who were stuck as a mage or succoring them out as a wizard/druid (consumed a regeant), teleporting others (again, consumed a regeant). Not to mention the numerous activites you could do that rewarded you for the opposite of cooperative play (controlling progression based bosses even when your guild was way past needing them), ninja looting, kill stealing EXP, etc. A number of mechanics were in the game to grief players too: dropping modulating rods in newbie zones, training newbie zones, summoning players in your group to areas they couldn't get out of normally, etc.
As far as I know no other game to date has really REWARDED cooperative play as GW2 has. The key word here is rewarded. You aren't forced to do anything.
Haha, yeah nice try playing friendly, but I know how this works. As soon as I turn my back it's GANK and there goes all my stuff. ;-)
Charr: Outta my way.
Human: What's your problem?
Charr: Your thin skin.
I very much disagree.
You are right on a few points, but it all comes down to base human psychology. Before I get into that, I also want to point out that these games take so long to program because they are extremely complex, not because of programming intent. It is difficult to take a creative idea and make it a tangible thing, though, but it's not because of intent. It's because artists & programmers typically operate on a completely different set of rules. Programmers basically have to figure out how to take that creative ruleset and fit it into technical language / limitations.
As for intent, & exploiting game mechanics, games are a system. Especially when it comes to MMOs. It's basic human nature to try an advantage a system, in order to achieve the best outcome. I.e. the path of least resistance. I wish I could remember the name, but an economist did an experiment on his 6 yr old daughter. He started out basically bribing her with M&Ms to try and get her to do chores, or various other tasks. She would happily go along w/ it, being as she really liked M&Ms. However, over time, she began to find out more efficient ways to get M&Ms, started bargaining, and it became harder & harder to make her do the same amount of chores within the current system. MMOs are no different.
Yes, some people grief just to be dicks. However, much of the time it's people finding a loophole in the system, and realize it's the best way to achieve what they want. Either it's camping the best mobs in the game to gain control of the best loot, or capitalizing on the endgame dungeons, forcing people to work w/ your guild, PKing entire areas for control over the best resources, etc. It falls on the game designers to try and make their games in such a way where this is either minimized or impossible.
And I'd agree on your last point. It was a great idea for Anet to release their design manifesto. Not only did it make it abundantly clear what they were trying to accomplish, but it also gave them a really solid reason NOT to include certain features that would harm their overall goal. There's been quite a few games that have implemented features over the years, because players asked for them. However, I think some of us know that most MMO gamers would make more terrible designers. They don't think about how it would effect the game as a whole, it's more about 'this sounds like an awesome feature, why don't they do this!?'.
Wau! So many nice emotions and holding hands together, happy jumping on the fields and kissing enemies. No more bad ninja boys, it is real dream and hideout for people who want to make some cyber friends. Well -BORIIINGGGG! In my life i have many friends and i don't want you to be my game pal, that is the reason why i play eve online, so i can cheat, kill, exct..... But it is nice to see that most of you have found heaven and peace in this game. To OP - THIS IS GAME and if i kill or cheat anyone it is because of fun, don't take any game to serious. You know at the end you do kill in this game!! So stop with flower power crap