Yeah, but that's you. And as you're next quote shows, you don't even believe that an MMO needs to last more than a few weeks.
Someone like you talking about MMO's seems very out of place compared to most of us. You have a totally different, hardcore gamer perspective.
You think nariu is the only gamer who isn't interested in 10+ minutes of non-gameplay?
Gamers want gameplay. That's all they want. In most games, and certainly the vast majority of MMORPG travel, travel is non-gameplay. The exact opposite of what gamers want.
The fastest way to kill your game in the first 2 weeks is to have it focus on excessive amounts of non-gameplay travel.
Interesting decisions make or break games, and travel lacks interesting decisions.
Travel by itself is pretty pointless, like me going to work on my daily commute, it is pointless and has no fun involved, but when I go hiking for instance and I decide I want to go up some peak and it requires a 2 or 3h hike, it is not boring like my daily commute I can certainly enjoy the journey there, because it is unknown, there are awesome views I have never seen before, etc...
What I am saying, is, that travelling is made non-gameplay, its not like you can't make travelling part of the experience, its just that in recent years travelling has become a time sink and or just a means to go from A to C there is nothing in between B is just moving to the nearest teleporter or wait around while your griphin flies for 4min before you get to your destination or just putting your mount on auto run while you get to C.
Travelling can def be integrated into the gameplay to provide a more meaningful experience, I can come up with a few ideas right here that would make it fun for ME to travel, I am sure a team of paid designers can come up with hundreds of fun ideas that would appeal to a wider audience with the added benefit of being able to actually test things with hundreds if not thousands of people. So yeah I agree, with you, travel is non-gameplay because it has become a standard of being just a boring time sink of giving you a mild feeling that the world is big rather than actually being part of gameplay.
Ill give you a quick example of a concept which would make travel awesome for me, think Infinity Quest for Earth, where they have said that galaxies and planets will be seeded as players travel further ( much like Minecraft's world is generated as you explore ), preparing a massive expedition with friends to explore different planets and unknown star systems for me would be gratifying in itself let alone getting there and having other activities that I may or not have seen before. I think there are plenty interesting decisions if you factor in all the dangers that travelling through space pose, the constant decision making in the middle of the unknown, this same concept can be applied anywhere this is just one concept out of a design page of Infinity.
That happens only ONCE, the first time you get there. So that is not an excuse not to have fast travel. Do it the WOW way. First time, you have to hike there. Second time, you have the option of fast travel.
And travel is NOT the only dead time. How about waiting for groups. Waiting is waiting, no matter how you cut & dice it. LFD solves that problem to some extent.
Yes and I agree and design decisions work towards it, if you read the rest of my post on procedural generated content, it would work to continue exploring, but I agree once something has been estabilished you cannot have the back and forth, the go do a quest, walk to town and sell, go and make a quest, rinse and repeat is boring, and that should be addressed, there are ways of addressing this problem, by adding ways of quick travel as people discover things, by adding mechanics that encourage you to stay where you are instead of mindlessly going back to town every 30min, which is something fairly annoying on pretty much every MMORPG released in the last 10 years, this cycle of go back to town your bags are full.
I wish going back to town was more like an event rather than a chore, as I said there are ways of making the "have to travel" experience much better by tweaking the design, travel itself isnt the problem is how travel is integrated into an already broken design that doesnt need travelling.
Everytime I find a town near a dungeon that is essentially just placeholder for a couple of vendors and a couple of quest givers I die a little bit inside.
It's funny how, over the many years now, it's always the same negative assumptions. Boring travel in a non changing game world, anything else can't be done, etc., etc.
You hit on something here that I've always wanted to see. Campsites. Sort of like SWG had, player made, player enhanced, but with the added option of player run/owned caravans to haul stuff back to town and to warehouses that are owned by players and rent storage space (optionally owned by towns). Just adds to game play. Of course, it probably would be deemed "can't be done" or "won't work".
Those phrases, I've grown to hate them in life. Losers say these things, winners find a way to make things work. And this industry most certainly is dominated by losers. I don't want to hear about the Bean Counters and money restrictions. Not one of the money bags would say "yeah, make a loser with my money". Yet that's exactly what's going on. It's not the freakin' bean counters, it's the lead developers who oversell them on anything to get the job. Ethically challenged individuals hoping for lightning to strike, because they sure as hell don't have any talent.
It's funny how, over the many years now, it's always the same negative assumptions. Boring travel in a non changing game world, anything else can't be done, etc., etc.
Of course that's the assumption! For starters, that's all that exists on the market (except extremely rare exceptions.) And then nobody who asks for it explains how to make it deep and fun.
Until the players asking for it explain how it becomes an activity which is fun, deep, and chock-full of interesting decision-making, other people will continue to assume travel is boring and virtually devoid of gameplay.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It's funny how, over the many years now, it's always the same negative assumptions. Boring travel in a non changing game world, anything else can't be done, etc., etc.
What assumptions? I was there when games have boring travel. Don't want to see it return.
Yes and I agree and design decisions work towards it, if you read the rest of my post on procedural generated content, it would work to continue exploring, but I agree once something has been estabilished you cannot have the back and forth, the go do a quest, walk to town and sell, go and make a quest, rinse and repeat is boring, and that should be addressed, there are ways of addressing this problem, by adding ways of quick travel as people discover things, by adding mechanics that encourage you to stay where you are instead of mindlessly going back to town every 30min, which is something fairly annoying on pretty much every MMORPG released in the last 10 years, this cycle of go back to town your bags are full.
I wish going back to town was more like an event rather than a chore, as I said there are ways of making the "have to travel" experience much better by tweaking the design, travel itself isnt the problem is how travel is integrated into an already broken design that doesnt need travelling.
Everytime I find a town near a dungeon that is essentially just placeholder for a couple of vendors and a couple of quest givers I die a little bit inside.
To be fair, if there is a way to procedurally create new parts of world all the time, then obviously you solve the problem of boring repeated travel.
However, i don't believe it until i see it.
I have yet to see a procedurally created world to be interesting. Random generated stuff feels generic and boring. If the generated stuff is like genericlly randomly placed terrain .. then once again it is boring.
The ONLY reason why WOW travel is NOT boring, the FIRST TIME, is because of the different art style, different archecture style, different quests, NPCs and events. All are hand made by creative HUMANS.
If you encounter random generic towns that look similar with random building placement, it will be boring .. at least to me.
100% combat oriented online games. Cash shops come standard. Purely developer driven content. Esport is the name of the game for pvp. Socialization has become automatized.
If you were to tell me ten years ago that this is what MMORPGS would be like, I would have never even bothered to get involved.
MMO versions of old console games from a decade ago. Thats what we have right now. The irony is that console games today are actually more open and diverse than these so called mmorpgs.
Its a shame. I have faith in indie devs, as always. But the AAA mmo devs have really led the genre astray as of late. I wonder if it will ever get back on track.
It all adds up. You could roam for 2 hours in Eve for a single 1 minute fight. Thats far from casual, nor is it a very good ratio between looking for a fight and the actual fight.
You can also roam for 1 minute for a 5 minute long fight. If you are going to use extreme cases then yes, it is easy to come up with a ratio which is either very bad or very good. The fact of the matter is that it doesn't require hours each log in session to do anything.
There is no denying that features like LFG tools, lobby instances and the like make specific mechanics instantly accessible and thus appeal to a casual audience (not meant in a derogative way). But you can quite easily play sandbox games casually. To try and make it seem like you have to plod across the entire map to do anything everytime you log in is disingenuous to say the least.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
It's funny how, over the many years now, it's always the same negative assumptions. Boring travel in a non changing game world, anything else can't be done, etc., etc.
Of course that's the assumption! For starters, that's all that exists on the market (except extremely rare exceptions.) And then nobody who asks for it explains how to make it deep and fun.
Until the players asking for it explain how it becomes an activity which is fun, deep, and chock-full of interesting decision-making, other people will continue to assume travel is boring and virtually devoid of gameplay.
It depends on the game, but even the most ardent anti open world person should see what it can add.
Travelling through a game world offers both direct and indirect impact mechanics. If someone is actually moving through the game world they have the chance of dynamic encounters. The king of which being players interacting with one another. So for an open world conflict game, then clearly having to actually move through the game world is very important.
Indirectly travel has many, many impacts, it can impact upon the games entire economy and trade. It can impact upon conflict, territory and resource control. It can impact upon the placement of player structures. It can impact upon which areas become activity hotzones. It can impact upon player created meta roles. With no need to travel, there is no need for trade routes, no need for hunters/rangers/explorers, no pirates, no haulers, no bodyguards etc etc.
You can sit in you station and trade away/play the economy to your hearts content, never really travelling anywhere. And yet the fact others are travelling through the world is having a massive impact upon your gaming.
If you are simply making people walk everywhere in a game with a centralized AH, no trade routes, no open world pvp, no territory control and lots and lots of instanced raids. Then yes it would be pointless.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
100% combat oriented online games. Cash shops come standard. Purely developer driven content. Esport is the name of the game for pvp. Socialization has become automatized.
If you were to tell me ten years ago that this is what MMORPGS would be like, I would have never even bothered to get involved.
MMO versions of old console games from a decade ago. Thats what we have right now. The irony is that console games today are actually more open and diverse than these so called mmorpgs.
Its a shame. I have faith in indie devs, as always. But the AAA mmo devs have really led the genre astray as of late. I wonder if it will ever get back on track.
I heard people whine and say that the genre is dead since the early 00s, it wasn´t true then and it isn´t now.
But just like then the genre is about to change again, for the better or worse is still hard to say. For me last time was for the worst but others thinks different.
As for cashshops and F2P, EA and Activision have both stated that is the future of gaming, and that just ain´t MMOs but singleplayer games as well. D3 is just the start.
But that EA and Activision is trying to bleed us for more money is hardly something new.
The music of the last decade is dead, do you see people releasing 90's style albums and making into the top 10? That is what has happened with MMO's, it is not that the genre is dead but that these new MMO's should go by a new name. We don't call the music of Diddy Combs 'new romantic' do we? To call any release this last couple of years a MMORPG is a joke.
The new MMO's are still multiplayer and still online. They are not Massive and not RPG's. EzMMO's are what I call the new MMO's, but MMORPG's are dead.
It's funny how, over the many years now, it's always the same negative assumptions. Boring travel in a non changing game world, anything else can't be done, etc., etc.
Of course that's the assumption! For starters, that's all that exists on the market (except extremely rare exceptions.) And then nobody who asks for it explains how to make it deep and fun.
Until the players asking for it explain how it becomes an activity which is fun, deep, and chock-full of interesting decision-making, other people will continue to assume travel is boring and virtually devoid of gameplay.
Originally posted by nariusseldon
Originally posted by Amaranthar
It's funny how, over the many years now, it's always the same negative assumptions. Boring travel in a non changing game world, anything else can't be done, etc., etc.
What assumptions? I was there when games have boring travel. Don't want to see it return.
That assumption. That it can't or will never be done because you haven't seen it or been satisfied with it. But you two, you guys are such Themepark hacks around here that nothing short of all out Themepark gameyness will do for you. While so many are tired of what you argue for. Tired of the real boredom of rinse and repeat game play, stagnant expectation of more of the same.
And you guys have seen the many suggestions to make travel not boring. Randomness in various forms and systems. You ignore those suggestions at times like this, and post your negative tripe when confronted directly with them because they aren't perfectly orchestrated Themepark instanced uber exciting (at least for the first time) candy dispensers.
It depends on the game, but even the most ardent anti open world person should see what it can add.
Travelling through a game world offers both direct and indirect impact mechanics. If someone is actually moving through the game world they have the chance of dynamic encounters. The king of which being players interacting with one another. So for an open world conflict game, then clearly having to actually move through the game world is very important.
Indirectly travel has many, many impacts, it can impact upon the games entire economy and trade. It can impact upon conflict, territory and resource control. It can impact upon the placement of player structures. It can impact upon which areas become activity hotzones. It can impact upon player created meta roles. With no need to travel, there is no need for trade routes, no need for hunters/rangers/explorers, no pirates, no haulers, no bodyguards etc etc.
You can sit in you station and trade away/play the economy to your hearts content, never really travelling anywhere. And yet the fact others are travelling through the world is having a massive impact upon your gaming.
If you are simply making people walk everywhere in a game with a centralized AH, no trade routes, no open world pvp, no territory control and lots and lots of instanced raids. Then yes it would be pointless.
It's not about whether travel "can impact" that kinda stuff.
It's about whether travel consistently involves interesting decisions with at least the quantity and quality of other potential game activities.
Because I can play an RTS or Web Strategy game where travel times have the same strategic implications, but while that unit or army is traveling I'm still actively making other decisions. So instead of travel meaning non-gameplay (or a 99% chance of non-gameplay with a 1% chance of a player interaction, which is almost the same thing) travel doesn't shut off the gameplay flow.
No game system is so strongly rationalized that it requires the excessive downtime of non-gameplay that EVE provides. Certainly not the lopsided PVP battles, and definitely not simple tasks like moving resources from one area to another (unless, again, the game is more like an RTS where the movement of those resources might be critical but you're able to actively engage in other gameplay while your strategic decision executes.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
That assumption. That it can't or will never be done because you haven't seen it or been satisfied with it. But you two, you guys are such Themepark hacks around here that nothing short of all out Themepark gameyness will do for you. While so many are tired of what you argue for. Tired of the real boredom of rinse and repeat game play, stagnant expectation of more of the same.
And you guys have seen the many suggestions to make travel not boring. Randomness in various forms and systems. You ignore those suggestions at times like this, and post your negative tripe when confronted directly with them because they aren't perfectly orchestrated Themepark instanced uber exciting (at least for the first time) candy dispensers.
Did you even read the post you quoted? My post explicitly implied travel could be done in an interesting manner, but that the burden is on the people who want travel to prove that.
Here is how assumptions work:
We're talking about travel in MMORPGs.
Historically, almost no games' travel provided interesting gameplay. (And in MMORPGs, only Puzzle Pirates AFAIK)
Proponents of travel aren't describing how travel could provide interesting gameplay.
And so opponents of travel make a completely safe assumption, based on the overwhelming majority of historical evidence, that travel will be boring. (Although calling us opponents of travel isn't accurate. We're opponents of the existing type of travel.)
Notice how this pattern will continue until a proponent of travel describes a fun system of travel.
Imagine you're living in a pre-flight era. Would you expect to be taken seriously if you say "Man can fly" without also providing evidence? However, once you draw a picture of a potential airplane or cite evidence of a prior successful flight, then you're going to start turning around peoples' assumptions. There are people out there open to the idea of flight, but until you start creating evidence nobody's going to listen to the crazy person who claims we should fly everywhere.
So it's very simple: if you want to be taken seriously as a proponent of Travel in MMORPGs, describe travel which sounds fun, interesting, and chock-full of interesting decisions.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
And you guys have seen the many suggestions to make travel not boring. Randomness in various forms and systems. You ignore those suggestions at times like this, and post your negative tripe when confronted directly with them because they aren't perfectly orchestrated Themepark instanced uber exciting (at least for the first time) candy dispensers.
I did not ignore it. I just don't believe it. Ultimately, a game needs to be fun. And a lot of it .. is detailed implementation and polish. Ideas are not fun. A good implemented, polished idea is.
So if there is a case of fun travel, in a game .. show it. Otherwise, it is just empty talk.
It's not about whether travel "can impact" that kinda stuff.
It's about whether travel consistently involves interesting decisions with at least the quantity and quality of other potential game activities.
Because I can play an RTS or Web Strategy game where travel times have the same strategic implications, but while that unit or army is traveling I'm still actively making other decisions. So instead of travel meaning non-gameplay (or a 99% chance of non-gameplay with a 1% chance of a player interaction, which is almost the same thing) travel doesn't shut off the gameplay flow.
No game system is so strongly rationalized that it requires the excessive downtime of non-gameplay that EVE provides. Certainly not the lopsided PVP battles, and definitely not simple tasks like moving resources from one area to another (unless, again, the game is more like an RTS where the movement of those resources might be critical but you're able to actively engage in other gameplay while your strategic decision executes.)
Whether it can impact "that kinda (sic) stuff" is exactly what it is about, as has been demonstrated numerous times.
It can impact upon and drive the economy.
It can impact upon and drive pvp.
It can impact upon and drive player created roles.
It can impact upon and drive dynamic encounters.
Can the act of travelling directly drive interesting decisions? Yes. Exploration, threat avoidance, tracking, trade routes/planning.
Can the act of travelling indirectly drive interesting decisions? Yes, an incredible amount.
Is trying to quantify a "per hour interesting decision metric compared to other mechanics" not only stupid, but so utterly subjective as to be pointless? Yes.
Not sure as to the point of mentioning "lopsided" pvp.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Travelling through a game world offers both direct and indirect impact mechanics. If someone is actually moving through the game world they have the chance of dynamic encounters. The king of which being players interacting with one another. So for an open world conflict game, then clearly having to actually move through the game world is very important.
Indirectly travel has many, many impacts, it can impact upon the games entire economy and trade. It can impact upon conflict, territory and resource control. It can impact upon the placement of player structures. It can impact upon which areas become activity hotzones. It can impact upon player created meta roles. With no need to travel, there is no need for trade routes, no need for hunters/rangers/explorers, no pirates, no haulers, no bodyguards etc etc.
If "dynamic encounters" are the fun part of the game, there is no need to have travel around it at all. Just generate a new encounter whenever a player/group wants it. There is no reason to walk through 10 min of grassland before the bandit pop up. In fact, SP games do that well. You click on a part of the map to travel to .. and you got interrupted with an enounter in the middle of the road ... without any wait.
All the "indirect" impact also do not need people actually walk 10 min to achieve. You can always generate instant encounters, let people teleport to them, and reconfigure the whole econ/world state by the success & failure of the encounters.
All the things you said .. that is fun ... is not the travel part. The travel part is incidental. Even trade route can be done without actual travelling. Say you are in city A with a group. Click on city B to go there .. and have a chance that you will be interrupted, teleported to the right point in teh geography, and start the encounter.
Pirates, haulers, bodyguards can all be done without walking 10 min between anything happening.
If "dynamic encounters" are the fun part of the game, there is no need to have travel around it at all. Just generate a new encounter whenever a player/group wants it. There is no reason to walk through 10 min of grassland before the bandit pop up. In fact, SP games do that well. You click on a part of the map to travel to .. and you got interrupted with an enounter in the middle of the road ... without any wait.
All the "indirect" impact also do not need people actually walk 10 min to achieve. You can always generate instant encounters, let people teleport to them, and reconfigure the whole econ/world state by the success & failure of the encounters.
All the things you said .. that is fun ... is not the travel part. The travel part is incidental. Even trade route can be done without actual travelling. Say you are in city A with a group. Click on city B to go there .. and have a chance that you will be interrupted, teleported to the right point in teh geography, and start the encounter.
Pirates, haulers, bodyguards can all be done without walking 10 min between anything happening.
Generating a new encounter whenever anyone wants it is not dynamic, it is scripted. It also removes dynamic pvp encounters, the most important factor.
Trying to replicate territory/resource control and economic metrics through scripted pve seems completely and utterly pointless. Trying to script in player driven versions would be even worse.
Some people actually find exploring fun, actually find logistics fun, actually enjoy moving through a game world fun.
Player pirates, haulers and the like cannot be "scripted in" in a way which offers the dynamism an open world and the travel through it offers.
Travel is not "incidental" if it is generating gameplay mechanics either directly or indirectly.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
in some ways yes!massive?every corp have their version of massive .in gamers view quad digit pvp battle is massive,double digit or very low triple digit?hell no!true it depend on the game but if one is going in an mmo,he expect to see massive amount of player if he doesnt then the game is just a multiplayer !there is a market for everything.but what hurts the long term succcess of a lot of game is that fact they all desperatly want to name themselves mmo even tho the vast majority are mo(xyz)
Ya, the big wigs have already decided to bleed the public with dlc for consoles and dumbed down micro transaction Blizzard style gameplay/endgame. The decision and view is already spread to every suit in the buisness, theres no changing it. If you want the old experiences you have to play an indie game...it is what it is...Now the game industry gets to feel what the music industry has felt for decades, 1 good band among a sea of garbage if your lucky.
Shocking that anyone might even suggest gamers are hard to please. Not insular at all, nawp.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
It all adds up. You could roam for 2 hours in Eve for a single 1 minute fight. Thats far from casual, nor is it a very good ratio between looking for a fight and the actual fight.
You can also roam for 1 minute for a 5 minute long fight. If you are going to use extreme cases then yes, it is easy to come up with a ratio which is either very bad or very good. The fact of the matter is that it doesn't require hours each log in session to do anything.
There is no denying that features like LFG tools, lobby instances and the like make specific mechanics instantly accessible and thus appeal to a casual audience (not meant in a derogative way). But you can quite easily play sandbox games casually. To try and make it seem like you have to plod across the entire map to do anything everytime you log in is disingenuous to say the least.
For starters a 5 minute fight is extremely rare outside of blob warfare. I thought mine was quite conservative still. I have, on few occasions, had 4 hour roams with just less than 4 under 1 minute "fights" (ganks really). It goes to demonstrate that excessive travel time and open world PvP is not very casual friendly when compared to map travel and arenas. Its all relative.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Ya, the big wigs have already decided to bleed the public with dlc for consoles and dumbed down micro transaction Blizzard style gameplay/endgame. The decision and view is already spread to every suit in the buisness, theres no changing it. If you want the old experiences you have to play an indie game...it is what it is...Now the game industry gets to feel what the music industry has felt for decades, 1 good band among a sea of garbage if your lucky.
Shocking that anyone might even suggest gamers are hard to please. Not insular at all, nawp.
NOPE, not even a little. Or have you missed the last 50 years of corporatization?
For starters a 5 minute fight is extremely rare outside of blob warfare. I thought mine was quite conservative still. I have, on few occasions, had 4 hour roams with just less than 4 under 1 minute "fights" (ganks really). It goes to demonstrate that excessive travel time and open world PvP is not very casual friendly when compared to map travel and arenas. Its all relative.
Yes, I can readily conceed that. Whilst it is more than possible to play open world games casually and derive enjoyment from that. It is also clear that map travel/arenas and the like are certainly more casual friendly (again i'll reiterate that is not meant in a bad way) and instantly accessible in comparison.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Whether it can impact "that kinda (sic) stuff" is exactly what it is about, as has been demonstrated numerous times.
It can impact upon and drive the economy.
It can impact upon and drive pvp.
It can impact upon and drive player created roles.
It can impact upon and drive dynamic encounters.
Can the act of travelling directly drive interesting decisions? Yes. Exploration, threat avoidance, tracking, trade routes/planning.
Can the act of travelling indirectly drive interesting decisions? Yes, an incredible amount.
Is trying to quantify a "per hour interesting decision metric compared to other mechanics" not only stupid, but so utterly subjective as to be pointless? Yes.
Not sure as to the point of mentioning "lopsided" pvp.
What's been demonstrated is that games with excessive non-gameplay do poorly.
"Can impact" is a promise of fun. If someone promises you fun, but 99.9% of the time doesn't deliver, would you keep playing their game? That's what travel does: it can potentially be fun...but it nearly alwaysisn't.
Nobody is implying these beneficial things never happen. So you can stop trying to list ways travel might be fun. We're observing the reality of how travel is. And the overwhelming majority of the time, it isn't fun.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Comments
It's funny how, over the many years now, it's always the same negative assumptions. Boring travel in a non changing game world, anything else can't be done, etc., etc.
You hit on something here that I've always wanted to see. Campsites. Sort of like SWG had, player made, player enhanced, but with the added option of player run/owned caravans to haul stuff back to town and to warehouses that are owned by players and rent storage space (optionally owned by towns). Just adds to game play. Of course, it probably would be deemed "can't be done" or "won't work".
Those phrases, I've grown to hate them in life. Losers say these things, winners find a way to make things work. And this industry most certainly is dominated by losers. I don't want to hear about the Bean Counters and money restrictions. Not one of the money bags would say "yeah, make a loser with my money". Yet that's exactly what's going on. It's not the freakin' bean counters, it's the lead developers who oversell them on anything to get the job. Ethically challenged individuals hoping for lightning to strike, because they sure as hell don't have any talent.
Once upon a time....
Of course that's the assumption! For starters, that's all that exists on the market (except extremely rare exceptions.) And then nobody who asks for it explains how to make it deep and fun.
Until the players asking for it explain how it becomes an activity which is fun, deep, and chock-full of interesting decision-making, other people will continue to assume travel is boring and virtually devoid of gameplay.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
What assumptions? I was there when games have boring travel. Don't want to see it return.
To be fair, if there is a way to procedurally create new parts of world all the time, then obviously you solve the problem of boring repeated travel.
However, i don't believe it until i see it.
I have yet to see a procedurally created world to be interesting. Random generated stuff feels generic and boring. If the generated stuff is like genericlly randomly placed terrain .. then once again it is boring.
The ONLY reason why WOW travel is NOT boring, the FIRST TIME, is because of the different art style, different archecture style, different quests, NPCs and events. All are hand made by creative HUMANS.
If you encounter random generic towns that look similar with random building placement, it will be boring .. at least to me.
100% agree.
You can also roam for 1 minute for a 5 minute long fight. If you are going to use extreme cases then yes, it is easy to come up with a ratio which is either very bad or very good. The fact of the matter is that it doesn't require hours each log in session to do anything.
There is no denying that features like LFG tools, lobby instances and the like make specific mechanics instantly accessible and thus appeal to a casual audience (not meant in a derogative way). But you can quite easily play sandbox games casually. To try and make it seem like you have to plod across the entire map to do anything everytime you log in is disingenuous to say the least.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
It depends on the game, but even the most ardent anti open world person should see what it can add.
Travelling through a game world offers both direct and indirect impact mechanics. If someone is actually moving through the game world they have the chance of dynamic encounters. The king of which being players interacting with one another. So for an open world conflict game, then clearly having to actually move through the game world is very important.
Indirectly travel has many, many impacts, it can impact upon the games entire economy and trade. It can impact upon conflict, territory and resource control. It can impact upon the placement of player structures. It can impact upon which areas become activity hotzones. It can impact upon player created meta roles. With no need to travel, there is no need for trade routes, no need for hunters/rangers/explorers, no pirates, no haulers, no bodyguards etc etc.
You can sit in you station and trade away/play the economy to your hearts content, never really travelling anywhere. And yet the fact others are travelling through the world is having a massive impact upon your gaming.
If you are simply making people walk everywhere in a game with a centralized AH, no trade routes, no open world pvp, no territory control and lots and lots of instanced raids. Then yes it would be pointless.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
I heard people whine and say that the genre is dead since the early 00s, it wasn´t true then and it isn´t now.
But just like then the genre is about to change again, for the better or worse is still hard to say. For me last time was for the worst but others thinks different.
As for cashshops and F2P, EA and Activision have both stated that is the future of gaming, and that just ain´t MMOs but singleplayer games as well. D3 is just the start.
But that EA and Activision is trying to bleed us for more money is hardly something new.
If I don't like the music that are popular right now does that mean the music genre is 'dead'?
Of course not! How does that make ANY sense what so ever?
So why are games / MMOs treated like that?
I don't get it.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
The music of the last decade is dead, do you see people releasing 90's style albums and making into the top 10? That is what has happened with MMO's, it is not that the genre is dead but that these new MMO's should go by a new name. We don't call the music of Diddy Combs 'new romantic' do we? To call any release this last couple of years a MMORPG is a joke.
The new MMO's are still multiplayer and still online. They are not Massive and not RPG's. EzMMO's are what I call the new MMO's, but MMORPG's are dead.
That assumption. That it can't or will never be done because you haven't seen it or been satisfied with it. But you two, you guys are such Themepark hacks around here that nothing short of all out Themepark gameyness will do for you. While so many are tired of what you argue for. Tired of the real boredom of rinse and repeat game play, stagnant expectation of more of the same.
And you guys have seen the many suggestions to make travel not boring. Randomness in various forms and systems. You ignore those suggestions at times like this, and post your negative tripe when confronted directly with them because they aren't perfectly orchestrated Themepark instanced uber exciting (at least for the first time) candy dispensers.
Once upon a time....
It's not about whether travel "can impact" that kinda stuff.
It's about whether travel consistently involves interesting decisions with at least the quantity and quality of other potential game activities.
Because I can play an RTS or Web Strategy game where travel times have the same strategic implications, but while that unit or army is traveling I'm still actively making other decisions. So instead of travel meaning non-gameplay (or a 99% chance of non-gameplay with a 1% chance of a player interaction, which is almost the same thing) travel doesn't shut off the gameplay flow.
No game system is so strongly rationalized that it requires the excessive downtime of non-gameplay that EVE provides. Certainly not the lopsided PVP battles, and definitely not simple tasks like moving resources from one area to another (unless, again, the game is more like an RTS where the movement of those resources might be critical but you're able to actively engage in other gameplay while your strategic decision executes.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Did you even read the post you quoted? My post explicitly implied travel could be done in an interesting manner, but that the burden is on the people who want travel to prove that.
Here is how assumptions work:
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I did not ignore it. I just don't believe it. Ultimately, a game needs to be fun. And a lot of it .. is detailed implementation and polish. Ideas are not fun. A good implemented, polished idea is.
So if there is a case of fun travel, in a game .. show it. Otherwise, it is just empty talk.
Whether it can impact "that kinda (sic) stuff" is exactly what it is about, as has been demonstrated numerous times.
It can impact upon and drive the economy.
It can impact upon and drive pvp.
It can impact upon and drive player created roles.
It can impact upon and drive dynamic encounters.
Can the act of travelling directly drive interesting decisions? Yes. Exploration, threat avoidance, tracking, trade routes/planning.
Can the act of travelling indirectly drive interesting decisions? Yes, an incredible amount.
Is trying to quantify a "per hour interesting decision metric compared to other mechanics" not only stupid, but so utterly subjective as to be pointless? Yes.
Not sure as to the point of mentioning "lopsided" pvp.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
If "dynamic encounters" are the fun part of the game, there is no need to have travel around it at all. Just generate a new encounter whenever a player/group wants it. There is no reason to walk through 10 min of grassland before the bandit pop up. In fact, SP games do that well. You click on a part of the map to travel to .. and you got interrupted with an enounter in the middle of the road ... without any wait.
All the "indirect" impact also do not need people actually walk 10 min to achieve. You can always generate instant encounters, let people teleport to them, and reconfigure the whole econ/world state by the success & failure of the encounters.
All the things you said .. that is fun ... is not the travel part. The travel part is incidental. Even trade route can be done without actual travelling. Say you are in city A with a group. Click on city B to go there .. and have a chance that you will be interrupted, teleported to the right point in teh geography, and start the encounter.
Pirates, haulers, bodyguards can all be done without walking 10 min between anything happening.
Generating a new encounter whenever anyone wants it is not dynamic, it is scripted. It also removes dynamic pvp encounters, the most important factor.
Trying to replicate territory/resource control and economic metrics through scripted pve seems completely and utterly pointless. Trying to script in player driven versions would be even worse.
Some people actually find exploring fun, actually find logistics fun, actually enjoy moving through a game world fun.
Player pirates, haulers and the like cannot be "scripted in" in a way which offers the dynamism an open world and the travel through it offers.
Travel is not "incidental" if it is generating gameplay mechanics either directly or indirectly.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
in some ways yes!massive?every corp have their version of massive .in gamers view quad digit pvp battle is massive,double digit or very low triple digit?hell no!true it depend on the game but if one is going in an mmo,he expect to see massive amount of player if he doesnt then the game is just a multiplayer !there is a market for everything.but what hurts the long term succcess of a lot of game is that fact they all desperatly want to name themselves mmo even tho the vast majority are mo(xyz)
Shocking that anyone might even suggest gamers are hard to please. Not insular at all, nawp.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
For starters a 5 minute fight is extremely rare outside of blob warfare. I thought mine was quite conservative still. I have, on few occasions, had 4 hour roams with just less than 4 under 1 minute "fights" (ganks really). It goes to demonstrate that excessive travel time and open world PvP is not very casual friendly when compared to map travel and arenas. Its all relative.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
The genre isn't dead it is just in a state of disrepair.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
NOPE, not even a little. Or have you missed the last 50 years of corporatization?
Yes, I can readily conceed that. Whilst it is more than possible to play open world games casually and derive enjoyment from that. It is also clear that map travel/arenas and the like are certainly more casual friendly (again i'll reiterate that is not meant in a bad way) and instantly accessible in comparison.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
What's been demonstrated is that games with excessive non-gameplay do poorly.
"Can impact" is a promise of fun. If someone promises you fun, but 99.9% of the time doesn't deliver, would you keep playing their game? That's what travel does: it can potentially be fun...but it nearly always isn't.
Nobody is implying these beneficial things never happen. So you can stop trying to list ways travel might be fun. We're observing the reality of how travel is. And the overwhelming majority of the time, it isn't fun.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver