Neither of those situations matters. What matters is travel itself, directly, being fun. If it's not fun, why's it taking more time than the bare minimum required by gameplay? And if the bare minimum is a lot of time spent in an un-fun system, that's going to drag the entire game down, and whatever game systems require players to spend a ton of time in non-gameplay are likely not going to be worth it overall.
Implying that players are going to accept travel as "fun in and of itself" is a rather....unique stance to take.
Going for a walk is plenty efficient. I walk to work every day. But if the direct benefit of that travel -- excercise -- didn't exist, I'd stop walking.
No, indirectly derived factors are actually pretty fucking important as it happens, especially when the are intrinsically linked.
You seem to be ignoring the fact that some can find the act of travelling through a game world "fun". Let's forget about that though as it doesn't fit in with your idea of "fun" right? Btw i'm not sure how you go from me pointing out some players can find travel through a game world fun, to me implying that "players" are going to "accept" travel as fun. I tend to leave posting an opinion as though it stands for the entire playerbase to other people...
The last part says it all really. You know some people actually go for a walk because they enjoy a stroll, without considering the fact that is it getting them fitter? No set route, no set time, no set goal. Just an enjoyable walk. I know, crazy right, it's like they haven't bought into the whole "must maximize kill ratio per hourz!!" crowd.
Not all games suit slow travel mechanics. This is a fact.
Some games suit a mix. This is a fact.
Instancing and fast travel can kill the direct and indirect consequences, interlinked mechanics if applied to open world games. This is a fact.
Some people find travel in and of itself fun, some don't. This is subjective.
Some people find the indirect consequences of travel fun, some don't. This is subjective.
Whether you think previous games have done it well/been fun is subjective.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
The last part says it all really. You know some people actually go for a walk because they enjoy a stroll, without considering the fact that is it getting them fitter? No set route, no set time, no set goal. Just an enjoyable walk. I know, crazy right, it's like they haven't bought into the whole "must maximize kill ratio per hourz!!" crowd.
You know, I once did more than a year without leveling a single character--was just having that much fun roleplaying.
That's clearly a pretty extreme example. But people that level faster than me clearly aren't all MMOLocusts--but but, I ran into "Locust" play style in a game where the level cap was (on average) ten years away.
Neither one had much of anything to do with transit times. Neither one "creates" a specific type of player.
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.
The last part says it all really. You know some people actually go for a walk because they enjoy a stroll, without considering the fact that is it getting them fitter? No set route, no set time, no set goal. Just an enjoyable walk. I know, crazy right, it's like they haven't bought into the whole "must maximize kill ratio per hourz!!" crowd.
You know, I once did more than a year without leveling a single character--was just having that much fun roleplaying.
That's clearly a pretty extreme example. But people that level faster than me clearly aren't all MMOLocusts--but but, I ran into "Locust" play style in a game where the level cap was (on average) ten years away.
Neither one had much of anything to do with transit times. Neither one "creates" a specific type of player.
I didn't try to correlate one type of game with generating a specific type of player. You get all types in all games. I try not to be black and white unless talking about specfic mechanics and what they can actually offer, whether they appeal to certain types or people find them fun is never completely clear.
I have always tended to be 99.99% pvp focused and yet I have found myself just happily wandering through a game world. Or doing something quite inane like fishing with guildes in SWG (a long time ago). Not trying to catch x amount of fish, just chilling out and admiring the scenery, trying to find new lakes etc etc.
I just found it rather sad that someone could fail to see that people can derive enjoyment without considering some kind of efficiency ratio. That is certainly indicative of a certain type of gamer, whichever game they happen to play.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
I just found it rather sad that someone could fail to see that people can derive enjoyment without considering some kind of efficiency ratio. That is certainly indicative of a certain type of gamer, whichever game they happen to play.
Yup. And my only goal was pointing out that the effect of transit on a game, how often the populace is happy/unhappy can be overstated...in either direction.
As an argument, full of sound and fury, but possibly signifying nothing.
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.
Damn it. And I picked Optimism to Win in the fourth race!
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.
an mmo with sports, races, comedy clubs....your talking about ideas light years beyond today. Its like trying to preach the world is round before the santa maria sailed.
People played football in UO. We had speeder races in SWG. People ran comedy clubs, dances, fancy dress parties in SWG. You could easily set up some kind of death race in Darkfall.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
whats funny too is that swg was the last game that i playedfor more then a year. Unless oyu count darkfall which i played on and off for awhile. I played SWG from day 1 till NGE, which I blame WoW for, along with the laundry list of failed mmos since.
Originally posted by nariusseldonDead?The market is huge and may still be expanding. Going into a direction you do not like != dead.In fact, i think it is becoming MORE ALIVE, solving all the old problems (like camping & finding groups with instances & LFD/LFR), while giving a large part of the games to the players for FREE.It is getting BETTER.
It is getting worse IMO. Instances (cutting the world into many little pieces), cash shops, getting a small portion of the game for FREE and then finding out you are crippled if you don't pay (not true in a few instances). How about everything being on rails? What happened to exploration? Why are people not as social now that we have all these things to assist us into grouping? Why is everything just handed to us now with a low difficulty rating? I understand the grind sucks, but difficulty and grinding don't have to mean the same thing.Why is it normal to repeat the same damn thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over again to unlock stuff, and that is your "end game content". Then, when an update comes out, your new end game content is just doing the new thing that came out over and over and over and over and over again to unluck slightly more powerful stuff. Which then just leaves many new players left behind drastically as not as many people want to group up to unlock TIER 1 armour/weps, because all the other players are too busy doing TIER 3 over and over and over and over again.Its no wonder most people are only in a game a few months at a time as opposed to years. Oh well. Things will turn around eventually.
The problem is back in the days of people playing for years at a time in giant virtual worlds there were very few options. People didn't really have a choice. If you wanted to play a game online with friends it was take it or leave it. Things evolved from meridian, to UO, to EQ etc etc etc. The industry isn't dead, nor is the genre. It simply changed to suit the people playing it. Yes, that's right. The old schoolers are now the minority, they ushered in the genre and made it mainstream, thus a lot more people began paying attention and getting involved and the needs and wants of those consumers eventually out weighed the needs and wants of the die hard originals.
So, there it is. Things won't turn around, they're ever getting more aggressively inclusive to fit more and more people, meaning that the good old days of sandboxy yore are not likely to rear up too often or even too successfully.
What options are you talking about? The option to kill stuff 100 different ways in 1000 different games? I liked the older options better. Yeah there were less actual games to choose from, but at least each of those games had dozens of different ways to play. MMOs today have 2 maybe 3 ways to play, tops. And no, killing something with a fireball instead of a crossbow is not variety.
I figured out your problem: You don't like the way MMOs are presented now. So you make blanket statements about how dead the genre is and ruminating on the sugar-coated good old days.
What has happened is that old-time gamers got their wish. Most of you sat aroung playing these games that were so awesome to you that you couldn't understand why no one else (i.e. the "mainstream") wanted to play them. So you talked about them. You showed people how cool they could be. Some of you even started making them to appeal to a larger group of people. Then came WoW. Even most old school gamers agree that original WoW was pretty damn awesome. And many other people saw that and joined in. But then came your problem: those people had a different mentality and a different way of playing, and *gasp* they actually told the devs what they wanted. And the devs (old school gamers who thought the games were so awesome they wanted to make them) listened because that's how the money is made. So, you see, you kinda created your own monster. Now you want to proclaim your monster is dead. It's not dead, it's only evolved from what you liked and now you realize you don't like the evolution.
Until devs see a market for those "old school" style games, they won't make them. Because they won't make any money if they do, because the gaming world has evolved.
Luckily, you have a choice. You can a) ragequit MMOs, b) play only sandboxy virtual world type games until the servers die, or c), start making your own games.
You want me to pay to play a game I already paid for???
**IMO** the genere isnt dead as millions are still playing. Just look at the list of gmaes posted here on mmorpg.com and see how many have gone under compared ones still going. Sounds like to me the OP is just bored with whats out there and thats ok as some ppl are.
Just because someone dont like the programming, business model, instancing, sandbox, themepark, leveling, skill based, etc etc doesnt mean the genere is dead. Those are just personnel preferences ppl may or may not like. Has nothing to do whether the MMO genere is dead or not.
***Raving Rabbid still waits patiently for WOD MMO....COME ON CCP hurry the F!** UP!!! ......plungers of mass destruction being aimed at CCP HP.....***
All my opinions are just that..opinions. If you like my opinions..coolness.If you dont like my opinion....I really dont care. Playing: ESO, WOT, Smite, and Marvel Heroes
"Until the players asking for it explain how it becomes an activity which is fun...."
I have listed and demonstrated how an open game world and travel through it can drive mechanics and systems which some players can indeed find fun, interesting. Whether it does or not in current mmos is partly subjective (the fun part) and partly clear cut (travel is either impacting upon a games systems or it is not).
No, you have to explain how travel itself is fun.
What you described was travel leading to other activities which are fun. But those activities are what's fun -- not travel. So travel hasn't be justified or rationalized. Instead there's an even stronger reason to skip travel (which contains and enables very little depth) in favor of engaging more with those other fun activities.
Unless the act of traveling is fun, travel deserves to be eliminated down to the absolute minimum travel duration required by gameplay. And if that absolute minimum is still a substantial chunk of time, then the game is watering down its own experience and probably could be designed a lot better.
So why have a game world at all? Just a lobby and then queues for the world content and pvp.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
"Until the players asking for it explain how it becomes an activity which is fun...."
I have listed and demonstrated how an open game world and travel through it can drive mechanics and systems which some players can indeed find fun, interesting. Whether it does or not in current mmos is partly subjective (the fun part) and partly clear cut (travel is either impacting upon a games systems or it is not).
No, you have to explain how travel itself is fun.
What you described was travel leading to other activities which are fun. But those activities are what's fun -- not travel. So travel hasn't be justified or rationalized. Instead there's an even stronger reason to skip travel (which contains and enables very little depth) in favor of engaging more with those other fun activities.
Unless the act of traveling is fun, travel deserves to be eliminated down to the absolute minimum travel duration required by gameplay. And if that absolute minimum is still a substantial chunk of time, then the game is watering down its own experience and probably could be designed a lot better.
So why have a game world at all? Just a lobby and then queues for the world content and pvp.
Eh, the genre needs some renaming, recategorization or whatever you want to call it done to it. We all know there is a Grand Canyon sized crater that divides persistent virtual world of mayhem and lobby-based instance-maker 9000. To try and put these two in the same box is just an argument waiting to happen...
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
No, indirectly derived factors are actually pretty fucking important as it happens, especially when the are intrinsically linked.
You seem to be ignoring the fact that some can find the act of travelling through a game world "fun". Let's forget about that though as it doesn't fit in with your idea of "fun" right? Btw i'm not sure how you go from me pointing out some players can find travel through a game world fun, to me implying that "players" are going to "accept" travel as fun. I tend to leave posting an opinion as though it stands for the entire playerbase to other people...
The last part says it all really. You know some people actually go for a walk because they enjoy a stroll, without considering the fact that is it getting them fitter? No set route, no set time, no set goal. Just an enjoyable walk. I know, crazy right, it's like they haven't bought into the whole "must maximize kill ratio per hourz!!" crowd.
Not all games suit slow travel mechanics. This is a fact.
Some games suit a mix. This is a fact.
Instancing and fast travel can kill the direct and indirect consequences, interlinked mechanics if applied to open world games. This is a fact.
Some people find travel in and of itself fun, some don't. This is subjective.
Some people find the indirect consequences of travel fun, some don't. This is subjective.
Whether you think previous games have done it well/been fun is subjective.
The number of people traveling (in games or in real life) purely for the fun of travel (and not to reach Magic Mountain or the Grand Canyon or rock climbing or to spend time with friends/family) is so incredibly miniscule as to be absurd to even bring up in this discussion.
Travel is virtually never the goal, but can be a conduit for other experiences which travelers desire. But in games' case, most of those experiences or goals can be achieved completely without travel -- and since travel is virtually never fun for its own sake, it won't ever be missed except when it's absolutely required for a certain experience (like exploration.) Exploration is a particularly good example because the first-time travel has value (exploration) and subsequent trips along the same route don't, which is where you have waypoint-style travel systems which let you fast travel to any place you've already been.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
So why have a game world at all? Just a lobby and then queues for the world content and pvp.
The world can still have a purpose in regards to immersion. Letting players fast travel to any place they've previously discovered won't change that. But apart from the initial exploration, there's usually little or no purpose to travel.
Well...little or no purpose in the player's favor. From a dev perspective, milking player subscriptions by adding unnecessary timesinks might be a quick way to turn a short-term buck at the cost of game longevity.
So in that sense, long travel times are the game developer equivalent of watering down the beer.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Originally posted by Icewhite Originally posted by azmundaieveryone saying "the genre didn't change, you did"
Possibly harder to face; but some of both may be true.
Nothing on a message board is harder to deliver than a partial truth. Lots of black and white thinkers.
being older and hopeful hopefully wiser .. though that is definitely debatable .. i don't see how I have changed all that much relative to what I expect or want from an MMO. My graphics and gameplay fluidity matrix may be slightly enhanced, but the fundamental reasons I play mmos hasnt changed.
the genre has changed in far too many ways for my taste which while somewhat evolved, is still pretty true to the original reason I enjoyed mmos 10+ years ago.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Originally posted by Axehilt Originally posted by waynejr2So why have a game world at all? Just a lobby and then queues for the world content and pvp.
The world can still have a purpose in regards to immersion. Letting players fast travel to any place they've previously discovered won't change that. But apart from the initial exploration, there's usually little or no purpose to travel.
Well...little or no purpose in the player's favor. From a dev perspective, milking player subscriptions by adding unnecessary timesinks might be a quick way to turn a short-term buck at the cost of game longevity.
So in that sense, long travel times are the game developer equivalent of watering down the beer.
there were lots of reasons, but they have all been gutted in favor of lobby type approaches.
when you buddy in TM told you the alliance were there killing everyone, it took you 10 minutes to get there. if there was actual world pvp instead of instance pvp, travel time would matter a lot.
that is just one reason the casual, insta travel world and the more hardcore world are constantly at war. open world pvp would suck if everyone could insta travel to wherever the battle was.
but there is no world pvp anymore so by default .. they probably should just make everything insta travel .. but that's not going to stop a lot of us posting that, that is not what we want.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
there were lots of reasons, but they have all been gutted in favor of lobby type approaches.
when you buddy in TM told you the alliance were there killing everyone, it took you 10 minutes to get there. if there was actual world pvp instead of instance pvp, travel time would matter a lot.
that is just one reason the casual, insta travel world and the more hardcore world are constantly at war. open world pvp would suck if everyone could insta travel to wherever the battle was.
but there is no world pvp anymore so by default .. they probably should just make everything insta travel .. but that's not going to stop a lot of us posting that, that is not what we want.
Travel hasn't been gutted. It's just pruned back to the bare minimum which actually provides gameplay value.
Also let's not pretend world PVP is anything but casual. Pure skill-centric PVP is hardcore. World PVP lets unskilled players win by allowing zerging and gear to matter. World PVP is casual PVP.
So only casual (world) PVP requires slow travel.
Pure PVP works fine with players teleporting directly into the arena (although movement typically plays an important role within the arena -- and that's the valuable type of travel because it's directly part of the gameplay and involves a constant flurry of interesting decisions.)
But I can understand your confusion, since usually casual gameplay attracts a large audience while hardcore gameplay attracts a smaller one. In this case it's hardcore, unforgiving, be-skilled-or-lose PVP games like LoL, SC2, fighting games, and FPSes which are just ridiculously more popular than casual zerg-and-outgear-to-gain-huge-advantage PVP games (world PVP.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Originally posted by Axehilt Originally posted by waynejr2So why have a game world at all? Just a lobby and then queues for the world content and pvp.
The world can still have a purpose in regards to immersion. Letting players fast travel to any place they've previously discovered won't change that. But apart from the initial exploration, there's usually little or no purpose to travel.
Well...little or no purpose in the player's favor. From a dev perspective, milking player subscriptions by adding unnecessary timesinks might be a quick way to turn a short-term buck at the cost of game longevity.
So in that sense, long travel times are the game developer equivalent of watering down the beer.
There are a ton of ways to make travel interesting from a developer perspective. But it makes more sense to just insta port to a fight when you make combat centric games. If you had more things to do than just combat, the journey could become quite interesting.
There are a ton of ways to make travel interesting from a developer perspective. But it makes more sense to just insta port to a fight when you make combat centric games. If you had more things to do than just combat, the journey could become quite interesting.
Right, which is basically what I've said throughout the "travel" half of this thread.
Game designers basically try to maximize players' time engaging with their best systems (whether they be combat or whatever) and minimize players' time engaging with the weakest game systems (like travel.)
In doing so, they min-max for fun much in the same way a fire mage in an RPG isn't going to max out his fire talents and then start casting ice spells.
But if a game "specced" for travel (made it a fun game unto itself) then it could totally work (and Puzzle Pirates did.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Originally posted by Axehilt Originally posted by FoomerangThere are a ton of ways to make travel interesting from a developer perspective. But it makes more sense to just insta port to a fight when you make combat centric games. If you had more things to do than just combat, the journey could become quite interesting.
Right, which is basically what I've said throughout the "travel" half of this thread.
Game designers basically try to maximize players' time engaging with their best systems (whether they be combat or whatever) and minimize players' time engaging with the weakest game systems (like travel.)
In doing so, they min-max for fun much in the same way a fire mage in an RPG isn't going to max out his fire talents and then start casting ice spells.
But if a game "specced" for travel (made it a fun game unto itself) then it could totally work (and Puzzle Pirates did.)
Thats exactly one of the reasons why I feel this genre is dead/dying. Developers arent making mmorpgs worth travelling through. If they were, we wouldn't be calling instant travel an evolution.
A truism I have seen throughout my days in MMO’s is that if one MMO has a great idea, no one else bothers to use it. So the idea of making travel interesting like in Puzzle Pirates is unlikey to me seen again, maybe in one or two MMO’s at best.
This is not just because MMO’s are being stripped down to the basics these days, it happened right from the start. From buddy level grouping to guild HQ’s, some of the best MMORPG ideas rarely see the light of day again.
A good example of how to do travel wrong is SWTOR. They spent a lot of time developing a rail shooter which was independent of all other areas of the game, a mini game really. They could have implemented a travel system where you could be caught up in space combat. One which tailored encounters to the size of the group travelling. If this part of the MMO was as good as planet missions players would have loved it. It could have been the only real way of earning creds for example so players who need an incentive don’t feel they are wasting their time in flying missions.
But this idea is not easymode, it would be seen as ‘imposing’ a play style on players, when in fact it could have become one of the best features of the MMO. I am not even talking of a SW virtual galaxy here, these days anyone who brings up that idea in a MMO concept meeting would be just asked to go outside and shoot himself.
The number of people traveling (in games or in real life) purely for the fun of travel (and not to reach Magic Mountain or the Grand Canyon or rock climbing or to spend time with friends/family) is so incredibly miniscule as to be absurd to even bring up in this discussion.
Travel is virtually never the goal, but can be a conduit for other experiences which travelers desire. But in games' case, most of those experiences or goals can be achieved completely without travel -- and since travel is virtually never fun for its own sake, it won't ever be missed except when it's absolutely required for a certain experience (like exploration.) Exploration is a particularly good example because the first-time travel has value (exploration) and subsequent trips along the same route don't, which is where you have waypoint-style travel systems which let you fast travel to any place you've already been.
So less people enjoy travel than lobby games, oh shit I guess it is totally invalid then right, right? It doesn't cut it. I mean there are a miniscule amount of people who like to wander through a game world from time to time. After all, you've counted them up haven't you. But let's not let the fact that some clearly do enjoy it get in the way.
Some people enjoy travelling through a game world, many people enjoy the mechanics that travel directly links into such as the economy et al.
Hi Mr Gamer, like some FFA OWPvP? Well tough shit, you can't have that i'm afraid, we have to remove travel and replace it with teleports because Axehilt says you are not getting a fun efficiency rating of 3.3 per hour compared to when he is queueing in a lobby.
Perhaps if you had stated "less people enjoy aspects of games derived from travel as opposed to instant action elements" or, "travel rammed into the wrong game is not always beneficial" and left it there you would have had a point. And I would have agreed. Sadly you didn't and (as usual) you don't.
In the case of games most of those experiences can NOT be replicated without travel. It has been repeatedly demonstrated how travel can impact upon a games economy, on it's territory warfare, on its player created meta roles and on it's pvp. And yet you still ignore that because non of those count to you. You only want e-sports and instances and so taking travel out of a game means nothing to you and for some off reason this means you are unable to grasp the fact that is actually matters to others. But there are less of them, so they don't count I guess.
"It won't ever be missed", except by those that enjoy it and/or enjoy the impact it has on other systems. But then, that wouldn't be you right so fuck em...
I have said not everyone finds the mechanics fun, I have not said they suit every game. Clearly travel does not matter in a game with high amounts of instancing, no open world pvp and a game with a centralized AH, loot based economy. Travel without fast travel would be pointless. I have also not said that 100% "slow" travel with zero fast travel at all is the right way to go either.
The simple fact of the matter is that it is as clear as day that travel can directly and indirectly generate fun for players in the right games, that travel cannot simply be ripped out of such games and replaced as though nothing has happened. If you are going to proclaim that people cannot come up with reasons why travel is good/fun and then when someone does stick your fingers in your ears and go "nah nah popularity", or suggest "travels impact on other systems doesn't count!!!" then it is a bit of a waste of time continuing the debate frankly.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Thats exactly one of the reasons why I feel this genre is dead/dying. Developers arent making mmorpgs worth travelling through. If they were, we wouldn't be calling instant travel an evolution.
It's amazing how many different things you believe caused the genre to die.
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.
Comments
No, indirectly derived factors are actually pretty fucking important as it happens, especially when the are intrinsically linked.
You seem to be ignoring the fact that some can find the act of travelling through a game world "fun". Let's forget about that though as it doesn't fit in with your idea of "fun" right? Btw i'm not sure how you go from me pointing out some players can find travel through a game world fun, to me implying that "players" are going to "accept" travel as fun. I tend to leave posting an opinion as though it stands for the entire playerbase to other people...
The last part says it all really. You know some people actually go for a walk because they enjoy a stroll, without considering the fact that is it getting them fitter? No set route, no set time, no set goal. Just an enjoyable walk. I know, crazy right, it's like they haven't bought into the whole "must maximize kill ratio per hourz!!" crowd.
Not all games suit slow travel mechanics. This is a fact.
Some games suit a mix. This is a fact.
Instancing and fast travel can kill the direct and indirect consequences, interlinked mechanics if applied to open world games. This is a fact.
Some people find travel in and of itself fun, some don't. This is subjective.
Some people find the indirect consequences of travel fun, some don't. This is subjective.
Whether you think previous games have done it well/been fun is subjective.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
You know, I once did more than a year without leveling a single character--was just having that much fun roleplaying.
That's clearly a pretty extreme example. But people that level faster than me clearly aren't all MMOLocusts--but but, I ran into "Locust" play style in a game where the level cap was (on average) ten years away.
Neither one had much of anything to do with transit times. Neither one "creates" a specific type of player.
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.
The genre is changing to suit the needs of a broader range of players, but it's far from dead.
Optimism is dead.
I didn't try to correlate one type of game with generating a specific type of player. You get all types in all games. I try not to be black and white unless talking about specfic mechanics and what they can actually offer, whether they appeal to certain types or people find them fun is never completely clear.
I have always tended to be 99.99% pvp focused and yet I have found myself just happily wandering through a game world. Or doing something quite inane like fishing with guildes in SWG (a long time ago). Not trying to catch x amount of fish, just chilling out and admiring the scenery, trying to find new lakes etc etc.
I just found it rather sad that someone could fail to see that people can derive enjoyment without considering some kind of efficiency ratio. That is certainly indicative of a certain type of gamer, whichever game they happen to play.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Yup. And my only goal was pointing out that the effect of transit on a game, how often the populace is happy/unhappy can be overstated...in either direction.
As an argument, full of sound and fury, but possibly signifying nothing.
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.
Damn it. And I picked Optimism to Win in the fourth race!
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.
People played football in UO. We had speeder races in SWG. People ran comedy clubs, dances, fancy dress parties in SWG. You could easily set up some kind of death race in Darkfall.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
SWG was the last attempt at a virtual world. ALL DOWNHILL FROM THERE
whats funny too is that swg was the last game that i playedfor more then a year. Unless oyu count darkfall which i played on and off for awhile. I played SWG from day 1 till NGE, which I blame WoW for, along with the laundry list of failed mmos since.
I figured out your problem: You don't like the way MMOs are presented now. So you make blanket statements about how dead the genre is and ruminating on the sugar-coated good old days.
What has happened is that old-time gamers got their wish. Most of you sat aroung playing these games that were so awesome to you that you couldn't understand why no one else (i.e. the "mainstream") wanted to play them. So you talked about them. You showed people how cool they could be. Some of you even started making them to appeal to a larger group of people. Then came WoW. Even most old school gamers agree that original WoW was pretty damn awesome. And many other people saw that and joined in. But then came your problem: those people had a different mentality and a different way of playing, and *gasp* they actually told the devs what they wanted. And the devs (old school gamers who thought the games were so awesome they wanted to make them) listened because that's how the money is made. So, you see, you kinda created your own monster. Now you want to proclaim your monster is dead. It's not dead, it's only evolved from what you liked and now you realize you don't like the evolution.
Until devs see a market for those "old school" style games, they won't make them. Because they won't make any money if they do, because the gaming world has evolved.
Luckily, you have a choice. You can a) ragequit MMOs, b) play only sandboxy virtual world type games until the servers die, or c), start making your own games.
You want me to pay to play a game I already paid for???
Be afraid.....The dragons are HERE!
**IMO** the genere isnt dead as millions are still playing. Just look at the list of gmaes posted here on mmorpg.com and see how many have gone under compared ones still going. Sounds like to me the OP is just bored with whats out there and thats ok as some ppl are.
Just because someone dont like the programming, business model, instancing, sandbox, themepark, leveling, skill based, etc etc doesnt mean the genere is dead. Those are just personnel preferences ppl may or may not like. Has nothing to do whether the MMO genere is dead or not.
***Raving Rabbid still waits patiently for WOD MMO....COME ON CCP hurry the F!** UP!!! ......plungers of mass destruction being aimed at CCP HP.....***
All my opinions are just that..opinions. If you like my opinions..coolness.If you dont like my opinion....I really dont care.
Playing: ESO, WOT, Smite, and Marvel Heroes
So why have a game world at all? Just a lobby and then queues for the world content and pvp.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Eh, the genre needs some renaming, recategorization or whatever you want to call it done to it. We all know there is a Grand Canyon sized crater that divides persistent virtual world of mayhem and lobby-based instance-maker 9000. To try and put these two in the same box is just an argument waiting to happen...
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
The number of people traveling (in games or in real life) purely for the fun of travel (and not to reach Magic Mountain or the Grand Canyon or rock climbing or to spend time with friends/family) is so incredibly miniscule as to be absurd to even bring up in this discussion.
Travel is virtually never the goal, but can be a conduit for other experiences which travelers desire. But in games' case, most of those experiences or goals can be achieved completely without travel -- and since travel is virtually never fun for its own sake, it won't ever be missed except when it's absolutely required for a certain experience (like exploration.) Exploration is a particularly good example because the first-time travel has value (exploration) and subsequent trips along the same route don't, which is where you have waypoint-style travel systems which let you fast travel to any place you've already been.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The world can still have a purpose in regards to immersion. Letting players fast travel to any place they've previously discovered won't change that. But apart from the initial exploration, there's usually little or no purpose to travel.
Well...little or no purpose in the player's favor. From a dev perspective, milking player subscriptions by adding unnecessary timesinks might be a quick way to turn a short-term buck at the cost of game longevity.
So in that sense, long travel times are the game developer equivalent of watering down the beer.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Nothing on a message board is harder to deliver than a partial truth. Lots of black and white thinkers.
being older and hopeful hopefully wiser .. though that is definitely debatable .. i don't see how I have changed all that much relative to what I expect or want from an MMO. My graphics and gameplay fluidity matrix may be slightly enhanced, but the fundamental reasons I play mmos hasnt changed.
the genre has changed in far too many ways for my taste which while somewhat evolved, is still pretty true to the original reason I enjoyed mmos 10+ years ago.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Well...little or no purpose in the player's favor. From a dev perspective, milking player subscriptions by adding unnecessary timesinks might be a quick way to turn a short-term buck at the cost of game longevity.
So in that sense, long travel times are the game developer equivalent of watering down the beer.
there were lots of reasons, but they have all been gutted in favor of lobby type approaches.
when you buddy in TM told you the alliance were there killing everyone, it took you 10 minutes to get there. if there was actual world pvp instead of instance pvp, travel time would matter a lot.
that is just one reason the casual, insta travel world and the more hardcore world are constantly at war. open world pvp would suck if everyone could insta travel to wherever the battle was.
but there is no world pvp anymore so by default .. they probably should just make everything insta travel .. but that's not going to stop a lot of us posting that, that is not what we want.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Travel hasn't been gutted. It's just pruned back to the bare minimum which actually provides gameplay value.
Also let's not pretend world PVP is anything but casual. Pure skill-centric PVP is hardcore. World PVP lets unskilled players win by allowing zerging and gear to matter. World PVP is casual PVP.
So only casual (world) PVP requires slow travel.
Pure PVP works fine with players teleporting directly into the arena (although movement typically plays an important role within the arena -- and that's the valuable type of travel because it's directly part of the gameplay and involves a constant flurry of interesting decisions.)
But I can understand your confusion, since usually casual gameplay attracts a large audience while hardcore gameplay attracts a smaller one. In this case it's hardcore, unforgiving, be-skilled-or-lose PVP games like LoL, SC2, fighting games, and FPSes which are just ridiculously more popular than casual zerg-and-outgear-to-gain-huge-advantage PVP games (world PVP.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Well...little or no purpose in the player's favor. From a dev perspective, milking player subscriptions by adding unnecessary timesinks might be a quick way to turn a short-term buck at the cost of game longevity.
So in that sense, long travel times are the game developer equivalent of watering down the beer.
There are a ton of ways to make travel interesting from a developer perspective. But it makes more sense to just insta port to a fight when you make combat centric games. If you had more things to do than just combat, the journey could become quite interesting.
Right, which is basically what I've said throughout the "travel" half of this thread.
Game designers basically try to maximize players' time engaging with their best systems (whether they be combat or whatever) and minimize players' time engaging with the weakest game systems (like travel.)
In doing so, they min-max for fun much in the same way a fire mage in an RPG isn't going to max out his fire talents and then start casting ice spells.
But if a game "specced" for travel (made it a fun game unto itself) then it could totally work (and Puzzle Pirates did.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Game designers basically try to maximize players' time engaging with their best systems (whether they be combat or whatever) and minimize players' time engaging with the weakest game systems (like travel.)
In doing so, they min-max for fun much in the same way a fire mage in an RPG isn't going to max out his fire talents and then start casting ice spells.
But if a game "specced" for travel (made it a fun game unto itself) then it could totally work (and Puzzle Pirates did.)
Thats exactly one of the reasons why I feel this genre is dead/dying. Developers arent making mmorpgs worth travelling through. If they were, we wouldn't be calling instant travel an evolution.
So less people enjoy travel than lobby games, oh shit I guess it is totally invalid then right, right? It doesn't cut it. I mean there are a miniscule amount of people who like to wander through a game world from time to time. After all, you've counted them up haven't you. But let's not let the fact that some clearly do enjoy it get in the way.
Some people enjoy travelling through a game world, many people enjoy the mechanics that travel directly links into such as the economy et al.
Hi Mr Gamer, like some FFA OWPvP? Well tough shit, you can't have that i'm afraid, we have to remove travel and replace it with teleports because Axehilt says you are not getting a fun efficiency rating of 3.3 per hour compared to when he is queueing in a lobby.
Perhaps if you had stated "less people enjoy aspects of games derived from travel as opposed to instant action elements" or, "travel rammed into the wrong game is not always beneficial" and left it there you would have had a point. And I would have agreed. Sadly you didn't and (as usual) you don't.
In the case of games most of those experiences can NOT be replicated without travel. It has been repeatedly demonstrated how travel can impact upon a games economy, on it's territory warfare, on its player created meta roles and on it's pvp. And yet you still ignore that because non of those count to you. You only want e-sports and instances and so taking travel out of a game means nothing to you and for some off reason this means you are unable to grasp the fact that is actually matters to others. But there are less of them, so they don't count I guess.
"It won't ever be missed", except by those that enjoy it and/or enjoy the impact it has on other systems. But then, that wouldn't be you right so fuck em...
I have said not everyone finds the mechanics fun, I have not said they suit every game. Clearly travel does not matter in a game with high amounts of instancing, no open world pvp and a game with a centralized AH, loot based economy. Travel without fast travel would be pointless. I have also not said that 100% "slow" travel with zero fast travel at all is the right way to go either.
The simple fact of the matter is that it is as clear as day that travel can directly and indirectly generate fun for players in the right games, that travel cannot simply be ripped out of such games and replaced as though nothing has happened. If you are going to proclaim that people cannot come up with reasons why travel is good/fun and then when someone does stick your fingers in your ears and go "nah nah popularity", or suggest "travels impact on other systems doesn't count!!!" then it is a bit of a waste of time continuing the debate frankly.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
It's amazing how many different things you believe caused the genre to die.
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.