Originally posted by Vermillion_Raventhal Well, you can because I agree. And not every person is wanting the same thing. I was not an EQ person at all. But there are things I can appreciate from it that don't revolve around corpse runs and mob grinding.
Its like if soft drink makers at one point just stopped making all other sodas outside cola variations because Coke and Pepsi were the top sellers. And the only alternatives are made by people with inadequete funds and caused alergies to a lot of people. Then the guys who support cola says "Everyone buys cola and it's supported by stats" of course of mostly of people who have only had cola ever with no alternatives, " And there is nobody who wants other drinks look at those indie makers. That's as good as it gets. Look at the old drinks like that they caused indigestion and gas." That totally ignores that people want the different flavor not so much the outdated issues that new soda no longer has.
This scenario would be comparable to the MMORPG market is the other soft drinks' market share started to shrink before Coke & Pepsi were released. It would also be comparable if other soft drink manufacturers tried to deliver those other drinks on a small scale, and people just weren't interested in their products.
Other people in this thread have listed out the games that have been attempted in recent history to appeal to the "old school" gamers. None of those games really took off, even when the development quality was good. There just aren't that many MMORPG players interested in those games. Certainly not enough to make someone think that a AAA version of an "old school" game would be a worthwhile endeavor.
What games are these I am curious.
If he's talking about what I think he's talking about, it was a list of about 7 games, 4 of which aren't even out yet. The other 3 were Darkfall, Perpetuum annnnnd I can't remember the last. I pointed out the list's absurdity at the time and nobody really wanted to talk about it. Then Quirhid posted a list of some of the most obscure, low-budget games you could imagine.... some games I hadn't even heard of. The point of these lists were to show games that we sandbox players have been super excited for in the past and have propped up as being "THE ONE" of sandbox games.
It is certainly true that neither old school nor sandbox has had a big budget modern title to test if they are viable today. If one were released and it failed (bearing in mind how we don't even all agree on what that means) I would not take that as deciding the issue. It could be evidence of problems with game as much as the gaming template. We have had a lot of modern themeparks fail and many on here still think that genre is doing fabulously.
I could not see a full set of old school rules working, it would have to be a rebalancing rather than a reversion of gameplay. The fuss EQNext posters are putting up about restricting classes to certain races shows you how ingrained the 'anything goes' easyMMO mentality has become in players.
But equally such a MMO would not be for everyone, that being that sort of design that got us here in the first place.
GW2? Fastest selling MMO (they claim) in history.
ESO will be a test too.
GW2 is neither sandbox or old school.
As to how do we know if modern MMOs have not failed simply because they are not good MMOs? The number of them, and the ones that were perfectly decent, which should not have done so badly.
I never questioned your definition of watered down, it is your definition, I was questioning your logic regarding how you called WoW watered down. I pointed out how your "case" is flawed. Being casual friendly has nothing to do with being less targeted or more targeted. Casual friendliness means you can log in, do something worthwhile within 20 minutes and log out. The opposite is a game where doing anything takes an uninterrupted long play session. It has no relation to depth, difficulty or how well it is targeted.
1. You absolutely did question what I meant by watered down. I think you said something about me using platitudes and then demanded I explain what I mean when I say watered down. That started a discussion that lead to using venn diagrams as an example and then eventually you changed the subject from what watered down means, to how I know that WoW is an example of watering down.
2. This is the first time you've responded to the connection between casual friendly and watered down. Casual friendliness doesn't just mean you can log in and do something in a short amount of time. That's one thing that casual people look for, I'm sure. But casual friendly games are in general not going to be as deep. Casual friendliness is kind of the antithesis of depth in a game. Depth means there's a lot to explore and a lot to consider and think about. Casual gameplay means you can kind of coast without having to take it too seriously. I'm not sure how you can claim that there's no connection between casual gameplay and watered down gameplay. Casual players pretty much by definition are going to care less about their game than a hardcore gamer.
1. I demanded you to define exactly what you mean by watered down. I did not question it.
2. Casual friendliness does not mean what you think it means. It doesn't matter if a single player game, for example, is deep or not. The fact that you can save your progress at any time and continue your play session later makes it casual friendly. It makes a game casual friendly when you don't need to spend any lengthy time preparing to play it. It has nothing to do with depth or difficulty.
Party forming tools make a game casual friendly. Instanced PvP is casual friendly. They don't make grouping or PvP shallow.
WoW was a hit profuct. An anomaly in MMORPG circles, but not too uncommon in business. Companies do the exact same thing in any market regarding hit products. It is not unnatural.
Everyone adopted touchscreen technology soon after iPhones success even though the technology was originally developed by Nokia almost 15 years ago.
Remember Tamagochis? A hit product copied by many. Leatherman? Sony Walkman?
I never said that taking proven methods or ideas from other companies is unnatural. I'm saying WoW's success was unnaturally, or abnormally, or unusually, substantial and so it lead to the market unnaturally favoring themeparks. The market has been in an unnatural state because of WoW's unusual success. I doubt 5 years from now the market will have as much of an focus on WoW-clones as it does now. If that ends up being the case (and I think it 's already happening), then that means we were right.
I think you are wrongly using the word "unnatural" in this, because there is nothing unnatural about it. Is it an anomaly? Maybe. Is in unnatural? Definitely not. This is what happens with hit products.
I have no issue with this although your comment about where market "needs to be" is rather odd.
When I say the market doesn't need to be where it is right now, I'm saying the MMO genre hasn't been figured out. It's still in a state of flux so you guys making the case that sandboxes won't exist simply because they don't already exist isn't accurate. Lizardbones in particular seems to like to talk about how the market knows best and the fact that developers aren't making them proves (or strongly suggests) that they're not viable. I'm saying I don't think that's true, I think developers are still figuring out what's doable and what isn't.
I am saying there is nothing inherently better or worse in sandbox design although their execution has always been subpar to a point where the word "sandbox MMO" is synonomous with poor quality. Usually I'd say the case is developers have been overreached.
And you can't know whether Eve is a similar anomaly among sandboxes as WoW is among themeparks. It is impossible to know since Eve doesn't have and hasn't had much competition. Every other sci-fi game has been lacking severely. Every other sandbox has lacked severely. With competition like that, you don't need to be "good", you only need to be better than the alternatives.
Yes, Eve is a perfect game for some, but you don't really know to how many people it is their "fallback MMO".
I don't think you understand my point about EvE. You guys are basically saying that sandboxes won't work. I'm saying they already do. EvE is a sandbox. The only reason I'm not playing it is because I'm not into the space combat. If you took the level of depth/complexity/consequence/sandbox-ness of EvE and made a fantasy game, that's a game I would be totally happy with.
We are not saying anything of the sort. We are explaining why it is unlikely for old-school games to make a comeback.
I don't mind people voicing their opinion. I mind it when they do it in a rude and antagonizing manner. I mind when people make a weekly thread about how things were better "back in the day" and how current MMOs suck. It is so common MMORPG.com should reserve a separate section or a sticky for it. Or delete it as spam.
They very rarely lead to a constructive conversation. Most often they are simply threads for bashing and flaming - ideal breeding grounds for trolls. It is not only the most common topic on these forums but also the least productive.
The point of a forum is for people to talk about what they want to talk about. If there are SOOO many of these threads (and there probably are), then it's probably because there are a lot of people who want to talk about it. This kind of makes me consider just how much you guys rely on this "vocal minority" argument. I agree that forums in particular disproportionately represent the people with a grievance, but there are a LOT of us on these forums. It seems like these discussions are split pretty much right down the middle between pro sandbox and anti sandbox. I don't often make predictions, but I think in the coming years, all of this sandbox naysaying is going to look absolutely ridiculous. I think sandbox games are going to be a really big splash. I doubt they'll ever beat themeparks, but considering you guys are basically saying we shouldn't even expect one or two good sandboxes, I think that's WAY off.
I didn't say there were a lot of people talking about it. I said there were many threads about it. It is more or less the same faces over and over who make 'em.
And if there is any sort of split on this topic, it is between fans and sceptics. You are seriously mistaken if you think we are anti sandbox.
Yes I think they are unrelated. To my knowledge, the complaining has been fairly constant the time I've been following these forums. If there was any significant change you could have a point, but even then you could not be sure: it could still be a coincidence.
Got it. A lot of people complaining about a lack of sandbox games, companies start to make sandbox games to sell to these (and other) people, and there's no connection.
The fact that you are attributing the development of a few games to yourself (and people like you) is rather amusing.
Second, if all you say is simply based on your judgement. Why are you defending it like its the truth? A sensible person would not cling to his arguments like so when they are that weak.
Would you stop acting like if it's not provable, it's not worth arguing? That's literally the ONLY time you would argue. If it was provable and not based on judgement or reason, then there'd be no point in arguing. And what's weak about it? You haven't even answered it.
I have. Many times already.
I think you need to look at this last exchange and ask if this is a reasonable position to take.
I wasn't quoting you. Clearly you can read from the context those were examples. And I already said, that is one way to further increase your playerbase but not the only one. And nothing says that WoW has had to rely on it any more than Eve, UO or SWG has. I feel like I am repeating myself.
You cannot make a judgement based on the size how watered down the game is. It is no way reasonable or intuitive to make that connection. You don't know how many of those players are precisely the target audience.
Again, you can make that connection based on size. We were given the gift of reason, after all. You do realize that your position is that the MMO that has BY FAR the most subscribers hasn't had to water down their gameplay? Technically is it possible that they just happen to find this HUGE niche of players that all share as many common preferences as the much smaller audience of SWG? I guess. Do you really think that's a defensible position though?
Now you get it. What if WoW has found that huge niche? I think it is entirely plausible. Certainly I find your assumption about how UO or SWG haven't had to expand their net as much as WoW very dangerous. And I think it is not very sound to base that argument on size alone.
All I see is you making a strawman. And I wasn't the only poster to point it out.
So you're saying that you're right because other people agreed with you? Seems more than a little bit fallacious to me. Also, I don't remember people agreeing with you that it was a strawman aside from Loktofeit. But you and he both really don't have much credibility when it comes to this kind of thing. He is totally incapable of having a conversation, and you continuously ignore the most important stuff. You're still not even acknowledging the point about your lack of knowledge of the context in which is was using the word "satisfied." That's the WHOLE thing and over and over again you ignore it, choosing to pick out little bits here and there that you can argue with.
Why didn't you change your position when Loktofeit further explained is post, then? His explanation was perfectly valid and the assumption he made very prudent.
Also, I can't find anything in that report that indicates what games it's counting. The whole reason I was asking for a source was because somebody pointed out that these numbers may include MOBAs. Then when Narius provided a link, his did include MOBAs. That would completely invalidate those numbers if that were the case.
Completely invalidates, huh?
Yes! MOBAs aren't MMOs. Not only that, MOBAs are HUGE. LoL is the single most played game ever. I don't know if the MMO genre is growing or not, but using a number that includes MOBAs is utterly and absolutely pointless.
It is not "utterly and absolutely pointless". Come on. You should know better than this.
Your opinion is as biased as theirs. Don't you think that maybe because they play a lot of those games they might be proficient identifying a "WoW clone"?
Copying UI design is normal practice when designing games. You'll notice a "copied UI"I, coming from a similar game it feels intuitive, benefiting the you, the player. In UI design, it is foolish to be different for the sake of being different.
But if you want to see a proper clone, you should check out Perpetuum or Heroes of Newerth. Perpetuum being a clone of Eve Online and HoN being a clone of the original Defense of the Ancients. You would be hard-pressed to find a themepark copying WoW to the same extent as those two games have copied their respective role models.
Of course my opinion is biased! I'm not nor have I ever claimed to be the overseer of what games are or aren't WoW clones. But how does that excuse you saying "If they don't think its a WoW clone, its not a WoW clone." ?? It seems like in any of these discussions whenever you hit a dead end, you just find some way to bring it back to me.
I highly doubt that MMORPG UIs have been figured out to the point of perfection. So anytime a company copies something from another game, that's a missed opportunity to discover more efficient or interesting ways of designing the UI. I fully expect companies to do that from time to time, obviously when I say a game is a WoW clone, I'm saying it relies more heavily on stealing ideas than they should.
Also, I'm sure certain UI choices are tied to how the game is made. So if a game is taking other ideas from a game like WoW, their UI is more likely to emulate WoW's UI. But also I don't care that much about what they take from the UI. I care way more about copying things like quest hubs, instancing, character progression, etc. Game structure stuff.
Why is they saying a game is not a WoW clone any different from you saying a game is a WoW clone?
No I didn't claim UIs were developed to perfection. I only made a point how it is sometimes beneficial to copy existing UIs. This includes some features as well. But I find some of the things you list are quite high concept features. It would be foolish to call game clone based off of those. It would be equivalent of me saying that lack of instances, crafting, classless progression and a harsh death penalty makes a clone.
The proposition is preposterous, no? So it is with the features you list.
Because here's a pretty basic way of looking at it: A lot more people play themeparks. It's possible that the few players playing sandbox games just haven't played themeparks, but let's just think about this logically. Considering there are tens of millions of people playing themeparks, and probably only like a million total playing sandboxes (rought estimates... half a million playing eve, let's just call it half a million playing whatever other sandboxes there are), it's far more likely that a random person has played a themepark game. Not only that, themepark games are just naturally more accessible. Sandbox games are known for being more complex and "hardcore" so it stands to reason that more "hardcore" gamers play them, gamers who have a deeper knowledge of the mmo industry. Sandbox players are known for their dislike of themepark games. Themepark players aren't particularly KNOWN for their dislike of sandbox games. You could claim that sandbox players are just generally more likely to dislike something they haven't played, but I'd like to hear why.
I'll ask again, if you had to guess... which would you say is more likely?
It is far more complicated than that. The term hardcore does not only apply to players who play "hardcore games" it also applies to hardcore players who spend much of their time mastering and playing all games. In fact, I would say most of the players playing "hardcore games" are casuals, just like most of the players playing "casual games" are casuals.
Sandboxes are also known for their poor quality. Does that also mean people who like sandboxes like the poor quality? Themepark players are known for disliking bad games. Sandboxes are generally bad games. ... Really you could go anywhere with that logic.
Do you know who has a deeper knowledge of the industry? -The people who work in the industry. And some have been posting here opposing you.
Since you're having such a hard time answering the question, let's just make it more specific. Do you think the % of SWG's playerbase who have also played WoW is higher than the % of WoW's playerbase who have also played SWG?
No. What does this have to do with anything?
But you would trust sandbox players talking about themeparks? How peculiar.
Who said anything about trusting sandbox players talking about themeparks? You're saying those powergamers play a lot of "games", so you'd trust their opinion about "games" more than the average gamer. I'm saying the games they're playing seem to be games that people are prone to jump around to and from. The themepark circuit. Oh I like that.
Also, I may trust that person's opinion over the "average game" but I absolutely would not trust that person's opinion over somebody who grew up playing Shadowbane or UO or SWG.
Powergamers play a lot of games. All games. Not just themeparks.
It is like you want to hear the history of the ancient word only through the eyes of the Greeks. Everyone else is a barbarian.
I am not only talking about aesthetics when I talk about quality. I am talking about everything in the game. What it tries to do and how well it achieves it, depth, amount of bugs, performance... everything.
And we've been over this already: Time spent playing is a poor measure of quality. I can play a game for a day and have more fun than playing something else for a year. As it has been pointed out, GTA V has less that 48 hours worth of content, yet it is undoubtedly one of the best games of the decade so far. I had more fun playing Nexus: Jupiter Incident and Freelancer (each of which took me a couple of afternoons to finish) than I've had playing Eve Online for well over 2 years.
Regarding PvP, I had more "good fights" in one weekend playing Guild Wars 1 than in all the engagements combined from open world PvP games I've tried. And the time spent in GW1 is less than playing all those open world PvP games. It is all relative. All subjective.
Time spent is a fine measure of quality in an industry that basically across the board is looking to keep people around. Portal is one of my favorite games of all time and it only lasts a couple of hours. But that's how it's designed. MMOs are always looking and trying to keep people around. If you don't think that MMOs care about their own longevity, than I'm not sure what to tell you. If they do care about their longevity, then time spent playing is definitely a good measure of quality.
No it isn't. P2P MMOs are designed to keep you playing as long as possible. And that actually leads to watered down content (Whaddya know; I got to use that term too!). Oftentimes these games require a lot of time to play but they don't have much substance in them.
If you had a can of soda and drank it, that would be your average single player RPG. If you have can of soda, poured it in a bucket full of water and enjoyed it with your friends, that would be your average P2P MMORPG. I exaggerate but I'm sure you get the picture.
How does Repopulation keeping itself alive makes my position wrong in any way? Or EQN being a sandbox or not? And making EQN a sandbox would be rather odd considering neither of the previous games in the series were strictly sandbox. What is your point?
I guess it depends on your position. Your position seems to be that I'm wrong. And my position is that there should be more sandboxes. So if a sandbox comes out and is alive enough for me to play it......?
I am merely voicing my scepticism and criticism toward your claims. Nothing more. All I've said - All anyone has said, is that they find your predictions unlikely.
You can't possibly claim to know their motives. And I think it is juvenile to call them greedy or lazy solely on the basis that they don't serve or share your preferences.
What the hell dude. Are you serious right now? You think I'm calling them greedy or lazy based on the fact that they don't serve my preferences? This is one of the first times I've actually been PISSED in any of these discussions. This is a downright ridiculous thing to say.
I'm calling them greedy/lazy (though again, I try to say things like "lazy game design") because they're making games that are clearly blatant ripoffs of other games just with a new skin in order to make money. Not only that, a lot of them claim to be things they're not. How often do developers shy away from questions about PvP because they don't want to scare anybody away from their game? Instead of just being honest so people don't buy your game and then end up disappointed.
Can you name a company that hasn't fallen short on their promises or lied outright?
Did you really just link me to a video discussing one of the most basic and obvious concepts in philosophy? What does this have to do with anything? I'm not asking you to prove a negative. Imagine how much time would be saved if you just took a second and thought about what I'm asking and what your response is.
How is this statement nonsensical? "Just because I can't prove it doesn't mean it isn't true"
That's not asking you to prove a negative. All that is doing is pointing out that we're talking about something that may be true, even if I can't prove it. Again, this describes almost every discussion people have ever participated in. When I said it, I believe it was pointing out that this is a discussion. I'm not trying to PROVE something. I'm making claims, and you're supposed to argue against those claims if you don't agree with them.
But if you accuse me of attacking your reasoning - clinging to your the things you use to build your argument. What do you expect? That is all I can do, because I cannot prove a negative. But as Randi something along the lines of "You can use it to illustrate your point, but whenever you claim something is, rather than isn't, you should provide evidence toward the positive". The latter part is incidentally the same comment Loktofeit made.
I questioned some of the claims you made to which you responded with your comment "just because I can't prove it doesn't mean it isn't true". You didn't use it to illustrate your point, you made a claim, and that is why it is nonsensical.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Originally posted by HolophonistWhat game did we sandbox players point to as being "the one"? The only one that I personally was really excited for was DFUW. And I do like that game, but it's not a sandbox unfortunately. So tell me, what sandbox game came out that we all claimed was going to be the big one?
Perpetuum
Dafrkfall Online
ArcheAge
Age of Wushu
Star Citizen
Black Desert
Everquest Next
You could travel back further and watch the pattern over and over again.
This is the list of games that are being put out to cater to "old school" players, minus Everquest Next. We'll have to see if Star Citizen and Black Desert follow the trend of fizzling out, but so far, Perpetuum, Darkfall Online, ArcheAge and Age of Wushu have failed to hit the big time. I've played Perpetuum and it's a good quality game. Bugs are few and the feature set is largely what was advertised before launch. I've not played the other games, but listening to conversations about them is not like listening to conversations about Mortal Online. There is every reason to believe those games are feature complete and have relatively few bugs.
I'm not saying these aren't good games, and I'm not saying they aren't successful. I'm saying that the target audience will largely determine the size of a game and while the build quality will determine the success of the game, regardless of how much time, money or faith that gets thrown at the game.
In a lot of cases, an "old school" target audience will be too small to bother with, unless the developer is largely self funded, or has a way to bring development costs down dramatically.
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Also, how are you guys even doing all that inline quoting? If I try to add one quote from another post, the editor borks and just merges all the quoted text together.
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Last edit, I promise.
The biggest issue with creating games for the "old school" crowd is that there isn't just one crowd that can be targeted. You might have the Always On PvP crowd, but you also have the Consensual PvP crowd too. You might have the Mob Grind crowd, but you also have the Quest Grind or Mission crowd. You might have an old school Sandbox crowd, but you'll also have an old school Theme Park crowd. There's a World Boss crowd and an Instanced Boss crowd. The "old school" crowd is just as fragmented as the rest of the MMORPG group, but there are fewer "old school" players. Each of those crowd fragments is diametrically opposed to the other, so pleasing a large group of them at the same time is difficult at best. With the rest of the MMORPG market, a developer can pick a particular fragment of the market and have a sizable group.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Really? People are writing posts that takes up 10 screens and need 5 min just to scroll through. Personally i am not reading those, but have fun dueling with wall of text.
Ashron's Call was a MMORPG, not a MMO.... perhaps that is why so many people are not playing MMORPG's, because there are not any good ones at the moment.
They are all non-roleplaying games..
Really? I remember farming the same mobs in some Tusker or Olthoi dungeons for days in order to get one level. Not sure what I was roleplaying then, and also how is that different from farming dungeons or raids in the newer MMOs?
Don't get me wrong, AC1 was an amazing game for its time, I played it for 5+ years, and at least quests in that game were real quests and not mere tasks, but I definitely lost my rose colored glasses quite a few years ago...
lol then you were playing the game wrong. I remember fighting players to be able to fight mobs in the ob plains.... Not to mention you could lvl in multi ways in ac1.
Current mmorpgs are stale and dont really offer anything a single player rpg cant do better. Thats why the genre is bleeding out.
Current mmorpgs are stale and dont really offer anything a single player rpg cant do better. Thats why the genre is bleeding out.
That is not true. MMORPGs offer a star trek, TNG era, RPG with both ship and ground combat. I can't drive a ST2 version miranda or constitution class starship in any SP RPG.
Current mmorpgs are stale and dont really offer anything a single player rpg cant do better. Thats why the genre is bleeding out.
That is not true. MMORPGs offer a star trek, TNG era, RPG with both ship and ground combat. I can't drive a ST2 version miranda or constitution class starship in any SP RPG.
Your not looking hard enough star trek has a single player game. Current FTP games and most mmorpgs in general are on equal standing with B movies... Bad ones at that.
Current mmorpgs are stale and dont really offer anything a single player rpg cant do better. Thats why the genre is bleeding out.
That is not true. MMORPGs offer a star trek, TNG era, RPG with both ship and ground combat. I can't drive a ST2 version miranda or constitution class starship in any SP RPG.
Your not looking hard enough star trek has a single player game. Current FTP games and most mmorpgs in general are on equal standing with B movies... Bad ones at that.
Really? Tell me what is the SP Star Trek RPG in the TNG (you know what that is, right) era with both ship & ground combat. Don't tell me the new JJ Abram movie game, because if you know anything about Star Trek, that is totally different than TOS/TNG/DS9/Voy canon.
Current mmorpgs are stale and dont really offer anything a single player rpg cant do better. Thats why the genre is bleeding out.
That is not true. MMORPGs offer a star trek, TNG era, RPG with both ship and ground combat. I can't drive a ST2 version miranda or constitution class starship in any SP RPG.
Your not looking hard enough star trek has a single player game. Current FTP games and most mmorpgs in general are on equal standing with B movies... Bad ones at that.
He's deliberately ignoring the point, as he always does. If you said "SWTOR doesn't do anything a singleplayer game couldn't do better he'd say "Are there any singleplayer games that let you play as a Sith during the Sith wars?" Even though the discussion is about mechanics, not window dressing.
Current mmorpgs are stale and dont really offer anything a single player rpg cant do better. Thats why the genre is bleeding out.
That is not true. MMORPGs offer a star trek, TNG era, RPG with both ship and ground combat. I can't drive a ST2 version miranda or constitution class starship in any SP RPG.
Your not looking hard enough star trek has a single player game. Current FTP games and most mmorpgs in general are on equal standing with B movies... Bad ones at that.
He's deliberately ignoring the point, as he always does. Best to just put him on ignore.
What point? That he subjectively thinks that MMORPGs are "bad"?
Don't tell me you think his preference should be valid for everyone.
Originally posted by ray12k Originally posted by Jean-Luc_PicardOriginally posted by PhelcherAshron's Call was a MMORPG, not a MMO.... perhaps that is why so many people are not playing MMORPG's, because there are not any good ones at the moment.They are all non-roleplaying games..
Really? I remember farming the same mobs in some Tusker or Olthoi dungeons for days in order to get one level. Not sure what I was roleplaying then, and also how is that different from farming dungeons or raids in the newer MMOs?Don't get me wrong, AC1 was an amazing game for its time, I played it for 5+ years, and at least quests in that game were real quests and not mere tasks, but I definitely lost my rose colored glasses quite a few years ago...lol then you were playing the game wrong. I remember fighting players to be able to fight mobs in the ob plains.... Not to mention you could lvl in multi ways in ac1.
Current mmorpgs are stale and dont really offer anything a single player rpg cant do better. Thats why the genre is bleeding out.
MMORPGs have never offered better mechanics than single player games. The advantage that MMORPGs offer, even new ones, is other players.
There are some MMORPGs that have things that don't currently exist in single player games. STO for instance has those ships that narisseldon is talking about. The Secret World has a modern setting and "mysteries" to solve and fight through. These things are advantages of MMORPGs, they're just things these games have that other games don't.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I never questioned your definition of watered down, it is your definition, I was questioning your logic regarding how you called WoW watered down. I pointed out how your "case" is flawed. Being casual friendly has nothing to do with being less targeted or more targeted. Casual friendliness means you can log in, do something worthwhile within 20 minutes and log out. The opposite is a game where doing anything takes an uninterrupted long play session. It has no relation to depth, difficulty or how well it is targeted.
1. You absolutely did question what I meant by watered down. I think you said something about me using platitudes and then demanded I explain what I mean when I say watered down. That started a discussion that lead to using venn diagrams as an example and then eventually you changed the subject from what watered down means, to how I know that WoW is an example of watering down.
2. This is the first time you've responded to the connection between casual friendly and watered down. Casual friendliness doesn't just mean you can log in and do something in a short amount of time. That's one thing that casual people look for, I'm sure. But casual friendly games are in general not going to be as deep. Casual friendliness is kind of the antithesis of depth in a game. Depth means there's a lot to explore and a lot to consider and think about. Casual gameplay means you can kind of coast without having to take it too seriously. I'm not sure how you can claim that there's no connection between casual gameplay and watered down gameplay. Casual players pretty much by definition are going to care less about their game than a hardcore gamer.
1. I demanded you to define exactly what you mean by watered down. I did not question it.
1. I'm really not interested in getting into another word game with you. The point is the discussion was about two separate things: FIRST it was about what watered down means. And we had several replies back and forth where you argued with my reasoning for a while, then it changed into what makes me think WoW meets that description more than SWG or UO.
2. Casual friendliness does not mean what you think it means. It doesn't matter if a single player game, for example, is deep or not. The fact that you can save your progress at any time and continue your play session later makes it casual friendly. It makes a game casual friendly when you don't need to spend any lengthy time preparing to play it. It has nothing to do with depth or difficulty.
Party forming tools make a game casual friendly. Instanced PvP is casual friendly. They don't make grouping or PvP shallow.
Dark Souls can be saved and picked back up later. It's not a casual friendly game. You're wrong in your definition of the term. In UO you can farm for 20 minutes and then stop. You can even make my money while not playing through a vendor. Yet most wouldn't consider it a casual friendly game. Starcraft2 games rarely exceed 20 minutes and it's one of the least casual friendly games in existence. On the other hand, MOBAs like LoL have matches that are often twice as long, yet it's way more casual friendly. Again, you're just not using the term correctly. In fact, really the only thing I can think of in gaming where you CAN'T stop and come back later is high level raiding in WOW. Difficulty, depth, accessibility are indicators as to how casual friendly a game is. I do agree that party forming tools like instance matching etc are casual instruments.
I think things like that are indicative of a watered down and casual friendly game. I think if you didn't have instance matching and instead had to go out and find a fight or find a group, that would require a deeper level of satisfaction and interest in the game. Instance matching and streamlining everything into utter simplicity and a lack of difficulty is what casual gaming is about, and it's what WoW is about and all of those things are related to watered down gameplay. People are less engrossed in the game so you have to feed them everything on a veritable conveyor belt of rewards and new "content."
WoW was a hit profuct. An anomaly in MMORPG circles, but not too uncommon in business. Companies do the exact same thing in any market regarding hit products. It is not unnatural.
Everyone adopted touchscreen technology soon after iPhones success even though the technology was originally developed by Nokia almost 15 years ago.
Remember Tamagochis? A hit product copied by many. Leatherman? Sony Walkman?
I never said that taking proven methods or ideas from other companies is unnatural. I'm saying WoW's success was unnaturally, or abnormally, or unusually, substantial and so it lead to the market unnaturally favoring themeparks. The market has been in an unnatural state because of WoW's unusual success. I doubt 5 years from now the market will have as much of an focus on WoW-clones as it does now. If that ends up being the case (and I think it 's already happening), then that means we were right.
I think you are wrongly using the word "unnatural" in this, because there is nothing unnatural about it. Is it an anomaly? Maybe. Is in unnatural? Definitely not. This is what happens with hit products.
Do you even realize you're doing it when this happens? The only thing you're talking about is if I'm using the proper word. I deliberately elaborated on my meaning so as not to waste any more time playing scrabble with you. Replace the word unnatural with unusual then.
The point is, you guys are claiming that the market knows best and if sandboxes were popular enough there would be more of them. I'm saying that's bull because of WoW's unusual success. That's how we're able to claim that the market at this moment does not know best, but it IS however fixing itself. That's why there are a number of higher budget sandbox games on the horizon.
I have no issue with this although your comment about where market "needs to be" is rather odd.
When I say the market doesn't need to be where it is right now, I'm saying the MMO genre hasn't been figured out. It's still in a state of flux so you guys making the case that sandboxes won't exist simply because they don't already exist isn't accurate. Lizardbones in particular seems to like to talk about how the market knows best and the fact that developers aren't making them proves (or strongly suggests) that they're not viable. I'm saying I don't think that's true, I think developers are still figuring out what's doable and what isn't.
You didn't respond to the above. It's probably because the formatting on this website can be terrible sometimes and I wasn't able to get it out of a quote box.
I am saying there is nothing inherently better or worse in sandbox design although their execution has always been subpar to a point where the word "sandbox MMO" is synonomous with poor quality. Usually I'd say the case is developers have been overreached.
And you can't know whether Eve is a similar anomaly among sandboxes as WoW is among themeparks. It is impossible to know since Eve doesn't have and hasn't had much competition. Every other sci-fi game has been lacking severely. Every other sandbox has lacked severely. With competition like that, you don't need to be "good", you only need to be better than the alternatives.
Yes, Eve is a perfect game for some, but you don't really know to how many people it is their "fallback MMO".
I don't think you understand my point about EvE. You guys are basically saying that sandboxes won't work. I'm saying they already do. EvE is a sandbox. The only reason I'm not playing it is because I'm not into the space combat. If you took the level of depth/complexity/consequence/sandbox-ness of EvE and made a fantasy game, that's a game I would be totally happy with.
We are not saying anything of the sort. We are explaining why it is unlikely for old-school games to make a comeback.
Well a lot of people who are asking for these old-school principles to make a comback are pretty happy with how EvE handles them, we just don't particularly like EvE. Old-school in these topics are often synonymous with sandbox, but also often specifically mean unforgiving, satisfying gameplay. EvE fits that description. So again, I'm not sure how you guys deal with that fact when you say games like this won't exist and that we should stop asking for them.
I don't mind people voicing their opinion. I mind it when they do it in a rude and antagonizing manner. I mind when people make a weekly thread about how things were better "back in the day" and how current MMOs suck. It is so common MMORPG.com should reserve a separate section or a sticky for it. Or delete it as spam.
They very rarely lead to a constructive conversation. Most often they are simply threads for bashing and flaming - ideal breeding grounds for trolls. It is not only the most common topic on these forums but also the least productive.
The point of a forum is for people to talk about what they want to talk about. If there are SOOO many of these threads (and there probably are), then it's probably because there are a lot of people who want to talk about it. This kind of makes me consider just how much you guys rely on this "vocal minority" argument. I agree that forums in particular disproportionately represent the people with a grievance, but there are a LOT of us on these forums. It seems like these discussions are split pretty much right down the middle between pro sandbox and anti sandbox. I don't often make predictions, but I think in the coming years, all of this sandbox naysaying is going to look absolutely ridiculous. I think sandbox games are going to be a really big splash. I doubt they'll ever beat themeparks, but considering you guys are basically saying we shouldn't even expect one or two good sandboxes, I think that's WAY off.
I didn't say there were a lot of people talking about it. I said there were many threads about it. It is more or less the same faces over and over who make 'em.
And if there is any sort of split on this topic, it is between fans and sceptics. You are seriously mistaken if you think we are anti sandbox.
Well I'm not sure what side you personally fall on, but in the sandbox vs themepark discussions that go on around here, it seems pretty well split down the middle. But you're kind of making my point even stronger. I'm sure there are some on the "themepark" side that are indeed fans of sandboxes, they just don't agree with the sandbox player's claim or the way they argue or call people carebears or whatever else. So all that means is that there are even more sandbox players than meets the eye.
I'll say it again, I think you guys are going to be made to look very foolish in a few years when there are a lot more sandbox titles than there are right now, which is really all we're asking for or claiming: that sandbox players are currently underserved.
Yes I think they are unrelated. To my knowledge, the complaining has been fairly constant the time I've been following these forums. If there was any significant change you could have a point, but even then you could not be sure: it could still be a coincidence.
Got it. A lot of people complaining about a lack of sandbox games, companies start to make sandbox games to sell to these (and other) people, and there's no connection.
The fact that you are attributing the development of a few games to yourself (and people like you) is rather amusing.
For somebody that likes to complain about logical fallacies and in particular strawman arguments, you sure as hell spit a lot of them out. I'm not taking credit for anything. That's like saying people who like steak are attributing the success of steak to themselves. All I'm saying is that it is NOT pointless to voice my opinion on a forum about sandbox games. I think myself and the countless other people who have made it clear that we are interested in a sandbox game are indeed one of the reasons those games exist. If they didn't think there was a market for them, they wouldn't make them. And by making ourselves heard (at least a little bit), it makes it that much more likely that they'll know there's a market for them.
Second, if all you say is simply based on your judgement. Why are you defending it like its the truth? A sensible person would not cling to his arguments like so when they are that weak.
Would you stop acting like if it's not provable, it's not worth arguing? That's literally the ONLY time you would argue. If it was provable and not based on judgement or reason, then there'd be no point in arguing. And what's weak about it? You haven't even answered it.
I have. Many times already.
I think you need to look at this last exchange and ask if this is a reasonable position to take.
I wasn't quoting you. Clearly you can read from the context those were examples. And I already said, that is one way to further increase your playerbase but not the only one. And nothing says that WoW has had to rely on it any more than Eve, UO or SWG has. I feel like I am repeating myself.
You cannot make a judgement based on the size how watered down the game is. It is no way reasonable or intuitive to make that connection. You don't know how many of those players are precisely the target audience.
Again, you can make that connection based on size. We were given the gift of reason, after all. You do realize that your position is that the MMO that has BY FAR the most subscribers hasn't had to water down their gameplay? Technically is it possible that they just happen to find this HUGE niche of players that all share as many common preferences as the much smaller audience of SWG? I guess. Do you really think that's a defensible position though?
Now you get it. What if WoW has found that huge niche? I think it is entirely plausible. Certainly I find your assumption about how UO or SWG haven't had to expand their net as much as WoW very dangerous. And I think it is not very sound to base that argument on size alone.
It's not size alone. How can you possibly have discussions with me that last for weeks and think my position relies on size alone? Again, strawman.
And now I get what? The thing that I've been saying literally the entire time? That's a lot of this is based on judgement? I said that exact thing to you weeks ago. I've been saying over and over and over and over that this is a discussion, I never meant it to be a provable fact. Your only contribution has been unreasonable skepticism. That's all I can remember you offering. Queue you talking about how skepticism is a noble position and how it has stopped many world tragedies etc.
All I see is you making a strawman. And I wasn't the only poster to point it out.
So you're saying that you're right because other people agreed with you? Seems more than a little bit fallacious to me. Also, I don't remember people agreeing with you that it was a strawman aside from Loktofeit. But you and he both really don't have much credibility when it comes to this kind of thing. He is totally incapable of having a conversation, and you continuously ignore the most important stuff. You're still not even acknowledging the point about your lack of knowledge of the context in which is was using the word "satisfied." That's the WHOLE thing and over and over again you ignore it, choosing to pick out little bits here and there that you can argue with.
Why didn't you change your position when Loktofeit further explained is post, then? His explanation was perfectly valid and the assumption he made very prudent.
You'll have to refresh my memory, I don't remember him changing his position in any meaningful way. I think he changed it from "If people are pay and playing, it's reasonable to assume they're satisfied" to "If people are paying and playing, and the industry continues to grow, it's reasonable to assume they're satisfied." Neither is sound. Especially when you consider what he was responding to: me saying that people seem to be disappointed with modern MMOs. So "satisfied" in this context has to mean satisfied to the point of not being disappointed, otherwise it's a meaningless statement. Yet that's how you and other tried to spin it. You started to say "satisfied to the point of playing" which is obviously redundant.
Also, I can't find anything in that report that indicates what games it's counting. The whole reason I was asking for a source was because somebody pointed out that these numbers may include MOBAs. Then when Narius provided a link, his did include MOBAs. That would completely invalidate those numbers if that were the case.
Completely invalidates, huh?
Yes! MOBAs aren't MMOs. Not only that, MOBAs are HUGE. LoL is the single most played game ever. I don't know if the MMO genre is growing or not, but using a number that includes MOBAs is utterly and absolutely pointless.
It is not "utterly and absolutely pointless". Come on. You should know better than this.
No, it is. Until you disaggregate you'll never know how much of that growth can be attributed to MOBAs, and how much can be attributed to MMOs. Especially because, as I said, LoL is the biggest game ever. You don't think it ruins your data to have an outlier like that?
Your opinion is as biased as theirs. Don't you think that maybe because they play a lot of those games they might be proficient identifying a "WoW clone"?
Copying UI design is normal practice when designing games. You'll notice a "copied UI"I, coming from a similar game it feels intuitive, benefiting the you, the player. In UI design, it is foolish to be different for the sake of being different.
But if you want to see a proper clone, you should check out Perpetuum or Heroes of Newerth. Perpetuum being a clone of Eve Online and HoN being a clone of the original Defense of the Ancients. You would be hard-pressed to find a themepark copying WoW to the same extent as those two games have copied their respective role models.
Of course my opinion is biased! I'm not nor have I ever claimed to be the overseer of what games are or aren't WoW clones. But how does that excuse you saying "If they don't think its a WoW clone, its not a WoW clone." ?? It seems like in any of these discussions whenever you hit a dead end, you just find some way to bring it back to me.
I highly doubt that MMORPG UIs have been figured out to the point of perfection. So anytime a company copies something from another game, that's a missed opportunity to discover more efficient or interesting ways of designing the UI. I fully expect companies to do that from time to time, obviously when I say a game is a WoW clone, I'm saying it relies more heavily on stealing ideas than they should.
Also, I'm sure certain UI choices are tied to how the game is made. So if a game is taking other ideas from a game like WoW, their UI is more likely to emulate WoW's UI. But also I don't care that much about what they take from the UI. I care way more about copying things like quest hubs, instancing, character progression, etc. Game structure stuff.
Why is they saying a game is not a WoW clone any different from you saying a game is a WoW clone?
I don't recall when I said that it was.
No I didn't claim UIs were developed to perfection. I only made a point how it is sometimes beneficial to copy existing UIs. This includes some features as well. But I find some of the things you list are quite high concept features. It would be foolish to call game clone based off of those. It would be equivalent of me saying that lack of instances, crafting, classless progression and a harsh death penalty makes a clone.
The proposition is preposterous, no? So it is with the features you list.
I'm listing features that factor into whether a game would be considered a WoW clone. What exactly is the problem here? I never said if it takes anything from another game it's a clone, I'm saying here are some common things that WoW clones copy from other games. You pick the weirdest and most indefensible positions sometimes.
Because here's a pretty basic way of looking at it: A lot more people play themeparks. It's possible that the few players playing sandbox games just haven't played themeparks, but let's just think about this logically. Considering there are tens of millions of people playing themeparks, and probably only like a million total playing sandboxes (rought estimates... half a million playing eve, let's just call it half a million playing whatever other sandboxes there are), it's far more likely that a random person has played a themepark game. Not only that, themepark games are just naturally more accessible. Sandbox games are known for being more complex and "hardcore" so it stands to reason that more "hardcore" gamers play them, gamers who have a deeper knowledge of the mmo industry. Sandbox players are known for their dislike of themepark games. Themepark players aren't particularly KNOWN for their dislike of sandbox games. You could claim that sandbox players are just generally more likely to dislike something they haven't played, but I'd like to hear why.
I'll ask again, if you had to guess... which would you say is more likely?
It is far more complicated than that. The term hardcore does not only apply to players who play "hardcore games" it also applies to hardcore players who spend much of their time mastering and playing all games. In fact, I would say most of the players playing "hardcore games" are casuals, just like most of the players playing "casual games" are casuals.
Sandboxes are also known for their poor quality. Does that also mean people who like sandboxes like the poor quality? Themepark players are known for disliking bad games. Sandboxes are generally bad games. ... Really you could go anywhere with that logic.
Do you know who has a deeper knowledge of the industry? -The people who work in the industry. And some have been posting here opposing you.
Since you're having such a hard time answering the question, let's just make it more specific. Do you think the % of SWG's playerbase who have also played WoW is higher than the % of WoW's playerbase who have also played SWG?
No. What does this have to do with anything?
Ok. Personally I think that's an absolutely absurd position to hold, and that you wouldn't be holding it if it weren't asked by me in this context, but hey it's your opinion.
Though in case you didn't understand it or something, here it is again... and I'm gonna make some numbers up just to make it simple:
Let's say that SWG had 300k subs and WoW had 10 million.
If you polled SWG's playerbase and asked if they had played WoW, and 25% of them said yes, that would mean that 75k of those 300k people have played WoW. Hardly a drop in the bucket of WoW's 10 million person playerbase.
If you polled WoW's playerbase and asked if they had played WoW, and 25% of them said yes, that would mean 2.5 million of them had played SWG.
You can play around with the numbers of course, because I don't KNOW how many people who played SWG also played WoW, but considering WoW is such a massive game in comparison to SWG, I'm not sure how you can possibly make the claim that it's the same, or that you don't believe a bigger proportion of SWG played WoW than vice versa. This just doesn't seem reasonable at all.
But you would trust sandbox players talking about themeparks? How peculiar.
Who said anything about trusting sandbox players talking about themeparks? You're saying those powergamers play a lot of "games", so you'd trust their opinion about "games" more than the average gamer. I'm saying the games they're playing seem to be games that people are prone to jump around to and from. The themepark circuit. Oh I like that.
Also, I may trust that person's opinion over the "average game" but I absolutely would not trust that person's opinion over somebody who grew up playing Shadowbane or UO or SWG.
Powergamers play a lot of games. All games. Not just themeparks.
It is like you want to hear the history of the ancient word only through the eyes of the Greeks. Everyone else is a barbarian.
When I picture somebody who hops from themepark to themepark, I don't picture them playing all types of games. My respect for somebody goes up if they've played specific games. And obviously I will trust somebody's opinion more if I respect them.
I am not only talking about aesthetics when I talk about quality. I am talking about everything in the game. What it tries to do and how well it achieves it, depth, amount of bugs, performance... everything.
And we've been over this already: Time spent playing is a poor measure of quality. I can play a game for a day and have more fun than playing something else for a year. As it has been pointed out, GTA V has less that 48 hours worth of content, yet it is undoubtedly one of the best games of the decade so far. I had more fun playing Nexus: Jupiter Incident and Freelancer (each of which took me a couple of afternoons to finish) than I've had playing Eve Online for well over 2 years.
Regarding PvP, I had more "good fights" in one weekend playing Guild Wars 1 than in all the engagements combined from open world PvP games I've tried. And the time spent in GW1 is less than playing all those open world PvP games. It is all relative. All subjective.
Time spent is a fine measure of quality in an industry that basically across the board is looking to keep people around. Portal is one of my favorite games of all time and it only lasts a couple of hours. But that's how it's designed. MMOs are always looking and trying to keep people around. If you don't think that MMOs care about their own longevity, than I'm not sure what to tell you. If they do care about their longevity, then time spent playing is definitely a good measure of quality.
No it isn't. P2P MMOs are designed to keep you playing as long as possible. And that actually leads to watered down content (Whaddya know; I got to use that term too!). Oftentimes these games require a lot of time to play but they don't have much substance in them.
If you had a can of soda and drank it, that would be your average single player RPG. If you have can of soda, poured it in a bucket full of water and enjoyed it with your friends, that would be your average P2P MMORPG. I exaggerate but I'm sure you get the picture.
I think content-driven MMOs like themeparks that are P2P lead to watered down gameplay. That's one of the reasons I like sandboxes: you make your own content through politics and community.
But I feel like you never really finished your point. P2P MMOs are designed to keep people playing but..... F2P MMOs aren't?
How does Repopulation keeping itself alive makes my position wrong in any way? Or EQN being a sandbox or not? And making EQN a sandbox would be rather odd considering neither of the previous games in the series were strictly sandbox. What is your point?
I guess it depends on your position. Your position seems to be that I'm wrong. And my position is that there should be more sandboxes. So if a sandbox comes out and is alive enough for me to play it......?
I am merely voicing my scepticism and criticism toward your claims. Nothing more. All I've said - All anyone has said, is that they find your predictions unlikely.
What are my predictions?
You can't possibly claim to know their motives. And I think it is juvenile to call them greedy or lazy solely on the basis that they don't serve or share your preferences.
What the hell dude. Are you serious right now? You think I'm calling them greedy or lazy based on the fact that they don't serve my preferences? This is one of the first times I've actually been PISSED in any of these discussions. This is a downright ridiculous thing to say.
I'm calling them greedy/lazy (though again, I try to say things like "lazy game design") because they're making games that are clearly blatant ripoffs of other games just with a new skin in order to make money. Not only that, a lot of them claim to be things they're not. How often do developers shy away from questions about PvP because they don't want to scare anybody away from their game? Instead of just being honest so people don't buy your game and then end up disappointed.
Can you name a company that hasn't fallen short on their promises or lied outright?
I doubt any company has been 100% truthful or genuine.
Did you really just link me to a video discussing one of the most basic and obvious concepts in philosophy? What does this have to do with anything? I'm not asking you to prove a negative. Imagine how much time would be saved if you just took a second and thought about what I'm asking and what your response is.
How is this statement nonsensical? "Just because I can't prove it doesn't mean it isn't true"
That's not asking you to prove a negative. All that is doing is pointing out that we're talking about something that may be true, even if I can't prove it. Again, this describes almost every discussion people have ever participated in. When I said it, I believe it was pointing out that this is a discussion. I'm not trying to PROVE something. I'm making claims, and you're supposed to argue against those claims if you don't agree with them.
But if you accuse me of attacking your reasoning - clinging to your the things you use to build your argument. What do you expect? That is all I can do, because I cannot prove a negative. But as Randi something along the lines of "You can use it to illustrate your point, but whenever you claim something is, rather than isn't, you should provide evidence toward the positive". The latter part is incidentally the same comment Loktofeit made.
I questioned some of the claims you made to which you responded with your comment "just because I can't prove it doesn't mean it isn't true". You didn't use it to illustrate your point, you made a claim, and that is why it is nonsensical.
This is pretty much bull. I've provided plenty of rational arguments to back up everything I've said. You're trying to rewrite history and make it seem like I just make claims and then say "if you don't like it, oh well." I never went straight to "just because I can't prove it, doesn't mean it isn't true." I said that in response to you demanding proof of things I never claimed to be able to prove. I've said this so many times now, this is getting ridiculous.
It's not an inherently nonsensical thing to say, like you claimed. And this is probably at least the 5th time you've dodged the question. It describes most statements made by humans.
It seems more to me that OP misses the old MMO communities more than the games in themself.
I can understand that, been playing since 1996 myself and MMO players used to be a rather small group of gamers that were closer to eachother than today (even if we had plenty of crafters Vs RPers Vs PvPers back then as well).
The MMO crowd is a lot larger today and way more diverse then it was back then and that have both advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side means more players more money which means that the games can put more into development but we also did loose some of the community feelings from way back. It is different to belonging to a small niche group after all.
And of course this means that the games needs to offer more varied gameplay today and have features that works for everyone, but that might not be so fun for a specific group of players as a game targeted just for them. You can notice this particularly in difficulty and time you need to spend in the games nowadays.
My personal opinion is that MMOs needs to stop to try to get all players and deliver a great experience for a specific group instead, the difference between now and before should be that there are more groups to choose between. I think that would both improve he feeling of community and the gameplay for the players of a specific game.
Not sure about that, Loke. I'm a veteran myself, I sometimes miss the old communities, but I also don't wear those glasses and remember they were also full of "douchebags".
I think people should focus more on trying to organize groups (aka guilds) which are likeminded than to try to turn whole games into their own specific playstyle.
There are some MMORPGs that have things that don't currently exist in single player games. STO for instance has those ships that narisseldon is talking about. The Secret World has a modern setting and "mysteries" to solve and fight through. These things are advantages of MMORPGs, they're just things these games have that other games don't.
If people like them, they are good advantages.
The STO example is great. Die hard trekkies love to get their hands on canon star ships.
Originally posted by FinalFikus lets forget about old school and talk about the new school.Tell us of your successes. There is WOW of coarse.Eq2- no one plays anymore either- join the old schoolDDO- failLORTO- no one plays anymore either-join the old schoolWAR-deadAOC-no one plays anymore either-join the old schoolTabla rasa-deadVangaurd-failFinal fantasy- looks like it will join the old schoolRift-joins the old schoolStar trek-join the old schoolCOH-deadAion- joins the old school at least hereFallen earth-old schoolGuild wars 1- not an mmorpg but sold a lot of boxesGuild wars 2 -sold a lot of boxesStar wars old republic- lol unless you count box sales then you could only make a comparison if old school games were marketed at all let alone evenly. And at a time when more than nerds played games on the PC over dial up connections (wanna use the phone).Plus the old school games need all the knowledge and trial and error of previous mmorpg makers. Plus all the new tech.Basically you cant know unless a new refined and polished game with old school features (freedom and open world) were made today. World sims with games built around them.Im sure Im wrong about all the newer games. They make more in a week than UO ever did right? It didn't make any money for EA over its 15+ year life span. EQ definitely didn't make sony any money.
Seems like you know what you're talking about; will keep a eye for your posts.
Originally posted by FinalFikus Originally posted by Quirhid Apparently you missed all the hype.
Sure. You win.
Nice finishing move.
Originally posted by FinalFikus Im stupid too.
Humility as well!
Originally posted by FinalFikus ...someone's opinion, which cannot be proven wrong, is being presented in the exact same manner as the opposing opinion. The only difference is no one is attacking your credibility or honesty out of respect and fair play.
So much of that going on here.
Originally posted by FinalFikus ...Either way the topic at hand is more interesting, can we assume that people are giving opinions and have fun again plz?
That makes common sense even if sense is not too common here.
Originally posted by Voqar "The MMOrpg genre is designed for the patient, curious, adventurous, ambitious gamers. The type of players who like to socialize, explore, and achieve self-set goals. It is factually not designed to be hopped-between and played solo. MMORPG's are the outlet for exploration and adventure not churning through quest after quest, and that is ultimately what these modern MMORPG's are designed for, all in the name of greed and money, not ambition." I fully agree ...
Me too; who were you quoting? It's genius.
Also, props to Loke666 for his great post.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon. In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
lets forget about old school and talk about the new school.
Tell us of your successes. There is WOW of coarse.
Eq2- no one plays anymore either- join the old school
DDO- fail
LORTO- no one plays anymore either-join the old school
WAR-dead
AOC-no one plays anymore either-join the old school
Tabla rasa-dead
Vangaurd-fail
Final fantasy- looks like it will join the old school
Rift-joins the old school
Star trek-join the old school
COH-dead
Aion- joins the old school at least here
Fallen earth-old school
Guild wars 1- not an mmorpg but sold a lot of boxes
Guild wars 2 -sold a lot of boxes
Star wars old republic- lol
unless you count box sales then you could only make a comparison if old school games were marketed at all let alone evenly. And at a time when more than nerds played games on the PC over dial up connections (wanna use the phone).
Plus the old school games need all the knowledge and trial and error of previous mmorpg makers. Plus all the new tech.
Basically you cant know unless a new refined and polished game with old school features (freedom and open world) were made today. World sims with games built around them.
Im sure Im wrong about all the newer games. They make more in a week than UO ever did right? It didn't make any money for EA over its 15+ year life span. EQ definitely didn't make sony any money.
Seems like you know what you're talking about; will keep a eye for your posts.
Originally posted by FinalFikus
Originally posted by Quirhid Apparently you missed all the hype.
Sure. You win.
Nice finishing move.
Originally posted by FinalFikus Im stupid too.
Humility as well!
Originally posted by FinalFikus ...someone's opinion, which cannot be proven wrong, is being presented in the exact same manner as the opposing opinion. The only difference is no one is attacking your credibility or honesty out of respect and fair play.
So much of that going on here.
Originally posted by FinalFikus ...Either way the topic at hand is more interesting, can we assume that people are giving opinions and have fun again plz?
That makes common sense even if sense is not too common here.
Originally posted by Voqar "The MMOrpg genre is designed for the patient, curious, adventurous, ambitious gamers. The type of players who like to socialize, explore, and achieve self-set goals. It is factually not designed to be hopped-between and played solo. MMORPG's are the outlet for exploration and adventure not churning through quest after quest, and that is ultimately what these modern MMORPG's are designed for, all in the name of greed and money, not ambition."
I fully agree ...
Me too; who were you quoting? It's genius.
Also, props to Loke666 for his great post.
And a great sense of humor... from "The Most Exciting Man In The World"
Originally posted by nariusseldon Originally posted by lizardbones There are some MMORPGs that have things that don't currently exist in single player games. STO for instance has those ships that narisseldon is talking about. The Secret World has a modern setting and "mysteries" to solve and fight through. These things are advantages of MMORPGs, they're just things these games have that other games don't.
If people like them, they are good advantages.
The STO example is great. Die hard trekkies love to get their hands on canon star ships.
What I meant to say, and didn't because I got in a hurry was that those things weren't advantages of MMORPGs, they were just advantages of the games themselves. And yes, nearly any advantage is a good one, whether it's something intrinsic to the type of game, or something that particular game provides that is part of the IP.
Also, does anyone else notice posts coming and going, near the end of the thread? Did we finally kill the MMORPG.com thread engine?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
What I meant to say, and didn't because I got in a hurry was that those things weren't advantages of MMORPGs, they were just advantages of the games themselves. And yes, nearly any advantage is a good one, whether it's something intrinsic to the type of game, or something that particular game provides that is part of the IP.
Yeh. I don't play games because they are good MMOs. I play games because they are good games.
If a MMO has an advantage, and it makes the game fun for me, do you think if i care what the advantage should be "categorized" as?
What I meant to say, and didn't because I got in a hurry was that those things weren't advantages of MMORPGs, they were just advantages of the games themselves. And yes, nearly any advantage is a good one, whether it's something intrinsic to the type of game, or something that particular game provides that is part of the IP.
Yeh. I don't play games because they are good MMOs. I play games because they are good games.
If a MMO has an advantage, and it makes the game fun for me, do you think if i care what the advantage should be "categorized" as?
Any type of gameplay, any type of "fun" if you must call it that has an impact on all the other gameplay in whatever you are playing. There is always a negative effect to be paid for whatever it is we enjoy in a game. Simply boiling this down to advantages ignores that any game is a holistic creation. We get more than the sum of the parts in a game by having good gameplay parts which work together to form something more than levelling, mounts and crafting etc.
So every advantage must be considered by what it contributes to the game and not just to us as individuals. Otherwise you end up going down the line of thinking class unbalance is fine as long as its for my class.
I never questioned your definition of watered down, it is your definition, I was questioning your logic regarding how you called WoW watered down. I pointed out how your "case" is flawed. Being casual friendly has nothing to do with being less targeted or more targeted. Casual friendliness means you can log in, do something worthwhile within 20 minutes and log out. The opposite is a game where doing anything takes an uninterrupted long play session. It has no relation to depth, difficulty or how well it is targeted.
1. You absolutely did question what I meant by watered down. I think you said something about me using platitudes and then demanded I explain what I mean when I say watered down. That started a discussion that lead to using venn diagrams as an example and then eventually you changed the subject from what watered down means, to how I know that WoW is an example of watering down.
2. This is the first time you've responded to the connection between casual friendly and watered down. Casual friendliness doesn't just mean you can log in and do something in a short amount of time. That's one thing that casual people look for, I'm sure. But casual friendly games are in general not going to be as deep. Casual friendliness is kind of the antithesis of depth in a game. Depth means there's a lot to explore and a lot to consider and think about. Casual gameplay means you can kind of coast without having to take it too seriously. I'm not sure how you can claim that there's no connection between casual gameplay and watered down gameplay. Casual players pretty much by definition are going to care less about their game than a hardcore gamer.
1. I demanded you to define exactly what you mean by watered down. I did not question it.
1. I'm really not interested in getting into another word game with you. The point is the discussion was about two separate things: FIRST it was about what watered down means. And we had several replies back and forth where you argued with my reasoning for a while, then it changed into what makes me think WoW meets that description more than SWG or UO.
2. Casual friendliness does not mean what you think it means. It doesn't matter if a single player game, for example, is deep or not. The fact that you can save your progress at any time and continue your play session later makes it casual friendly. It makes a game casual friendly when you don't need to spend any lengthy time preparing to play it. It has nothing to do with depth or difficulty.
Party forming tools make a game casual friendly. Instanced PvP is casual friendly. They don't make grouping or PvP shallow.
Dark Souls can be saved and picked back up later. It's not a casual friendly game. You're wrong in your definition of the term. In UO you can farm for 20 minutes and then stop. You can even make my money while not playing through a vendor. Yet most wouldn't consider it a casual friendly game. Starcraft2 games rarely exceed 20 minutes and it's one of the least casual friendly games in existence. On the other hand, MOBAs like LoL have matches that are often twice as long, yet it's way more casual friendly. Again, you're just not using the term correctly. In fact, really the only thing I can think of in gaming where you CAN'T stop and come back later is high level raiding in WOW. Difficulty, depth, accessibility are indicators as to how casual friendly a game is. I do agree that party forming tools like instance matching etc are casual instruments.
So you grasp on the time? No Dark Souls is not as casual friendly as say Dragon Age because the method of progress is through checkpoints (bonfires). Starcraft 2 is casual friendly. Every MOBA is. Difficulty and depth are NOT indicators of casual friendliness.
I think things like that are indicative of a watered down and casual friendly game. I think if you didn't have instance matching and instead had to go out and find a fight or find a group, that would require a deeper level of satisfaction and interest in the game. Instance matching and streamlining everything into utter simplicity and a lack of difficulty is what casual gaming is about, and it's what WoW is about and all of those things are related to watered down gameplay. People are less engrossed in the game so you have to feed them everything on a veritable conveyor belt of rewards and new "content."
Oh that is a big pile of bullshit right there. Tedium is not difficult. Cutting tedium is fine. Cutting unnecessary inconveniences is fine. Especially when they don't contribute to depth. I hope we are not back discussing depth vs. complexity.
WoW was a hit profuct. An anomaly in MMORPG circles, but not too uncommon in business. Companies do the exact same thing in any market regarding hit products. It is not unnatural.
Everyone adopted touchscreen technology soon after iPhones success even though the technology was originally developed by Nokia almost 15 years ago.
Remember Tamagochis? A hit product copied by many. Leatherman? Sony Walkman?
I never said that taking proven methods or ideas from other companies is unnatural. I'm saying WoW's success was unnaturally, or abnormally, or unusually, substantial and so it lead to the market unnaturally favoring themeparks. The market has been in an unnatural state because of WoW's unusual success. I doubt 5 years from now the market will have as much of an focus on WoW-clones as it does now. If that ends up being the case (and I think it 's already happening), then that means we were right.
I think you are wrongly using the word "unnatural" in this, because there is nothing unnatural about it. Is it an anomaly? Maybe. Is in unnatural? Definitely not. This is what happens with hit products.
Do you even realize you're doing it when this happens? The only thing you're talking about is if I'm using the proper word. I deliberately elaborated on my meaning so as not to waste any more time playing scrabble with you. Replace the word unnatural with unusual then.
The point is, you guys are claiming that the market knows best and if sandboxes were popular enough there would be more of them. I'm saying that's bull because of WoW's unusual success. That's how we're able to claim that the market at this moment does not know best, but it IS however fixing itself. That's why there are a number of higher budget sandbox games on the horizon.
Unusual fits much better.
I have no issue with this although your comment about where market "needs to be" is rather odd.
When I say the market doesn't need to be where it is right now, I'm saying the MMO genre hasn't been figured out. It's still in a state of flux so you guys making the case that sandboxes won't exist simply because they don't already exist isn't accurate. Lizardbones in particular seems to like to talk about how the market knows best and the fact that developers aren't making them proves (or strongly suggests) that they're not viable. I'm saying I don't think that's true, I think developers are still figuring out what's doable and what isn't.
You didn't respond to the above. It's probably because the formatting on this website can be terrible sometimes and I wasn't able to get it out of a quote box.
We are saying it is unlikely for the old school values to come back. The track record for games that have tried to bring them back hasn't been good which he rightly pointed out. I am anxiously waiting for entirely new games. Not old revivals.
We are not saying anything of the sort. We are explaining why it is unlikely for old-school games to make a comeback.
Well a lot of people who are asking for these old-school principles to make a comback are pretty happy with how EvE handles them, we just don't particularly like EvE. Old-school in these topics are often synonymous with sandbox, but also often specifically mean unforgiving, satisfying gameplay. EvE fits that description. So again, I'm not sure how you guys deal with that fact when you say games like this won't exist and that we should stop asking for them.
We are not saying games like this won't exist. We are expressing our scepticism. You are putting words in our mouths.
I didn't say there were a lot of people talking about it. I said there were many threads about it. It is more or less the same faces over and over who make 'em.
And if there is any sort of split on this topic, it is between fans and sceptics. You are seriously mistaken if you think we are anti sandbox.
Well I'm not sure what side you personally fall on, but in the sandbox vs themepark discussions that go on around here, it seems pretty well split down the middle. But you're kind of making my point even stronger. I'm sure there are some on the "themepark" side that are indeed fans of sandboxes, they just don't agree with the sandbox player's claim or the way they argue or call people carebears or whatever else. So all that means is that there are even more sandbox players than meets the eye.
I'll say it again, I think you guys are going to be made to look very foolish in a few years when there are a lot more sandbox titles than there are right now, which is really all we're asking for or claiming: that sandbox players are currently underserved.
Don't try to be yet another Internet prophet.
The fact that you are attributing the development of a few games to yourself (and people like you) is rather amusing.
For somebody that likes to complain about logical fallacies and in particular strawman arguments, you sure as hell spit a lot of them out. I'm not taking credit for anything. That's like saying people who like steak are attributing the success of steak to themselves. All I'm saying is that it is NOT pointless to voice my opinion on a forum about sandbox games. I think myself and the countless other people who have made it clear that we are interested in a sandbox game are indeed one of the reasons those games exist. If they didn't think there was a market for them, they wouldn't make them. And by making ourselves heard (at least a little bit), it makes it that much more likely that they'll know there's a market for them.
This affirms my previous statement. I have nothing more to say about this subject.
Now you get it. What if WoW has found that huge niche? I think it is entirely plausible. Certainly I find your assumption about how UO or SWG haven't had to expand their net as much as WoW very dangerous. And I think it is not very sound to base that argument on size alone.
It's not size alone. How can you possibly have discussions with me that last for weeks and think my position relies on size alone? Again, strawman.
And now I get what? The thing that I've been saying literally the entire time? That's a lot of this is based on judgement? I said that exact thing to you weeks ago. I've been saying over and over and over and over that this is a discussion, I never meant it to be a provable fact. Your only contribution has been unreasonable skepticism. That's all I can remember you offering. Queue you talking about how skepticism is a noble position and how it has stopped many world tragedies etc.
But since it is foolish to assume your judgement is any better than anyone else's, all you are left with is size. And I specifically pointed out how that argument is not very good.
Why didn't you change your position when Loktofeit further explained is post, then? His explanation was perfectly valid and the assumption he made very prudent.
You'll have to refresh my memory, I don't remember him changing his position in any meaningful way. I think he changed it from "If people are pay and playing, it's reasonable to assume they're satisfied" to "If people are paying and playing, and the industry continues to grow, it's reasonable to assume they're satisfied." Neither is sound. Especially when you consider what he was responding to: me saying that people seem to be disappointed with modern MMOs. So "satisfied" in this context has to mean satisfied to the point of not being disappointed, otherwise it's a meaningless statement. Yet that's how you and other tried to spin it. You started to say "satisfied to the point of playing" which is obviously redundant.
No its not "sound" but it is a reasonable assupmtion. It is more reasonable than when you claimed most of them are dissatisfied. Or if you meant "a lot of them" are dissatisfied, where does that leave us?
It is not "utterly and absolutely pointless". Come on. You should know better than this.
No, it is. Until you disaggregate you'll never know how much of that growth can be attributed to MOBAs, and how much can be attributed to MMOs. Especially because, as I said, LoL is the biggest game ever. You don't think it ruins your data to have an outlier like that?
So it is not utterly pointless if you discount MOBAs?
Why is they saying a game is not a WoW clone any different from you saying a game is a WoW clone?
I don't recall when I said that it was.
Your word is as good as theirs then. If they don't think they are playing a WoW clone, they aren't. To them it is not a WoW clone. To you it might be. And you are all right.
People use that term far to liberally anyway.
No I didn't claim UIs were developed to perfection. I only made a point how it is sometimes beneficial to copy existing UIs. This includes some features as well. But I find some of the things you list are quite high concept features. It would be foolish to call game clone based off of those. It would be equivalent of me saying that lack of instances, crafting, classless progression and a harsh death penalty makes a clone.
The proposition is preposterous, no? So it is with the features you list.
I'm listing features that factor into whether a game would be considered a WoW clone. What exactly is the problem here? I never said if it takes anything from another game it's a clone, I'm saying here are some common things that WoW clones copy from other games. You pick the weirdest and most indefensible positions sometimes.
You can't pick high level concepts as your basis of calling something a clone. You would end up with clones all around! It is not rational or reasonable. It is like you are dividing your toys into two boxes based on what you like. I am trying to show how silly it is to use high level concepts for this purpose.
Lack of instances, crafting, classless progression, harsh death penalty -> UO clone. Do you think that is reasonable?
No. What does this have to do with anything?
Ok. Personally I think that's an absolutely absurd position to hold, and that you wouldn't be holding it if it weren't asked by me in this context, but hey it's your opinion.
Though in case you didn't understand it or something, here it is again... and I'm gonna make some numbers up just to make it simple:
Let's say that SWG had 300k subs and WoW had 10 million.
If you polled SWG's playerbase and asked if they had played WoW, and 25% of them said yes, that would mean that 75k of those 300k people have played WoW. Hardly a drop in the bucket of WoW's 10 million person playerbase.
If you polled WoW's playerbase and asked if they had played WoW, and 25% of them said yes, that would mean 2.5 million of them had played SWG.
You can play around with the numbers of course, because I don't KNOW how many people who played SWG also played WoW, but considering WoW is such a massive game in comparison to SWG, I'm not sure how you can possibly make the claim that it's the same, or that you don't believe a bigger proportion of SWG played WoW than vice versa. This just doesn't seem reasonable at all.
I think it wouldn't be impossible that more people enjoying WoW have tried SWG than SWG players have tried WoW. But I have not mentioned proportions or percentages at all. I don't know where you are going with this.
Powergamers play a lot of games. All games. Not just themeparks.
It is like you want to hear the history of the ancient word only through the eyes of the Greeks. Everyone else is a barbarian.
When I picture somebody who hops from themepark to themepark, I don't picture them playing all types of games. My respect for somebody goes up if they've played specific games. And obviously I will trust somebody's opinion more if I respect them.
That is why I read these forums. I am not here to affirm my own beliefs - I am here to look for differing opinions.
No it isn't. P2P MMOs are designed to keep you playing as long as possible. And that actually leads to watered down content (Whaddya know; I got to use that term too!). Oftentimes these games require a lot of time to play but they don't have much substance in them.
If you had a can of soda and drank it, that would be your average single player RPG. If you have can of soda, poured it in a bucket full of water and enjoyed it with your friends, that would be your average P2P MMORPG. I exaggerate but I'm sure you get the picture.
I think content-driven MMOs like themeparks that are P2P lead to watered down gameplay. That's one of the reasons I like sandboxes: you make your own content through politics and community.
But I feel like you never really finished your point. P2P MMOs are designed to keep people playing but..... F2P MMOs aren't?
F2P MMOs are meant to give you a free trial and then force or lure (whichever way you want to look at it) into paying. If there is a "premium subscription" then they are no different. But if they only sell items through a cash shop, then they have no reason to water down the content. They do however, need to inconvenience the player so that he/she would want to buy something in order to overcome that inconvenience. Sometimes that inconvenience is slow XP rate, but it is purely coincidental.
On the other hand if you look at games which are B2P. Those games need to be only good enough, so that players will want to buy the next game or expansion. That has been the norm in the single player front since forever.
I am merely voicing my scepticism and criticism toward your claims. Nothing more. All I've said - All anyone has said, is that they find your predictions unlikely.
What are my predictions?
That sandboxes would somehow all but rise to world power. I kid, I kid... What you claim about old school values making a comeback.
Can you name a company that hasn't fallen short on their promises or lied outright?
I doubt any company has been 100% truthful or genuine.
Yep. They are all greedy and lazy. Each and every one.
Did you really just link me to a video discussing one of the most basic and obvious concepts in philosophy? What does this have to do with anything? I'm not asking you to prove a negative. Imagine how much time would be saved if you just took a second and thought about what I'm asking and what your response is.
How is this statement nonsensical? "Just because I can't prove it doesn't mean it isn't true"
That's not asking you to prove a negative. All that is doing is pointing out that we're talking about something that may be true, even if I can't prove it. Again, this describes almost every discussion people have ever participated in. When I said it, I believe it was pointing out that this is a discussion. I'm not trying to PROVE something. I'm making claims, and you're supposed to argue against those claims if you don't agree with them.
But if you accuse me of attacking your reasoning - clinging to your the things you use to build your argument. What do you expect? That is all I can do, because I cannot prove a negative. But as Randi something along the lines of "You can use it to illustrate your point, but whenever you claim something is, rather than isn't, you should provide evidence toward the positive". The latter part is incidentally the same comment Loktofeit made.
I questioned some of the claims you made to which you responded with your comment "just because I can't prove it doesn't mean it isn't true". You didn't use it to illustrate your point, you made a claim, and that is why it is nonsensical.
This is pretty much bull. I've provided plenty of rational arguments to back up everything I've said. You're trying to rewrite history and make it seem like I just make claims and then say "if you don't like it, oh well." I never went straight to "just because I can't prove it, doesn't mean it isn't true." I said that in response to you demanding proof of things I never claimed to be able to prove. I've said this so many times now, this is getting ridiculous.
It's not an inherently nonsensical thing to say, like you claimed. And this is probably at least the 5th time you've dodged the question. It describes most statements made by humans.
No you didn't go straight to it, I pressed you to it because I sensed it was coming. Just like I pressed you into saying your opinion is better than mine.
It doesn't matter if most humans use it. Most humans are not very educated. Many people think about how the lack of proof against God is somehow proof of God. It isn't.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
I never questioned your definition of watered down, it is your definition, I was questioning your logic regarding how you called WoW watered down. I pointed out how your "case" is flawed. Being casual friendly has nothing to do with being less targeted or more targeted. Casual friendliness means you can log in, do something worthwhile within 20 minutes and log out. The opposite is a game where doing anything takes an uninterrupted long play session. It has no relation to depth, difficulty or how well it is targeted.
1. You absolutely did question what I meant by watered down. I think you said something about me using platitudes and then demanded I explain what I mean when I say watered down. That started a discussion that lead to using venn diagrams as an example and then eventually you changed the subject from what watered down means, to how I know that WoW is an example of watering down.
2. This is the first time you've responded to the connection between casual friendly and watered down. Casual friendliness doesn't just mean you can log in and do something in a short amount of time. That's one thing that casual people look for, I'm sure. But casual friendly games are in general not going to be as deep. Casual friendliness is kind of the antithesis of depth in a game. Depth means there's a lot to explore and a lot to consider and think about. Casual gameplay means you can kind of coast without having to take it too seriously. I'm not sure how you can claim that there's no connection between casual gameplay and watered down gameplay. Casual players pretty much by definition are going to care less about their game than a hardcore gamer.
1. I demanded you to define exactly what you mean by watered down. I did not question it.
1. I'm really not interested in getting into another word game with you. The point is the discussion was about two separate things: FIRST it was about what watered down means. And we had several replies back and forth where you argued with my reasoning for a while, then it changed into what makes me think WoW meets that description more than SWG or UO.
2. Casual friendliness does not mean what you think it means. It doesn't matter if a single player game, for example, is deep or not. The fact that you can save your progress at any time and continue your play session later makes it casual friendly. It makes a game casual friendly when you don't need to spend any lengthy time preparing to play it. It has nothing to do with depth or difficulty.
Party forming tools make a game casual friendly. Instanced PvP is casual friendly. They don't make grouping or PvP shallow.
Dark Souls can be saved and picked back up later. It's not a casual friendly game. You're wrong in your definition of the term. In UO you can farm for 20 minutes and then stop. You can even make my money while not playing through a vendor. Yet most wouldn't consider it a casual friendly game. Starcraft2 games rarely exceed 20 minutes and it's one of the least casual friendly games in existence. On the other hand, MOBAs like LoL have matches that are often twice as long, yet it's way more casual friendly. Again, you're just not using the term correctly. In fact, really the only thing I can think of in gaming where you CAN'T stop and come back later is high level raiding in WOW. Difficulty, depth, accessibility are indicators as to how casual friendly a game is. I do agree that party forming tools like instance matching etc are casual instruments.
So you grasp on the time? No Dark Souls is not as casual friendly as say Dragon Age because the method of progress is through checkpoints (bonfires). Starcraft 2 is casual friendly. Every MOBA is. Difficulty and depth are NOT indicators of casual friendliness.
Starcraft 2 is absolutely NOT casual friendly. There was an internal debate in the community about how Blizzard could make it more casual friendly to compete with LoL. You're just ignorant on this issue methinks.
What do the bonfires have to do with Dark Souls being casual friendly or not? You can play the game in small chunks and stop and pick it up later. I sincerely doubt anybody would say Dark Souls is casual friendly.
Face it, your definition of casual friendly simply doesn't work.
I think things like that are indicative of a watered down and casual friendly game. I think if you didn't have instance matching and instead had to go out and find a fight or find a group, that would require a deeper level of satisfaction and interest in the game. Instance matching and streamlining everything into utter simplicity and a lack of difficulty is what casual gaming is about, and it's what WoW is about and all of those things are related to watered down gameplay. People are less engrossed in the game so you have to feed them everything on a veritable conveyor belt of rewards and new "content."
Oh that is a big pile of bullshit right there. Tedium is not difficult. Cutting tedium is fine. Cutting unnecessary inconveniences is fine. Especially when they don't contribute to depth. I hope we are not back discussing depth vs. complexity.
I never said tedium is difficult. But tedium isn't always a bad thing. Auction houses and instance matching are both things that make the game less social and less about the community. In UO you got to to know vendors and crafters. You had your favorite shops to go to. In WoW you search the auction house and sort by price. Getting rid of tedium is NOT inherently good. By the way, did you know that D3 is getting rid of the auction house?
WoW was a hit profuct. An anomaly in MMORPG circles, but not too uncommon in business. Companies do the exact same thing in any market regarding hit products. It is not unnatural.
Everyone adopted touchscreen technology soon after iPhones success even though the technology was originally developed by Nokia almost 15 years ago.
Remember Tamagochis? A hit product copied by many. Leatherman? Sony Walkman?
I never said that taking proven methods or ideas from other companies is unnatural. I'm saying WoW's success was unnaturally, or abnormally, or unusually, substantial and so it lead to the market unnaturally favoring themeparks. The market has been in an unnatural state because of WoW's unusual success. I doubt 5 years from now the market will have as much of an focus on WoW-clones as it does now. If that ends up being the case (and I think it 's already happening), then that means we were right.
I think you are wrongly using the word "unnatural" in this, because there is nothing unnatural about it. Is it an anomaly? Maybe. Is in unnatural? Definitely not. This is what happens with hit products.
Do you even realize you're doing it when this happens? The only thing you're talking about is if I'm using the proper word. I deliberately elaborated on my meaning so as not to waste any more time playing scrabble with you. Replace the word unnatural with unusual then.
The point is, you guys are claiming that the market knows best and if sandboxes were popular enough there would be more of them. I'm saying that's bull because of WoW's unusual success. That's how we're able to claim that the market at this moment does not know best, but it IS however fixing itself. That's why there are a number of higher budget sandbox games on the horizon.
Unusual fits much better.
AND YET YOU STILL DO IT. Holy shit this is getting pathetic. Stop clinging to things that are so obviously unimportant. I go to the effort to clarify myself and you just ignore it outright. This is getting to be an enormous waste of time.
I have no issue with this although your comment about where market "needs to be" is rather odd.
When I say the market doesn't need to be where it is right now, I'm saying the MMO genre hasn't been figured out. It's still in a state of flux so you guys making the case that sandboxes won't exist simply because they don't already exist isn't accurate. Lizardbones in particular seems to like to talk about how the market knows best and the fact that developers aren't making them proves (or strongly suggests) that they're not viable. I'm saying I don't think that's true, I think developers are still figuring out what's doable and what isn't.
You didn't respond to the above. It's probably because the formatting on this website can be terrible sometimes and I wasn't able to get it out of a quote box.
We are saying it is unlikely for the old school values to come back. The track record for games that have tried to bring them back hasn't been good which he rightly pointed out. I am anxiously waiting for entirely new games. Not old revivals.
As others have pointed out, we don't want the old games back. We also want new games. But we want new games that have roots in the oldschool ones rather than roots in the current modern MMOs
We are not saying anything of the sort. We are explaining why it is unlikely for old-school games to make a comeback.
Well a lot of people who are asking for these old-school principles to make a comback are pretty happy with how EvE handles them, we just don't particularly like EvE. Old-school in these topics are often synonymous with sandbox, but also often specifically mean unforgiving, satisfying gameplay. EvE fits that description. So again, I'm not sure how you guys deal with that fact when you say games like this won't exist and that we should stop asking for them.
We are not saying games like this won't exist. We are expressing our scepticism. You are putting words in our mouths.
Yup. Typical quirhid argument. I'm not gonna make any claims on this forum designed to have discussions. I'm just gonna say that you may not be right. Thanks for the contribution and the insight.
I didn't say there were a lot of people talking about it. I said there were many threads about it. It is more or less the same faces over and over who make 'em.
And if there is any sort of split on this topic, it is between fans and sceptics. You are seriously mistaken if you think we are anti sandbox.
Well I'm not sure what side you personally fall on, but in the sandbox vs themepark discussions that go on around here, it seems pretty well split down the middle. But you're kind of making my point even stronger. I'm sure there are some on the "themepark" side that are indeed fans of sandboxes, they just don't agree with the sandbox player's claim or the way they argue or call people carebears or whatever else. So all that means is that there are even more sandbox players than meets the eye.
I'll say it again, I think you guys are going to be made to look very foolish in a few years when there are a lot more sandbox titles than there are right now, which is really all we're asking for or claiming: that sandbox players are currently underserved.
Don't try to be yet another Internet prophet.
Why are you even responding at this point? You clearly have just completely given up on having a discussion.
The fact that you are attributing the development of a few games to yourself (and people like you) is rather amusing.
For somebody that likes to complain about logical fallacies and in particular strawman arguments, you sure as hell spit a lot of them out. I'm not taking credit for anything. That's like saying people who like steak are attributing the success of steak to themselves. All I'm saying is that it is NOT pointless to voice my opinion on a forum about sandbox games. I think myself and the countless other people who have made it clear that we are interested in a sandbox game are indeed one of the reasons those games exist. If they didn't think there was a market for them, they wouldn't make them. And by making ourselves heard (at least a little bit), it makes it that much more likely that they'll know there's a market for them.
This affirms my previous statement. I have nothing more to say about this subject.
What... on.... earth are you talking about? Did you just not understand what I wrote?
Now you get it. What if WoW has found that huge niche? I think it is entirely plausible. Certainly I find your assumption about how UO or SWG haven't had to expand their net as much as WoW very dangerous. And I think it is not very sound to base that argument on size alone.
It's not size alone. How can you possibly have discussions with me that last for weeks and think my position relies on size alone? Again, strawman.
And now I get what? The thing that I've been saying literally the entire time? That's a lot of this is based on judgement? I said that exact thing to you weeks ago. I've been saying over and over and over and over that this is a discussion, I never meant it to be a provable fact. Your only contribution has been unreasonable skepticism. That's all I can remember you offering. Queue you talking about how skepticism is a noble position and how it has stopped many world tragedies etc.
But since it is foolish to assume your judgement is any better than anyone else's, all you are left with is size. And I specifically pointed out how that argument is not very good.
All I am left with is size? No I'm also left with judgement. Why do you act like that doesn't exist? That people can't have a discussion about anything except what can be proven?
Why didn't you change your position when Loktofeit further explained is post, then? His explanation was perfectly valid and the assumption he made very prudent.
You'll have to refresh my memory, I don't remember him changing his position in any meaningful way. I think he changed it from "If people are pay and playing, it's reasonable to assume they're satisfied" to "If people are paying and playing, and the industry continues to grow, it's reasonable to assume they're satisfied." Neither is sound. Especially when you consider what he was responding to: me saying that people seem to be disappointed with modern MMOs. So "satisfied" in this context has to mean satisfied to the point of not being disappointed, otherwise it's a meaningless statement. Yet that's how you and other tried to spin it. You started to say "satisfied to the point of playing" which is obviously redundant.
No its not "sound" but it is a reasonable assupmtion. It is more reasonable than when you claimed most of them are dissatisfied. Or if you meant "a lot of them" are dissatisfied, where does that leave us?
What I said was people seem to be disappointed with modern MMOs. It seems like there is a lot of hype about a game, and when the game comes out, a lot of that hype turns into disappointment. It seems to be far worse in the MMO genre than other genres. Other genres have plenty of games that are pretty universally accepted in a positive way. MMOs don't seem to have any.
It is not "utterly and absolutely pointless". Come on. You should know better than this.
No, it is. Until you disaggregate you'll never know how much of that growth can be attributed to MOBAs, and how much can be attributed to MMOs. Especially because, as I said, LoL is the biggest game ever. You don't think it ruins your data to have an outlier like that?
So it is not utterly pointless if you discount MOBAs?
Then it's a different number. I really hope your chosen profession doesn't have anything to do with data analysis.
Why is they saying a game is not a WoW clone any different from you saying a game is a WoW clone?
I don't recall when I said that it was.
Your word is as good as theirs then. If they don't think they are playing a WoW clone, they aren't. To them it is not a WoW clone. To you it might be. And you are all right.
People use that term far to liberally anyway.
This is such a cowardly, ridiculous argument. Do you not believe in any kind of objectivity? Do you not think that if we took the time to analyze a handful of games, you could determine which were more or less innovative. Which were more or less copies of other games? Then we're not "all right." Stop feeding me this bullcrap about everybody's opinions being sacred and untouchable. If somebody offers a mediocre product that has a lot of features stolen from a different game, there's NOTHING wrong with criticizing it. You do understand game reviewers exist right? Are they wrong to do so? My opinion isn't going to be as credible as a lot of professional game reviewers, but my platform isn't as large as well.
No I didn't claim UIs were developed to perfection. I only made a point how it is sometimes beneficial to copy existing UIs. This includes some features as well. But I find some of the things you list are quite high concept features. It would be foolish to call game clone based off of those. It would be equivalent of me saying that lack of instances, crafting, classless progression and a harsh death penalty makes a clone.
The proposition is preposterous, no? So it is with the features you list.
I'm listing features that factor into whether a game would be considered a WoW clone. What exactly is the problem here? I never said if it takes anything from another game it's a clone, I'm saying here are some common things that WoW clones copy from other games. You pick the weirdest and most indefensible positions sometimes.
You can't pick high level concepts as your basis of calling something a clone. You would end up with clones all around! It is not rational or reasonable. It is like you are dividing your toys into two boxes based on what you like. I am trying to show how silly it is to use high level concepts for this purpose.
Lack of instances, crafting, classless progression, harsh death penalty -> UO clone. Do you think that is reasonable?
If a game had character progression similar to UO, and crafting similar to UO, and pvp and loot rules similar to UO and a UI similar to UO, yes of COURSE I would be ok with calling that game a UO clone. But the term UO clone doesn't exist because there aren't many (if any) of them. Again, the term WoW clone exists for a reason. And it's because there's a lot of them, and that's because WoW was hugely successful. This isn't rocket science.
No. What does this have to do with anything?
Ok. Personally I think that's an absolutely absurd position to hold, and that you wouldn't be holding it if it weren't asked by me in this context, but hey it's your opinion.
Though in case you didn't understand it or something, here it is again... and I'm gonna make some numbers up just to make it simple:
Let's say that SWG had 300k subs and WoW had 10 million.
If you polled SWG's playerbase and asked if they had played WoW, and 25% of them said yes, that would mean that 75k of those 300k people have played WoW. Hardly a drop in the bucket of WoW's 10 million person playerbase.
If you polled WoW's playerbase and asked if they had played WoW, and 25% of them said yes, that would mean 2.5 million of them had played SWG.
You can play around with the numbers of course, because I don't KNOW how many people who played SWG also played WoW, but considering WoW is such a massive game in comparison to SWG, I'm not sure how you can possibly make the claim that it's the same, or that you don't believe a bigger proportion of SWG played WoW than vice versa. This just doesn't seem reasonable at all.
I think it wouldn't be impossible that more people enjoying WoW have tried SWG than SWG players have tried WoW. But I have not mentioned proportions or percentages at all. I don't know where you are going with this.
You don't know where I'm going with this because you're completely incapable of remembering the context of an argument. I was saying that not all opinions are necessarily equal. Some people have more knowledge about what they're talking about. If there's a person who has knowledge of both sandbox games and themepark games, I'm going to take his opinion more seriously than somebody who only has knowledge about themepark games... holding all things constant of course, like intelligence, etc.
Powergamers play a lot of games. All games. Not just themeparks.
It is like you want to hear the history of the ancient word only through the eyes of the Greeks. Everyone else is a barbarian.
When I picture somebody who hops from themepark to themepark, I don't picture them playing all types of games. My respect for somebody goes up if they've played specific games. And obviously I will trust somebody's opinion more if I respect them.
That is why I read these forums. I am not here to affirm my own beliefs - I am here to look for differing opinions.
You said you'd rather trust their opinion than the average gamer. This isn't about you looking for differing opinions.
No it isn't. P2P MMOs are designed to keep you playing as long as possible. And that actually leads to watered down content (Whaddya know; I got to use that term too!). Oftentimes these games require a lot of time to play but they don't have much substance in them.
If you had a can of soda and drank it, that would be your average single player RPG. If you have can of soda, poured it in a bucket full of water and enjoyed it with your friends, that would be your average P2P MMORPG. I exaggerate but I'm sure you get the picture.
I think content-driven MMOs like themeparks that are P2P lead to watered down gameplay. That's one of the reasons I like sandboxes: you make your own content through politics and community.
But I feel like you never really finished your point. P2P MMOs are designed to keep people playing but..... F2P MMOs aren't?
F2P MMOs are meant to give you a free trial and then force or lure (whichever way you want to look at it) into paying. If there is a "premium subscription" then they are no different. But if they only sell items through a cash shop, then they have no reason to water down the content. They do however, need to inconvenience the player so that he/she would want to buy something in order to overcome that inconvenience. Sometimes that inconvenience is slow XP rate, but it is purely coincidental.
On the other hand if you look at games which are B2P. Those games need to be only good enough, so that players will want to buy the next game or expansion. That has been the norm in the single player front since forever.
F2P and P2P both benefit from people sticking around. It depends on how the F2P games are exactly making their money, but the longer somebody plays, the more likely they are to spend money on the game. Time spent on the game is just as good as an indicator for quality as total subs or box sales or whatever else. Though time spent even has its own flaws with things like carrot-on-a-stick gameplay.
I am merely voicing my scepticism and criticism toward your claims. Nothing more. All I've said - All anyone has said, is that they find your predictions unlikely.
What are my predictions?
That sandboxes would somehow all but rise to world power. I kid, I kid... What you claim about old school values making a comeback.
I don't know what you mean by comeback, but as I've said a couple of times is that I think sandbox players are underserved. Do you want to take back everything you've ever said or what? Because I don't think that's a whacky theory.
Can you name a company that hasn't fallen short on their promises or lied outright?
I doubt any company has been 100% truthful or genuine.
Yep. They are all greedy and lazy. Each and every one.
Did you really just link me to a video discussing one of the most basic and obvious concepts in philosophy? What does this have to do with anything? I'm not asking you to prove a negative. Imagine how much time would be saved if you just took a second and thought about what I'm asking and what your response is.
How is this statement nonsensical? "Just because I can't prove it doesn't mean it isn't true"
That's not asking you to prove a negative. All that is doing is pointing out that we're talking about something that may be true, even if I can't prove it. Again, this describes almost every discussion people have ever participated in. When I said it, I believe it was pointing out that this is a discussion. I'm not trying to PROVE something. I'm making claims, and you're supposed to argue against those claims if you don't agree with them.
But if you accuse me of attacking your reasoning - clinging to your the things you use to build your argument. What do you expect? That is all I can do, because I cannot prove a negative. But as Randi something along the lines of "You can use it to illustrate your point, but whenever you claim something is, rather than isn't, you should provide evidence toward the positive". The latter part is incidentally the same comment Loktofeit made.
I questioned some of the claims you made to which you responded with your comment "just because I can't prove it doesn't mean it isn't true". You didn't use it to illustrate your point, you made a claim, and that is why it is nonsensical.
This is pretty much bull. I've provided plenty of rational arguments to back up everything I've said. You're trying to rewrite history and make it seem like I just make claims and then say "if you don't like it, oh well." I never went straight to "just because I can't prove it, doesn't mean it isn't true." I said that in response to you demanding proof of things I never claimed to be able to prove. I've said this so many times now, this is getting ridiculous.
It's not an inherently nonsensical thing to say, like you claimed. And this is probably at least the 5th time you've dodged the question. It describes most statements made by humans.
No you didn't go straight to it, I pressed you to it because I sensed it was coming. Just like I pressed you into saying your opinion is better than mine.
It doesn't matter if most humans use it. Most humans are not very educated. Many people think about how the lack of proof against God is somehow proof of God. It isn't.
I didn't say most humans use it. But ironically enough you're talking about how uneducated most humans are while you misread what I write and then make a halfassed response to it.
I said it describes most statements made by humans. That includes most of your statements. Just because you haven't used that quote, doesn't mean it doesn't apply to almost everything you say. Very little of what we claim can be proven, at least by us at the time. That doesn't mean we're all wrong whenever we say things. It just means the discussions we have as humans involve reason and logic.
So you grasp on the time? No Dark Souls is not as casual friendly as say Dragon Age because the method of progress is through checkpoints (bonfires). Starcraft 2 is casual friendly. Every MOBA is. Difficulty and depth are NOT indicators of casual friendliness.
Starcraft 2 is absolutely NOT casual friendly. There was an internal debate in the community about how Blizzard could make it more casual friendly to compete with LoL. You're just ignorant on this issue methinks.
What do the bonfires have to do with Dark Souls being casual friendly or not? You can play the game in small chunks and stop and pick it up later. I sincerely doubt anybody would say Dark Souls is casual friendly.
Face it, your definition of casual friendly simply doesn't work.
Have you played Dark Souls? You advance from bonfire to bonfire. Respawn point to respawn point. You cannot just load up a save if you die. In this regard, it is not as casual friendly as Dragon Age. And you were the one who brought up Dark Souls as a hardcore game. I don't remember claiming that Dark Souls was casual friendly.
And no matter how hard Starcraft is at a high level, it is casual friendly, because you can jump in through an automated matchmaking and matches don't generally last too long. Ofcourse ther are long matches, but they are nothing compared to the multiple-hour play sessions of some old-school MMORPGs.
My definition is not strict, but relative. The 20-minute-mark was not definite, but an example.
I think things like that are indicative of a watered down and casual friendly game. I think if you didn't have instance matching and instead had to go out and find a fight or find a group, that would require a deeper level of satisfaction and interest in the game. Instance matching and streamlining everything into utter simplicity and a lack of difficulty is what casual gaming is about, and it's what WoW is about and all of those things are related to watered down gameplay. People are less engrossed in the game so you have to feed them everything on a veritable conveyor belt of rewards and new "content."
Oh that is a big pile of bullshit right there. Tedium is not difficult. Cutting tedium is fine. Cutting unnecessary inconveniences is fine. Especially when they don't contribute to depth. I hope we are not back discussing depth vs. complexity.
I never said tedium is difficult. But tedium isn't always a bad thing. Auction houses and instance matching are both things that make the game less social and less about the community. In UO you got to to know vendors and crafters. You had your favorite shops to go to. In WoW you search the auction house and sort by price. Getting rid of tedium is NOT inherently good. By the way, did you know that D3 is getting rid of the auction house?
Auction houses and matchmaking make the game more about the fun itself, and less about preparing to have fun. Another man's gameplay is another man's inconvenience. WoW serves a different niche than the one that appreciates trading and spending hours getting a group together. There's nothing wrong with that and it doesn't make the game shallow.
I always thought the auction house for D3 was rather questionable since the previous titles had a huge emphasis on gear grind. Hunting and finding new gear was fun. It is not the same as buying it.
Well a lot of people who are asking for these old-school principles to make a comback are pretty happy with how EvE handles them, we just don't particularly like EvE. Old-school in these topics are often synonymous with sandbox, but also often specifically mean unforgiving, satisfying gameplay. EvE fits that description. So again, I'm not sure how you guys deal with that fact when you say games like this won't exist and that we should stop asking for them.
We are not saying games like this won't exist. We are expressing our scepticism. You are putting words in our mouths.
Yup. Typical quirhid argument. I'm not gonna make any claims on this forum designed to have discussions. I'm just gonna say that you may not be right. Thanks for the contribution and the insight.
Don't try to be yet another Internet prophet.
Why are you even responding at this point? You clearly have just completely given up on having a discussion.
Look you don't have to be insulted just because I questioned your claims. I wasn't attacking you, I was attacking your argument. And why would I care in the least if my suspicions turned out to be wrong? I know how to separate myself from my arguments. If I was wrong, I was wrong. Everybody is from time to time.
But since it is foolish to assume your judgement is any better than anyone else's, all you are left with is size. And I specifically pointed out how that argument is not very good.
All I am left with is size? No I'm also left with judgement. Why do you act like that doesn't exist? That people can't have a discussion about anything except what can be proven?
But your judgement is no better than anyone else's! You are biased and the only objective argument you made is faulty.
It is not "utterly and absolutely pointless". Come on. You should know better than this.
No, it is. Until you disaggregate you'll never know how much of that growth can be attributed to MOBAs, and how much can be attributed to MMOs. Especially because, as I said, LoL is the biggest game ever. You don't think it ruins your data to have an outlier like that?
So it is not utterly pointless if you discount MOBAs?
Then it's a different number. I really hope your chosen profession doesn't have anything to do with data analysis.
Ad hominem. But if you must know, data analysis is somewhat central to my "chosen profession".
Your word is as good as theirs then. If they don't think they are playing a WoW clone, they aren't. To them it is not a WoW clone. To you it might be. And you are all right.
People use that term far to liberally anyway.
This is such a cowardly, ridiculous argument. Do you not believe in any kind of objectivity? Do you not think that if we took the time to analyze a handful of games, you could determine which were more or less innovative. Which were more or less copies of other games? Then we're not "all right." Stop feeding me this bullcrap about everybody's opinions being sacred and untouchable. If somebody offers a mediocre product that has a lot of features stolen from a different game, there's NOTHING wrong with criticizing it. You do understand game reviewers exist right? Are they wrong to do so? My opinion isn't going to be as credible as a lot of professional game reviewers, but my platform isn't as large as well.
I believe in objectivity, yes. I also find that you are not very objective. Trouble with innovation is the definition of innovation. We don't have it. Who gets to say which game is innovative and which ideas are stolen? What would even be the value of such a measurement? It doesn't tell us whether the game is good or not. There is no value in innovating for the sake of innovation.
You can't pick high level concepts as your basis of calling something a clone. You would end up with clones all around! It is not rational or reasonable. It is like you are dividing your toys into two boxes based on what you like. I am trying to show how silly it is to use high level concepts for this purpose.
Lack of instances, crafting, classless progression, harsh death penalty -> UO clone. Do you think that is reasonable?
If a game had character progression similar to UO, and crafting similar to UO, and pvp and loot rules similar to UO and a UI similar to UO, yes of COURSE I would be ok with calling that game a UO clone. But the term UO clone doesn't exist because there aren't many (if any) of them. Again, the term WoW clone exists for a reason. And it's because there's a lot of them, and that's because WoW was hugely successful. This isn't rocket science.
Well of course it isn't rocket science because the term doesn't have a rational source! It is a derogative term used by those who hate themeparks.
I think it wouldn't be impossible that more people enjoying WoW have tried SWG than SWG players have tried WoW. But I have not mentioned proportions or percentages at all. I don't know where you are going with this.
You don't know where I'm going with this because you're completely incapable of remembering the context of an argument. I was saying that not all opinions are necessarily equal. Some people have more knowledge about what they're talking about. If there's a person who has knowledge of both sandbox games and themepark games, I'm going to take his opinion more seriously than somebody who only has knowledge about themepark games... holding all things constant of course, like intelligence, etc.
So is your argument then, that because the percentage of SWG players who have tried WoW is greater than the percentage of WoW players who have tried SWG; therefore, SWG players should be more trusted when evaluating both?
That is why I read these forums. I am not here to affirm my own beliefs - I am here to look for differing opinions.
You said you'd rather trust their opinion than the average gamer. This isn't about you looking for differing opinions.
Just because I trust one group more than another doesn't mean I am not looking for differing opinions. I trust powergamers more because their experience tends to be deeper and wider than that of an average player.
F2P MMOs are meant to give you a free trial and then force or lure (whichever way you want to look at it) into paying. If there is a "premium subscription" then they are no different. But if they only sell items through a cash shop, then they have no reason to water down the content. They do however, need to inconvenience the player so that he/she would want to buy something in order to overcome that inconvenience. Sometimes that inconvenience is slow XP rate, but it is purely coincidental.
On the other hand if you look at games which are B2P. Those games need to be only good enough, so that players will want to buy the next game or expansion. That has been the norm in the single player front since forever.
F2P and P2P both benefit from people sticking around. It depends on how the F2P games are exactly making their money, but the longer somebody plays, the more likely they are to spend money on the game. Time spent on the game is just as good as an indicator for quality as total subs or box sales or whatever else. Though time spent even has its own flaws with things like carrot-on-a-stick gameplay.
True, no doubt.
That sandboxes would somehow all but rise to world power. I kid, I kid... What you claim about old school values making a comeback.
I don't know what you mean by comeback, but as I've said a couple of times is that I think sandbox players are underserved. Do you want to take back everything you've ever said or what? Because I don't think that's a whacky theory.
Under-served or no, I doubt old-school proponents are as large a group as you make it sound.
Yep. They are all greedy and lazy. Each and every one.
I didn't say that lol. This is so dumb...
No. I did. If you remember, I said companies are the same as they've always been. WoW didn't change the nature of companies. We are back to square one.
No you didn't go straight to it, I pressed you to it because I sensed it was coming. Just like I pressed you into saying your opinion is better than mine.
It doesn't matter if most humans use it. Most humans are not very educated. Many people think about how the lack of proof against God is somehow proof of God. It isn't.
I didn't say most humans use it. But ironically enough you're talking about how uneducated most humans are while you misread what I write and then make a halfassed response to it.
I said it describes most statements made by humans. That includes most of your statements. Just because you haven't used that quote, doesn't mean it doesn't apply to almost everything you say. Very little of what we claim can be proven, at least by us at the time. That doesn't mean we're all wrong whenever we say things. It just means the discussions we have as humans involve reason and logic.
You want to be pedantic? Humans is a generalization in the following sentence, is it not?
"...describes most statements made by humans"
But you forget my Randi quote. You can use is as a way to illustrate your point. You cannot use it to affirm something.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
So you grasp on the time? No Dark Souls is not as casual friendly as say Dragon Age because the method of progress is through checkpoints (bonfires). Starcraft 2 is casual friendly. Every MOBA is. Difficulty and depth are NOT indicators of casual friendliness.
Starcraft 2 is absolutely NOT casual friendly. There was an internal debate in the community about how Blizzard could make it more casual friendly to compete with LoL. You're just ignorant on this issue methinks.
What do the bonfires have to do with Dark Souls being casual friendly or not? You can play the game in small chunks and stop and pick it up later. I sincerely doubt anybody would say Dark Souls is casual friendly.
Face it, your definition of casual friendly simply doesn't work.
Have you played Dark Souls? You advance from bonfire to bonfire. Respawn point to respawn point. You cannot just load up a save if you die. In this regard, it is not as casual friendly as Dragon Age. And you were the one who brought up Dark Souls as a hardcore game. I don't remember claiming that Dark Souls was casual friendly.
And no matter how hard Starcraft is at a high level, it is casual friendly, because you can jump in through an automated matchmaking and matches don't generally last too long. Ofcourse ther are long matches, but they are nothing compared to the multiple-hour play sessions of some old-school MMORPGs.
My definition is not strict, but relative. The 20-minute-mark was not definite, but an example.
Yes, I have played Dark Souls. The time between bonfires really isn't that much. In fact it's often SOMEWHAT close to 20 minutes. So assuming that number is somewhat accurate, you can play for 20 minute chunks. Does that mean this game is just as casual friendly as any other game that has 20 minute chunks? That's rhetorical, because it very obviously isn't.
Regarding SC2: It's not a casual friendly game. You're just claiming it is based on your definition of the term casual friendly. In reality SC2 is KNOWN for not being casual friendly. Did you even know that? The game is notoriously inaccessible to casual players. Hell, even specifically compared to LoL it's less casual friendly.... yet SC2 matches are shorter. So by your definition, SC2 is more casual friendly than LoL. This is an absolute laughable position, and one that is held by essentially NOBODY who plays these games. Your definition of casual friendly is just flat out wrong. Difficulty, depth, complexity, etc all factor in to what makes a game casual friendly.
I think things like that are indicative of a watered down and casual friendly game. I think if you didn't have instance matching and instead had to go out and find a fight or find a group, that would require a deeper level of satisfaction and interest in the game. Instance matching and streamlining everything into utter simplicity and a lack of difficulty is what casual gaming is about, and it's what WoW is about and all of those things are related to watered down gameplay. People are less engrossed in the game so you have to feed them everything on a veritable conveyor belt of rewards and new "content."
Oh that is a big pile of bullshit right there. Tedium is not difficult. Cutting tedium is fine. Cutting unnecessary inconveniences is fine. Especially when they don't contribute to depth. I hope we are not back discussing depth vs. complexity.
I never said tedium is difficult. But tedium isn't always a bad thing. Auction houses and instance matching are both things that make the game less social and less about the community. In UO you got to to know vendors and crafters. You had your favorite shops to go to. In WoW you search the auction house and sort by price. Getting rid of tedium is NOT inherently good. By the way, did you know that D3 is getting rid of the auction house?
Auction houses and matchmaking make the game more about the fun itself, and less about preparing to have fun. Another man's gameplay is another man's inconvenience. WoW serves a different niche than the one that appreciates trading and spending hours getting a group together. There's nothing wrong with that and it doesn't make the game shallow.
I always thought the auction house for D3 was rather questionable since the previous titles had a huge emphasis on gear grind. Hunting and finding new gear was fun. It is not the same as buying it.
You said "Cutting tedium is fine." I'm challenging that statement by pointing out unfortunate side effects that can occur from "cutting tedium", which you say is fine. SOMETIMES, tedium can be a good thing. I mean my gosh, you yourself just gave an example of that being the case: the auction house in D3. Obviously in that instance cutting tedium was not a great choice.
Well a lot of people who are asking for these old-school principles to make a comback are pretty happy with how EvE handles them, we just don't particularly like EvE. Old-school in these topics are often synonymous with sandbox, but also often specifically mean unforgiving, satisfying gameplay. EvE fits that description. So again, I'm not sure how you guys deal with that fact when you say games like this won't exist and that we should stop asking for them.
We are not saying games like this won't exist. We are expressing our scepticism. You are putting words in our mouths.
Yup. Typical quirhid argument. I'm not gonna make any claims on this forum designed to have discussions. I'm just gonna say that you may not be right. Thanks for the contribution and the insight.
Don't try to be yet another Internet prophet.
Why are you even responding at this point? You clearly have just completely given up on having a discussion.
Look you don't have to be insulted just because I questioned your claims. I wasn't attacking you, I was attacking your argument. And why would I care in the least if my suspicions turned out to be wrong? I know how to separate myself from my arguments. If I was wrong, I was wrong. Everybody is from time to time.
When did I say I was insulted? I asked why you're even responding anymore considering almost everything you say is dodging the main point, nit-picking about word usage, or things like the above, which is just inciting... not insightful.
But since it is foolish to assume your judgement is any better than anyone else's, all you are left with is size. And I specifically pointed out how that argument is not very good.
All I am left with is size? No I'm also left with judgement. Why do you act like that doesn't exist? That people can't have a discussion about anything except what can be proven?
But your judgement is no better than anyone else's! You are biased and the only objective argument you made is faulty.
I'm sorry what? My judgement is no better than anyone else's? Or my judgement isn't better than everybody else's? One is true, the other is ridiculous. My judgement is definitely better than many other people's judgement. Yours might even be too! We'll never know because you never take a stance on anything.
It is not "utterly and absolutely pointless". Come on. You should know better than this.
No, it is. Until you disaggregate you'll never know how much of that growth can be attributed to MOBAs, and how much can be attributed to MMOs. Especially because, as I said, LoL is the biggest game ever. You don't think it ruins your data to have an outlier like that?
So it is not utterly pointless if you discount MOBAs?
Then it's a different number. I really hope your chosen profession doesn't have anything to do with data analysis.
Ad hominem. But if you must know, data analysis is somewhat central to my "chosen profession".
So how exactly is this piece of data not totally ruined by possibly including THE most successful game of all time, among other very popular games? How exactly can you use this as an argument that MMOs are increasing their playerbase, if that data includes games that AREN'T MMOS?
BTW, that wasn't an ad hominem attack in the way it's used in debate. An ad hominem attack attempts to use attacks against the person (ad hominem) as a means to of dismantling their argument, which is typically a fallacy). My argument doesn't at all rely on attacking you, even if I did attack you. I'm merely throwing that in, on top of my otherwise perfeclty sound argument.
Your word is as good as theirs then. If they don't think they are playing a WoW clone, they aren't. To them it is not a WoW clone. To you it might be. And you are all right.
People use that term far to liberally anyway.
This is such a cowardly, ridiculous argument. Do you not believe in any kind of objectivity? Do you not think that if we took the time to analyze a handful of games, you could determine which were more or less innovative. Which were more or less copies of other games? Then we're not "all right." Stop feeding me this bullcrap about everybody's opinions being sacred and untouchable. If somebody offers a mediocre product that has a lot of features stolen from a different game, there's NOTHING wrong with criticizing it. You do understand game reviewers exist right? Are they wrong to do so? My opinion isn't going to be as credible as a lot of professional game reviewers, but my platform isn't as large as well.
I believe in objectivity, yes. I also find that you are not very objective. Trouble with innovation is the definition of innovation. We don't have it. Who gets to say which game is innovative and which ideas are stolen? What would even be the value of such a measurement? It doesn't tell us whether the game is good or not. There is no value in innovating for the sake of innovation.
Then you're completely clouded by your disdain for me personally because of all my faults, a lack of objectivity isn't one I'm often accused of.
Back on topic: Are you still trying to claim that if the developer themselves don't think a game is a WoW clone, then it isn't a WoW clone? Because that is such an absurd, out of touch with reality thing to say. If them saying their game ISN'T a WoW clone, and everybody's opinions are the same, and I say that their game IS a WoW clone, then why doesn't my opinion matter in this? Why do they get to decide if their game is a WoW clone or not?
I asked this question before but you didn't answer it so I'll ask again: If a company did make a game that was EXACTLY like WoW except they changed the skins of the races. Would it be a WoW clone? And what if the developer somehow convinced themselves that isn't a WoW clone? Would it still be a WoW clone?
You can't pick high level concepts as your basis of calling something a clone. You would end up with clones all around! It is not rational or reasonable. It is like you are dividing your toys into two boxes based on what you like. I am trying to show how silly it is to use high level concepts for this purpose.
Lack of instances, crafting, classless progression, harsh death penalty -> UO clone. Do you think that is reasonable?
If a game had character progression similar to UO, and crafting similar to UO, and pvp and loot rules similar to UO and a UI similar to UO, yes of COURSE I would be ok with calling that game a UO clone. But the term UO clone doesn't exist because there aren't many (if any) of them. Again, the term WoW clone exists for a reason. And it's because there's a lot of them, and that's because WoW was hugely successful. This isn't rocket science.
Well of course it isn't rocket science because the term doesn't have a rational source! It is a derogative term used by those who hate themeparks.
Who are you to claim it doesn't have a rational source? You love to talk about people's opinions being equal and things like that.... except when it doesn't fit your narrative. You happen to agree with the people who don't think WoW clones exist (though I'm not sure many people think that), instead of the people who do think WoW clones exist. Why? You're assuming that it was just created by people who hate themeparks. What if people hate themeparks because they're often WoW clones?
I think it wouldn't be impossible that more people enjoying WoW have tried SWG than SWG players have tried WoW. But I have not mentioned proportions or percentages at all. I don't know where you are going with this.
You don't know where I'm going with this because you're completely incapable of remembering the context of an argument. I was saying that not all opinions are necessarily equal. Some people have more knowledge about what they're talking about. If there's a person who has knowledge of both sandbox games and themepark games, I'm going to take his opinion more seriously than somebody who only has knowledge about themepark games... holding all things constant of course, like intelligence, etc.
So is your argument then, that because the percentage of SWG players who have tried WoW is greater than the percentage of WoW players who have tried SWG; therefore, SWG players should be more trusted when evaluating both?
I'm saying holding certain things constant, the average SWG player's opinion on sandox vs themepark is more valid than the average WoW player's opinion because I believe the average SWG player has more knowledge of themeparks than the average WoW player has of sandboxes. Why? Because more people have played WoW. You're far more likely to randomly pick somebody who has played WoW (or any themepark) than you are to randomly pick somebody who has played SWG (or any sandbox).
Not only that, SWG being a more niche game at least indicates that its players found out about it through being somewhat active in the community or through actively looking for a game to play... at least more so than the average WoW players because WoW is just a more popular game. It was advertised on TV for goodness sake.
Experience = a more valid opinion, in general
That is why I read these forums. I am not here to affirm my own beliefs - I am here to look for differing opinions.
You said you'd rather trust their opinion than the average gamer. This isn't about you looking for differing opinions.
Just because I trust one group more than another doesn't mean I am not looking for differing opinions. I trust powergamers more because their experience tends to be deeper and wider than that of an average player.
Who cares about average players? I thought the point was to compare themepark and sandbox, modern and oldschool. I'd absolutely trust a shadowbane vet's opinion on a game over a "powergamer" like narius.
Powergames probably have more games "under their belt." But they also probably spent less time in those games. Also those types of games are probably more likely to be similar titles, like WoW clones and other themeparks.
F2P MMOs are meant to give you a free trial and then force or lure (whichever way you want to look at it) into paying. If there is a "premium subscription" then they are no different. But if they only sell items through a cash shop, then they have no reason to water down the content. They do however, need to inconvenience the player so that he/she would want to buy something in order to overcome that inconvenience. Sometimes that inconvenience is slow XP rate, but it is purely coincidental.
On the other hand if you look at games which are B2P. Those games need to be only good enough, so that players will want to buy the next game or expansion. That has been the norm in the single player front since forever.
F2P and P2P both benefit from people sticking around. It depends on how the F2P games are exactly making their money, but the longer somebody plays, the more likely they are to spend money on the game. Time spent on the game is just as good as an indicator for quality as total subs or box sales or whatever else. Though time spent even has its own flaws with things like carrot-on-a-stick gameplay.
True, no doubt.
Yes, ok. So they have an interest in keeping people around. So time spent is, in that sense, an appropriate measurement for quality (or at least success) of a game. Time spent (average player's tenure in the game) has its own problems though, as I mentioned before. But I think it's a lot better than just total subs or box sales, which are going to be more easily distorted through things like marketing and aesthetics.
That sandboxes would somehow all but rise to world power. I kid, I kid... What you claim about old school values making a comeback.
I don't know what you mean by comeback, but as I've said a couple of times is that I think sandbox players are underserved. Do you want to take back everything you've ever said or what? Because I don't think that's a whacky theory.
Under-served or no, I doubt old-school proponents are as large a group as you make it sound.
As I "make it sound." Now there's some objectivity.
Maybe it's just your interpretation of my opinion? Because I'm pretty sure all I'm claiming is that sandbox (including oldschool principles) players are underserved and that I believe the market will correct itself. I believe the only reason the market hasn't corrected itself already is because of the anomalous success of WoW.
^^^^This is what I and so many others believe. If you have a problem with that, I'd really be curious what you take issue with. If you don't have a problem with that, then you've misunderstood my position.
Yep. They are all greedy and lazy. Each and every one.
I didn't say that lol. This is so dumb...
No. I did. If you remember, I said companies are the same as they've always been. WoW didn't change the nature of companies. We are back to square one.
Except I never said WoW changed the nature of companies, but it absolutely can, and probably has changed the nature of what companies are in this industry.
But actually the question was more along the lines of are companies all the same? Can you have greedy companies, etc. And of course you can. Not every company is ONLY looking to make as much money as possible. Plenty of companies are MORE focused becoming hugely successful than others. Some companies are more willing to engage in fraudulent activities. Some companies are more willing to blatantly take ideas from other games. This is a somewhat common concept in businesses, sure... but to what degree? I don't see what's wrong with pointing out when a company or game does it too much. It's BAD when a company basically repackages the same product with a new skin. That's what we're saying has happened with this industry. It seems obvious that a lot of people are disappointed with modern MMOs, and it's because deep down a lot of them are the same game.
No you didn't go straight to it, I pressed you to it because I sensed it was coming. Just like I pressed you into saying your opinion is better than mine.
It doesn't matter if most humans use it. Most humans are not very educated. Many people think about how the lack of proof against God is somehow proof of God. It isn't.
I didn't say most humans use it. But ironically enough you're talking about how uneducated most humans are while you misread what I write and then make a halfassed response to it.
I said it describes most statements made by humans. That includes most of your statements. Just because you haven't used that quote, doesn't mean it doesn't apply to almost everything you say. Very little of what we claim can be proven, at least by us at the time. That doesn't mean we're all wrong whenever we say things. It just means the discussions we have as humans involve reason and logic.
You want to be pedantic? Humans is a generalization in the following sentence, is it not?
"...describes most statements made by humans"
But you forget my Randi quote. You can use is as a way to illustrate your point. You cannot use it to affirm something.
LOL I'm sorry.... did you just call me pedantic? If that's not the pot calling the kettle black, I don't know what is.
No, humans isn't a generalization. That's why I said "most." I meant it literally. The quote "just because I can't prove it, doesn't mean it isn't true." can be used to describe most statements made by humans. And yet you say it's a ridiculous thing to say. It isn't. It would be a ridiculous thing to try and use to prove a point, which is NOT HOW IT WAS USED!!! For like the nth man.... I said that because you're always so focused on telling me that what I'm saying has no proof. I'm not trying to PROVE anything. I'm trying to have a discussion.
Comments
If he's talking about what I think he's talking about, it was a list of about 7 games, 4 of which aren't even out yet. The other 3 were Darkfall, Perpetuum annnnnd I can't remember the last. I pointed out the list's absurdity at the time and nobody really wanted to talk about it. Then Quirhid posted a list of some of the most obscure, low-budget games you could imagine.... some games I hadn't even heard of. The point of these lists were to show games that we sandbox players have been super excited for in the past and have propped up as being "THE ONE" of sandbox games.
GW2 is neither sandbox or old school.
As to how do we know if modern MMOs have not failed simply because they are not good MMOs? The number of them, and the ones that were perfectly decent, which should not have done so badly.
1. I demanded you to define exactly what you mean by watered down. I did not question it.
2. Casual friendliness does not mean what you think it means. It doesn't matter if a single player game, for example, is deep or not. The fact that you can save your progress at any time and continue your play session later makes it casual friendly. It makes a game casual friendly when you don't need to spend any lengthy time preparing to play it. It has nothing to do with depth or difficulty.
Party forming tools make a game casual friendly. Instanced PvP is casual friendly. They don't make grouping or PvP shallow.
I think you are wrongly using the word "unnatural" in this, because there is nothing unnatural about it. Is it an anomaly? Maybe. Is in unnatural? Definitely not. This is what happens with hit products.
But if you accuse me of attacking your reasoning - clinging to your the things you use to build your argument. What do you expect? That is all I can do, because I cannot prove a negative. But as Randi something along the lines of "You can use it to illustrate your point, but whenever you claim something is, rather than isn't, you should provide evidence toward the positive". The latter part is incidentally the same comment Loktofeit made.
I questioned some of the claims you made to which you responded with your comment "just because I can't prove it doesn't mean it isn't true". You didn't use it to illustrate your point, you made a claim, and that is why it is nonsensical.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
This is the list of games that are being put out to cater to "old school" players, minus Everquest Next. We'll have to see if Star Citizen and Black Desert follow the trend of fizzling out, but so far, Perpetuum, Darkfall Online, ArcheAge and Age of Wushu have failed to hit the big time. I've played Perpetuum and it's a good quality game. Bugs are few and the feature set is largely what was advertised before launch. I've not played the other games, but listening to conversations about them is not like listening to conversations about Mortal Online. There is every reason to believe those games are feature complete and have relatively few bugs.
I'm not saying these aren't good games, and I'm not saying they aren't successful. I'm saying that the target audience will largely determine the size of a game and while the build quality will determine the success of the game, regardless of how much time, money or faith that gets thrown at the game.
In a lot of cases, an "old school" target audience will be too small to bother with, unless the developer is largely self funded, or has a way to bring development costs down dramatically.
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Also, how are you guys even doing all that inline quoting? If I try to add one quote from another post, the editor borks and just merges all the quoted text together.
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Last edit, I promise.
The biggest issue with creating games for the "old school" crowd is that there isn't just one crowd that can be targeted. You might have the Always On PvP crowd, but you also have the Consensual PvP crowd too. You might have the Mob Grind crowd, but you also have the Quest Grind or Mission crowd. You might have an old school Sandbox crowd, but you'll also have an old school Theme Park crowd. There's a World Boss crowd and an Instanced Boss crowd. The "old school" crowd is just as fragmented as the rest of the MMORPG group, but there are fewer "old school" players. Each of those crowd fragments is diametrically opposed to the other, so pleasing a large group of them at the same time is difficult at best. With the rest of the MMORPG market, a developer can pick a particular fragment of the market and have a sizable group.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Really? People are writing posts that takes up 10 screens and need 5 min just to scroll through. Personally i am not reading those, but have fun dueling with wall of text.
lol then you were playing the game wrong. I remember fighting players to be able to fight mobs in the ob plains.... Not to mention you could lvl in multi ways in ac1.
Current mmorpgs are stale and dont really offer anything a single player rpg cant do better. Thats why the genre is bleeding out.
That is not true. MMORPGs offer a star trek, TNG era, RPG with both ship and ground combat. I can't drive a ST2 version miranda or constitution class starship in any SP RPG.
Your not looking hard enough star trek has a single player game. Current FTP games and most mmorpgs in general are on equal standing with B movies... Bad ones at that.
Really? Tell me what is the SP Star Trek RPG in the TNG (you know what that is, right) era with both ship & ground combat. Don't tell me the new JJ Abram movie game, because if you know anything about Star Trek, that is totally different than TOS/TNG/DS9/Voy canon.
He's deliberately ignoring the point, as he always does. If you said "SWTOR doesn't do anything a singleplayer game couldn't do better he'd say "Are there any singleplayer games that let you play as a Sith during the Sith wars?" Even though the discussion is about mechanics, not window dressing.
Best to just put him on ignore.
What point? That he subjectively thinks that MMORPGs are "bad"?
Don't tell me you think his preference should be valid for everyone.
lol then you were playing the game wrong. I remember fighting players to be able to fight mobs in the ob plains.... Not to mention you could lvl in multi ways in ac1.
Current mmorpgs are stale and dont really offer anything a single player rpg cant do better. Thats why the genre is bleeding out.
MMORPGs have never offered better mechanics than single player games. The advantage that MMORPGs offer, even new ones, is other players.
There are some MMORPGs that have things that don't currently exist in single player games. STO for instance has those ships that narisseldon is talking about. The Secret World has a modern setting and "mysteries" to solve and fight through. These things are advantages of MMORPGs, they're just things these games have that other games don't.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
1. I'm really not interested in getting into another word game with you. The point is the discussion was about two separate things: FIRST it was about what watered down means. And we had several replies back and forth where you argued with my reasoning for a while, then it changed into what makes me think WoW meets that description more than SWG or UO.
Dark Souls can be saved and picked back up later. It's not a casual friendly game. You're wrong in your definition of the term. In UO you can farm for 20 minutes and then stop. You can even make my money while not playing through a vendor. Yet most wouldn't consider it a casual friendly game. Starcraft2 games rarely exceed 20 minutes and it's one of the least casual friendly games in existence. On the other hand, MOBAs like LoL have matches that are often twice as long, yet it's way more casual friendly. Again, you're just not using the term correctly. In fact, really the only thing I can think of in gaming where you CAN'T stop and come back later is high level raiding in WOW. Difficulty, depth, accessibility are indicators as to how casual friendly a game is. I do agree that party forming tools like instance matching etc are casual instruments.
I think things like that are indicative of a watered down and casual friendly game. I think if you didn't have instance matching and instead had to go out and find a fight or find a group, that would require a deeper level of satisfaction and interest in the game. Instance matching and streamlining everything into utter simplicity and a lack of difficulty is what casual gaming is about, and it's what WoW is about and all of those things are related to watered down gameplay. People are less engrossed in the game so you have to feed them everything on a veritable conveyor belt of rewards and new "content."
Do you even realize you're doing it when this happens? The only thing you're talking about is if I'm using the proper word. I deliberately elaborated on my meaning so as not to waste any more time playing scrabble with you. Replace the word unnatural with unusual then.
The point is, you guys are claiming that the market knows best and if sandboxes were popular enough there would be more of them. I'm saying that's bull because of WoW's unusual success. That's how we're able to claim that the market at this moment does not know best, but it IS however fixing itself. That's why there are a number of higher budget sandbox games on the horizon.
This is pretty much bull. I've provided plenty of rational arguments to back up everything I've said. You're trying to rewrite history and make it seem like I just make claims and then say "if you don't like it, oh well." I never went straight to "just because I can't prove it, doesn't mean it isn't true." I said that in response to you demanding proof of things I never claimed to be able to prove. I've said this so many times now, this is getting ridiculous.
It's not an inherently nonsensical thing to say, like you claimed. And this is probably at least the 5th time you've dodged the question. It describes most statements made by humans.
It seems more to me that OP misses the old MMO communities more than the games in themself.
I can understand that, been playing since 1996 myself and MMO players used to be a rather small group of gamers that were closer to eachother than today (even if we had plenty of crafters Vs RPers Vs PvPers back then as well).
The MMO crowd is a lot larger today and way more diverse then it was back then and that have both advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side means more players more money which means that the games can put more into development but we also did loose some of the community feelings from way back. It is different to belonging to a small niche group after all.
And of course this means that the games needs to offer more varied gameplay today and have features that works for everyone, but that might not be so fun for a specific group of players as a game targeted just for them. You can notice this particularly in difficulty and time you need to spend in the games nowadays.
My personal opinion is that MMOs needs to stop to try to get all players and deliver a great experience for a specific group instead, the difference between now and before should be that there are more groups to choose between. I think that would both improve he feeling of community and the gameplay for the players of a specific game.
Not sure about that, Loke. I'm a veteran myself, I sometimes miss the old communities, but I also don't wear those glasses and remember they were also full of "douchebags".
I think people should focus more on trying to organize groups (aka guilds) which are likeminded than to try to turn whole games into their own specific playstyle.
My computer is better than yours.
If people like them, they are good advantages.
The STO example is great. Die hard trekkies love to get their hands on canon star ships.
Seems like you know what you're talking about; will keep a eye for your posts.
Sure. You win.Nice finishing move.
Humility as well!
So much of that going on here.
That makes common sense even if sense is not too common here.
Me too; who were you quoting? It's genius.
Also, props to Loke666 for his great post.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
And a great sense of humor... from "The Most Exciting Man In The World"
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
The STO example is great. Die hard trekkies love to get their hands on canon star ships.
What I meant to say, and didn't because I got in a hurry was that those things weren't advantages of MMORPGs, they were just advantages of the games themselves. And yes, nearly any advantage is a good one, whether it's something intrinsic to the type of game, or something that particular game provides that is part of the IP.
Also, does anyone else notice posts coming and going, near the end of the thread? Did we finally kill the MMORPG.com thread engine?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Yeh. I don't play games because they are good MMOs. I play games because they are good games.
If a MMO has an advantage, and it makes the game fun for me, do you think if i care what the advantage should be "categorized" as?
Any type of gameplay, any type of "fun" if you must call it that has an impact on all the other gameplay in whatever you are playing. There is always a negative effect to be paid for whatever it is we enjoy in a game. Simply boiling this down to advantages ignores that any game is a holistic creation. We get more than the sum of the parts in a game by having good gameplay parts which work together to form something more than levelling, mounts and crafting etc.
So every advantage must be considered by what it contributes to the game and not just to us as individuals. Otherwise you end up going down the line of thinking class unbalance is fine as long as its for my class.
So you grasp on the time? No Dark Souls is not as casual friendly as say Dragon Age because the method of progress is through checkpoints (bonfires). Starcraft 2 is casual friendly. Every MOBA is. Difficulty and depth are NOT indicators of casual friendliness.
Oh that is a big pile of bullshit right there. Tedium is not difficult. Cutting tedium is fine. Cutting unnecessary inconveniences is fine. Especially when they don't contribute to depth. I hope we are not back discussing depth vs. complexity.
Unusual fits much better.
No you didn't go straight to it, I pressed you to it because I sensed it was coming. Just like I pressed you into saying your opinion is better than mine.
It doesn't matter if most humans use it. Most humans are not very educated. Many people think about how the lack of proof against God is somehow proof of God. It isn't.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Starcraft 2 is absolutely NOT casual friendly. There was an internal debate in the community about how Blizzard could make it more casual friendly to compete with LoL. You're just ignorant on this issue methinks.
What do the bonfires have to do with Dark Souls being casual friendly or not? You can play the game in small chunks and stop and pick it up later. I sincerely doubt anybody would say Dark Souls is casual friendly.
Face it, your definition of casual friendly simply doesn't work.
I never said tedium is difficult. But tedium isn't always a bad thing. Auction houses and instance matching are both things that make the game less social and less about the community. In UO you got to to know vendors and crafters. You had your favorite shops to go to. In WoW you search the auction house and sort by price. Getting rid of tedium is NOT inherently good. By the way, did you know that D3 is getting rid of the auction house?
AND YET YOU STILL DO IT. Holy shit this is getting pathetic. Stop clinging to things that are so obviously unimportant. I go to the effort to clarify myself and you just ignore it outright. This is getting to be an enormous waste of time.
I didn't say most humans use it. But ironically enough you're talking about how uneducated most humans are while you misread what I write and then make a halfassed response to it.
I said it describes most statements made by humans. That includes most of your statements. Just because you haven't used that quote, doesn't mean it doesn't apply to almost everything you say. Very little of what we claim can be proven, at least by us at the time. That doesn't mean we're all wrong whenever we say things. It just means the discussions we have as humans involve reason and logic.
Have you played Dark Souls? You advance from bonfire to bonfire. Respawn point to respawn point. You cannot just load up a save if you die. In this regard, it is not as casual friendly as Dragon Age. And you were the one who brought up Dark Souls as a hardcore game. I don't remember claiming that Dark Souls was casual friendly.
And no matter how hard Starcraft is at a high level, it is casual friendly, because you can jump in through an automated matchmaking and matches don't generally last too long. Ofcourse ther are long matches, but they are nothing compared to the multiple-hour play sessions of some old-school MMORPGs.
My definition is not strict, but relative. The 20-minute-mark was not definite, but an example.
Auction houses and matchmaking make the game more about the fun itself, and less about preparing to have fun. Another man's gameplay is another man's inconvenience. WoW serves a different niche than the one that appreciates trading and spending hours getting a group together. There's nothing wrong with that and it doesn't make the game shallow.
I always thought the auction house for D3 was rather questionable since the previous titles had a huge emphasis on gear grind. Hunting and finding new gear was fun. It is not the same as buying it.
You want to be pedantic? Humans is a generalization in the following sentence, is it not?
"...describes most statements made by humans"
But you forget my Randi quote. You can use is as a way to illustrate your point. You cannot use it to affirm something.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Yes, I have played Dark Souls. The time between bonfires really isn't that much. In fact it's often SOMEWHAT close to 20 minutes. So assuming that number is somewhat accurate, you can play for 20 minute chunks. Does that mean this game is just as casual friendly as any other game that has 20 minute chunks? That's rhetorical, because it very obviously isn't.
Regarding SC2: It's not a casual friendly game. You're just claiming it is based on your definition of the term casual friendly. In reality SC2 is KNOWN for not being casual friendly. Did you even know that? The game is notoriously inaccessible to casual players. Hell, even specifically compared to LoL it's less casual friendly.... yet SC2 matches are shorter. So by your definition, SC2 is more casual friendly than LoL. This is an absolute laughable position, and one that is held by essentially NOBODY who plays these games. Your definition of casual friendly is just flat out wrong. Difficulty, depth, complexity, etc all factor in to what makes a game casual friendly.
You said "Cutting tedium is fine." I'm challenging that statement by pointing out unfortunate side effects that can occur from "cutting tedium", which you say is fine. SOMETIMES, tedium can be a good thing. I mean my gosh, you yourself just gave an example of that being the case: the auction house in D3. Obviously in that instance cutting tedium was not a great choice.
LOL I'm sorry.... did you just call me pedantic? If that's not the pot calling the kettle black, I don't know what is.
No, humans isn't a generalization. That's why I said "most." I meant it literally. The quote "just because I can't prove it, doesn't mean it isn't true." can be used to describe most statements made by humans. And yet you say it's a ridiculous thing to say. It isn't. It would be a ridiculous thing to try and use to prove a point, which is NOT HOW IT WAS USED!!! For like the nth man.... I said that because you're always so focused on telling me that what I'm saying has no proof. I'm not trying to PROVE anything. I'm trying to have a discussion.