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What is, and what will never be...
Nineven
Member UncommonPosts: 86
I wanted to start a thread about how well this game plays, and how well IT SHOULD be played.
Currently, here is the condition of MxO:
You log in. You're standing next to the hardline and everyone is standing around. You notice everyone is the same height as you, some skinnier, some chubbier, but all the same height; both male and female characters...No one says anything, they just appear to be standing there, milling about. When they do talk, all you see are black dots inside a chat bubble. You open your UI options and find no option to be able to see chat in the chat bubbles...A few crews run back and forth from the hardline dropping off mission loot. Another group of faction comes by and ganks a few of your player faction. You watch the same old repetitive 5 second animations playing. You click your cell phone and take a mission...
Here's the way playing a Matrix MMORPG should be:
You log in. You're standing next the hardline, a few people hangin' out chatting about their last mission. You notice a female character standing much taller than all other female and male characters, and she looks quite intimidating as she types in your "laugh" emote. You can clearly see what they are saying because it's written in a nice, clear, readable font in their chat bubbles. You open your UI options and decide to increase the chat hover delay, and make your main chat window your combat information window. Now if someone says something, the chat bubbles stay long enough that you can see what everyone is saying. You hear a roaring engine behind you and turn to look and see a large white van with a Merovingian-factioned player in the driver's seat aimed straight at the telephone booth. Somebody yells, "Holy sh#@!" and everyone jumps out of the way as the player rams the van into the hardline, destroying it, a fire igniting underneath the van. You will have to log on your alt later and gather some resource to reconstruct the busted telephone booth. But it doesn't end there, a black car full of Operatives was following not far behind and rams the driver side door of the van so the Merovingian-faction player can't get out. The van EXPLODES! And your screen blurs from the heat as your character and all bystanders are blown backwards onto the asphalt. One of them throws everyone a heal as the area becomes heavy with gunfire. The Operatives are now out of the vehicle emptying clips of bullets at the enemy. One of them appears to be coordinating and tells a group member to run in and grab "the disk". Your hear this and decide to grab "the disk" from the guy instead. You jump in, stun him, fists and feet flailing, dealing massive amounts of damage as your new friends fill his torso with lead. As you're combating the outcast program one of the Operatives yells, "AGENT!", and your stomach drops. Some dude dressed in a fine suit and a pair of black sunglasses runs up, hits your enemy, then pulls out a gun and finishes him off point blank, reaching down and taking "the disk". You start backing up just enough to get out melee range when someone screams, "OMG 2 AGENTS RUN!". You turn and see an NPC turning into another Agent. Someone sends you an IM, telling you to grab "the disk" and run in to the Mara Central hardline. It will probably be about another 30 seconds before the other NPC has fully formed into an Agent so you pull out an uzi and a samurai sword you had to friend craft for you last week. It took you almost a month to get the resources for it, but it's the most powerful melee weapon in the game. You computer screen flashes with automatic gunfire as you start shooting at the NPC turning into an Agent. You use your sword to fight off the one that picked up "the disk". You manage to kill the NPC before he fully forms into another Agent. A few good slices stuns the other one and knocks "the disk" loose. You grab it and leap 200 feet into the air to the top of a building in the direction of Mara Central...
'Nuff said. LOL
Any thoughts? I think we can safely say that we won't be seeing this anytime soon from SOE...
Comments
Items that can be dropped in the world are as good as developed and are only waiting for a usage.
And dude, I honestly can't take seriously what you're saying about the current condition. Chat window is perfectly stable, you can change its proportions and size how you like... chat is perfectly readable, the contrast is perfect.
What you described as the "current condition of MxO" is one of the cases where people say nothing, and do random bored stuff. Probably just your own experience.
Events and RP events might be not as awesome as you described, but they still take place.
A poor comparison, and lacking observation. Not completely false. No time to pick apart in detail. =p
They won't include all these additions for the two big reasons why there's comparably little content, so many bugs and a slow development, among other demerits: dev number's not big enough, the game engine appears to suck.
My bad about the chat bubbles / chat window, I should have read better.
I just didn't like how you put this very specific picture or a handful of players doing bored stuff at a hardline as "the current condition of MxO". Too specific, you know?
So what you are saying.. is that you want more roleplaying? Go for it
"This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force"
You can do that with any game out today, for example
"You magically appear in the exact same place you made a invisible camp at 13 hours ago. Nevermind you havent changed or cleaned your armor of gear for 3 weeks, nor have you ever ever ever taken a bath. Around you are men and woman of all kinds, most of them are just stareing ahead blankly, and you remember they were doing the same thing 13 hours ago. The sly dark elf warrior and brutish troll warrior are wearing the same armor, and fight in a identical way. All of a sudden in a voice that somehow echos across the entire zone and is understandible by everyone says " 42 PAL LFG PST for EXP" and a nod of understanding washes over the crowd. If you do get a telepathic tell from across the word from a total stranger requesting your set skill set you dont worry, when its time to fight your sword and sheild will magically appear in your hands, and the foe with nothing to do but stand in the same spot 24/7 will engage you for the fight. Your semi random group of evil and good characters, all ignoring years of coflict and stife will band together to overcome a foe that will return to life standing in the same spot in about 13 minutes......
Get what im saying?
MXO is not a perfect game by far, and it wont ever be a perfect game. Short of the hand of god, we wont see anything large added to this game ever.
What MXO does have is a small tight knit group of people who want to RP and want to make it the best they can with the tools and bugs we have. I log into MXO everynight (almost) and the people there welcome me. The dont welcome be because im in a guild, or have an item. They want people to RP with them.
Its a very different community.
MxO was at its finest during those first months of release.. I would LOVE to log in on those days and see what was going on. But of course, thanks to Sony, this game is pretty much in the exact same place it once was as far as progress. I don't play anymore myself, but I still have hopes even for SOE.
Seriously, you show me a place I can find that, and I MIGHT just come back (SOE, or not)
I have rp toons on both recursion and Sytax and the simple answer is yes, there is quite a bit of active RP in Matrix still.
Now this is only my opinion, and im sure some people would not agree. It seems to me that Syntax has more RP, and recursion has quality RP.
It's is not uncommon to log into recursion and have no Rp going on at all, but when it does happen, its better planned out, and the people really do a great job.
Syntax is different in the way that there is almost always some level of Rp, but its not as well done.
You really should, the people there on both servers really want to make good rp, and it shows.
There are a ton of MMO's that cater to a RP fanbase as well as content fanbase or even a PvP fanbase.
Unfortunatly, MxO was given the resources to make a great game only in early production. They were sold out, and their resources are even smaller.
IVe said it before, and I'll say it again, MxO pwns the MMO market when it comes to unique combat, and the graphics engine. However, there is no actual content that will keep a gamer hooked outside of RP and turtle esque pace that is the story.
Then again, I don't count anyway.
You stay with the game because you enjoy Roleplaying. Repeat it: Roleplaying.
The story appeals to you because of the Roleplaying aspects it holds. It was introduced in other mediums...such as...missions only, would you stay? Not as likely. While you dont actually see many events because of time restraints, you still use the MxO boards to imagine yourself as being there, in preparation for when you are actually there. Again...Roleplaying. Certainly, the contact missions were fun, the first time around, and Pandora's Box was awesome, the first time around (same can actually be said about the standard missions) but you cant rely on recycling those for content.
Now, as pertaining to the story, it indeed does move at a turtle's pace. For instance, wasnt it once stated that the story would evolve 1 chapter a month or something similar? If that was the case, wouldnt you be on...something like chapter 24? The point is, while the story does evolve faster than immediately after SOE took control, it is still greatly slowed down than the LET days. I know why that is the case, and I know that LESIG does their best, it just doesnt do enough. Perhaps that is solely a personal belief, but Ive met many people that hold the same belief. It just depends on what you as a gamer, enjoy.
You don't remember the system misplacing interlock participants so they fight each other meters away, or merge into another?
Or this happening when the combat approached a wall?
Well, none of this is gone. Additionally, several particular animations have been fubar'd since CR 2.0 release - from what I can tell, no big effort is made to fix them, or they lack resources.
So I would think twice before I called the game's combat, or its visual aspects, a success or selling point. Not a complete failure, of cousre, but far from perfect.
"You stay with the game because you enjoy Roleplaying. Repeat it: Roleplaying.
The story appeals to you because of the Roleplaying aspects it holds. It was introduced in other mediums...such as...missions only, would you stay? Not as likely. While you dont actually see many events because of time restraints, you still use the MxO boards to imagine yourself as being there, in preparation for when you are actually there. Again...Roleplaying."
Hm, depends on how wide you stretch this term.
I don't roleplay actively, neither in the game nor on the boards.
But I often do like other players' RP, on boards and in the game, when reading it.
Rarebit, or the former LET, tell a story when doing events, but they certainly also role play - and I'm interested in what they say, it is role playing, even if *do not* imagine myself there.
When they write texts on the boards, on blogs, or in missions - you might call that RP, but I think it's already storytelling - I mean, a novel writer also writes all his characters, it just isn't called "roleplaying" I think.
Cinematics certainly are not RP.
In the end, although I'm not uninterested in RP, my primary interest lies in the story and storywriting. If you want to know what happens in the next subchapter, it's not RP, it consuming of a storyline.
So let's just change "roleplaying" to "roleplaying/storyline", okay? This game is good for Matrix fans who want to "roleplay in a Matrix environment", *and* are interested in the storyline.
"Semantics" or not, it's just much closer to the truth.
"Certainly, the contact missions were fun, the first time around, and Pandora's Box was awesome, the first time around (same can actually be said about the standard missions) but you cant rely on recycling those for content."
I don't perceive the new story missions as recycling of old content, rather the mission system as a storytelling medium. A medium that is a) limited and lacklustre, and b) is hardly used to its potential's extent.
And I doubt the same can be said about standard missions, as they randomly variate a few task and texts, which are altogether boring and uninteresting.
Everything about standard missions is random and meaningless.
"Now, as pertaining to the story, it indeed does move at a turtle's pace. For instance, wasnt it once stated that the story would evolve 1 chapter a month or something similar? If that was the case, wouldnt you be on...something like chapter 24? The point is, while the story does evolve faster than immediately after SOE took control, it is still greatly slowed down than the LET days. I know why that is the case, and I know that LESIG does their best, it just doesnt do enough. Perhaps that is solely a personal belief, but Ive met many people that hold the same belief. It just depends on what you as a gamer, enjoy."
This is a point, but the story is now being written in consideration of this pace.
It's not only about the chapter numbers, also about the density the chapters contain. Density is a compensation for lack of speed.
Not saying it couldn't move faster, because it certainly could, but you still get something new more frequently than once per week, so yea.
For my own tastes I like to see the storyline pretty much every few minutes. With significant progress every few hours.
It doesn't have to be much, but if the story line is engaging*, I want it to be an active part of my gaming experience, rather than a time sink to keep me paying.
(*)and by no means all game storylines are engaging, so if you have found one you like that is a good thing.
I'm not really an endgame type of player I like the content to come at a steady pace and when the flow dries up, so does my wallet.
I find by changing games regularly I can find intresting stories that flow at the pace I want to read them.
That's how I see Matrix's actively updating storyline. A timesink, like skill tree's in Eve or rep grinding in WoW. It's just too little for too much money for too little update to keep me on board.
Missions could come out every day, instead of every week.
Of course it could be moving faster, and fast enough for certain players. It can't be done because all of this is produced by one person who has aswell other tasks. That's how it looks.
PS: So you've recognized MxO at least has a story? =pp
Not for my money.
I recognise that there are people who do think that, but I am not one of them.
I think it has an excuse for a story at most.
There's a large difference between a story not being worth your money, and not existing.
Also, since you seem to be a smart businessman and all - you certainly understand what it means to understand the value of something before making a decision about money expense? Because this isn't something you seem to do, or have done here.
And considering the story is one of the core elements of the game... excuse? Whatever, if you think so.
Because gamers aren't interested in story? Meh.