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Ignorance is Bliss?
Midus
Member Posts: 4
I read the forums here, often times with amusement, and other times with disdain. I see the problems with the genre, and I equate it to many things. Those reasons stim from:
1. A younger and younger MMO gamer with a throw-away mentality and Mom and Dads disposable income to bounce every title. The problem with this attitude is that heavy early game sales often give the false sense of security that money can be abundantly made in the genre if their game were just a little different. NOT THE CASE.
2. The majority of gamers are not hardcore. They are not capable of "Grind" it frustrates them. It was tolerated in EQ becuase..... where the hell were they gonna go?? Well, I will tell you they would go back and respawn a new character.. and they perpetually had toons in the 20s or 30s. That was how it was.. and it was.. because there was nothing else to lure them away!!!!! Now, there are choices, most of them bad, but still choices.
3. Lastly, ignorance is bliss. 99% of people are part of a herd. Read the posts here.. they are comprised of regurgitated slurs people have overheard here or there, little miny pieces of "forum plagiarism". Dont get me wrong, There are the elite here that do have sound and well structured thought processes in all that they suggest. However, others do not, and for those, ignorance must be bliss. Because for the rest of us... Simply put... It sucks!!
Now, another peav of mine is those who rant and have nothing constructive to say. So let me attempt to give one mans opinions. Take them as you will or shred them, for they are only opinions and far from absolute knowledge.
The MMO genre as a whole needs a revamp. Stop the leveling. It take away from the realism. It makes little sense to me why a company would spend the huge amounts required to "Properly" launch and MMO, which are best known for their RPG characteristics, offer real time interaction with masses, and then add an element that to me seems to only belittle the entire concept completely. Why can a character just not "grow" in skill? If your a hard core gamer you have more skills yes.. but your not grinding.. Your playing. The key that is often lost here is REALISM. If a person swings a sword 200 times a day.. he is going to get stronger. That stat should not be linked to your creation. It should be linked to your usage, as should every other stat. Ohh you say that encouraging group play is good.. Then again create more REALISM.. give heavy death penalties.. make bodies fully lootable. Now wait wait wait.. I hear the herd already with the rumblings.. Hear me out. If you die... you die... is there a solution? Of course.. make PLAYER BASE items the BEST items... make the resources needed for the items part of PVE loot, but make them abundant. Now, again I am sure many of your are thinking ok.. he has lost his mind.. No... your missing my point.. Realism in my humble opinion is the only possible savoir for the MMO genre, and in this line of thinking why not take a good look at the reasoning behind the maddening thought that LOOT is the driving force to a character. Is a Balanced Warrior somehow less deadly if his breastplate is not the best in the game. NO he is NOT!!!! The basis of games needs to be about the people. If we just stopped to look a little deeper, and little further outside the box I think this would become more and more apparent to people. PvP is also a good think... PvPers should be free to run wild.. but in my thought, why should we have the ability to see your skills. Would we have have them tattooed on us somewhere if the genre were in any way real?? No we would not, and items, why should a noobs sword have to look less threatening than a masters? It shouldnt, you see with these small changes even more harsh penalties for those who choose to be the antagonists in any PvP encounter, a game could be balanced. You would have the forces of good.. and you would have the much smaller player based forces of evil. People this arrangement is a good thing. Ohh wait ... more rumblings.. how do you prevent the evil alligned toons from just rolling other toons and getting what they need easily?? Well, it isnt rocket science. You make all toons be alligned the same.. So if you have 5 toons on your account and you decide your diabolical wizard, or Mutant Mauler, or whater is going to effectively attempt to mop the floor with another toon... then please enjoy your well earned experience.. but know when you log in your sweet little female armorsmith to make a little coin, Uhh.... well she would be alligned to the dark side now as well.. Problem solved. I could go on and on.. but the point is... there are solutions here.. We just have to take off the blinders and get serious.
Midus
Comments
1. People do not necessarily play games for realism. They play games for escapism.
2. With your skills argument you are talking semantics. With skill if you swing that sword 200 times a day, that is a grind and your strength and skill go up. With levels if you swing that sword 200 times a day your level goes up increasing your skill and strength. See it is the exact same thing with different words.
The only place that a skill system has over a level system is being able to choose which skills you want. There is no benefit in the way the skills are progressed.
Venge Sunsoar
Well, obviously you dont understand my gest. But again, as I stated, it is all opinion, but the "grind" is a reference to predictablity, for those of you less fortunate in the intellect department. Swinging the sword is a reference to how attributes should be tied to something other than creation. When you tie an attribute to creation, your forcing people from the very beginning to have to some degree decided how their toon is going to be built. Why?
Midus
Hades,
OU was a start.. Yes I would agree.. But what if in UO when you attacked someone ALL YOUR TOONS were now banned from town or KOS.. It would make the player base on the evil side much smaller, and therefore help balance the game. A player base that is alligned evil is always good. You just dont want that base to be to large or the games balance gets skewed.
Midus
to the op:
Paragraphs are your friend.
Nearly impossible to read...........
So you want to replace one time sink (killing mobs to level) with another (using your weapon to level), am I the only person wondering why?
Also you state that most MMORPG gamers aren't hardcore, later you state that in order to save the genre (from what I'm not sure) we need severe death penaltys (permadeath?) and fully lootable corpses in PvP. Please put down the crack pipe mate!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
Skills that are improved through usage and not tied to specific classes make far more sense than having to pick a class and level your character. It would be far more entertaining if it were not obvious to everyone what your characters skills and capabilities were.
Again i must put forth that classic SWG had the best recipe for character building.
Critical thinking is a desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and hatred for every kind of imposture.
Usually have to level to get them though....
It's like having the hottest wife with no personality;you have to literaly tell her sarcasm /on and /off so she "gets" some of your humour.She's really boring and simple,but damn She is nice to look at and "easy".
I hate levels.
But they just make things easier.Easier for everyone.Easier for the developers,easier for the players.I still hate levels.
Levels segragate the players from the time you pop into the world as level 1 fresh newbie. You can't hang with those guys,look at their number(level).... too high. You do know who you can hang with though..;they got about the same number as you.And You do know what you can hunt alone safely..;it has about the same number as you.
You know where to go at what level.
This dungeon is level# -level#. This zone is level# - level#.
That instance is level#-level#. Simple. Not only that but it's easier to find group members.
Need a healer level 20ish.
Need a tank level 30ish. Look up the levels of all the people online on your server.
Easy.
Think about loot.The items need to be marked with an appropriate level.
Will it change ever?
Will we get the sandbox with no levels that all the hardcore vets dream of?
I doubt it,but keep let's whining about it pls 'cause i hate levels too.I really do.
When swg was pretty new,i can remember standing around outside Mos Espa "grinding" amongst tons of newbs shooting and hacking at giant rats and lizards and whatnot. All around the town,it was pure mayhem. Most people were soloing,"GRINDING" up their skills. and after some slow respawnage a few of us gathered near, by chance and kinda just stood around talking newbishly to each other.
We teamed up and decided to hunt something bigger and badder. It was 4 or 5 of us soon-to-be rebels;standing around chatting about what skill we workin on or w/e.
I think everyone seemed friendly and normal and we were all laughing and stuff,except for one strange wookie wielding a 2 hand axe. He just kept sayin one thing over and over,
"Dewback Time"
Every 30 secs or so he would type it in the group chat.....
"Dewback Time."
Over and over he would say it every so often, and everyone kinda ignored him and stood still and talked about something else. "Dewback Time"
"Dewback Time"
Finally, i said 'hey should we try some dewbacks? LOL
So we ran around and found some.
The wookie charged like a real n00b who skipped the tutorial and maybe thought that social mobs were groups of pvpers who didn't roleplay or something.We handled the adds though, and only 1 or 2 group members 'incapped'.It was fun as we learned to assist and all attack 1 at a time and everything started getting easy and the fun wore off as we became like a machine of bots farming for gold. Here's where the fun ended.
The real prob was when someone said, "hey these are green to me now. Lets find something else.
" Another said, "...well they are orange to me.Great Exp still."
They were red to me,but when i equipped my carb they were yellowish....
Someone got a wise idea to go kill raiders for 'faster' exp.
so he lead us to a spot were we all got knocked unconscious in about 10 secs.
And received the deaTH BLOW.
We all respawned and that's when the group kinda broke apart.One person had to goto the hospital to heal wounds,another had too much battle fatigue and had to goto cantina. One guy wanted to go and teach skill to others for apprentice points.
It was fun tho.
Supernerd, is it really that hard to break up your post into paragraphs like I just did for you? As for the content of your post, I agree with what you were saying starting out, but you completely lost me when you went on the SWG tangent. What were you trying to convey exactly?
My blog:
Ahh! Block text crits you for 792482367821 Damage! You die!
but seriously,i guess that even though i hate levels they are just more "efficient"
or something like that
I could only read up to the first 3 bullets, as that big wall of text almost blinded me. Line breaks are the good guys!
But in response to what you were saying in the part that I did read, I have to disagree. Numbers do not lie. People play these games because they enjoy them. There are many other games out there to play if you dont like the one you're in. There has always been choices.
If you are not happy with the games that are available, it doesn't make the rest of the gaming community "ignorant" or "sheep following the herd". No game is able to please everyone. This genre is still fairly new, and it takes years to make a new title. If your ideal game is not out yet, I'm sorry, but it doesn't make the rest of us sheep.
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