Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
I don't care about skill, I care about intelligence and creativity.
adam_nox
Member UncommonPosts: 2,148
The big boy on the block, WoW, requires no intelligence to play correctly, and shuns any creativity. This is not the community's fault, this is a result of the game and how it is structured. The only thing you must do in WoW is what other people tell you. I'm talking about endgame raiding, because that's 99% of what there is to do for longterm players. If you are satisfied leveling new toons by yourself doing fedex quests all day long or getting pwned by twinks in battlegrounds for hours at a time, then I guess this complaint will fall on deaf ears and that's ok.
But just look at what WoW has done to the mindset of MMO players. Gearscore? Really? You are now judged based solely on your gear, that tells you everything you need to know about what's really important to playing WoW. Raid leaders telling people to apply like it's a job. Provide references. Do homework on exact steps required to fight raid encounters. It almost jerks tears from my eyes to think of how pathetic such a life must be.
You can add skill to this, like it's an fps or something, but that won't add intelligence. That won't allow free-thinking. That won't give space for creative builds and tactics. Fight cookie cutter stagnant mmo development. Fight gear treadmills. Fight for your mmo freedom.
Comments
Perhaps you ask too much of an MMO?
Perhaps WoW is as good as it gets?
If you want to hire Machete to kill the bad guys, you better make damn sure the bad guy isnt you!
"I got kicked out of raids and I'm far too uber-leet with my "free thinking" for that. Something must be wrong with games that aren't designed to cater to my exact skillset! It can't possibly be my faul!"
Important facts:
1. Free to Play games are poorly made.
2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals.
3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE.
4. Community is more important than you think.
Sounds like you should try EVE.
That, or GW1 until GW2 launches. Though GW2 sound sliek it will be even more aligned with what he wants with the traits system, environmental weapons, being able to respec pretty much on the fly, etc. Youll be able to make use of a lot of variety of builds consistently as you play through the game and encounter different enemies compared to having to preset your skills and build ahead of time like in GW1.
THAT has got to be the most depressing and fatalistic thing I have EVER seen on this site in all my years of posting here. And I mean no offense when I say that.
Thankfully, NO....WoW is NOT as good as it gets. But just having to meditate ON that thought for 2 minutes before typing this....has sent me into a downward emotional spiral. I will now procede to take a Xanax and call my doctor. Thank you. Thank you ever so much.
@ the OP:
I agree, and I believe there is still hope. There are, even now, games that care at least a LITTLE bit more about intelligence and creativity. We just have to be open-minded and explore. And I also believe that the future is NOT bleak, but that we will see more diversity in MMOs in years to come.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
skill = intelligence.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
"Your pride, good sir, far exceeds your worth." -x3r0h
Oldest mmorpg.com member with the least amount of post counts. That counts for something, right?
With WoW you can avoid hard.
.
If you avoid hard, the game is easy.
.
Or you can seek hard.
.
Here is a simulation from bosskillers. Soloing Saurfang is hard:
.
Saurfang simulation on bosskillers.com
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
You can make anything hard. Tic tac toe is easy. Now try it after 8 beers while blindfolded.
Similarly, every game has some challenge in it somewhere (either by design or by finding a way to make something harder than it is). But that doesn't change the fact that many games are as a whole absurdly easy.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
“skill = intelligence.”
I cannot agree with this statement. Skill is about doing things correctly. Intelligence is about knowing how to do things correctly.
I have once asked a famous surgeon after an operation why he cut in a “wrong” way, very different from text books schemes. His answer was: “I don’t know, I had a feeling”. This “wrong” cut saved patient’s life: the artery had atypical very rare location, a “correct” text book cut would kill the guy.
Raid encounters in WoW are puzzles to be solved that can take a bit of intelligence and creativity. If players wanted to do so, they could form raids and go in to the raid dungeons without looking up strategies beforehand, and without using UI enhancements like Deadly Boss Mods, and try to work out successful strategies on their own. That's what guilds on the bleeding edge of the content have to do. The fact that most players don't says more about the players themselves than the game.
Ahhh, Amathe. I love reading your posts. It's like a breath of fresh air. You always MAKE SENSE. Thank you. Thank you for that. (And no....that was NOT sarcasm.)
As you can see....you have become my Forum Sig of the Month. I hope you don't mind.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
The problem here is that many/most of us are forced to do it. No one will let you in the group if you don't already know the dungeon. Another case of the players ruining the game for themselves.
It's been my experience that whenever ppl come to the forums and complain about WoWs lack of intelligence to play or whatever, they just had their asses handed to them over and over again by some 11 yr old kid and can't take it.
Yes, and one of the "things it says" about the players themselves....is that not everyone thinks that RAIDING is the be all end all of what an MMORPG should be, and that they, perhaps, don't care to run the same raid over and over even IF they're doing it with self-imposed handicaps. Heck....I could level yet another character from 1 to 80 (AGAIN) and do something like....
Never allow myself to amass more than 100g by giving gold away (or whatever)
Never take any fast forms of transportation or buy any mounts
Do it in all crafted only gear (giving away or vending all drops)
Do it with one hand tied behind my back and using my nose to click the mouse
Only play when I'm very drunk, preferably seeing doubles, and only between 1 and 4 am
But you know what would NEVER CHANGE? The game's community, the fact that it's still the same zones, same instances, same quests (of course I could choose to do it again without doing any quests...thereby imposing a mega-grind style...maybe that would be somehow "creative"), the same tired classes with the same tired talent trees, the same lack of housing, the same single button crafting, the same lack of variety in types of activities....etc.
You can change the WAY you play a game, but if you simply don't LIKE THE GAME....it still doesn't change a lot of the things that you don't like.
Besides....I'm not sure that injecting our own "skills" of trying to figure out a way to not be bored....is really what anyone is wanting when they ask for intelligence or creativity. Although, it might work as a short term fix for boredom, similar to dancing with naked night elves in the Dalaran bars and giving them rides on your motorcycle....the novelty of such fixes wears off pretty quickly...at least for me.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Doing a raid without following someone else's strategy guide isn't a handicap. The encounter itself isn't any more difficult.
If you don't like the game, that's fine. But don't follow someone else's leveling guide from lvl 1-80, follow someone else's strategy guide for all of the heroic dungeons, and follow someone else's strategy guide for all of the raid dungeons, then complain that the game is boring. You spoiled the experience for yourself.
I do COMPLETELY agree with that. Just because a game encourages you to take shortcuts....does not mean you HAVE to do so, and yes....it really does spoil things, at least for me. I was really being kind of a smartass in my response....not because I totally disagreed with your basic point, but more because....yeah...that doesn't work for me with the specific game that was being referrenced.
But I do think you're 100 percent correct in saying we can easily ruin games for ourselves with all the addons and shortcuts. I don't use ANY addons in the game I'm now playing...not even a MAP addon...nothing...nada...zilch...zip. And for me....it's a far better way to play a game.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
I agree with the point you are trying to make, but not with the way you present it. In my experience, many elements of the game and community that you mention are indeed there. However, much of what you talk about actually is at least partially the fault of the community. The game mechanics do not expect players to look up boss strategies or optimal rotations online, and shun anyone who fails to do so. WoW was also not the first game to use an item-level-based gear system, nor was the idea of gearscore created or encouraged by Blizzard. Elitism is a community element that appears in every mmo ever made, regardless of mechanics.
However, you could indeed make a solid argument that WoW's mechanics discourage creativity in some ways. The game presents challenges in a linear fashion which usually have, at most, two different ways of being solved (think raid bosses). Once you've solved these challenges, the creative curve all but grinds to a halt as you farm the same bosses until new content arrives. The most the player can really do to keep learning and having new experiences is to level alts so they can approach the same problems from the slightly different angle of another class, or go for achievements - which in my opinion rarely add enough novelty to be worthwhile. PvP might stay fresh slightly longer just because of the increased human element, but even that has it's limits, especially considering that various mechanics made world pvp basically dead.
In my opinion, the developers could address these problems partially by altering their design goals to encourage open-world pvp, to make raid and dungeon encounters more dynamic in such a way as to force players to adapt to changing situations that are more difficult to anticipate, and to introduce challenging content in a less unilateral fashion.
Thanks
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Welcome to the world that was early EQ and its death through the glorious VIsion.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.