A breathing apparatus breaking immersion is laughable.
I'm pretty sure I've asked this before but does anyone here know what a fantasy game is? Ya see, Guild Wars 2 is ArenaNet's fantasy. Not yours. They're inviting you into THEIR fantasy. If you don't like something about it, then get a job in the game industry, copy Guild Wars 2(people do that with WoW anyways) and then take out the thing that you do not like to create YOUR fantasy.
It's funny how I have to tell people to be realistic about a fantasy game but be realistic here, you can put anything you want into a fantasy. That's why they call it a fantasy. So if ArenaNet wants to put a device where you can breathe underwater for as long as you like, then they can because it's their world. It's their fantasy. Your perception of what their world should be is not the realistic outcome.
Actually, steampunk relates to the industrial revolution and James Watt's patented steam engine. Steam locomotives, steam boats, steam-powered factories. Those were some of the key inventions of that era. The agrarian society was replaced by the industrial society and industrialization was born in this period.
I would not find it odd at all if someone used a firearm in a steampunk setting.
... have you ever noticed a lot of steampunk things use robots? <.<
... also, you apparently must hate the WHOLE Charr city then. The whole thing, and pretty much everything about the Charr.
Steampunk and clockpunk are both fantasy technologies, so the technology can cover a broad span, only loosely connected to our own.
I'm not sure why this is really that confusing to you, to the point it breaks your immersion.
(PS, the Charr are specifically going through an Industrial revolution type period, they've already stated that before. They just happen to be using clockwork and springs a lot)
ALSO, look up automaton and karakuri (A Japanese term)
You'll discover that the whole idea of automatic devices simulating life is OLDER than the renaissance period, but really flourished during then. You'll notice they all use lots of clockwork.
So yeah. Automaton gun turrets fall perfectly within the purview of renaissance style clockpunk anyway. :T
... have you ever noticed a lot of steampunk things use robots? <.<
Yes, steam-powered robots are quite common in steampunk fiction. And clockpunk often uses robots based on clockwork components. That's what speculative fiction is all about... "what if... ?"
WHAT IF some crazy engineer from the Victorian era tried to build a killer robot with the technology at hand? What would it look like? Would it be able to fly and shoot laser beams from the eyes? No, probably not. But a rudimentary chainsaw or a steam-powered hammer attached to the arm? Yeah, that sounds plausible.
By the way, you mentioned karakuri. I have to admit that I've never heard of karakuri so I had to look it up, and as it turns out, that's exactly what I'd expect to see in a clockpunk setting - they even feature the iconic escapement device that made the all-mechanical clock possible.
To be honest, I don't think we'll ever see things in the same light and I'm pretty sure nobody wants to follow a multi-page thread about something as trivial as a breathing apparatus. Also, you know what they say about people who indulge in forum discussions and Special Olympics - win or lose, they're still retards.
Send me a private message if you want to add something to the discussion.
By the way, you mentioned karakuri. I have to admit that I've never heard of karakuri so I had to look it up, and as it turns out, that's exactly what I'd expect to see in a clockpunk setting - they even feature the iconic escapement device that made the all-mechanical clock possible.
For what it's worth, there's actually some pretty interesting karakuri based comics out there.
Specifically, Le Cirque De Karakuri. It's about... evil clockwork robots made in the Renaissance period through the power of LOTS AND LOTS of gears + a little alchemy.
Then immortals (Through Alchemy) fight them using clockwork puppets that are manipulated through wires attached to every finger and toe.
Both the goodguys and the badguys have a circus, and one of the main characters is a kung fu master who has a rare medical condition where if he stresses out he will die unless he can make somebody laugh. (It actually turns out to be a pretty important plot point, and isn't as silly as it sounds)
... it's... pretty weird.
... but thanks to reading stuff like that, underwater breathing devices aside (We'll leave that alone), I look at automated turrets and don't even blink an eye. To me, clockpunk means automatons. They go hand in hand.
Back then, people just seemed to think if you put ENOUGH gears in, eventually you'd have a mannequin that can do everything a human did. I'm pretty amazed at the kinds of stuff they DID manage to do, just with gears.
edit: Actually, on a GW2 related side note, alchemy is an oft-forgotten aspect of GW2 technology (As it is), apparently.
You have the magitech (Like the Asura), you have the clockpunk/(with shades of steampunk too) tech of the Charr...
... and then you have alchemy instead of proper chemistry. Materials technology in GW2 (and even GW) is pretty weird. I mean, they make armor out of ectoplasm. That's pretty strange. Would you have been more comfortable if they had done what they originally mentioned and used underwater breathing potions instead?
In my opinion, gameplay comes first. There's no immutable canon here when it comes to lore and what is or isn't allowed. You come up with a gameplay idea and then you try to justify its inclusion in whatever way makes the most sense to the most people. There will always be people who don't buy it or for whom it breaks immersion, you can't help that.
You can see by the design decisions in this game that ArenaNet wanted to remove as many barriers to having fun as possible. Instant teleportation, minimal grind leveling and no mandatory endgame grinds, no griefing in PVE and resource gathering, being able to do a dungeon with any 5 people, and so on.
They also wanted to do underwater content, probably because they consider it fun. The biggest barrier to underwater content is breathing, it's a pain to deal with. It's not fun to keep staring at a breath meter. One of the early articles mentioned that they were just going to have easily obtainable breath potions. Even that though is a minor hassle. Maybe it only lasts an hour, so you still have to keep looking at it. You know someone is going to forget to buy more.
So I'm sure someone came up with the idea that people shouldn't have to worry about breath at all. How could they have accomplished that? Everybody has mutated to also have gills? The dragons rising has oxygenated the water? Or how about a mask that automatically goes on your head when you dive? It's brilliant. It's plausible. It fits the philosophy of their game perfectly. It's amazing nobody has ever thought of it before.
Gameplay comes first, and if possible, lore is changed to justify it. But if it can't be, players just have to suspend disbelief. Take world PVP in GW2. You have an entirely PVE game with 5 races, but you also want to have 3 faction PVP because it's fun. So it takes place "in the mists" and it becomes fighting for the gods' amusement or something. There's people who undoubtedly think that explanation is sufficient, I personally think it's pretty terrible. But I don't care, the gameplay is the important thing.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it."-Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Gameplay comes first, and if possible, lore is changed to justify it. But if it can't be, players just have to suspend disbelief. Take world PVP in GW2. You have an entirely PVE game with 5 races, but you also want to have 3 faction PVP because it's fun. So it takes place "in the mists" and it becomes fighting for the gods' amusement or something. There's people who undoubtedly think that explanation is sufficient, I personally think it's pretty terrible. But I don't care, the gameplay is the important thing.
I agree that in general, gameplay should come first as in 'so far as importances goes', but it doesn't neccessarily come chronologically first when it comes to designing content.
For example, more than once GW2 devs have pointed out some things start off as art, and then they try to justify game lore stuff to fit it... which means that gameplay would come (chronologically) third.
That might have been what you meant in the first place, just felt like clarifying that there's two different kinds of way somebody can mean 'gameplay comes first'.
(If more people would realize that's how games are made, it would probably save a lot of people saying really strange things. Like 'I don't like guns in MMORPGs because why don't people die when they're shot the first time?'. Same reason people don't die when they're hit by a lightning bolt, stepped on by a dragon or hit right in the face with an ax the first time. Some people say strange things. )
Gameplay comes first, and if possible, lore is changed to justify it. But if it can't be, players just have to suspend disbelief. Take world PVP in GW2. You have an entirely PVE game with 5 races, but you also want to have 3 faction PVP because it's fun. So it takes place "in the mists" and it becomes fighting for the gods' amusement or something. There's people who undoubtedly think that explanation is sufficient, I personally think it's pretty terrible. But I don't care, the gameplay is the important thing.
I agree that in general, gameplay should come first as in 'so far as importances goes', but it doesn't neccessarily come chronologically first when it comes to designing content.
For example, more than once GW2 devs have pointed out some things start off as art, and then they try to justify game lore stuff to fit it... which means that gameplay would come (chronologically) third.
That might have been what you meant in the first place, just felt like clarifying that there's two different kinds of way somebody can mean 'gameplay comes first'.
(If more people would realize that's how games are made, it would probably save a lot of people saying really strange things. Like 'I don't like guns in MMORPGs because why don't people die when they're shot the first time?'. Same reason people don't die when they're hit by a lightning bolt, stepped on by a dragon or hit right in the face with an ax the first time. Some people say strange things. )
I did mean as far as importance goes, but thanks for clarifying.
I was trying to include the Kodan as an example of canon being modified in the name of coolness, but opted to use the WvWvW example instead.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it."-Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
By the way, you mentioned karakuri. I have to admit that I've never heard of karakuri so I had to look it up, and as it turns out, that's exactly what I'd expect to see in a clockpunk setting - they even feature the iconic escapement device that made the all-mechanical clock possible.
For what it's worth, there's actually some pretty interesting karakuri based comics out there.
Specifically, Le Cirque De Karakuri. It's about... evil clockwork robots made in the Renaissance period through the power of LOTS AND LOTS of gears + a little alchemy.
Then immortals (Through Alchemy) fight them using clockwork puppets that are manipulated through wires attached to every finger and toe.
Both the goodguys and the badguys have a circus, and one of the main characters is a kung fu master who has a rare medical condition where if he stresses out he will die unless he can make somebody laugh. (It actually turns out to be a pretty important plot point, and isn't as silly as it sounds)
... it's... pretty weird.
... but thanks to reading stuff like that, underwater breathing devices aside (We'll leave that alone), I look at automated turrets and don't even blink an eye. To me, clockpunk means automatons. They go hand in hand.
Back then, people just seemed to think if you put ENOUGH gears in, eventually you'd have a mannequin that can do everything a human did. I'm pretty amazed at the kinds of stuff they DID manage to do, just with gears.
edit: Actually, on a GW2 related side note, alchemy is an oft-forgotten aspect of GW2 technology (As it is), apparently.
You have the magitech (Like the Asura), you have the clockpunk/(with shades of steampunk too) tech of the Charr...
... and then you have alchemy instead of proper chemistry. Materials technology in GW2 (and even GW) is pretty weird. I mean, they make armor out of ectoplasm. That's pretty strange. Would you have been more comfortable if they had done what they originally mentioned and used underwater breathing potions instead?
I found a few interesting things in this post and I also wanted to make some comments...
Except they substitute computer components for gears. They think that we are conscious merely by virtue of our brains being very complex. Personally, I think this is absolutely ridiculous. I don't care how many routines and processors you put it a computer, it's still just a computer. But that's me .
Second, I believe that what you consider to be "plausible" in fiction is a function of how much you understand about our world. For example, many people see a picture of a gun that resembles a turret (on a tripod) that was invented in the 1700's, they think that turrets in a game like GW2 are definitely plausible just because they look similar.
However, if you have a better understanding of AI and robotics, you will realize that there is NO WAY a GW2 turret that can recognize targets and orient itself towards them would have been plausible for someone in the 1700's. By far, the most advanced parts of a turret are its sensory (sensing light/movement), computerized components (its AI), and robotic components (being able to rotate on its own and having a power source). There's no way someone from the 1700's could build a turret like that, it's completely implausible.
So to me, plausibility is a moot point, it's all fantasy. You basically have to accept it's going to be unrealistic. And at that point, things "fitting in" become more of a question of the general "theme" of the world that they exist in. For example, a laser gun that looks like it's from star wars would not fit in a steam/clock punk world. But a laser gun that just artistically "looks" like it belongs in a steam/clock punk world would: http://scyfilove.com/1074/more-christmas-present-ideas-for-science-fiction-fans/.
I guess what I'm saying is that ALL of the "science" in steam/clock punk is fantasy. The only thing that makes it "plausible" is its physical appearance.
I guess what I'm saying is that ALL of the "science" in steam/clock punk is fantasy. The only thing that makes it "plausible" is its physical appearance.
Well... yeah. That's what I keep saying about GW2 'science', that so many people don't seem to get.
It's not real science, it's clockpunk science. Dunno why that's a sticking point for some people. It's about as scientific as the alchemy in GW2 is... or the magic, for that matter. It's just aesthetically 'sciency'.
Yep, this thread is still figuring out basic design rules! I get what you're talkking about there, Meowhead, and it's a shame that it really has to be explained.
At the top of mainstream/casual game developmental codex (essentially for games that aren't entirely art games, pure simulations, edutational, more-work-than-game games, or hipster-indie) there are rules which should be obeyed above all others:
Rule of Cool - For the most part, sans plot scenarios, the game should make the player feel powerful. Failing that, the game should strive for at least making the player feel useful. If the player feels impotent then eventually they're going to get bored and look for something else that will provide gratification. (This is why MMORPG development has gravitated away from 'kill ten rats' to 'kill a boss almost right after spawning.')
Rule of Fun - The game has to be entertaining. This does not necessarily mean funny as people can be entertained whilst feeling scared, but rather the game should occupy the mind of the player and provide them with a sense of amusement and joy. Thrills and spills, if you will, the game has to target those areas of the brain to succeed. The gameplay itself must be fun and never seem like a chore, and efforts through gameplay should be rewarded.
Rule of Sexy - This is one of the lesser rules but it applies, and it doesn't solely apply to humans, but a game has to feel 'sexy.' To that end, it should at least have good art direction, and/or a compelling storyline, the game itself should be attractive to the player, it's the initial hook that draws many in, and each element that's designed to target a demographic should be sexy in its own way. Again: This does not necessarily imply physical sexual attraction, but more towards aesthetic appreciation.
Everything else comes after those rules and if they are ever subverted, it should only be done sparingly. What one might find in the game must support those rules, as has been mentioned. Want to add an auto-targeting gattling gun? Do it, Rules of Cool/Fun, man. People will enjoy the hell out of it. Sure, try to support it with the lore, but the primary thing is is that it has to be cool and it has to be fun. Underwater combat being sluggish, slow, and unresponsive? That's neither cool or fun, therefore it's bad game design.
See, if they do water wrong, it starts becoming repetitive, then it becomes work, and that smacks of bad game design. You can still imply certain social conditioning techniques to get people addicted to work, as some games have, both mainstream (WoW) and casual (Farmville), but that doesn't mean that it's good game design. It just means that if you're into that, Blizzard/Zynga is particularly good at hacking your head, and that's all it means. :P
Objectively, good game design must occur for a good game to be made. Once again, you can make a bad game and then get people addicted to it, but I don't think that's ArenaNet's goal. I think they want to make a good game. And thus in making a good game, they'll make a game that is in equal parts fun, cool, and aesthetically pleasing (sexy).
At the top of mainstream/casual game developmental codex (essentially for games that aren't entirely art games, pure simulations, edutational, more-work-than-game games, or hipster-indie) there are rules which should be obeyed above all others:
Rule of Cool - For the most part, sans plot scenarios, the game should make the player feel powerful. Failing that, the game should strive for at least making the player feel useful. If the player feels impotent then eventually they're going to get bored and look for something else that will provide gratification. (This is why MMORPG development has gravitated away from 'kill ten rats' to 'kill a boss almost right after spawning.')
Rule of Fun - The game has to be entertaining. This does not necessarily mean funny as people can be entertained whilst feeling scared, but rather the game should occupy the mind of the player and provide them with a sense of amusement and joy. Thrills and spills, if you will, the game has to target those areas of the brain to succeed. The gameplay itself must be fun and never seem like a chore, and efforts through gameplay should be rewarded.
Rule of Sexy - This is one of the lesser rules but it applies, and it doesn't solely apply to humans, but a game has to feel 'sexy.' To that end, it should at least have good art direction, and/or a compelling storyline, the game itself should be attractive to the player, it's the initial hook that draws many in, and each element that's designed to target a demographic should be sexy in its own way. Again: This does not necessarily imply physical sexual attraction, but more towards aesthetic appreciation.
Everything else comes after those rules and if they are ever subverted, it should only be done sparingly. What one might find in the game must support those rules, as has been mentioned. Want to add an auto-targeting gattling gun? Do it, Rules of Cool/Fun, man. People will enjoy the hell out of it. Sure, try to support it with the lore, but the primary thing is is that it has to be cool and it has to be fun. Underwater combat being sluggish, slow, and unresponsive? That's neither cool or fun, therefore it's bad game design.
You have cited the so-called rules of game development in a couple of posts already. I was curious about their origins so I did a quick Google search on "rule of cool", and the magic 8-ball came up with this: The Rule of Cool was extended to RPGs back in 2007 by an RPG blogger named Philippe-Antoine Menard.
Is this guy in any way affiliated with ArenaNet? And more importantly - does the Guild Wars 2 developing team share his design philosophy? Because his design philosophy is in no way universally accepted - it has indeed taken a lot of flak (especially from immersionists and roleplayers).
This is in no way an attempt to troll you or anything. I'm genuinely curious about the set of rules and how they relate to the development of Guild Wars 2.
personally I feel the movement speed is a design decision and it seems the only reason people dont like it is because its not the same as other big MMO's out there on the market. Same goes for the no breath meter, Ive seen a lot of posts that seem to be carbon copies of the descriptors big MMO's give for their underwater breath meters.
A lot of mmo players take their opinions of a new mmo's from the experience of the mmo they have played the most and while this is not necissarily bad, it can cripple you if you base your opinion of a game in development purely on the thought that its different from what you've played before.
If they can keep good on their promise of awesome explorable underwater combat (in what I hope will truly be on par with the surface exploration) then I see no problem with the underwater speed and no breath meter. Really what these things do is allow you to explore and fight monsters in a cool environment without the threat of a breath meter. Theres still going to be drowning tho (if you get attacked by a mob and enter the "last chance mode" you begin to drown, and this can be fixed by killing a baddie, or rising to the surface to catch your breath.)
Really theres no point in judging it till we see how it actually plays and feels. Till then its fairly pointless to speculate or critisize the developers for their design choice till we see it in action.
It's definitely a design choice and a good one, too. It's both baffling and entertaining to me that some people still don't understand why. Okay, consider this - in a space combat game, you don't have to go from place to place at sublight speeds, taking years to get anywhere, and putting your characters into hypersleep for years whilst you go and do something else because that would be ridiculous. Instead, space games toss in impossible things like FTL/dimension-ripping/dimension-folding/dimension-raping hyperdrives or wormhole pathways. The player just needs to suspend their disbelief abou tthis in favour of the rule of fun.
This turns decades of travel into mere seconds. Space combat games have been doing this for years. I particularly liked the space-tunnel system in Freelancer, for example. Freelancer... what a glorious game you were, with your metallic whale-shaped spaceships. But anyway, by this point you might be wondering what the point of this segue is.
The point is is that non-necessary delays are pointless, but you need a way to keep all players equal, so you give them the same movement speed. However, if you lower that in water then you're putting that player at a disadvantage, and therefore you're making the game frustrating and boring for them. BOOM! The rule of fun is destroyed that easily. There goes the fun. Let's say that you've just swum into an underwater cave network, and you've done something that's activated an event on the island up above. If you're moving 3x or 4x slower than you do on land, then other players nearby are going to get to and possibly complete that event before you can, you're at a massive disadvantage simply for being underwater.
Slowing movement speed underwater is a purely arbitrary thing, and those who fetishise trad MMORPGs seem to love their arbitrary hassles, like how if you include mounts then unmounted movement speed is reduced to compensate. (I don't know whether you've noticed, but characterrs in Guild Wars 2 run really, really fast, and this is because the game is sans mounts.) Really, this is just how good of a job trad MMORPGs have done brainwashing the trad MMORPG herd. They believe that movement speed has to be slow, that there should be mounts to remedy that, and moveement speed underwater should be slower.
There are no valid, reasonable, or logical reasons for them to believe this, and I don't even know if they know why they believe it themselves since they can't provide a good argument, but because these trad MMORPGs have take up such a large chunk of their lives, their static brains seem to be unable to grasp that an MMORPG can be built another way, without these arbitrary hassles which are contradictory to good game design.
This is the problem.
Geez, the first week of Guild Wars 2 is going to be hell as the trad MMORPGists pour in and we all have to explain things to them over and over and over again to break their classical conditioning. It'll be like so many thousands of pavlov's dogs. That's the only thing I fear about the launch of Guild Wars 2, really. "THIS IS DIFFERENT, SO IT IS THEREFORE STUPID AND INCORRECT!!111ONEONE" That's going to be a lot of fun, isn't it?
Look, it's a new game, ArenaNet are doing things differently, and if you didn't have your head so far up a trad MMORPGs arse then you'd actually be current with game design. In Uncharted, Nathan Drake does not moove more slowly in water, most games don't do that anymore, because it's an arbitrary and pointless way to slow the player down. If you're not having the player pay for a monthly subscription, then why would you ever desire, as a developer, to implement ways which slow the player's progression for entirely arbitrary reasons?
The truth of this thread is that there are people who need to stop fetishising trad MMORPGs. It's as simple as that.
Trad MMORPGs are not the world. They are not even the gaming world. In fact, they're an artifact of an ancient, bygone world that we've since moved beyond. Trad MMORPG fans are still in the past, still trapped back a decade ago, and they seem to be scared and confused by the modern ideas which proliferate every other genre of game currently, ideas which have noow begun to work their way into MMORPGs like Guild Wars 2.
Moral of the Story: It's not 2001 any more, it's 2011, and people don't have 15 hours a day, 7 days a week, to work on a game that they'll never complete. That's not fun. Games should be fun. WoW and trad MMORPGs like it are not fun. Guild Wars 2 will be fun. Fin.
(I'll note that all of this can apply to mount fans too as I've been saying the same thing to them. "But we need mounts, we can't have instatravel!" Well, that's what ELITE was doing years before your trad bloody MMORPGs existed. Guh. This all amounts to trying to break an incredibly good brainwashing job, seriously. Well done Sony and Blizzard, you've really screwed up the heads of these people, they don't know left from right any more.)
Dreamchaser, I'd be a lot more willing to cheer you on and shake my fist and go 'Yes! Preach it!' if you didn't keep seguing into insulting every OTHER game design. I realize that other games aren't to your taste, and they usually aren't to mine either...
... but even if you BELIEVE that other MMORPGs are the antichrist, just fake that you find them tolerable, other valid design choices that you just don't happen to enjoy.
It helps to convince people you're right if you don't start off part of your argument with '... and by the way everything you've ever believed before is stupid'.
Wait until they agree wholeheartedly with you before you tell them that.
Interesting that he chose to include WoW as an example of traditional MMORPGs, arguably the game that was the first to really dare and break several of the old MMO conventions, and was suitably rewarded for it.
Moral of the Story: It's not 2001 any more, it's 2011, and people don't have 15 hours a day, 7 days a week, to work on a game that they'll never complete. That's not fun. Games should be fun. WoW and trad MMORPGs like it are not fun. Guild Wars 2 will be fun. Fin.
That's a pretty bold statement. Certainly, you must be speaking on behalf of yourself, in which case it would be absurd to disagree with you.
Anyway, I was merely asking for a link to a developer blog or a podcast interview, where the ArenaNet staff mentioned the set of aforementioned rules and how they apply to Guild Wars 2. It's not in the official Guild Wars 2 manifesto as far as I know, so I assume you picked up the information from somewhere else?
Originally posted by Kharnath You have cited the so-called rules of game development in a couple of posts already. I was curious about their origins so I did a quick Google search on "rule of cool", and the magic 8-ball came up with this: The Rule of Cool was extended to RPGs back in 2007 by an RPG blogger named Philippe-Antoine Menard. Is this guy in any way affiliated with ArenaNet? And more importantly - does the Guild Wars 2 developing team share his design philosophy? Because his design philosophy is in no way universally accepted - it has indeed taken a lot of flak (especially from immersionists and roleplayers). This is in no way an attempt to troll you or anything. I'm genuinely curious about the set of rules and how they relate to the development of Guild Wars 2.
I have only seen Jeff Grubb, GW2's Lore Master, reference the Rule of Cool when it comes to thinking things up for the story. I couldn't find any other references from GW2 staff, so, grain of salt and all that.
Certainly the devs have a metric for determining whether something is cool or fun enough to be in the game, and that this is internally consistent, but we don't know if they use these metrics specifically.
Dreamchaser, I'd be a lot more willing to cheer you on and shake my fist and go 'Yes! Preach it!' if you didn't keep seguing into insulting every OTHER game design. I realize that other games aren't to your taste, and they usually aren't to mine either...
That's because I don't want to be cheered on. I find it's easier to get people thinking if you kick them up the butt. I have no desire to befriend the vast majority of gamers because they're not specifically people I like, and commonly I find that kicking them up the butt opens up their minds a bit. They may be sore, but the words will hang around in their minds longer that way, and eventually they'll realise the ring of truth to them.
... but even if you BELIEVE that other MMORPGs are the antichrist, just fake that you find them tolerable, other valid design choices that you just don't happen to enjoy.
I don't. So why shoould I lie? Should I lie about Zynga to my family? Should I tell them that it isn't all just some scheme cleverly designed by psychologists using the nature of addiction to pull them into something and to force them to pull others into something that will simply siphon money off them? Is that what I should tell them? I'm not going to tell them that because it isn't the truth. I view being honest to myself and to others as a more important virtue than candy coating things.
As I said above, I'm not out to make any friends as usually gamers aren't my favourite people and MMORPG gamers even less so, but I do care enough to get people thinking twice about their misconceptions.
It helps to convince people you're right if you don't start off part of your argument with '... and by the way everything you've ever believed before is stupid'.
Hey, sometimes it's true. And we're doing that all the time in today's world. The problem is that sometimes people use their personal beliefs and values to justify something, so tackling the justification isn't going to help, you have to go straight to the heart of the matter and attack the belief. If you can get a few people questioning whether things they've alwasy believed to be factual, then you've won a fight for philosophy.
I find the game design tenets of trad MMORPGs to be filled with bad game design, and I uphold that anything that moves away from that is going to be good for us as a whole, and healthier. Sure, it might not be so great for those who want status symbols through grinding or whatnot, or for those who've poured years of their life into a game, but I'd like to get some people questioning whether those were bad choices, too. Blizzard is just Zynga, really. They're the mainstream Zynga, and therefore WoW and games like it are just Farmville. That's a lot of people hooked on Farmville, or games like it.
So again, sometimes you just have to kick someone up the arse. It's hard to get people to realise that their beliefs might be wrong because they're so emotionally invested in a game due to how much of their life they've lost to it. And one thing they really don't want to do is question why they put so much of their life out to a bad game, they'd rather defend the bad game and then try to make all other games like that bad game so they can uphold the justification.
That irritates me. You can't imagine.
So I try to get to the core of the matter. I point out, honestly, that these games were filled with bad design decisions, and how many years of your life you spent on it, how emotionally invested in it you might be, is simply irrelevant. I'm tired of seeing trad MMORPG fans fool themselves into believing that their past actions are justified if they could just turn every future MMORPG into the game that originally hooked them and stole their life.
That's not healthy. It's a point of view I should be fighting. I'm so sick of that point of view and so many others that gamers take for granted. There are so many wars of philosophy I'd like to fight on so many fronts, just to make gamers less likely to be xenophobic, basement dwelling, traditionalist, anti-progress, small-minded, culturally stunted jerks.
Wait until they agree wholeheartedly with you before you tell them that.
I can't. That would be dishonest. And besides, often offending someone is the hook that keeps them reading. If I can piss off enough people to make them question their current values, then hey, war of philosophy won and the gaming subculture becomes a bit better for it.
(It's really worth pointing out that everything i say here has that base motivation behind it. One might not realise it, but it does, and I'll use many vectors of entry for trying to get my points across. Even if it comes down to insults, sarcasm, or even reverse psychology. Sometimes I really just want to kick MMORPG players up the butt and that's what I'm doing. Guild Wars 2 is a great game for so many reasons, because it fits things that the MMORPG needs to be.
I feel that so many MMORPGs out there actually encourage people to be xenophobic, basement dwelling, traditionalist, anti-progress, small-minded, culturally stunted jerks, I think the games groom them into that mindset. It's a different approach to Farmville, but it's just as effective, and it creates players for life.
I am so sick of seeing that. You have no idea. No idea. So I'm going to do my best to knock as many people out of that cycle as I can. Call it being an arsehole if you want, call it whatever you like, people can call me the antichrist, or they can think of it as tough love. It's not really relevant. I just want people to question these MMORPGs they've devoted their lives to and the values they've been teaching them. From the little things like "It's important to have a faction to hate and racism is something you should learn." to "You can acquire real social worth from a videogame!".
I don't think these are values that we should be teaching anyone.)
I think if someone makes a game, and someone else enjoys it, they have designed a good game. Nobody needs to get their butts kicked. Your opinions are not fact or truth. They hold no veto over anyone else's opinion. They can be honest, rude, aloof, passionate, uplifting asshole-ish, whatever your fancy. But they are not fact. And they will never be truth. Because opinions are personal. Nothing more. Nothing less.
(It's really worth pointing out that everything i say here has that base motivation behind it. One might not realise it, but it does, and I'll use many vectors of entry for trying to get my points across. Even if it comes down to insults, sarcasm, or even reverse psychology. Sometimes I really just want to kick MMORPG players up the butt and that's what I'm doing. Guild Wars 2 is a great game for so many reasons, because it fits things that the MMORPG needs to be.
I feel that so many MMORPGs out there actually encourage people to be xenophobic, basement dwelling, traditionalist, anti-progress, small-minded, culturally stunted jerks, I think the games groom them into that mindset. It's a different approach to Farmville, but it's just as effective, and it creates players for life.
I am so sick of seeing that. You have no idea. No idea. So I'm going to do my best to knock as many people out of that cycle as I can. Call it being an arsehole if you want, call it whatever you like, people can call me the antichrist, or they can think of it as tough love. It's not really relevant. I just want people to question these MMORPGs they've devoted their lives to and the values they've been teaching them. From the little things like "It's important to have a faction to hate and racism is something you should learn." to "You can acquire real social worth from a videogame!".
I don't think these are values that we should be teaching anyone.)
You do realize people get entertainment from different things right? What you look for in a game isn't what everyone is seeking, the values you hold so high in GW2 aren't what everyone else is seeking. That's why there's no point in what you think you're doing. You can't change a persons perspective on taste, no matter how long you make them sit at the table.
The paragraph in yellow, is just baseless assumption on your part. All derived from stereotypes. You expect anyone to take you seriously when you're stating things like that? Yet you still want to call others "culturally stunted jerks"?
People like what they like and dislike what they don't, someone like you lambasting them for those likes or dislikes isn't going to change them, the only thing you're going to accomplish is being the next entry on someones ignore list. I'm sure you would just chalk that up as a win though.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
(It's really worth pointing out that everything i say here has that base motivation behind it. One might not realise it, but it does, and I'll use many vectors of entry for trying to get my points across. Even if it comes down to insults, sarcasm, or even reverse psychology. Sometimes I really just want to kick MMORPG players up the butt and that's what I'm doing. Guild Wars 2 is a great game for so many reasons, because it fits things that the MMORPG needs to be.
I feel that so many MMORPGs out there actually encourage people to be xenophobic, basement dwelling, traditionalist, anti-progress, small-minded, culturally stunted jerks, I think the games groom them into that mindset. It's a different approach to Farmville, but it's just as effective, and it creates players for life.
I am so sick of seeing that. You have no idea. No idea. So I'm going to do my best to knock as many people out of that cycle as I can. Call it being an arsehole if you want, call it whatever you like, people can call me the antichrist, or they can think of it as tough love. It's not really relevant. I just want people to question these MMORPGs they've devoted their lives to and the values they've been teaching them. From the little things like "It's important to have a faction to hate and racism is something you should learn." to "You can acquire real social worth from a videogame!".
I don't think these are values that we should be teaching anyone.)
You do realize people get entertainment from different things right? What you look for in a game isn't what everyone is seeking, the values you hold so high in GW2 aren't what everyone else is seeking. That's why there's no point in what you think you're doing. You can't change a persons perspective on taste, no matter how long you make them sit at the table.
The paragraph in yellow, is just baseless assumption on your part. All derived from stereotypes. You expect anyone to take you seriously when you're stating things like that? Yet you still want to call others "culturally stunted jerks"?
People like what they like and dislike what they don't, someone like you lambasting them for those likes or dislikes isn't going to change them, the only thing you're going to accomplish is being the next entry on someones ignore list. I'm sure you would just chalk that up as a win though.
While I agree with you that people don't like the same things, I agree with Dreamchaser that MMORPG's do have a knack for bringing the tools out of the shed. As far as I am concerned, and I am looking at you since I see you on GW2 forums a lot when it's clear you don't favor the game and use every chance you can to mention SWTOR, if you don't like the games direction then please by all means quit gracing the GW forums. Not just you but all the others that want to constantly post here when they have made it clear they are looking for features in a game that aren't gonna be in this one.
Not saying you can't speak your mind where you want, but do try to understand that you are in a GW2 forum and some of us are looking forward to the game. While I don't care to "change a persons perspective on taste" I do ask that if GW isn't their taste please please please understand that anythign that comes from some of you means squat. After all, taste will vary and if this one isn't to some of ya'lls liken then why come back for more? hmm
While I agree with you that people don't like the same things, I agree with Dreamchaser that MMORPG's do have a knack for bringing the tools out of the shed. As far as I am concerned, and I am looking at you since I see you on GW2 forums a lot when it's clear you don't favor the game and use every chance you can to mention SWTOR, if you don't like the games direction then please by all means quit gracing the GW forums. Not just you but all the others that want to constantly post here when they have made it clear they are looking for features in a game that aren't gonna be in this one.
Not saying you can't speak your mind where you want, but do try to understand that you are in a GW2 forum and some of us are looking forward to the game. While I don't care to "change a persons perspective on taste" I do ask that if GW isn't their taste please please please understand that anythign that comes from some of you means squat. After all, taste will vary and if this one isn't to some of ya'lls liken then why come back for more? hmm
What are you talking about? I don't compare games against each other, I look at games on their own merits, I don't favor TOR over GW2, I look forward to them both equally. I have not said a bad thing about GW2. Questioned things, been confused about others, never bashed though, so I'm not sure what you mean here. I prefer to post here lately because discusions have been more productive as well as interesting compared to TSW/TOR or AA the other games I'm looking forward to.
-Edit- to be honest you'd be hard pressed to find me ever bashing any game on this site, as I typically only discuss games I like, have played or intend to play. I'm sure I'll be called a fanboi for GW2 as well at some point, because after launch when the mindless bashing does begin, I'm sure I'll have something to say. I usually do as I hate mindless bashing as much as anyone if not more than most. As a matter of fact I just defended wow with a few posts and I hate that game.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
While I agree with you that people don't like the same things, I agree with Dreamchaser that MMORPG's do have a knack for bringing the tools out of the shed. As far as I am concerned, and I am looking at you since I see you on GW2 forums a lot when it's clear you don't favor the game and use every chance you can to mention SWTOR, if you don't like the games direction then please by all means quit gracing the GW forums. Not just you but all the others that want to constantly post here when they have made it clear they are looking for features in a game that aren't gonna be in this one.
Not saying you can't speak your mind where you want, but do try to understand that you are in a GW2 forum and some of us are looking forward to the game. While I don't care to "change a persons perspective on taste" I do ask that if GW isn't their taste please please please understand that anythign that comes from some of you means squat. After all, taste will vary and if this one isn't to some of ya'lls liken then why come back for more? hmm
What are you talking about? I don't compare games against each other, I look at games on their own merits, I don't favor TOR over GW2, I look forward to them both equally. I have not said a bad thing about GW2. Questioned things, been confused about others, never bashed though, so I'm not sure what you mean here. I prefer to post here lately because discusions have been more productive as well as interesting compared to TSW/TOR or AA the other games I'm looking forward to.
-Edit- to be honest you'd be hard pressed to find me ever bashing any game on this site, as I typically only discuss games I like, have played or intend to play. I'm sure I'll be called a fanboi for GW2 as well at some point, because after launch when the mindless bashing does begin, I'm sure I'll have something to say. I usually do as I hate mindless bashing as much as anyone if not more than most. As a matter of fact I just defended wow with a few posts and I hate that game.
If that is the case then I will apologize for accusing. Just thought it funny that certain names pop up a lot in GW forums and I just got through reading some of your less than enthusiastic and more judgemental remarks in the thread about Health pools. I also think it is funny when some people use the claim they plan on playing the game so they have a valid justification to bash it to hell and make there "concerns" seem valid because they plan on giving it a try. thats a cop-out imo. It is late and as I said I just went from one topic to the next and a couple of names stood out for some reason.
The part that stood out in the other thread the most was you placen words in Anets mouth and saying it was their fault for "wording" things a certain way then Romanator0 gave you the exact quote from the team. Sorry but that was exactly what I was talking about. If I was mistaken your intentions it's your fault for "wording things wrong and looking for trouble."
Comments
A breathing apparatus breaking immersion is laughable.
I'm pretty sure I've asked this before but does anyone here know what a fantasy game is? Ya see, Guild Wars 2 is ArenaNet's fantasy. Not yours. They're inviting you into THEIR fantasy. If you don't like something about it, then get a job in the game industry, copy Guild Wars 2(people do that with WoW anyways) and then take out the thing that you do not like to create YOUR fantasy.
It's funny how I have to tell people to be realistic about a fantasy game but be realistic here, you can put anything you want into a fantasy. That's why they call it a fantasy. So if ArenaNet wants to put a device where you can breathe underwater for as long as you like, then they can because it's their world. It's their fantasy. Your perception of what their world should be is not the realistic outcome.
In other words, deal with it.
... have you ever noticed a lot of steampunk things use robots? <.<
... also, you apparently must hate the WHOLE Charr city then. The whole thing, and pretty much everything about the Charr.
Steampunk and clockpunk are both fantasy technologies, so the technology can cover a broad span, only loosely connected to our own.
I'm not sure why this is really that confusing to you, to the point it breaks your immersion.
(PS, the Charr are specifically going through an Industrial revolution type period, they've already stated that before. They just happen to be using clockwork and springs a lot)
ALSO, look up automaton and karakuri (A Japanese term)
You'll discover that the whole idea of automatic devices simulating life is OLDER than the renaissance period, but really flourished during then. You'll notice they all use lots of clockwork.
So yeah. Automaton gun turrets fall perfectly within the purview of renaissance style clockpunk anyway. :T
I think I was a bit unduly harsh in this post so I retracted it.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Yes, steam-powered robots are quite common in steampunk fiction. And clockpunk often uses robots based on clockwork components. That's what speculative fiction is all about... "what if... ?"
WHAT IF some crazy engineer from the Victorian era tried to build a killer robot with the technology at hand? What would it look like? Would it be able to fly and shoot laser beams from the eyes? No, probably not. But a rudimentary chainsaw or a steam-powered hammer attached to the arm? Yeah, that sounds plausible.
By the way, you mentioned karakuri. I have to admit that I've never heard of karakuri so I had to look it up, and as it turns out, that's exactly what I'd expect to see in a clockpunk setting - they even feature the iconic escapement device that made the all-mechanical clock possible.
To be honest, I don't think we'll ever see things in the same light and I'm pretty sure nobody wants to follow a multi-page thread about something as trivial as a breathing apparatus. Also, you know what they say about people who indulge in forum discussions and Special Olympics - win or lose, they're still retards.
Send me a private message if you want to add something to the discussion.
In my opinion, gameplay comes first. There's no immutable canon here when it comes to lore and what is or isn't allowed. You come up with a gameplay idea and then you try to justify its inclusion in whatever way makes the most sense to the most people. There will always be people who don't buy it or for whom it breaks immersion, you can't help that.
You can see by the design decisions in this game that ArenaNet wanted to remove as many barriers to having fun as possible. Instant teleportation, minimal grind leveling and no mandatory endgame grinds, no griefing in PVE and resource gathering, being able to do a dungeon with any 5 people, and so on.
They also wanted to do underwater content, probably because they consider it fun. The biggest barrier to underwater content is breathing, it's a pain to deal with. It's not fun to keep staring at a breath meter. One of the early articles mentioned that they were just going to have easily obtainable breath potions. Even that though is a minor hassle. Maybe it only lasts an hour, so you still have to keep looking at it. You know someone is going to forget to buy more.
So I'm sure someone came up with the idea that people shouldn't have to worry about breath at all. How could they have accomplished that? Everybody has mutated to also have gills? The dragons rising has oxygenated the water? Or how about a mask that automatically goes on your head when you dive? It's brilliant. It's plausible. It fits the philosophy of their game perfectly. It's amazing nobody has ever thought of it before.
Gameplay comes first, and if possible, lore is changed to justify it. But if it can't be, players just have to suspend disbelief. Take world PVP in GW2. You have an entirely PVE game with 5 races, but you also want to have 3 faction PVP because it's fun. So it takes place "in the mists" and it becomes fighting for the gods' amusement or something. There's people who undoubtedly think that explanation is sufficient, I personally think it's pretty terrible. But I don't care, the gameplay is the important thing.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
I agree that in general, gameplay should come first as in 'so far as importances goes', but it doesn't neccessarily come chronologically first when it comes to designing content.
For example, more than once GW2 devs have pointed out some things start off as art, and then they try to justify game lore stuff to fit it... which means that gameplay would come (chronologically) third.
That might have been what you meant in the first place, just felt like clarifying that there's two different kinds of way somebody can mean 'gameplay comes first'.
(If more people would realize that's how games are made, it would probably save a lot of people saying really strange things. Like 'I don't like guns in MMORPGs because why don't people die when they're shot the first time?'. Same reason people don't die when they're hit by a lightning bolt, stepped on by a dragon or hit right in the face with an ax the first time. Some people say strange things.
)
I did mean as far as importance goes, but thanks for clarifying.
I was trying to include the Kodan as an example of canon being modified in the name of coolness, but opted to use the WvWvW example instead.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
I found a few interesting things in this post and I also wanted to make some comments...
First, it's funny that people back then felt that if you put enough gears in something it will eventually become self aware. Because, oddly enough, that's basically what many AI theorists think today: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-theory-of-consciousness
Except they substitute computer components for gears. They think that we are conscious merely by virtue of our brains being very complex. Personally, I think this is absolutely ridiculous. I don't care how many routines and processors you put it a computer, it's still just a computer. But that's me
.
Second, I believe that what you consider to be "plausible" in fiction is a function of how much you understand about our world. For example, many people see a picture of a gun that resembles a turret (on a tripod) that was invented in the 1700's, they think that turrets in a game like GW2 are definitely plausible just because they look similar.
However, if you have a better understanding of AI and robotics, you will realize that there is NO WAY a GW2 turret that can recognize targets and orient itself towards them would have been plausible for someone in the 1700's. By far, the most advanced parts of a turret are its sensory (sensing light/movement), computerized components (its AI), and robotic components (being able to rotate on its own and having a power source). There's no way someone from the 1700's could build a turret like that, it's completely implausible.
So to me, plausibility is a moot point, it's all fantasy. You basically have to accept it's going to be unrealistic. And at that point, things "fitting in" become more of a question of the general "theme" of the world that they exist in. For example, a laser gun that looks like it's from star wars would not fit in a steam/clock punk world. But a laser gun that just artistically "looks" like it belongs in a steam/clock punk world would: http://scyfilove.com/1074/more-christmas-present-ideas-for-science-fiction-fans/.
I guess what I'm saying is that ALL of the "science" in steam/clock punk is fantasy. The only thing that makes it "plausible" is its physical appearance.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Well... yeah. That's what I keep saying about GW2 'science', that so many people don't seem to get.
It's not real science, it's clockpunk science. Dunno why that's a sticking point for some people. It's about as scientific as the alchemy in GW2 is... or the magic, for that matter. It's just aesthetically 'sciency'.
Yep, this thread is still figuring out basic design rules! I get what you're talkking about there, Meowhead, and it's a shame that it really has to be explained.
At the top of mainstream/casual game developmental codex (essentially for games that aren't entirely art games, pure simulations, edutational, more-work-than-game games, or hipster-indie) there are rules which should be obeyed above all others:
Rule of Cool - For the most part, sans plot scenarios, the game should make the player feel powerful. Failing that, the game should strive for at least making the player feel useful. If the player feels impotent then eventually they're going to get bored and look for something else that will provide gratification. (This is why MMORPG development has gravitated away from 'kill ten rats' to 'kill a boss almost right after spawning.')
Rule of Fun - The game has to be entertaining. This does not necessarily mean funny as people can be entertained whilst feeling scared, but rather the game should occupy the mind of the player and provide them with a sense of amusement and joy. Thrills and spills, if you will, the game has to target those areas of the brain to succeed. The gameplay itself must be fun and never seem like a chore, and efforts through gameplay should be rewarded.
Rule of Sexy - This is one of the lesser rules but it applies, and it doesn't solely apply to humans, but a game has to feel 'sexy.' To that end, it should at least have good art direction, and/or a compelling storyline, the game itself should be attractive to the player, it's the initial hook that draws many in, and each element that's designed to target a demographic should be sexy in its own way. Again: This does not necessarily imply physical sexual attraction, but more towards aesthetic appreciation.
Everything else comes after those rules and if they are ever subverted, it should only be done sparingly. What one might find in the game must support those rules, as has been mentioned. Want to add an auto-targeting gattling gun? Do it, Rules of Cool/Fun, man. People will enjoy the hell out of it. Sure, try to support it with the lore, but the primary thing is is that it has to be cool and it has to be fun. Underwater combat being sluggish, slow, and unresponsive? That's neither cool or fun, therefore it's bad game design.
See, if they do water wrong, it starts becoming repetitive, then it becomes work, and that smacks of bad game design. You can still imply certain social conditioning techniques to get people addicted to work, as some games have, both mainstream (WoW) and casual (Farmville), but that doesn't mean that it's good game design. It just means that if you're into that, Blizzard/Zynga is particularly good at hacking your head, and that's all it means. :P
Objectively, good game design must occur for a good game to be made. Once again, you can make a bad game and then get people addicted to it, but I don't think that's ArenaNet's goal. I think they want to make a good game. And thus in making a good game, they'll make a game that is in equal parts fun, cool, and aesthetically pleasing (sexy).
/thread?
You have cited the so-called rules of game development in a couple of posts already. I was curious about their origins so I did a quick Google search on "rule of cool", and the magic 8-ball came up with this: The Rule of Cool was extended to RPGs back in 2007 by an RPG blogger named Philippe-Antoine Menard.
Is this guy in any way affiliated with ArenaNet? And more importantly - does the Guild Wars 2 developing team share his design philosophy? Because his design philosophy is in no way universally accepted - it has indeed taken a lot of flak (especially from immersionists and roleplayers).
This is in no way an attempt to troll you or anything. I'm genuinely curious about the set of rules and how they relate to the development of Guild Wars 2.
personally I feel the movement speed is a design decision and it seems the only reason people dont like it is because its not the same as other big MMO's out there on the market. Same goes for the no breath meter, Ive seen a lot of posts that seem to be carbon copies of the descriptors big MMO's give for their underwater breath meters.
A lot of mmo players take their opinions of a new mmo's from the experience of the mmo they have played the most and while this is not necissarily bad, it can cripple you if you base your opinion of a game in development purely on the thought that its different from what you've played before.
If they can keep good on their promise of awesome explorable underwater combat (in what I hope will truly be on par with the surface exploration) then I see no problem with the underwater speed and no breath meter. Really what these things do is allow you to explore and fight monsters in a cool environment without the threat of a breath meter. Theres still going to be drowning tho (if you get attacked by a mob and enter the "last chance mode" you begin to drown, and this can be fixed by killing a baddie, or rising to the surface to catch your breath.)
Really theres no point in judging it till we see how it actually plays and feels. Till then its fairly pointless to speculate or critisize the developers for their design choice till we see it in action.
It's definitely a design choice and a good one, too. It's both baffling and entertaining to me that some people still don't understand why. Okay, consider this - in a space combat game, you don't have to go from place to place at sublight speeds, taking years to get anywhere, and putting your characters into hypersleep for years whilst you go and do something else because that would be ridiculous. Instead, space games toss in impossible things like FTL/dimension-ripping/dimension-folding/dimension-raping hyperdrives or wormhole pathways. The player just needs to suspend their disbelief abou tthis in favour of the rule of fun.
This turns decades of travel into mere seconds. Space combat games have been doing this for years. I particularly liked the space-tunnel system in Freelancer, for example. Freelancer... what a glorious game you were, with your metallic whale-shaped spaceships. But anyway, by this point you might be wondering what the point of this segue is.
The point is is that non-necessary delays are pointless, but you need a way to keep all players equal, so you give them the same movement speed. However, if you lower that in water then you're putting that player at a disadvantage, and therefore you're making the game frustrating and boring for them. BOOM! The rule of fun is destroyed that easily. There goes the fun. Let's say that you've just swum into an underwater cave network, and you've done something that's activated an event on the island up above. If you're moving 3x or 4x slower than you do on land, then other players nearby are going to get to and possibly complete that event before you can, you're at a massive disadvantage simply for being underwater.
Slowing movement speed underwater is a purely arbitrary thing, and those who fetishise trad MMORPGs seem to love their arbitrary hassles, like how if you include mounts then unmounted movement speed is reduced to compensate. (I don't know whether you've noticed, but characterrs in Guild Wars 2 run really, really fast, and this is because the game is sans mounts.) Really, this is just how good of a job trad MMORPGs have done brainwashing the trad MMORPG herd. They believe that movement speed has to be slow, that there should be mounts to remedy that, and moveement speed underwater should be slower.
There are no valid, reasonable, or logical reasons for them to believe this, and I don't even know if they know why they believe it themselves since they can't provide a good argument, but because these trad MMORPGs have take up such a large chunk of their lives, their static brains seem to be unable to grasp that an MMORPG can be built another way, without these arbitrary hassles which are contradictory to good game design.
This is the problem.
Geez, the first week of Guild Wars 2 is going to be hell as the trad MMORPGists pour in and we all have to explain things to them over and over and over again to break their classical conditioning. It'll be like so many thousands of pavlov's dogs. That's the only thing I fear about the launch of Guild Wars 2, really. "THIS IS DIFFERENT, SO IT IS THEREFORE STUPID AND INCORRECT!!111ONEONE" That's going to be a lot of fun, isn't it?
Look, it's a new game, ArenaNet are doing things differently, and if you didn't have your head so far up a trad MMORPGs arse then you'd actually be current with game design. In Uncharted, Nathan Drake does not moove more slowly in water, most games don't do that anymore, because it's an arbitrary and pointless way to slow the player down. If you're not having the player pay for a monthly subscription, then why would you ever desire, as a developer, to implement ways which slow the player's progression for entirely arbitrary reasons?
The truth of this thread is that there are people who need to stop fetishising trad MMORPGs. It's as simple as that.
Trad MMORPGs are not the world. They are not even the gaming world. In fact, they're an artifact of an ancient, bygone world that we've since moved beyond. Trad MMORPG fans are still in the past, still trapped back a decade ago, and they seem to be scared and confused by the modern ideas which proliferate every other genre of game currently, ideas which have noow begun to work their way into MMORPGs like Guild Wars 2.
Moral of the Story: It's not 2001 any more, it's 2011, and people don't have 15 hours a day, 7 days a week, to work on a game that they'll never complete. That's not fun. Games should be fun. WoW and trad MMORPGs like it are not fun. Guild Wars 2 will be fun. Fin.
(I'll note that all of this can apply to mount fans too as I've been saying the same thing to them. "But we need mounts, we can't have instatravel!" Well, that's what ELITE was doing years before your trad bloody MMORPGs existed. Guh. This all amounts to trying to break an incredibly good brainwashing job, seriously. Well done Sony and Blizzard, you've really screwed up the heads of these people, they don't know left from right any more.)
Dreamchaser, I'd be a lot more willing to cheer you on and shake my fist and go 'Yes! Preach it!' if you didn't keep seguing into insulting every OTHER game design. I realize that other games aren't to your taste, and they usually aren't to mine either...
... but even if you BELIEVE that other MMORPGs are the antichrist, just fake that you find them tolerable, other valid design choices that you just don't happen to enjoy.
It helps to convince people you're right if you don't start off part of your argument with '... and by the way everything you've ever believed before is stupid'.
Wait until they agree wholeheartedly with you before you tell them that.
Interesting that he chose to include WoW as an example of traditional MMORPGs, arguably the game that was the first to really dare and break several of the old MMO conventions, and was suitably rewarded for it.
I guess that's what 6 years can do to you
That's a pretty bold statement. Certainly, you must be speaking on behalf of yourself, in which case it would be absurd to disagree with you.
Anyway, I was merely asking for a link to a developer blog or a podcast interview, where the ArenaNet staff mentioned the set of aforementioned rules and how they apply to Guild Wars 2. It's not in the official Guild Wars 2 manifesto as far as I know, so I assume you picked up the information from somewhere else?
I have only seen Jeff Grubb, GW2's Lore Master, reference the Rule of Cool when it comes to thinking things up for the story. I couldn't find any other references from GW2 staff, so, grain of salt and all that.
Certainly the devs have a metric for determining whether something is cool or fun enough to be in the game, and that this is internally consistent, but we don't know if they use these metrics specifically.
(It's really worth pointing out that everything i say here has that base motivation behind it. One might not realise it, but it does, and I'll use many vectors of entry for trying to get my points across. Even if it comes down to insults, sarcasm, or even reverse psychology. Sometimes I really just want to kick MMORPG players up the butt and that's what I'm doing. Guild Wars 2 is a great game for so many reasons, because it fits things that the MMORPG needs to be.
I feel that so many MMORPGs out there actually encourage people to be xenophobic, basement dwelling, traditionalist, anti-progress, small-minded, culturally stunted jerks, I think the games groom them into that mindset. It's a different approach to Farmville, but it's just as effective, and it creates players for life.
I am so sick of seeing that. You have no idea. No idea. So I'm going to do my best to knock as many people out of that cycle as I can. Call it being an arsehole if you want, call it whatever you like, people can call me the antichrist, or they can think of it as tough love. It's not really relevant. I just want people to question these MMORPGs they've devoted their lives to and the values they've been teaching them. From the little things like "It's important to have a faction to hate and racism is something you should learn." to "You can acquire real social worth from a videogame!".
I don't think these are values that we should be teaching anyone.)
I think if someone makes a game, and someone else enjoys it, they have designed a good game. Nobody needs to get their butts kicked. Your opinions are not fact or truth. They hold no veto over anyone else's opinion. They can be honest, rude, aloof, passionate, uplifting asshole-ish, whatever your fancy. But they are not fact. And they will never be truth. Because opinions are personal. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Thats my opinion anyway, heh.
You do realize people get entertainment from different things right? What you look for in a game isn't what everyone is seeking, the values you hold so high in GW2 aren't what everyone else is seeking. That's why there's no point in what you think you're doing. You can't change a persons perspective on taste, no matter how long you make them sit at the table.
The paragraph in yellow, is just baseless assumption on your part. All derived from stereotypes. You expect anyone to take you seriously when you're stating things like that? Yet you still want to call others "culturally stunted jerks"?
People like what they like and dislike what they don't, someone like you lambasting them for those likes or dislikes isn't going to change them, the only thing you're going to accomplish is being the next entry on someones ignore list. I'm sure you would just chalk that up as a win though.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
While I agree with you that people don't like the same things, I agree with Dreamchaser that MMORPG's do have a knack for bringing the tools out of the shed. As far as I am concerned, and I am looking at you since I see you on GW2 forums a lot when it's clear you don't favor the game and use every chance you can to mention SWTOR, if you don't like the games direction then please by all means quit gracing the GW forums. Not just you but all the others that want to constantly post here when they have made it clear they are looking for features in a game that aren't gonna be in this one.
Not saying you can't speak your mind where you want, but do try to understand that you are in a GW2 forum and some of us are looking forward to the game. While I don't care to "change a persons perspective on taste" I do ask that if GW isn't their taste please please please understand that anythign that comes from some of you means squat. After all, taste will vary and if this one isn't to some of ya'lls liken then why come back for more? hmm
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
What are you talking about? I don't compare games against each other, I look at games on their own merits, I don't favor TOR over GW2, I look forward to them both equally. I have not said a bad thing about GW2. Questioned things, been confused about others, never bashed though, so I'm not sure what you mean here. I prefer to post here lately because discusions have been more productive as well as interesting compared to TSW/TOR or AA the other games I'm looking forward to.
-Edit- to be honest you'd be hard pressed to find me ever bashing any game on this site, as I typically only discuss games I like, have played or intend to play. I'm sure I'll be called a fanboi for GW2 as well at some point, because after launch when the mindless bashing does begin, I'm sure I'll have something to say. I usually do as I hate mindless bashing as much as anyone if not more than most. As a matter of fact I just defended wow with a few posts and I hate that game.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Cloudsol/
If that is the case then I will apologize for accusing. Just thought it funny that certain names pop up a lot in GW forums and I just got through reading some of your less than enthusiastic and more judgemental remarks in the thread about Health pools. I also think it is funny when some people use the claim they plan on playing the game so they have a valid justification to bash it to hell and make there "concerns" seem valid because they plan on giving it a try. thats a cop-out imo. It is late and as I said I just went from one topic to the next and a couple of names stood out for some reason.
The part that stood out in the other thread the most was you placen words in Anets mouth and saying it was their fault for "wording" things a certain way then Romanator0 gave you the exact quote from the team. Sorry but that was exactly what I was talking about. If I was mistaken your intentions it's your fault for "wording things wrong and looking for trouble."
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.