It's possible to RP anywhere at anytime really, doesn't mean it's RP friendly though IE pnp you have virtually nothing besides a possible somewhat detailed map of the place you are in and some rough miniatures of the characters/monsters most of the RP occurs in your head but it works because there's nothing obvious pulling you out from the made up world constantly with illogical game nonsense, the DM doesn't go "jack the barbarian just killed general bob you have to wait 5 rounds before he respawns". Basically the more RP friendly the less the players have to make up excuses/explanations for things that makes no sense(either due to flawed/bad design or limited technically).
I'd imagine the RP that occurs on wow servers are for the most part more or less completely detached from what your character actually does ingame.. could as well RP in a irc chat room really. *walks into bar* "Hey X what did you do today?" "Oh I killed Onyxia with my guild mates for the fifth time" "Oh? I did the same!" *highfive* .... wat
Oh it's definitely detached from what your character actually does ingame.
Much like how I've done all sorts of things in tabletop RPGs that the miniature representing my character didn't act out.
But the point is these players are immersing themselves. They're not relying on some the game to tell them exactly how to be immersed, just like they wouldn't rely on a D&D module to tell them exactly how the story goes.
Basically immersion is part attitude.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Good or bad it really doesn't matter, Blizzard has been doing something right.
By that logic, "games" like Farmville are the ultimate success then, given that they have 4 or 5 times more "regular players" than WoW, and make more profit than WoW...
Mass appeal does not translate into "high quality" automatically. If more than half of the people you know are playing WoW at any given moment, it becomes very hard to avoid constantly "going back", even if you don't really enjoy the game all that much anymore. For a great many people, WoW has become the default MMO, the go-to game when there's nothing better to do.
Farmville is making more than wow? Reference?
No, of course not
Not making more money, but possibly a far better ROI. Considering that WoW took 3 to 4 years to build, and Farmville most likely took 3 to 4 months.
But in December, Zynga's IPO valued them at more than EA, which is no mean feat, given that EA has been around the gaming market for over 25 years, compared to Zynga's 3 (?) years.
Activision/Blizzard earned $750M dollars nett in the third quarter of 2011 alone, and that number apparently excludes any revenue from MW3, and despite the ongoing drop in WoW subs. Revenue from the 4th quarter of 2011 might reach $900M with the added boost from MW3 sales. Their total revenue for 2011 may top $4 Billion dollars... 0.o
And people still wonder why developers want to emulate WoW ?
Oh it's definitely detached from what your character actually does ingame.
Much like how I've done all sorts of things in tabletop RPGs that the miniature representing my character didn't act out.
But the point is these players are immersing themselves. They're not relying on some the game to tell them exactly how to be immersed, just like they wouldn't rely on a D&D module to tell them exactly how the story goes.
Basically immersion is part attitude.
I think you misunderstand what I'm saying.
There is a difference between your characters representation not acting out something you did 100% and your representation acting out something you both did(playerwise) and didn't do(character wise).
You aren't really detached from your minature when playing a tabletop it's just there to help while raiding boss X ten times because the game essentially demands it to be playable beyond that point you have to detach yourself, this forced detachment is what I'm talking about, this should be removed as much as possible and definitely not have the mmo revolve around it. If you want immersion that is.
This is sort of like addiction come to think of it..
Some people have an addictive personality and can get addicted to non addictive things but there are actually addictive things.
In the same way some people have an "immersive personality" and can be immersed in things that are totally non immersive but there are actually immersive things.
I want an immersive thing(mmo). Maybe it's to much to ask.
Oh it's definitely detached from what your character actually does ingame.
Much like how I've done all sorts of things in tabletop RPGs that the miniature representing my character didn't act out.
But the point is these players are immersing themselves. They're not relying on some the game to tell them exactly how to be immersed, just like they wouldn't rely on a D&D module to tell them exactly how the story goes.
Basically immersion is part attitude.
I think you misunderstand what I'm saying.
There is a difference between your characters representation not acting out something you did 100% and your representation acting out something you both did(playerwise) and didn't do(character wise).
You aren't really detached from your minature when playing a tabletop it's just there to help while raiding boss X ten times because the game essentially demands it to be playable beyond that point you have to detach yourself, this forced detachment is what I'm talking about, this should be removed as much as possible and definitely not have the mmo revolve around it. If you want immersion that is.
This is sort of like addiction come to think of it..
Some people have an addictive personality and can get addicted to non addictive things but there are actually addictive things.
In the same way some people have an "immersive personality" and can be immersed in things that are totally non immersive but there are actually immersive things.
I want an immersive thing(mmo). Maybe it's to much to ask.
I am working on it my friend! Sadly for money reasons you will have to be down with 2d graphics.
I might be on my own here but I think where many MMOs trip up isn't graphics or storyline but with sound effects, have a listen to many of the early MMOs where audio was key. DAOC in particular had superb audio for combat moves, attacks, defense and spells, the same can't be said of many other games.
I need to feel connected to the avatar that represents me in game, that's not just how he/she/it looks but also the sounds it generates. I want to feel connected to that sword as it impacts, not distanced from what sounds like a soggy fish slapping into an enemy. you can shove your sparkly and bright effects if you can't make it sound right.
Sound tracks also tend to be fairly generic and poor these days, heck even the old midi-generated ones of Ultima Online where more uplifting than many of the tracks I hear when playing Rift.
By that logic, "games" like Farmville are the ultimate success then, given that they have 4 or 5 times more "regular players" than WoW, and make more profit than WoW...
Mass appeal does not translate into "high quality" automatically. If more than half of the people you know are playing WoW at any given moment, it becomes very hard to avoid constantly "going back", even if you don't really enjoy the game all that much anymore. For a great many people, WoW has become the default MMO, the go-to game when there's nothing better to do.
Farmville is making more than wow? Reference?
No, of course not
Not making more money, but possibly a far better ROI. Considering that WoW took 3 to 4 years to build, and Farmville most likely took 3 to 4 months.
Great point, Farmville is HUGE and it is actually a very tiny game despite its big impact. I think a lot of real gamers (even the casual warcraft players) want to pretend giants like Farmville dont exist... But it does and its having an impact on our industry.
Originally posted by Halfmad
I might be on my own here but I think where many MMOs trip up isn't graphics or storyline but with sound effects, have a listen to many of the early MMOs where audio was key. DAOC in particular had superb audio for combat moves, attacks, defense and spells, the same can't be said of many other games.
I need to feel connected to the avatar that represents me in game, that's not just how he/she/it looks but also the sounds it generates. I want to feel connected to that sword as it impacts, not distanced from what sounds like a soggy fish slapping into an enemy. you can shove your sparkly and bright effects if you can't make it sound right.
Sound tracks also tend to be fairly generic and poor these days, heck even the old midi-generated ones of Ultima Online where more uplifting than many of the tracks I hear when playing Rift.
I can agree with how important it is to connect to the avatar... And sound is important but for me not necessarily the most important thing to create this connection.
I remember saying a lot shortly after SWG came out that the reason why I loved it so much is because of the connection I felt to my character. I had invested my time, emotion, and money into this character and it was important to me. This probably has not happened in many other games, never to the same extent. It was probably because of the huge focus on socialization, the one character per server policy, the openess of the skill system, and all the amazing customization and housing options.
I've sorta forgotten about that now, probably because I have never found another game where I invested into my character so much...
Thats depressing. I have no intention of doing the enchanting/smithing anytime soon but I have to admit I sorta wish I didn't know because I feel like it cheapens the game when I know the easy way out.
It's a design failing in Skyrim, sadly.
[...]
A fine example of why MMO developers avoid "open" skill systems, the more complex they are, the greater the likelihood that some player will find an "unintended" outcome. And if it exists, somebody WILL find it
I wouldn't say it has anything to do with it being an open skill system. It's really a very simple system, as far as skill systems go. They just made crafting ridiculously effective, especially considering that its not a particularly meaty crafting system. It's very basic, very easy to progress, and creates drastic improvements over anything and everything else in the game. The problem isn't that its a skill system, just that its very poorly thought out, on just about every level.
I just got the impression that Raph hadn't experienced any of this himself - not just in what he said, but how he said it.. and find it odd that he'd go on at length about some of the meanings and ramifications inspired by something he seemed to know next to nothing about. Especially given that his ideas carry a certain weight, I just think it might be somewhat important to make sure your starting point is accurate before getting carried away by it.
In regards to immersion, specifically - this isn't about Skyrim lacking immersion, or players doing all sorts of number crunching, or jumping through any sort of unintuitive or unintended hoops. It's a flaw in the design that manifests very much during immersion, if a player simply opts to explore this aspect of the game.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
There is a difference between your characters representation not acting out something you did 100% and your representation acting out something you both did(playerwise) and didn't do(character wise).
You aren't really detached from your minature when playing a tabletop it's just there to help while raiding boss X ten times because the game essentially demands it to be playable beyond that point you have to detach yourself, this forced detachment is what I'm talking about, this should be removed as much as possible and definitely not have the mmo revolve around it. If you want immersion that is.
I definitely didn't understand what you were trying to say this time around.
Neither my MMORPG character and my D&D Miniature acted out with exacting detail the things I might role-play them as doing.
An important difference is that my MMORPG character is capable of acting out a lot more of the things I might role-play than my D&D Miniature is, even though the D&D Miniature has a slight advantage in that it's so abstract that the mind is forced to fill in the blanks.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
There is a difference between your characters representation not acting out something you did 100% and your representation acting out something you both did(playerwise) and didn't do(character wise).
You aren't really detached from your minature when playing a tabletop it's just there to help while raiding boss X ten times because the game essentially demands it to be playable beyond that point you have to detach yourself, this forced detachment is what I'm talking about, this should be removed as much as possible and definitely not have the mmo revolve around it. If you want immersion that is.
I definitely didn't understand what you were trying to say this time around.
Neither my MMORPG character and my D&D Miniature acted out with exacting detail the things I might role-play them as doing.
An important difference is that my MMORPG character is capable of acting out a lot more of the things I might role-play than my D&D Miniature is, even though the D&D Miniature has a slight advantage in that it's so abstract that the mind is forced to fill in the blanks.
That's interesting. Correct me if I am wrong but by "D&D Miniature" you mean some miniature that were representing you as character on some f.e. room / map your GM made?
I am asking cause when I was playing tabletop games 10 + years ago I were playing Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, CyberPunk and such titles. D&D was not really popular in my area.
Anyway I will assume I am right what you meant.
So , thing is NO game up till now and I don't think any video game will until game & technology will go full VR will be able to match what I was able to do in tabletop game. I role-played with me myself as instrument + with help of sometimes some tools (like this miniature you said) so no mmorpg can match that in terms what mmorpg character can do vs. me playing table top game can do.
I find odd to actually role-play with miniature? Miniature is just plastic / metal figure , how can anyone role play with that?
Unless D&D tabletop game you're talking about is something diffrent than I am imagining...
considering how many of those "theory of fun" concepts directly contributed to the "dumbing down" of MMOs over the years.
I have seen that comment or its equivalent on here before, and I have never understood it.
The core premise of Theory of Fun is that the brain enjoys kearning new patterns and finding new stuff to master. In other words, it's anti-grind. It also implicitly means that games need to reveal greater deopth over time... which means so should MMOs.
It also does argue that the learning curve should be fairly shallow, since overcompklexity too early baffles people... but that's not the same as "dumbing down."
I agree with a lot of what Raph has said about gaming, but here's something that nags at me, and over the years, I've gotten the impression that it might be somewhat common to developers. They often seem out of touch with gamers, and like they're not really gamers themselves. Or maybe more accurately, they're surprisingly casual?
"The post was prompted in part by hearing someone talk about Skyrim and how they stopped playing because they figured out how to max out some aspect of crafting and stacking bonuses or something."
I mean, what? He hasn't even played Skyrim? Or if he has, doesn't even know about the crafting issue? Whether you play the game, or spend a minute or two in a Skyrim forum, it's kind of hard to miss, isn't it? And what sort of gamer hasn't played Skyrim?
I have played it, but not very much, and not as a crafter. I play a LOT of games, and rarely get very far into any given one. It's extremely unlikely I would ever get to the levels of crafting that you need in order to find this bug. And I do not have time to participate in the communities for every given game, not even close. I have never seen a Skyrim forum. Over the Xmas holiday I played over 40 games to catch up on what has been going on in console gaming, because I do not get the chance during the regular work week.
My point there was that Skyrim is everyone's poster child for immersion right now, and yet what are people paying attention to? Counting the stacked bonuses. This bug wouldn't even be found without people min-maxing in the first place.
Now, it's not that I don't expect people to mix-max. It's more that min-maxiong and "gaming it" is the default approach, and pretty much everything encourages us to look at it that way.
I think the games are actively training us that way, these days, via the non-fictional feedback they give, and the nature of the game systems they tend to use.
That's interesting. Correct me if I am wrong but by "D&D Miniature" you mean some miniature that were representing you as character on some f.e. room / map your GM made?
I am asking cause when I was playing tabletop games 10 + years ago I were playing Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, CyberPunk and such titles. D&D was not really popular in my area.
So , thing is NO game up till now and I don't think any video game will until game & technology will go full VR will be able to match what I was able to do in tabletop game. I role-played with me myself as instrument + with help of sometimes some tools (like this miniature you said) so no mmorpg can match that in terms what mmorpg character can do vs. me playing table top game can do.
I find odd to actually role-play with miniature? Miniature is just plastic / metal figure , how can anyone role play with that?
Unless D&D tabletop game you're talking about is something diffrent than I am imagining...
A miniature on a game map, yes. A visual representation of your D&D character.
Which is exactly what your MMORPG character is if you RP: it's a visual representation of a character you're role-playing. With like-minded players, RPers act out all sorts of stuff and fabricate an imaginary existence with others in a MMORPG -- much like tabletop RPing.
Point being that those players are able to experience a lot of immersion because their attitude creates the immersion. Whereas a player who wants immersion but isn't willing to have that attitude and actually put forth the effort to make the game immersive for themselves; that player isn't going to feel like the game is immersive at all in most cases (although with games like ToR you can come pretty close.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Activision/Blizzard earned $750M dollars nett in the third quarter of 2011 alone, and that number apparently excludes any revenue from MW3, and despite the ongoing drop in WoW subs. Revenue from the 4th quarter of 2011 might reach $900M with the added boost from MW3 sales. Their total revenue for 2011 may top $4 Billion dollars... 0.o
And people still wonder why developers want to emulate WoW ?
I heard that while WOW subs has been going down, its revenue actually increases in the last quarter, no doubt due to all the other income like selling mounts for money, $3 to use mobile app for auction ....
My point there was that Skyrim is everyone's poster child for immersion right now, and yet what are people paying attention to? Counting the stacked bonuses. This bug wouldn't even be found without people min-maxing in the first place.
Now, it's not that I don't expect people to mix-max. It's more that min-maxiong and "gaming it" is the default approach, and pretty much everything encourages us to look at it that way.
I think the games are actively training us that way, these days, via the non-fictional feedback they give, and the nature of the game systems they tend to use.
I don't think most players play games like that though. (Forum posters often do, but they don't really represent the common player.)
Even if they do I'm not sure it's wholly bad -- the game systems shape the world, and exploring their patterns can be just as satisfying as exploring some out of the way location and discovering something unexpected. We min-max real life too, and that manages to be immersive.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
My point there was that Skyrim is everyone's poster child for immersion right now, and yet what are people paying attention to? Counting the stacked bonuses. This bug wouldn't even be found without people min-maxing in the first place.
Now, it's not that I don't expect people to mix-max. It's more that min-maxiong and "gaming it" is the default approach, and pretty much everything encourages us to look at it that way.
I think the games are actively training us that way, these days, via the non-fictional feedback they give, and the nature of the game systems they tend to use.
I don't think most players play games like that though. (Forum posters often do, but they don't really represent the common player.)
Even if they do I'm not sure it's wholly bad -- the game systems shape the world, and exploring their patterns can be just as satisfying as exploring some out of the way location and discovering something unexpected. We min-max real life too, and that manages to be immersive.
The problem with min maxing is that knowledge is tranferable. So once a single person min maxes things, raids for instance, they just fucking tell everyone else! Spoilers anyone? The reason games fail at immersion is that people ruin the game with out of game information channels.
I almost wrote a post on this once but I gave up. The reason game fantasy worlds never seem like books is because in books the characters solve problems with limitations that mimic real life. Communication problems? Not in video games where we have 50000 ways to spoil the game or send messages as fast light. No matter how weak your character is in the game he still possesses the impossibly powerful magic of perfect unlimited communication. Knowledge is power.
Immersion is broken because players constantly purposefully break it. And then they lie and say they want to be immersed.
I used to be a huge fan of Raph Koster. But after following him on twitter and reading a lot of his blogs over the past couple years, I'm done. His ego is just too much for me to handle. I truly hope he makes another great game someday, but im done reading his speeches.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
I have played it, but not very much, and not as a crafter. I play a LOT of games, and rarely get very far into any given one. It's extremely unlikely I would ever get to the levels of crafting that you need in order to find this bug. And I do not have time to participate in the communities for every given game, not even close. I have never seen a Skyrim forum. Over the Xmas holiday I played over 40 games to catch up on what has been going on in console gaming, because I do not get the chance during the regular work week.
My point there was that Skyrim is everyone's poster child for immersion right now, and yet what are people paying attention to? Counting the stacked bonuses. This bug wouldn't even be found without people min-maxing in the first place.
Now, it's not that I don't expect people to mix-max. It's more that min-maxiong and "gaming it" is the default approach, and pretty much everything encourages us to look at it that way.
I think the games are actively training us that way, these days, via the non-fictional feedback they give, and the nature of the game systems they tend to use.
It's interesting that with each subsequent Elder Scrolls game, Bethesda has moved further away from stats, classifications, and numbers, in favor of fictional context. They've caught quite a bit of flak for it over the years, from some of us oldschool fans of the series, but I think they've been rolling in too much money to care.
While that does make the game more immersive, on one hand, I think on the other, complexity helps immersion. Complexity doesn't have to mean stats, min/maxing, and all that, but realistically, we're still not at the point where the same level of info can be conveyed contextually. Not realistically, not all that well. So games get dumbed down, as they strive to become more immersive, which for some, is a contradiction.
Complexity begets depth, which in turn, begets immersion.. while too much emphasis on representing the fiction by sight and sound tends to be just the opposite. Shallow. Or is there another method of conveying fiction that I'm overlooking?
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
It's interesting that with each subsequent Elder Scrolls game, Bethesda has moved further away from stats, classifications, and numbers, in favor of fictional context. They've caught quite a bit of flak for it over the years, from some of us oldschool fans of the series, but I think they've been rolling in too much money to care.
While that does make the game more immersive, on one hand, I think on the other, complexity helps immersion. Complexity doesn't have to mean stats, min/maxing, and all that, but realistically, we're still not at the point where the same level of info can be conveyed contextually. Not realistically, not all that well. So games get dumbed down, as they strive to become more immersive, which for some, is a contradiction.
Complexity begets depth, which in turn, begets immersion.. while too much emphasis on representing the fiction by sight and sound tends to be just the opposite. Shallow. Or is there another method of conveying fiction that I'm overlooking?
That's a backwards way to seek game depth though.
Chess and Go are extremely simple games, yet the emergent depth each provides is amazing.
Complexity isn't what you want. What you want are a number of simple systems which, when layered together, create depth.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Chess and Go are extremely simple games, yet the emergent depth each provides is amazing.
Complexity isn't what you want. What you want are a number of simple systems which, when layered together, create depth.
Not all games should be immersive. I think its a major part of the RPG genre, somewhat important to shooters, not so important to an RTS, and not at all important to puzzle games.
Not that immersion = depth, but they're related, and not all games need to be deep, either. I think depth is more directly related to complexity, and it's a mistake to take a word like that, and assume it's a negative thing, to say its lacking, but I have to disagree that games like chess or go are deep (or complex) but I might be defining it a bit differently?
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I definitely didn't understand what you were trying to say this time around.
Neither my MMORPG character and my D&D Miniature acted out with exacting detail the things I might role-play them as doing.
An important difference is that my MMORPG character is capable of acting out a lot more of the things I might role-play than my D&D Miniature is, even though the D&D Miniature has a slight advantage in that it's so abstract that the mind is forced to fill in the blanks.
Lets make it short..
If you play a campaign and retell it as a story it can actually be a decent cohesive story.
If you play wow for a month and retell that you need to leave out massive parts or the story will be completly fucked up and illogical due to the games features (killing bosses multiple times, respawning mobs, houses not getting destroyed after you do so yadayada).
I definitely didn't understand what you were trying to say this time around.
Neither my MMORPG character and my D&D Miniature acted out with exacting detail the things I might role-play them as doing.
An important difference is that my MMORPG character is capable of acting out a lot more of the things I might role-play than my D&D Miniature is, even though the D&D Miniature has a slight advantage in that it's so abstract that the mind is forced to fill in the blanks.
Lets make it short..
If you play a campaign and retell it as a story it's can actually be a decent cohesive story.
If you play wow for a month and retell that you need to leave out massive parts or the story will be completed fucked up and illogical due to the games features (killing bossesmultiple times respawning mobs houses not getting destroyed after you do so yadayada).
This is brilliant. I would rep you 1000x if this place had a rep system.
I had this desire once to just gather all the good quotes and analogies and explanations I see here on a website, kinda like those places that give you a motivational quote a day. But I am so over worked on so many projects that I just don't have time.
I have played it, but not very much, and not as a crafter. I play a LOT of games, and rarely get very far into any given one. It's extremely unlikely I would ever get to the levels of crafting that you need in order to find this bug. And I do not have time to participate in the communities for every given game, not even close. I have never seen a Skyrim forum. Over the Xmas holiday I played over 40 games to catch up on what has been going on in console gaming, because I do not get the chance during the regular work week.
My point there was that Skyrim is everyone's poster child for immersion right now, and yet what are people paying attention to? Counting the stacked bonuses. This bug wouldn't even be found without people min-maxing in the first place.
Now, it's not that I don't expect people to mix-max. It's more that min-maxiong and "gaming it" is the default approach, and pretty much everything encourages us to look at it that way.
I think the games are actively training us that way, these days, via the non-fictional feedback they give, and the nature of the game systems they tend to use.
It's interesting that with each subsequent Elder Scrolls game, Bethesda has moved further away from stats, classifications, and numbers, in favor of fictional context. They've caught quite a bit of flak for it over the years, from some of us oldschool fans of the series, but I think they've been rolling in too much money to care.
While that does make the game more immersive, on one hand, I think on the other, complexity helps immersion. Complexity doesn't have to mean stats, min/maxing, and all that, but realistically, we're still not at the point where the same level of info can be conveyed contextually. Not realistically, not all that well. So games get dumbed down, as they strive to become more immersive, which for some, is a contradiction.
Complexity begets depth, which in turn, begets immersion.. while too much emphasis on representing the fiction by sight and sound tends to be just the opposite. Shallow. Or is there another method of conveying fiction that I'm overlooking?
depth is not complextiy.
The game of Go is not complex but it has more depth than most games I know.
I think Bethesday is very much on the right track. Instead of getting mired down with bean counting they are trying to create a world. Where they fail is that they never go quite far enough.
The depth in an Elder Scrolls game is more about the detail of the world and its inhabitants. Now all they have to do is reign in some of their overpowered decisons and allow some of the story arcs to go slightly farther. Such as the Civil War questline or the Bardic college questline.
Heck, even the mage guild quest line.
I realize there are people who like stats and numbers and percentages but that's not what an immersive world is about. That's about something else and scratches a whole other itch.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I have played it, but not very much, and not as a crafter. I play a LOT of games, and rarely get very far into any given one. It's extremely unlikely I would ever get to the levels of crafting that you need in order to find this bug. And I do not have time to participate in the communities for every given game, not even close. I have never seen a Skyrim forum. Over the Xmas holiday I played over 40 games to catch up on what has been going on in console gaming, because I do not get the chance during the regular work week.
My point there was that Skyrim is everyone's poster child for immersion right now, and yet what are people paying attention to? Counting the stacked bonuses. This bug wouldn't even be found without people min-maxing in the first place.
Now, it's not that I don't expect people to mix-max. It's more that min-maxiong and "gaming it" is the default approach, and pretty much everything encourages us to look at it that way.
I think the games are actively training us that way, these days, via the non-fictional feedback they give, and the nature of the game systems they tend to use.
It's interesting that with each subsequent Elder Scrolls game, Bethesda has moved further away from stats, classifications, and numbers, in favor of fictional context. They've caught quite a bit of flak for it over the years, from some of us oldschool fans of the series, but I think they've been rolling in too much money to care.
While that does make the game more immersive, on one hand, I think on the other, complexity helps immersion. Complexity doesn't have to mean stats, min/maxing, and all that, but realistically, we're still not at the point where the same level of info can be conveyed contextually. Not realistically, not all that well. So games get dumbed down, as they strive to become more immersive, which for some, is a contradiction.
Complexity begets depth, which in turn, begets immersion.. while too much emphasis on representing the fiction by sight and sound tends to be just the opposite. Shallow. Or is there another method of conveying fiction that I'm overlooking?
depth is not complextiy.
The game of Go is not complex but it has more depth than most games I know.
I think Bethesday is very much on the right track. Instead of getting mired down with bean counting they are trying to create a world. Where they fail is that they never go quite far enough.
The depth in an Elder Scrolls game is more about the detail of the world and its inhabitants. Now all they have to do is reign in some of their overpowered decisons and allow some of the story arcs to go slightly farther. Such as the Civil War questline or the Bardic college questline.
Heck, even the mage guild quest line.
I realize there are people who like stats and numbers and percentages but that's not what an immersive world is about. That's about something else and scratches a whole other itch.
The mistake you are making is that the real world is based on math. So putting math in the game is everything. Math is what lets you interact with the game. Math is the game. If you hide the math which I would say would be good, is people pitch a hissy fit.
I have played it, but not very much, and not as a crafter. I play a LOT of games, and rarely get very far into any given one. It's extremely unlikely I would ever get to the levels of crafting that you need in order to find this bug. And I do not have time to participate in the communities for every given game, not even close. I have never seen a Skyrim forum. Over the Xmas holiday I played over 40 games to catch up on what has been going on in console gaming, because I do not get the chance during the regular work week.
My point there was that Skyrim is everyone's poster child for immersion right now, and yet what are people paying attention to? Counting the stacked bonuses. This bug wouldn't even be found without people min-maxing in the first place.
Now, it's not that I don't expect people to mix-max. It's more that min-maxiong and "gaming it" is the default approach, and pretty much everything encourages us to look at it that way.
I think the games are actively training us that way, these days, via the non-fictional feedback they give, and the nature of the game systems they tend to use.
It's interesting that with each subsequent Elder Scrolls game, Bethesda has moved further away from stats, classifications, and numbers, in favor of fictional context. They've caught quite a bit of flak for it over the years, from some of us oldschool fans of the series, but I think they've been rolling in too much money to care.
While that does make the game more immersive, on one hand, I think on the other, complexity helps immersion. Complexity doesn't have to mean stats, min/maxing, and all that, but realistically, we're still not at the point where the same level of info can be conveyed contextually. Not realistically, not all that well. So games get dumbed down, as they strive to become more immersive, which for some, is a contradiction.
Complexity begets depth, which in turn, begets immersion.. while too much emphasis on representing the fiction by sight and sound tends to be just the opposite. Shallow. Or is there another method of conveying fiction that I'm overlooking?
depth is not complextiy.
The game of Go is not complex but it has more depth than most games I know.
I think Bethesday is very much on the right track. Instead of getting mired down with bean counting they are trying to create a world. Where they fail is that they never go quite far enough.
The depth in an Elder Scrolls game is more about the detail of the world and its inhabitants. Now all they have to do is reign in some of their overpowered decisons and allow some of the story arcs to go slightly farther. Such as the Civil War questline or the Bardic college questline.
Heck, even the mage guild quest line.
I realize there are people who like stats and numbers and percentages but that's not what an immersive world is about. That's about something else and scratches a whole other itch.
The mistake you are making is that the real world is based on math. So putting math in the game is everything. Math is what lets you interact with the game. Math is the game. If you hide the math which I would say would be good, is people pitch a hissy fit.
You know what games have no math? FPS games.
Actually that's your mistake.
It's like all the people who say there is math in music so knowing math will help with music. But it realy doesn't. In analysis, one can see the "golden section" (1.618 etc) in a piece of music or art or even apply it to literature if you want. But the creators of these things didn't necessarily sit down and plot out this place in the work. It happens because it's sort of how we are wired.
I say "necessarily" because there are people who sit down and apply all sorts of mathmetical concepts to their work or whatever complex system they are using (total serialism) but that's because their work is based upon those concepts "on purpose".
You are confusing the awareness of mathmatical concepts that occur naturally as opposed to works that have them inserted deliberatley.
and I would bet dollars to donuts that there is "math" in fps games. You are just not looking hard enough or just not willing to look.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Complexity begets depth, which in turn, begets immersion..
depth is not complextiy.
In my eyes both don't necessarily have something todo with immersion. To me a vital part of immersion are hopelessly old schooled graphics (the wierd that may sound). Or in other words, the better the graphics, the more details the game has the sooner I'm getting bored. Probably has something todo with the empty space that fantasy needs... (sry if I quoted wrong, I never get comfortable with these forum's quoting system)
Comments
Oh it's definitely detached from what your character actually does ingame.
Much like how I've done all sorts of things in tabletop RPGs that the miniature representing my character didn't act out.
But the point is these players are immersing themselves. They're not relying on some the game to tell them exactly how to be immersed, just like they wouldn't rely on a D&D module to tell them exactly how the story goes.
Basically immersion is part attitude.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
No, of course not
Not making more money, but possibly a far better ROI. Considering that WoW took 3 to 4 years to build, and Farmville most likely took 3 to 4 months.
But in December, Zynga's IPO valued them at more than EA, which is no mean feat, given that EA has been around the gaming market for over 25 years, compared to Zynga's 3 (?) years.
Activision/Blizzard earned $750M dollars nett in the third quarter of 2011 alone, and that number apparently excludes any revenue from MW3, and despite the ongoing drop in WoW subs. Revenue from the 4th quarter of 2011 might reach $900M with the added boost from MW3 sales. Their total revenue for 2011 may top $4 Billion dollars... 0.o
And people still wonder why developers want to emulate WoW ?
I think you misunderstand what I'm saying.
There is a difference between your characters representation not acting out something you did 100% and your representation acting out something you both did(playerwise) and didn't do(character wise).
You aren't really detached from your minature when playing a tabletop it's just there to help while raiding boss X ten times because the game essentially demands it to be playable beyond that point you have to detach yourself, this forced detachment is what I'm talking about, this should be removed as much as possible and definitely not have the mmo revolve around it. If you want immersion that is.
This is sort of like addiction come to think of it..
Some people have an addictive personality and can get addicted to non addictive things but there are actually addictive things.
In the same way some people have an "immersive personality" and can be immersed in things that are totally non immersive but there are actually immersive things.
I want an immersive thing(mmo). Maybe it's to much to ask.
I am working on it my friend! Sadly for money reasons you will have to be down with 2d graphics.
I might be on my own here but I think where many MMOs trip up isn't graphics or storyline but with sound effects, have a listen to many of the early MMOs where audio was key. DAOC in particular had superb audio for combat moves, attacks, defense and spells, the same can't be said of many other games.
I need to feel connected to the avatar that represents me in game, that's not just how he/she/it looks but also the sounds it generates. I want to feel connected to that sword as it impacts, not distanced from what sounds like a soggy fish slapping into an enemy. you can shove your sparkly and bright effects if you can't make it sound right.
Sound tracks also tend to be fairly generic and poor these days, heck even the old midi-generated ones of Ultima Online where more uplifting than many of the tracks I hear when playing Rift.
Great point, Farmville is HUGE and it is actually a very tiny game despite its big impact. I think a lot of real gamers (even the casual warcraft players) want to pretend giants like Farmville dont exist... But it does and its having an impact on our industry.
I can agree with how important it is to connect to the avatar... And sound is important but for me not necessarily the most important thing to create this connection.
I remember saying a lot shortly after SWG came out that the reason why I loved it so much is because of the connection I felt to my character. I had invested my time, emotion, and money into this character and it was important to me. This probably has not happened in many other games, never to the same extent. It was probably because of the huge focus on socialization, the one character per server policy, the openess of the skill system, and all the amazing customization and housing options.
I've sorta forgotten about that now, probably because I have never found another game where I invested into my character so much...
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
I wouldn't say it has anything to do with it being an open skill system. It's really a very simple system, as far as skill systems go. They just made crafting ridiculously effective, especially considering that its not a particularly meaty crafting system. It's very basic, very easy to progress, and creates drastic improvements over anything and everything else in the game. The problem isn't that its a skill system, just that its very poorly thought out, on just about every level.
I just got the impression that Raph hadn't experienced any of this himself - not just in what he said, but how he said it.. and find it odd that he'd go on at length about some of the meanings and ramifications inspired by something he seemed to know next to nothing about. Especially given that his ideas carry a certain weight, I just think it might be somewhat important to make sure your starting point is accurate before getting carried away by it.
In regards to immersion, specifically - this isn't about Skyrim lacking immersion, or players doing all sorts of number crunching, or jumping through any sort of unintuitive or unintended hoops. It's a flaw in the design that manifests very much during immersion, if a player simply opts to explore this aspect of the game.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I definitely didn't understand what you were trying to say this time around.
Neither my MMORPG character and my D&D Miniature acted out with exacting detail the things I might role-play them as doing.
An important difference is that my MMORPG character is capable of acting out a lot more of the things I might role-play than my D&D Miniature is, even though the D&D Miniature has a slight advantage in that it's so abstract that the mind is forced to fill in the blanks.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
That's interesting. Correct me if I am wrong but by "D&D Miniature" you mean some miniature that were representing you as character on some f.e. room / map your GM made?
I am asking cause when I was playing tabletop games 10 + years ago I were playing Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, CyberPunk and such titles. D&D was not really popular in my area.
Anyway I will assume I am right what you meant.
So , thing is NO game up till now and I don't think any video game will until game & technology will go full VR will be able to match what I was able to do in tabletop game. I role-played with me myself as instrument + with help of sometimes some tools (like this miniature you said) so no mmorpg can match that in terms what mmorpg character can do vs. me playing table top game can do.
I find odd to actually role-play with miniature? Miniature is just plastic / metal figure , how can anyone role play with that?
Unless D&D tabletop game you're talking about is something diffrent than I am imagining...
considering how many of those "theory of fun" concepts directly contributed to the "dumbing down" of MMOs over the years.
I have seen that comment or its equivalent on here before, and I have never understood it.
The core premise of Theory of Fun is that the brain enjoys kearning new patterns and finding new stuff to master. In other words, it's anti-grind. It also implicitly means that games need to reveal greater deopth over time... which means so should MMOs.
It also does argue that the learning curve should be fairly shallow, since overcompklexity too early baffles people... but that's not the same as "dumbing down."
So why do you say that?
I have played it, but not very much, and not as a crafter. I play a LOT of games, and rarely get very far into any given one. It's extremely unlikely I would ever get to the levels of crafting that you need in order to find this bug. And I do not have time to participate in the communities for every given game, not even close. I have never seen a Skyrim forum. Over the Xmas holiday I played over 40 games to catch up on what has been going on in console gaming, because I do not get the chance during the regular work week.
My point there was that Skyrim is everyone's poster child for immersion right now, and yet what are people paying attention to? Counting the stacked bonuses. This bug wouldn't even be found without people min-maxing in the first place.
Now, it's not that I don't expect people to mix-max. It's more that min-maxiong and "gaming it" is the default approach, and pretty much everything encourages us to look at it that way.
I think the games are actively training us that way, these days, via the non-fictional feedback they give, and the nature of the game systems they tend to use.
A miniature on a game map, yes. A visual representation of your D&D character.
Which is exactly what your MMORPG character is if you RP: it's a visual representation of a character you're role-playing. With like-minded players, RPers act out all sorts of stuff and fabricate an imaginary existence with others in a MMORPG -- much like tabletop RPing.
Point being that those players are able to experience a lot of immersion because their attitude creates the immersion. Whereas a player who wants immersion but isn't willing to have that attitude and actually put forth the effort to make the game immersive for themselves; that player isn't going to feel like the game is immersive at all in most cases (although with games like ToR you can come pretty close.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I heard that while WOW subs has been going down, its revenue actually increases in the last quarter, no doubt due to all the other income like selling mounts for money, $3 to use mobile app for auction ....
I don't think most players play games like that though. (Forum posters often do, but they don't really represent the common player.)
Even if they do I'm not sure it's wholly bad -- the game systems shape the world, and exploring their patterns can be just as satisfying as exploring some out of the way location and discovering something unexpected. We min-max real life too, and that manages to be immersive.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The problem with min maxing is that knowledge is tranferable. So once a single person min maxes things, raids for instance, they just fucking tell everyone else! Spoilers anyone? The reason games fail at immersion is that people ruin the game with out of game information channels.
I almost wrote a post on this once but I gave up. The reason game fantasy worlds never seem like books is because in books the characters solve problems with limitations that mimic real life. Communication problems? Not in video games where we have 50000 ways to spoil the game or send messages as fast light. No matter how weak your character is in the game he still possesses the impossibly powerful magic of perfect unlimited communication. Knowledge is power.
Immersion is broken because players constantly purposefully break it. And then they lie and say they want to be immersed.
I used to be a huge fan of Raph Koster. But after following him on twitter and reading a lot of his blogs over the past couple years, I'm done. His ego is just too much for me to handle. I truly hope he makes another great game someday, but im done reading his speeches.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
It's interesting that with each subsequent Elder Scrolls game, Bethesda has moved further away from stats, classifications, and numbers, in favor of fictional context. They've caught quite a bit of flak for it over the years, from some of us oldschool fans of the series, but I think they've been rolling in too much money to care.
While that does make the game more immersive, on one hand, I think on the other, complexity helps immersion. Complexity doesn't have to mean stats, min/maxing, and all that, but realistically, we're still not at the point where the same level of info can be conveyed contextually. Not realistically, not all that well. So games get dumbed down, as they strive to become more immersive, which for some, is a contradiction.
Complexity begets depth, which in turn, begets immersion.. while too much emphasis on representing the fiction by sight and sound tends to be just the opposite. Shallow. Or is there another method of conveying fiction that I'm overlooking?
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
That's a backwards way to seek game depth though.
Chess and Go are extremely simple games, yet the emergent depth each provides is amazing.
Complexity isn't what you want. What you want are a number of simple systems which, when layered together, create depth.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Not all games should be immersive. I think its a major part of the RPG genre, somewhat important to shooters, not so important to an RTS, and not at all important to puzzle games.
Not that immersion = depth, but they're related, and not all games need to be deep, either. I think depth is more directly related to complexity, and it's a mistake to take a word like that, and assume it's a negative thing, to say its lacking, but I have to disagree that games like chess or go are deep (or complex) but I might be defining it a bit differently?
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Lets make it short..
If you play a campaign and retell it as a story it can actually be a decent cohesive story.
If you play wow for a month and retell that you need to leave out massive parts or the story will be completly fucked up and illogical due to the games features (killing bosses multiple times, respawning mobs, houses not getting destroyed after you do so yadayada).
This is brilliant. I would rep you 1000x if this place had a rep system.
I had this desire once to just gather all the good quotes and analogies and explanations I see here on a website, kinda like those places that give you a motivational quote a day. But I am so over worked on so many projects that I just don't have time.
depth is not complextiy.
The game of Go is not complex but it has more depth than most games I know.
I think Bethesday is very much on the right track. Instead of getting mired down with bean counting they are trying to create a world. Where they fail is that they never go quite far enough.
The depth in an Elder Scrolls game is more about the detail of the world and its inhabitants. Now all they have to do is reign in some of their overpowered decisons and allow some of the story arcs to go slightly farther. Such as the Civil War questline or the Bardic college questline.
Heck, even the mage guild quest line.
I realize there are people who like stats and numbers and percentages but that's not what an immersive world is about. That's about something else and scratches a whole other itch.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
The mistake you are making is that the real world is based on math. So putting math in the game is everything. Math is what lets you interact with the game. Math is the game. If you hide the math which I would say would be good, is people pitch a hissy fit.
You know what games have no math? FPS games.
Actually that's your mistake.
It's like all the people who say there is math in music so knowing math will help with music. But it realy doesn't. In analysis, one can see the "golden section" (1.618 etc) in a piece of music or art or even apply it to literature if you want. But the creators of these things didn't necessarily sit down and plot out this place in the work. It happens because it's sort of how we are wired.
I say "necessarily" because there are people who sit down and apply all sorts of mathmetical concepts to their work or whatever complex system they are using (total serialism) but that's because their work is based upon those concepts "on purpose".
You are confusing the awareness of mathmatical concepts that occur naturally as opposed to works that have them inserted deliberatley.
and I would bet dollars to donuts that there is "math" in fps games. You are just not looking hard enough or just not willing to look.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
In my eyes both don't necessarily have something todo with immersion. To me a vital part of immersion are hopelessly old schooled graphics (the wierd that may sound). Or in other words, the better the graphics, the more details the game has the sooner I'm getting bored. Probably has something todo with the empty space that fantasy needs... (sry if I quoted wrong, I never get comfortable with these forum's quoting system)