How do you define "core experience", the way "I like it, it is core experience" ?
Taken out of "core experience", arent raids atm in that unfortunate position of being the other things which are mandatory and harming gameplay?
The 1-3 main activities of a game (what you spend the most time doing) are the core experience.
The core activity is combat. Raids aren't a core activity, but rather a form of content that involves the core activity. And certainly some forms of content aren't popular (like those which require you to schedule game time, or water down your personal contribution amongst 24+ other members) but when it comes to the core experiences a game offer, trying to do too many things at once certainly would make combat much worse (if you think combat isn't that exciting in current MMORPGs, imagine if the devs spent 1/10th as much time implementing and polishing combat!)
By this definition, the main 3 activities in wow are sitting in the town waiting for finder to pop up, yelling over vent and using foul language in chat...
And again , where does it say that combat is a core activity, where do you get the perception that if combat is cool, but there is nothing you can achieve using it, it is enough on its own, pvp aspects aside ofc
As for the last part, it is a matter of perception and a matter of finding the right mix, using rotations would be somehow disruptive in a FPS game, so it is not a plus on its own, thus we can argue if the combat in modern mmos is a "polished thing", or a product of a long time of adding stuff to a system that started out simple.
You will surely find enough people (as with everything) that will say they like a more simplistic combat approach, even in pvp, say "mage meets warrior, fight!, if mage OOM, mage looses, if warrior OOH, warrior looses", which is rather interesting at a point that it would be somehwat balanced 1v1, which is something a great number of arena players would tell you is impossible
I’ve playing MMO for several years now and of the things that intrigues me is who came up with the idea of raids as means of end game? and why players consider this is ok?
When I mean raids as means of end game, I’m talking about asking players to grind certain raids not only for their amusement but to get gear to later grind upper raids. In case, you don’t like those raids, you still have to grind them if you want to do the ones you really like.
Man, whoever invented this kind of end game in MMO made such big damage to the genre that will take long time to fix.
Can you imagine somebody designing a golf course for months, then spending months building it.
Then say to the players: “play this golf course for X amount of times so you can get enough marks to get to the next golf course that we are currently designing”
People play in a golf course not only to enjoy but if they wish also to get “AN SCORE” that can be compared to other players and be competitive in a regular bases vs other players or himself.
That way, you play the course for many times without getting bored because not only are you beating the course but you are also beating other players and yourself.
Again, this also makes the believe that PVE can't be competitive.
Raids in early MMOs were a special occasion, dragons that spawned once a week, or the planes of gods that took an immense amount of time to clear, in some cases even took the co-operation of multiple guilds (many raids were 72 man events). It was a special event.
WoW came onto the field and tried to streamline the over all experience, in essence making it a guaranteed nightly grind rather than a special occasion. WoW took the activities of prior MMOs, created an experience that somewhat emulated those, but lost so much in the process, as they did with the rest of the experience as well.
Now we have raids as a nightly grind. Why? They're not special anymore, they're, in most cases, nothing to brag about in terms of difficulty. It's just like being forced to play simon-says with people you'd probably rather not spend your time with. They serve no purpose worth preserving as the goal can be achieved now through other avenues. They're a way of forcing large groups to play with and compete against eachother that have outlived their usefulness.
If the best loot came from hard single group dungeons instead of raids, a lot of people would stop raiding. So it's clearly not that the activity it's become is enjoyable, it's a means to an end.
It would be nice to see any large gathering of players be a response to a special event or occasion once again, not a nightly hamster wheel grind of memorized dance steps.
Dungeons or raids themself are not bad , what is bad is that they are ONLY thing to do. Apart of grinding instanced BG's.
Well but mmorpg genre starts to do baby steps into splitting games into ofering OTHER things to do at end game AS WELL.
Well since many ppl seem to enjoy grinding raids / dungeons or BG as only things to do then guess they should have those games. After all this is what WoW build itself success upon.
I don't like mmorpg's that are just framework to run instances anymore , seem like lobby game and while it was fun to play game like that for quite some time , it is not anymore.
I want virtual world type of mmorpg and I refuse to play lobby like instance grinder anymore. Too limited. Sorry.
I hate raiding...it's perhaps the most boring and repetitive thing ever created for gaming. SWTOR's endgame consists of boring raids and broken PVP grind for gear. So after you get that gear....you have to raid and PVP for the next set of gear?
I refuse to pay these companies for the same old cheap boring crap they're putting out. I'm back at EQII where I can least do other things besides Raid and PVP (although I do love PVP - just not pointless PVP)
Currently playing SWTOR and it's MUCH better than it was at launch.
I’ve playing MMO for several years now and of the things that intrigues me is who came up with the idea of raids as means of end game? and why players consider this is ok?
When I mean raids as means of end game, I’m talking about asking players to grind certain raids not only for their amusement but to get gear to later grind upper raids. In case, you don’t like those raids, you still have to grind them if you want to do the ones you really like.
Man, whoever invented this kind of end game in MMO made such big damage to the genre that will take long time to fix.
Can you imagine somebody designing a golf course for months, then spending months building it.
Then say to the players: “play this golf course for X amount of times so you can get enough marks to get to the next golf course that we are currently designing”
People play in a golf course not only to enjoy but if they wish also to get “AN SCORE” that can be compared to other players and be competitive in a regular bases vs other players or himself.
That way, you play the course for many times without getting bored because not only are you beating the course but you are also beating other players and yourself.
Again, this also makes the believe that PVE can't be competitive.
It's so very easy to criticise what exists isn't it?
How very much harder it is to come up with an actual creative alternative that works, do you have any solid, positive contribution to make to the debate on endgame or are you just trotting out the same old tired complaints that have existed for 10 years or more?
I invite you, to grant us your wisdom & creativity and provide us with a well thought out endgame.
crowd sourced/ player created/ contributed content is the ultimate "end game " content.
100 of the best most creative designers/ developers in the world are no match for the creativity of 10,000+ players.
instead of always being in a race to roll out the latest "end content" dungeon/ raid/ scenario... developers should focus on rolling out the "tools" that would allow players to create their own end content.
some games already offer basic "dungeon creator" options for their players. this is the future. we need to take this to the next level.
imagine... a tool kit available for for your favorite game that would allow you to design/ create a dungeon/ raid/ PvP scenario for the entire server to enjoy. a yearly contest held to to determine the best submission... the developers then test, tweak, and polish ... and eventualy roll it out to the servers.
the winner for one year has his creation on the world map "Jimmy John's Dungeon of Horrors"
in addition to crowd sourced creativty, i think EvP is also another direction with great potential... after you have maxed out and achieved every level of mastery in the gme... you unlock the ability to log in as certain NPC mobs ...
how much more challenging would/ could a scenario be if just one or two of those mobs were actually player controlled?
It's so very easy to criticise what exists isn't it?
How very much harder it is to come up with an actual creative alternative that works, do you have any solid, positive contribution to make to the debate on endgame or are you just trotting out the same old tired complaints that have existed for 10 years or more?
I invite you, to grant us your wisdom & creativity and provide us with a well thought out endgame.
Up for the challenge?
I did mentioned on my original post that developers must find a way that at end of the dungeon you have an "score".
An score that means something important for the player.
Same as golf players do when they finish the course.
Having an score would allow interest in running dungeons to improve an score rather than just getting gear for the next.
The current system is a grind because you run a dungeon not to compete vs yourself (improving your score) or someone else but you run the dungeon to be able to run the dungeons on the next expansion.
So you're suggesting MMORPGs should charge real money for the next raid content like golf courses do? And progression becomes purely a matter of being able to pay to go to the next golf course, instead of a matter of skillfully working your way through the courses?
Raiding has issues, but it's more "more people, more problems" than the structure of their progression systems.
Personally I'd prefer 5-man content to scale in difficulty with raid-style boss challenges. There are a myriad of ways that requiring 25+ people harms the experience without really adding anything (that I can't get in a 5-10 man team.)
Axehilt is once again inside my head. Couldn't have said it better myself.
By this definition, the main 3 activities in wow are sitting in the town waiting for finder to pop up, yelling over vent and using foul language in chat...
And again , where does it say that combat is a core activity, where do you get the perception that if combat is cool, but there is nothing you can achieve using it, it is enough on its own, pvp aspects aside ofc
As for the last part, it is a matter of perception and a matter of finding the right mix, using rotations would be somehow disruptive in a FPS game, so it is not a plus on its own, thus we can argue if the combat in modern mmos is a "polished thing", or a product of a long time of adding stuff to a system that started out simple.
You will surely find enough people (as with everything) that will say they like a more simplistic combat approach, even in pvp, say "mage meets warrior, fight!, if mage OOM, mage looses, if warrior OOH, warrior looses", which is rather interesting at a point that it would be somehwat balanced 1v1, which is something a great number of arena players would tell you is impossible
If you're going to be contrary for the sake of argument, there isn't much left for us to discuss.
Combat is so obviously one of the core activities in WOW that to suggest otherwise is to troll.
The core activities in a game aren't subjective. They're the central pillars the game is built upon, and you're not going to play WOW without engaging in the combat system.
Offtopic, I don't know anyone I'd consider knowledgable who'd insist that "somewhat balanced" PVP is impossible. Even "mostly balanced" is very possible.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
By this definition, the main 3 activities in wow are sitting in the town waiting for finder to pop up, yelling over vent and using foul language in chat...
And again , where does it say that combat is a core activity, where do you get the perception that if combat is cool, but there is nothing you can achieve using it, it is enough on its own, pvp aspects aside ofc
As for the last part, it is a matter of perception and a matter of finding the right mix, using rotations would be somehow disruptive in a FPS game, so it is not a plus on its own, thus we can argue if the combat in modern mmos is a "polished thing", or a product of a long time of adding stuff to a system that started out simple.
You will surely find enough people (as with everything) that will say they like a more simplistic combat approach, even in pvp, say "mage meets warrior, fight!, if mage OOM, mage looses, if warrior OOH, warrior looses", which is rather interesting at a point that it would be somehwat balanced 1v1, which is something a great number of arena players would tell you is impossible
If you're going to be contrary for the sake of argument, there isn't much left for us to discuss.
Combat is so obviously one of the core activities in WOW that to suggest otherwise is to troll.
The core activities in a game aren't subjective. They're the central pillars the game is built upon, and you're not going to play WOW without engaging in the combat system.
Offtopic, I don't know anyone I'd consider knowledgable who'd insist that "somewhat balanced" PVP is impossible. Even "mostly balanced" is very possible.
Im not, atleast not on purpose.
What we were talking at the beginning about, was that you have said that a game needs just a few core experieces polished, i countered with trying to find out what that core thing is (especially in a mmorpg), and ofcourse i have thrown in a little rant about raids being disconnected from the game overall because of the thread title, and that maybe we (or the developers) should think about creating a good game system overall, where many "experiences" can be tagged on instead of focusing on a small number of more or less disconnected things.
Then i went somewhat downhill, i admit, and we ended up here where combat is a "central pillar" and "you cannot play without it", well what you want to hear, yelling, chat, drama you probably cannot play without either, but its not a pillar, why?
I mean, some time ago there were RP enthusiasts playing non-combat characters, leveling them just via delivery and similar quests, so in the end my opinion is, that combat itself, even raids, are just MEANS to an end, not the end itself.
WoW is not an FPS, or a action game, for a fps or action game, it is till too boring, too "thought intensive", far too many rpg leftovers still present, we may arrive there eventually, and then we will see if combat itself is a "pillar", if few good things outweight many average at best, so far it does not look that way.
As for PvP, i was referring to 1vs1 , a duel, these days with the notion that skilled players should be able to combat each other in pvp forever, if they dont make mistakes, it is very hard to balance (you know, rpg leftovers )
Raids was the first step on the Path to RUIN.. the next step was battlegrounds... you all know the rest..
Modern MMOS are counstructed as a CASINO slotmashine/or a Mouse Labyrinth.. they are clever at masking this but if you have any brains you soon undestand why...
Holding a carrot infront of the players nose keeps him blindly moving forward without questioning what he is actually doing...
Back in the day MMOS were mostly about Politics and players vs player interaction... EvE online is a good example of a game who has survived passed the WoW era.. and the endgame design of that game is totaly diffrent then WoWs..
As I have mentioned in other threads.. these days Devs look for casual gamers.. who they want to Pay for a ticket to their theampark and take the Rides they have chosen for them. When the park closes they want said casuals to go back to their ordinary lifes and return for another thrillride when it gets installed... They dont want the gamers to dissmantle the Rides they have made for them and start constructing their own. They also dont want them to pull out Tents and sleeping bags and start squatting on thier property.. When the Park closes people are expected to go home...
Freedom of choise, Open Worlds and Meaningfull PvP have been replaced by Premade choises, Linear worlds and meningless Battleground PvP.. that changes nothing.. But the Casual gamer is happy with this because lets face it they dident start up the game to do anything challenging or constructive they just want to kill a few off hours before they go back to their real lifes...
So you're suggesting MMORPGs should charge real money for the next raid content like golf courses do? And progression becomes purely a matter of being able to pay to go to the next golf course, instead of a matter of skillfully working your way through the courses?
Raiding has issues, but it's more "more people, more problems" than the structure of their progression systems.
Personally I'd prefer 5-man content to scale in difficulty with raid-style boss challenges. There are a myriad of ways that requiring 25+ people harms the experience without really adding anything (that I can't get in a 5-10 man team.)
Axehilt is once again inside my head. Couldn't have said it better myself.
you both missunderstood. A person play a golf course (as many times he wants) for enjoyment and to compare his performance vs his previous performances or vs others he is competing with. After the run, he gets an score that cant be measured and compared
In MMO people "grind" dungeons for enjoyment and to be able to get the right to "grind" upper dungeons. After the run, they either get currency or drops that have nothing to do with how good or bad they did overthere. A good player and a bad player get same rewards.
What we were talking at the beginning about, was that you have said that a game needs just a few core experieces polished, i countered with trying to find out what that core thing is (especially in a mmorpg), and ofcourse i have thrown in a little rant about raids being disconnected from the game overall because of the thread title, and that maybe we (or the developers) should think about creating a good game system overall, where many "experiences" can be tagged on instead of focusing on a small number of more or less disconnected things.
Then i went somewhat downhill, i admit, and we ended up here where combat is a "central pillar" and "you cannot play without it", well what you want to hear, yelling, chat, drama you probably cannot play without either, but its not a pillar, why?
I mean, some time ago there were RP enthusiasts playing non-combat characters, leveling them just via delivery and similar quests, so in the end my opinion is, that combat itself, even raids, are just MEANS to an end, not the end itself.
WoW is not an FPS, or a action game, for a fps or action game, it is till too boring, too "thought intensive", far too many rpg leftovers still present, we may arrive there eventually, and then we will see if combat itself is a "pillar", if few good things outweight many average at best, so far it does not look that way.
As for PvP, i was referring to 1vs1 , a duel, these days with the notion that skilled players should be able to combat each other in pvp forever, if they dont make mistakes, it is very hard to balance (you know, rpg leftovers )
Flame on!
The beginning of the discussion was the idea that pissing your dev hours away on 50 different activities (not necessarily just the core ones) is definitely going to result in some crappy gameplay, whereas focusing on a narrower set of activities and polishing them is going to create a much better experience overall.
Combat being a pillar has nothing to do with liking it, or with whether a game is a FPS or action game. For example, gathering is a core pillar to EVE which completely sucks ("press this button near an asteroid and AFK".) Gathering being terrible in no way causes it to magically not be a pillar the game is built on.
You can certainly avoid the core pillars of a game entirely in some cases, but usually (as with the RP enthusiasts) you're missing out on everything most people would consider fun. Certainly I know very few people who'd consider a game purely about Delivery quests to be fun. Unless, of course, they were completely different delivery quests from what we see in current MMORPGs and gameplay was built up around them (in other words: unless they were built as a core activity of the game.)
Duels where players can fight each other "forever" if they don't make mistakes? That's just bad PVP design. All good PVP systems are designed to end with a victor.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Raiding goes against the whole idea of an MMO. An MMO should be a game with a massive number of players. Raids turn MMOs in your regular multiplayer game. There is absolutely no difference between an MMO's endgame and your regular multiplayer game. 24-50 people playing together to kill a boss? Not massive AT ALL>!
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Raiding goes against the whole idea of an MMO. An MMO should be a game with a massive number of players. Raids turn MMOs in your regular multiplayer game. There is absolutely no difference between an MMO's endgame and your regular multiplayer game. 24-50 people playing together to kill a boss? Not massive AT ALL>!
Not anymore. Obviously you do not need all acitivities to be massive in an MMO. That makes the game more fun. I really don't think i want to kill a dragon with 1000 people .. you cannot even see what is going on.
Comments
By this definition, the main 3 activities in wow are sitting in the town waiting for finder to pop up, yelling over vent and using foul language in chat...
And again , where does it say that combat is a core activity, where do you get the perception that if combat is cool, but there is nothing you can achieve using it, it is enough on its own, pvp aspects aside ofc
As for the last part, it is a matter of perception and a matter of finding the right mix, using rotations would be somehow disruptive in a FPS game, so it is not a plus on its own, thus we can argue if the combat in modern mmos is a "polished thing", or a product of a long time of adding stuff to a system that started out simple.
You will surely find enough people (as with everything) that will say they like a more simplistic combat approach, even in pvp, say "mage meets warrior, fight!, if mage OOM, mage looses, if warrior OOH, warrior looses", which is rather interesting at a point that it would be somehwat balanced 1v1, which is something a great number of arena players would tell you is impossible
Context of the whole game
Flame on!
Raids in early MMOs were a special occasion, dragons that spawned once a week, or the planes of gods that took an immense amount of time to clear, in some cases even took the co-operation of multiple guilds (many raids were 72 man events). It was a special event.
WoW came onto the field and tried to streamline the over all experience, in essence making it a guaranteed nightly grind rather than a special occasion. WoW took the activities of prior MMOs, created an experience that somewhat emulated those, but lost so much in the process, as they did with the rest of the experience as well.
Now we have raids as a nightly grind. Why? They're not special anymore, they're, in most cases, nothing to brag about in terms of difficulty. It's just like being forced to play simon-says with people you'd probably rather not spend your time with. They serve no purpose worth preserving as the goal can be achieved now through other avenues. They're a way of forcing large groups to play with and compete against eachother that have outlived their usefulness.
If the best loot came from hard single group dungeons instead of raids, a lot of people would stop raiding. So it's clearly not that the activity it's become is enjoyable, it's a means to an end.
It would be nice to see any large gathering of players be a response to a special event or occasion once again, not a nightly hamster wheel grind of memorized dance steps.
Dungeons or raids themself are not bad , what is bad is that they are ONLY thing to do. Apart of grinding instanced BG's.
Well but mmorpg genre starts to do baby steps into splitting games into ofering OTHER things to do at end game AS WELL.
Well since many ppl seem to enjoy grinding raids / dungeons or BG as only things to do then guess they should have those games. After all this is what WoW build itself success upon.
I don't like mmorpg's that are just framework to run instances anymore , seem like lobby game and while it was fun to play game like that for quite some time , it is not anymore.
I want virtual world type of mmorpg and I refuse to play lobby like instance grinder anymore. Too limited. Sorry.
I hate raiding...it's perhaps the most boring and repetitive thing ever created for gaming. SWTOR's endgame consists of boring raids and broken PVP grind for gear. So after you get that gear....you have to raid and PVP for the next set of gear?
I refuse to pay these companies for the same old cheap boring crap they're putting out. I'm back at EQII where I can least do other things besides Raid and PVP (although I do love PVP - just not pointless PVP)
Currently playing SWTOR and it's MUCH better than it was at launch.
It's so very easy to criticise what exists isn't it?
How very much harder it is to come up with an actual creative alternative that works, do you have any solid, positive contribution to make to the debate on endgame or are you just trotting out the same old tired complaints that have existed for 10 years or more?
I invite you, to grant us your wisdom & creativity and provide us with a well thought out endgame.
Up for the challenge?
crowd sourced/ player created/ contributed content is the ultimate "end game " content.
100 of the best most creative designers/ developers in the world are no match for the creativity of 10,000+ players.
instead of always being in a race to roll out the latest "end content" dungeon/ raid/ scenario... developers should focus on rolling out the "tools" that would allow players to create their own end content.
some games already offer basic "dungeon creator" options for their players. this is the future. we need to take this to the next level.
imagine... a tool kit available for for your favorite game that would allow you to design/ create a dungeon/ raid/ PvP scenario for the entire server to enjoy. a yearly contest held to to determine the best submission... the developers then test, tweak, and polish ... and eventualy roll it out to the servers.
the winner for one year has his creation on the world map "Jimmy John's Dungeon of Horrors"
in addition to crowd sourced creativty, i think EvP is also another direction with great potential... after you have maxed out and achieved every level of mastery in the gme... you unlock the ability to log in as certain NPC mobs ...
how much more challenging would/ could a scenario be if just one or two of those mobs were actually player controlled?
comments?
I did mentioned on my original post that developers must find a way that at end of the dungeon you have an "score".
An score that means something important for the player.
Same as golf players do when they finish the course.
Having an score would allow interest in running dungeons to improve an score rather than just getting gear for the next.
The current system is a grind because you run a dungeon not to compete vs yourself (improving your score) or someone else but you run the dungeon to be able to run the dungeons on the next expansion.
As much as i love my game EQ it did start the raiding endgame which i wish it would have never done.
if you could come up with a good alternative this thread would have been a lot more useful.
Lot's of people like raiding.
A lot of people like golf too but if golfers dont have an score at the end of the course. Very few of them would like it.
There should be a way to score points inside a dungeon. In a way, that it is interesting for players.
I'm not a programer but there should be a way to score points on bosses (the equivalent to holes in golf). Thats for developers to figure out.
You can make a hole in golf in several strokes, can we have a simiilar measurement on bosses?
Axehilt is once again inside my head. Couldn't have said it better myself.
If you're going to be contrary for the sake of argument, there isn't much left for us to discuss.
Combat is so obviously one of the core activities in WOW that to suggest otherwise is to troll.
The core activities in a game aren't subjective. They're the central pillars the game is built upon, and you're not going to play WOW without engaging in the combat system.
Offtopic, I don't know anyone I'd consider knowledgable who'd insist that "somewhat balanced" PVP is impossible. Even "mostly balanced" is very possible.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Im not, atleast not on purpose.
What we were talking at the beginning about, was that you have said that a game needs just a few core experieces polished, i countered with trying to find out what that core thing is (especially in a mmorpg), and ofcourse i have thrown in a little rant about raids being disconnected from the game overall because of the thread title, and that maybe we (or the developers) should think about creating a good game system overall, where many "experiences" can be tagged on instead of focusing on a small number of more or less disconnected things.
Then i went somewhat downhill, i admit, and we ended up here where combat is a "central pillar" and "you cannot play without it", well what you want to hear, yelling, chat, drama you probably cannot play without either, but its not a pillar, why?
I mean, some time ago there were RP enthusiasts playing non-combat characters, leveling them just via delivery and similar quests, so in the end my opinion is, that combat itself, even raids, are just MEANS to an end, not the end itself.
WoW is not an FPS, or a action game, for a fps or action game, it is till too boring, too "thought intensive", far too many rpg leftovers still present, we may arrive there eventually, and then we will see if combat itself is a "pillar", if few good things outweight many average at best, so far it does not look that way.
As for PvP, i was referring to 1vs1 , a duel, these days with the notion that skilled players should be able to combat each other in pvp forever, if they dont make mistakes, it is very hard to balance (you know, rpg leftovers
)
Flame on!
Raids was the first step on the Path to RUIN.. the next step was battlegrounds... you all know the rest..
Modern MMOS are counstructed as a CASINO slotmashine/or a Mouse Labyrinth.. they are clever at masking this but if you have any brains you soon undestand why...
Holding a carrot infront of the players nose keeps him blindly moving forward without questioning what he is actually doing...
Back in the day MMOS were mostly about Politics and players vs player interaction... EvE online is a good example of a game who has survived passed the WoW era.. and the endgame design of that game is totaly diffrent then WoWs..
As I have mentioned in other threads.. these days Devs look for casual gamers.. who they want to Pay for a ticket to their theampark and take the Rides they have chosen for them. When the park closes they want said casuals to go back to their ordinary lifes and return for another thrillride when it gets installed... They dont want the gamers to dissmantle the Rides they have made for them and start constructing their own. They also dont want them to pull out Tents and sleeping bags and start squatting on thier property.. When the Park closes people are expected to go home...
Freedom of choise, Open Worlds and Meaningfull PvP have been replaced by Premade choises, Linear worlds and meningless Battleground PvP.. that changes nothing.. But the Casual gamer is happy with this because lets face it they dident start up the game to do anything challenging or constructive they just want to kill a few off hours before they go back to their real lifes...
you both missunderstood. A person play a golf course (as many times he wants) for enjoyment and to compare his performance vs his previous performances or vs others he is competing with. After the run, he gets an score that cant be measured and compared
In MMO people "grind" dungeons for enjoyment and to be able to get the right to "grind" upper dungeons. After the run, they either get currency or drops that have nothing to do with how good or bad they did overthere. A good player and a bad player get same rewards.
The beginning of the discussion was the idea that pissing your dev hours away on 50 different activities (not necessarily just the core ones) is definitely going to result in some crappy gameplay, whereas focusing on a narrower set of activities and polishing them is going to create a much better experience overall.
Combat being a pillar has nothing to do with liking it, or with whether a game is a FPS or action game. For example, gathering is a core pillar to EVE which completely sucks ("press this button near an asteroid and AFK".) Gathering being terrible in no way causes it to magically not be a pillar the game is built on.
You can certainly avoid the core pillars of a game entirely in some cases, but usually (as with the RP enthusiasts) you're missing out on everything most people would consider fun. Certainly I know very few people who'd consider a game purely about Delivery quests to be fun. Unless, of course, they were completely different delivery quests from what we see in current MMORPGs and gameplay was built up around them (in other words: unless they were built as a core activity of the game.)
Duels where players can fight each other "forever" if they don't make mistakes? That's just bad PVP design. All good PVP systems are designed to end with a victor.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Raiding goes against the whole idea of an MMO. An MMO should be a game with a massive number of players. Raids turn MMOs in your regular multiplayer game. There is absolutely no difference between an MMO's endgame and your regular multiplayer game. 24-50 people playing together to kill a boss? Not massive AT ALL>!
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Not anymore. Obviously you do not need all acitivities to be massive in an MMO. That makes the game more fun. I really don't think i want to kill a dragon with 1000 people .. you cannot even see what is going on.
they said that about spore
then you got a billion dick animals
I prefer people whose job it is to make games to craft an interesting expiriance rather than some random smuck down the street