Originally posted by Oberholzer I have some good, funny memories of corpse runs but i don't think I miss it. I'm not anti death penalty in game or anything and if a game had corpse runs it wouldn't be a deal breaker for me if the game was good but I can't say I miss it.
What I mean is there should be multiple times during a trip where you would have to sneak, run like hell, turn and fight, stop and observe, wonder what could be hiding behind a bush or the next bend in the road, looking over your shoulder, and deciding if taking the short cut would be a worth some extra risk or do you stick to the main road that has friendly patrols.
To me that sort of gameplay is much more engaging and exciting that simply clicking a button for action.
Skip to the sneak, run like hell, turn and fight, stop and observe ...parts and forget the walking 10 min parts.
What you describe is not traveling, but combat and sneak gameplay.
Yes, sneaking from point A to B is fun, given that there is no long stretch of nothing that you only walk.
Play Dishonored to see how good stealth level is created.
Yeah...not going to get progress in this conversation.
He's just cycling back on what he doesn't want, and not considering the factors that are being suggested, instead dividing the elements out to rant about the base factor of walking about, even though it's fairly obvious by now people are saying they want travel not simply for travel, but because it enables a greater variety of activity that's in general lost when you pair it down to specific events.
Hence his converting PGA, implying something with a broader scope due to greater space and the shift in ruleset to an 'always onward' type approach, into 'minigolf with walking'.
The analogies are going to be constantly adapted to fit the perception, rather than representing the point of the argument.
The original post shares as much of these points being ignored as well. It's not simply that travel is there or corpse runs are there, but the consequences and interaction created because of them, and the play that was able to be built off those mechanics that simply can't exist when the core pieces (travel and death) are mitigated or removed.
Travel when dealing with only the most finite aspect is walking about. It properly is a much broader concept than that and there is no logic in excluding events that are integrated into the act of travel, movement, and death itself save for focusing on a more specific kind of play.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Yeah...not going to get progress in this conversation.
Not with Nariusseldon and especially Axehilt, I agree.
You made some excellent points that I have decided not to quote, but it is quite clear that these two people think of travel as commuting and not as a journey.
They do have a point. Some people don't enjoy that sort of game play. But they are over stating it, and what they are asking for is arena style PvP and/or a game focused sololy on running dungeons and beating bosses. Pure destilled "endgame"
That is not an MMORPG. And many contemporary MMORPGs should never have been made, since they focus too heavily on that type of game play and only added "a persistant world" to cash in on the MMORPG label. They would have been far better games if they hadn't tried to be something they are not.
It's obvious that some, just want to pay their token to the carnie, and shoot at the ducks until they win their prize.. I play MMO's for a different reason and ask the devs to treat traveling as an adventure.. Whether it was roaming mobs crossing the paths, or even using GW2 type of dynamic events, a dev can program FUN in all aspects of the game.. Traveling thru Kith Forrest at night (EQ) was not mindless.. He He He He..
Originally posted by Rydeson It's obvious that some, just want to pay their token to the carnie, and shoot at the ducks until they win their prize.. I play MMO's for a different reason and ask the devs to treat traveling as an adventure.. Whether it was roaming mobs crossing the paths, or even using GW2 type of dynamic events, a dev can program FUN in all aspects of the game.. Traveling thru Kith Forrest at night (EQ) was not mindless.. He He He He..
Not with Nariusseldon and especially Axehilt, I agree.
You made some excellent points that I have decided not to quote, but it is quite clear that these two people think of travel as commuting and not as a journey.
They do have a point. Some people don't enjoy that sort of game play. But they are over stating it, and what they are asking for is arena style PvP and/or a game focused sololy on running dungeons and beating bosses. Pure destilled "endgame"
That is not an MMORPG. And many contemporary MMORPGs should never have been made, since they focus too heavily on that type of game play and only added "a persistant world" to cash in on the MMORPG label. They would have been far better games if they hadn't tried to be something they are not.
Travel is a commute, in nearly all MMORPGs. If we all agree it's shallow and empty in nearly every MMORPG, we can possibly move the discussion to the more interesting "How could travel be chock-full of deep gameplay?"
My personal opinion on travel or corpse runs is as irrelevant as yours or anyone's. But most of what I'm discussing isn't my opinion but rather identifying the fundamental traits of the system, and how they interact with the way we know the human mind to work. It's based on a pretty substantial body of evidence and experience:
Koster's A Theory of Fun describes how fun is derived from games as pattern mastery (essentially you experience fun by developing skills with the game.) This is logically consistent with how we see many species play-fight (to practice combat in a low-risk environment) and how humans also play with even more complicated concepts.
This is important to understand because it describes the core way players enjoy games (at least games which aren't simply casual relaxation activities like FarmVille.)
So without game depth, a game is like Tic Tac Toe: quickly mastered and discarded (because once mastered our minds understand there is no more value if we continue playing.)
Analyzing data of my own games' players' behavior, looking for the points where they stop playing. Unsurprisingly, empty parts of the gameplay were a big one. (Pretty good sample sizes of 300k-500k players too, so it was a good snapshot of what players like.)
Observations of which games actually do well (none of which involve excessive gameplay "white space") and games which do poorly. Although no game fails specifically due to white space, but most designers who would make the mistake of creating a game with too much white space also make several other mistakes which, in total, cause the game to be criticized by players.
Observations of how other entertainment industries work, and how nobody in movies or TV records a 30-minute travel scene with no dialog or plot development because, well...it's boring. It's empty. Devoid of content. Same goes for authors. Basically scenes don't exist in good writing (or movies, etc) unless they have a good purpose.
I'll probably seem pretty hard-nosed on the issue, with so much evidence visible on one side of the fence. At least unless the other side of the fence comes up with evidence rather than nostalgia-charged opinion or simply stating the limited advantages without considering the overall impact.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Yeah...not going to get progress in this conversation.
He's just cycling back on what he doesn't want, and not considering the factors that are being suggested, instead dividing the elements out to rant about the base factor of walking about, even though it's fairly obvious by now people are saying they want travel not simply for travel, but because it enables a greater variety of activity that's in general lost when you pair it down to specific events.
Hence his converting PGA, implying something with a broader scope due to greater space and the shift in ruleset to an 'always onward' type approach, into 'minigolf with walking'.
The analogies are going to be constantly adapted to fit the perception, rather than representing the point of the argument.
The original post shares as much of these points being ignored as well. It's not simply that travel is there or corpse runs are there, but the consequences and interaction created because of them, and the play that was able to be built off those mechanics that simply can't exist when the core pieces (travel and death) are mitigated or removed.
Travel when dealing with only the most finite aspect is walking about. It properly is a much broader concept than that and there is no logic in excluding events that are integrated into the act of travel, movement, and death itself save for focusing on a more specific kind of play.
That is a very naive and idealistic way of looking at this. Things can happen, sure, but overwhelming majority of times, nothing happens - nothing fun anyway. Travel is sure to be fun for the first few times at most. After that, it often starts to feel like a commute. Then it becomes a hindrance.
Same thing with corpse runs: Most of the time, they're an annoyance. The good do not outweigh the bad.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
there should be multiple times during a trip where you would have to sneak, run like hell, turn and fight, stop and observe, wonder what could be hiding behind a bush or the next bend in the road, looking over your shoulder, and deciding if taking the short cut would be a worth some extra risk or do you stick to the main road that has friendly patrols.
To me that sort of gameplay is much more engaging and exciting that simply clicking a button for action.
reading this reminded me of traveling in EQ1
traveling from North Karana to Freeport
you have 2 choices
-- go the lake rathe route and come in through SoRo (involves swimming and dodging wildmen/undead in desert)
-- risk going through highpass (invis usually required) and later Kithicor forest (deadly undead at night)
travel was an adventure
EQ had no mounts for 3 years and traveling was often dangerous
Observations of how other entertainment industries work, and how nobody in movies or TV records a 30-minute travel scene with no dialog or plot development because, well...it's boring. It's empty. Devoid of content. Same goes for authors. Basically scenes don't exist in good writing (or movies, etc) unless they have a good purpose.
I'll probably seem pretty hard-nosed on the issue, with so much evidence visible on one side of the fence. At least unless the other side of the fence comes up with evidence rather than nostalgia-charged opinion or simply stating the limited advantages without considering the overall impact.
30 Minutes is a big chunk out of what, at most, lasts maybe 4 hours in the extreme. Cant remember watching 4 hour movie..Unless you count a mini-series, but then you are back to maybe 2 hours tops per session. On the other hand.. some of my favorite all time shows are the view from the cockpit of a train or out of the windshield of a car: "Die Schönsten Bahnstrecken Deutchlands" and "Die Schönsten Autobahnstrecken Deutchlands". Look it up.. its a thing.. I'm even a little disappointed that they skip the dark tunnel bits :P
This is a passive sort of enterteinment and quite zen and relaxing in my oppinion. But definatly not what I want from a game. especially not if I had to hold down a key to keep moving. Its not like I want to watch pitch drip, paint dry, or grass grow for my entertainment.
But having distances matter strategically in a game is important to me. And so is having to do some less excting stuff, like having to go and get my corpse back (to keep on point) or going out and recouping my losses or being forced to back away from an objective to a point where I am relatively strong. Losing ground when losing and gaining ground when winning, to put it simply. Not simply fighting in place till I win.
Back to my main point, though: In a form of entertainment that I am going to enjoy for hundreds if not thousands of hours I may require a little more variety and changes of pace. While I do enjoy playing MOBAs too, even they have boring bits.. It isnt all about the teamfights.
I am looking forward to AC 4: Black Flag. They atleast seem to get what im saying. (though I am quite aware they didnt get the idea from me). Lots of traveling and constant oportunity for getting distracted from the straight and narrow path to the finish. They also get that for a single player game, not all travel is meaningful, so they have lots of fast traveling options too. But for a multiplayer game with even a minimum of strategy, position and distance has to matter. MMOs even more so.
That is a very naive and idealistic way of looking at this. Things can happen, sure, but overwhelming majority of times, nothing happens - nothing fun anyway. Travel is sure to be fun for the first few times at most. After that, it often starts to feel like a commute. Then it becomes a hindrance.
Same thing with corpse runs: Most of the time, they're an annoyance. The good do not outweigh the bad.
It isnt supposed to be fun. It is supposed to add resistance to the experience and to make the game be about something other than boss fights.
It may be that corpse runs arent the way to go forward. But I think they added a lot to my experience in EQ. Im struggling to think of a feature that could replace it without removing the "quest starter element" or the "conversation starter" that springs from having the next thing to do being to go and get you stuff back somehow.
You can still get the "bad shit happens when you die and you better learn how to play better" effect from item loss or damage, xp loss, or permadeath. Or indeed just a boss reset, by some peoples standards. But they dont offer anything else
That is a very naive and idealistic way of looking at this. Things can happen, sure, but overwhelming majority of times, nothing happens - nothing fun anyway. Travel is sure to be fun for the first few times at most. After that, it often starts to feel like a commute. Then it becomes a hindrance.
In MUDs, travel was (mostly) scripted. You paid attention to the screen because [x] attack could interrupt your transit and drop you into combat; dealt with the combat, and started the script back up. Traveling across 600 "rooms" with a memorized pattern of N E E NE E SE S D U go gate N N E NE....yep, good travel scripts were worth cash, for certain.
You know, it's interesting; I recall MMO threads with players complaining that grey mobs could dismount them...
Sure, travel can be hazardous. And it can be no risk at all. And it can be just stupid--mobs you can't even earn xp from, dropping you into a pointless combat.
Capped? Mostly time-wasting, not much risk. Level 1? Jogging anywhere is usually considerable risk.
Maybe ya'll are mutually unintelligible because you're thinking about totally different situations that you generalize into "Travel".
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
That is a very naive and idealistic way of looking at this. Things can happen, sure, but overwhelming majority of times, nothing happens - nothing fun anyway. Travel is sure to be fun for the first few times at most. After that, it often starts to feel like a commute. Then it becomes a hindrance.
In MUDs, travel was (mostly) scripted. You paid attention to the screen because [x] attack could interrupt your transit and drop you into combat; dealt with the combat, and started the script back up. Traveling across 600 "rooms" with a memorized pattern of N E E NE E SE S D U go gate N N E NE....yep, good travel scripts were worth cash, for certain.
You know, it's interesting; I recall MMO threads with players complaining that grey mobs could dismount them...
Sure, travel can be hazardous. And it can be no risk at all. And it can be just stupid--mobs you can't even earn xp from, dropping you into a pointless combat.
Capped? Mostly time-wasting, not much risk. Level 1? Jogging anywhere is usually considerable risk.
Maybe ya'll are mutually unintelligible because you're thinking about totally different situations that you generalize into "Travel".
I can definatly relate to that.. as I have a bothersome fly on the lose that keeps landing on me arms and hands.. Only danger it represents is getting me annoyed enough to knock over my drink or damage my computer screen trying to get at it..
HAH! I Got it! And it only doubled the time it took for me to finish this post :P
I smote the beast with my mighty hands and lightning reflexes :P
30 Minutes is a big chunk out of what, at most, lasts maybe 4 hours in the extreme. Cant remember watching 4 hour movie..Unless you count a mini-series, but then you are back to maybe 2 hours tops per session. On the other hand.. some of my favorite all time shows are the view from the cockpit of a train or out of the windshield of a car: "Die Schönsten Bahnstrecken Deutchlands" and "Die Schönsten Autobahnstrecken Deutchlands". Look it up.. its a thing.. I'm even a little disappointed that they skip the dark tunnel bits :P
This is a passive sort of enterteinment and quite zen and relaxing in my oppinion. But definatly not what I want from a game. especially not if I had to hold down a key to keep moving. Its not like I want to watch pitch drip, paint dry, or grass grow for my entertainment.
But having distances matter strategically in a game is important to me. And so is having to do some less excting stuff, like having to go and get my corpse back (to keep on point) or going out and recouping my losses or being forced to back away from an objective to a point where I am relatively strong. Losing ground when losing and gaining ground when winning, to put it simply. Not simply fighting in place till I win.
Back to my main point, though: In a form of entertainment that I am going to enjoy for hundreds if not thousands of hours I may require a little more variety and changes of pace. While I do enjoy playing MOBAs too, even they have boring bits.. It isnt all about the teamfights.
I am looking forward to AC 4: Black Flag. They atleast seem to get what im saying. (though I am quite aware they didnt get the idea from me). Lots of traveling and constant oportunity for getting distracted from the straight and narrow path to the finish. They also get that for a single player game, not all travel is meaningful, so they have lots of fast traveling options too. But for a multiplayer game with even a minimum of strategy, position and distance has to matter. MMOs even more so.
30 minutes wasn't supposed to be a number to get hung up on. It's more the realization that if 12.5%-25% of an entertainment experience is considerably shallower than the rest of the experience it's not going to work.
Uneven depth is probably the core reason it doesn't work. It's certainly possible to enjoy a FarmVille, or a movie of a train moving through scenery, where the depth of the experience is shallow throughout.
The problem comes when you have a game which is deeper than that, but has mandatory patches of shallow gameplay.
It's like watching House of Cards (drama), or Avengers (action), or Cabin in the Woods (horror/comedy) and suddenly in the middle of this highly-engaging movie they show 20-30 minutes of uneventful travel. It would completely break both the pace and mood of the movies, and would be inconsistent with the expectations which were set both before and during the movie.
Zen has a place.
Randomly injecting mandatory zen into an otherwise non-zen-like experience does not work. With zen activities you want them to either encompass the entire experience (FarmVille, Die Schönsten...) or be completely optional (fishing/crafting in WOW.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
30 Minutes is a big chunk out of what, at most, lasts maybe 4 hours in the extreme. Cant remember watching 4 hour movie..Unless you count a mini-series, but then you are back to maybe 2 hours tops per session. On the other hand.. some of my favorite all time shows are the view from the cockpit of a train or out of the windshield of a car: "Die Schönsten Bahnstrecken Deutchlands" and "Die Schönsten Autobahnstrecken Deutchlands". Look it up.. its a thing.. I'm even a little disappointed that they skip the dark tunnel bits :P
This is a passive sort of enterteinment and quite zen and relaxing in my oppinion. But definatly not what I want from a game. especially not if I had to hold down a key to keep moving. Its not like I want to watch pitch drip, paint dry, or grass grow for my entertainment.
But having distances matter strategically in a game is important to me. And so is having to do some less excting stuff, like having to go and get my corpse back (to keep on point) or going out and recouping my losses or being forced to back away from an objective to a point where I am relatively strong. Losing ground when losing and gaining ground when winning, to put it simply. Not simply fighting in place till I win.
Back to my main point, though: In a form of entertainment that I am going to enjoy for hundreds if not thousands of hours I may require a little more variety and changes of pace. While I do enjoy playing MOBAs too, even they have boring bits.. It isnt all about the teamfights.
I am looking forward to AC 4: Black Flag. They atleast seem to get what im saying. (though I am quite aware they didnt get the idea from me). Lots of traveling and constant oportunity for getting distracted from the straight and narrow path to the finish. They also get that for a single player game, not all travel is meaningful, so they have lots of fast traveling options too. But for a multiplayer game with even a minimum of strategy, position and distance has to matter. MMOs even more so.
30 minutes wasn't supposed to be a number to get hung up on. It's more the realization that if 12.5%-25% of an entertainment experience is considerably shallower than the rest of the experience it's not going to work.
Uneven depth is probably the core reason it doesn't work. It's certainly possible to enjoy a FarmVille, or a movie of a train moving through scenery, where the depth of the experience is shallow throughout.
The problem comes when you have a game which is deeper than that, but has mandatory patches of shallow gameplay.
It's like watching House of Cards (drama), or Avengers (action), or Cabin in the Woods (horror/comedy) and suddenly in the middle of this highly-engaging movie they show 20-30 minutes of uneventful travel. It would completely break both the pace and mood of the movies, and would be inconsistent with the expectations which were set both before and during the movie.
Zen has a place.
Randomly injecting mandatory zen into an otherwise non-zen-like experience does not work. With zen activities you want them to either encompass the entire experience (FarmVille, Die Schönsten...) or be completely optional (fishing/crafting in WOW.)
Not quite the point I was trying to make. Perhaps I shouldn't have said less exciting, but said less desirable when I made the point about corpse runs.
And when it comes to traveling I wasnt advocating uneventful traveling or a passive experience. Like it was said in a AC4 dev video they want something interesting to occur every few minutes when on the open sea. Like whales, storms, targets, being chased by others, and uncharted islands. Stuff like that.. Some of which you can chose to engage in or not and some of it will be forced on you since you arent fast enough or clever enough to outmaneuver the enemy.
In an MMO, with an overall strategic layer as well as a tactical layer, it would be important to have distance and locations mean something. That involves traveling. And while it is not pointless in that situation, can very clearly be made boring. You could have it be cutscene with an in flight movie, an open world train ride, a horse ride or jog where you had to steer, or it could be a race with sneak parts involved and with auto run toggleable so you could focus on your surroundings instead of walking.. because we can both agree walking is not the skill we want to be testing in an MMO... World of QWOP anyone?..
It could also be some deeper sailing mechanic.. where you actually had to handle a sailing ship and not some windpowered motorboat.
Oh damn.. I just said deeper mechanic....I was hoping you would have defined what you meant by deep gameplay and deep combat, before I stepped on that land mine.
They do have a point. Some people don't enjoy that sort of game play. But they are over stating it, and what they are asking for is arena style PvP and/or a game focused sololy on running dungeons and beating bosses. Pure destilled "endgame"
That is not an MMORPG. And many contemporary MMORPGs should never have been made, since they focus too heavily on that type of game play and only added "a persistant world" to cash in on the MMORPG label. They would have been far better games if they hadn't tried to be something they are not.
First, it is not just the endgame. You can do the solo/co-opp instanced dungeons in the leveling up portion of the game too. There is a lot of LFD leveling in WOW, and D3 is purely instance when you level up (not a MMO, but close enough).
The key point is this. Whether it is a MMO is just semantics. I don't really care. It makes a better GAME for me. Even Skyrim have instanced travel. And better games should always be made. MMOs are moving away from the traditional trappings for a while, for whatever reasons. And i like them as better games, and that is why i am here, and why i play them
I highly doubt you can change whether people call these games MMOs. But again, i don't care about the label. I care if a game is fun (to me).
Originally posted by ReallyNow10To take that mindset beyond gaming and into literature, would we not skip the entire LOTR and just have Frodo tossiing the Ring into the lava, ad infinitum? The journey, the struggles, the efforts, are all part of the adventure, and ultimately the fun in an MMO (or anything). No pain, no gain.
This point is absolutely correct and epitomizes everything that 'the other side' simply doesn't get.
Originally posted by nariusseldonThere is no "struggle", "effort" in MMO travel.If LOTR Is spending pages to describe how Frodo rides a horse through endless forecasts with different kinds of trees .. yes .. please cut it.Get to the old part .. adventure .. which is NOT travel...
As ReallyNow mentioned, most of the LOTR story is travel, lol. Things are happening in the (virtual) world, and they are observed and potentially interacted with by traveling. Are current games that much lobbyish in nature? Are there no interactions going on in the game world outside of instances? It must be so, else why would you liken travel to a romp through a forest which is devoid of everything except plant life?
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon. In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
Originally posted by nariusseldonThere is no "struggle", "effort" in MMO travel.
If LOTR Is spending pages to describe how Frodo rides a horse through endless forecasts with different kinds of trees .. yes .. please cut it.
Get to the old part .. adventure .. which is NOT travel...
As ReallyNow mentioned, most of the LOTR story is travel, lol. Things are happening in the (virtual) world, and they are observed and potentially interacted with by traveling. Are current games that much lobbyish in nature? Are there no interactions going on in the game world outside of instances?
I do not miss corpse runs. But then I don't like travel for the sake of travel. Not in a game where the primary source of progression are things that aren't traveling.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
As ReallyNow mentioned, most of the LOTR story is travel, lol. Things are happening in the (virtual) world, and they are observed and potentially interacted with by traveling. Are current games that much lobbyish in nature? Are there no interactions going on in the game world outside of instances? It must be so, else why would you liken travel to a romp through a forest which is devoid of everything except plant life?
While there is some travel action in LOTR, the story cuts out most of the travel the characters did and "instant travels" them to the points in the story where action takes place. The books do not have thousands of pages that detail each step Frodo took or each hill he climbed. The story gives us the highlights of their journey and skips past the mundane bits.
As ReallyNow mentioned, most of the LOTR story is travel, lol. Things are happening in the (virtual) world, and they are observed and potentially interacted with by traveling. Are current games that much lobbyish in nature? Are there no interactions going on in the game world outside of instances? It must be so, else why would you liken travel to a romp through a forest which is devoid of everything except plant life?
No. Most of LOTR story is the interesting stuff happening during travel, not travel itself.
There is no 5 page description of riding a horse on a path, then move 100 feet, then move another 100 feet, then move another 100 feet, and so on.
The book skips to the FUN part.
The same as instant travel in games like SKYRIM.
And yes, current games are that much lobbyish ... you hit a button, and you get to the good parts.
Comments
This is about accurate for me too.
Skip to the sneak, run like hell, turn and fight, stop and observe ...parts and forget the walking 10 min parts.
What you describe is not traveling, but combat and sneak gameplay.
Yes, sneaking from point A to B is fun, given that there is no long stretch of nothing that you only walk.
Play Dishonored to see how good stealth level is created.
More accurately:
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Yeah...not going to get progress in this conversation.
He's just cycling back on what he doesn't want, and not considering the factors that are being suggested, instead dividing the elements out to rant about the base factor of walking about, even though it's fairly obvious by now people are saying they want travel not simply for travel, but because it enables a greater variety of activity that's in general lost when you pair it down to specific events.
Hence his converting PGA, implying something with a broader scope due to greater space and the shift in ruleset to an 'always onward' type approach, into 'minigolf with walking'.
The analogies are going to be constantly adapted to fit the perception, rather than representing the point of the argument.
The original post shares as much of these points being ignored as well. It's not simply that travel is there or corpse runs are there, but the consequences and interaction created because of them, and the play that was able to be built off those mechanics that simply can't exist when the core pieces (travel and death) are mitigated or removed.
Travel when dealing with only the most finite aspect is walking about. It properly is a much broader concept than that and there is no logic in excluding events that are integrated into the act of travel, movement, and death itself save for focusing on a more specific kind of play.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Not with Nariusseldon and especially Axehilt, I agree.
You made some excellent points that I have decided not to quote, but it is quite clear that these two people think of travel as commuting and not as a journey.
They do have a point. Some people don't enjoy that sort of game play. But they are over stating it, and what they are asking for is arena style PvP and/or a game focused sololy on running dungeons and beating bosses. Pure destilled "endgame"
That is not an MMORPG. And many contemporary MMORPGs should never have been made, since they focus too heavily on that type of game play and only added "a persistant world" to cash in on the MMORPG label. They would have been far better games if they hadn't tried to be something they are not.
Except some don't even want to pay the token.
Travel is a commute, in nearly all MMORPGs. If we all agree it's shallow and empty in nearly every MMORPG, we can possibly move the discussion to the more interesting "How could travel be chock-full of deep gameplay?"
My personal opinion on travel or corpse runs is as irrelevant as yours or anyone's. But most of what I'm discussing isn't my opinion but rather identifying the fundamental traits of the system, and how they interact with the way we know the human mind to work. It's based on a pretty substantial body of evidence and experience:
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
That is a very naive and idealistic way of looking at this. Things can happen, sure, but overwhelming majority of times, nothing happens - nothing fun anyway. Travel is sure to be fun for the first few times at most. After that, it often starts to feel like a commute. Then it becomes a hindrance.
Same thing with corpse runs: Most of the time, they're an annoyance. The good do not outweigh the bad.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
reading this reminded me of traveling in EQ1
traveling from North Karana to Freeport
you have 2 choices
-- go the lake rathe route and come in through SoRo (involves swimming and dodging wildmen/undead in desert)
-- risk going through highpass (invis usually required) and later Kithicor forest (deadly undead at night)
travel was an adventure
EQ had no mounts for 3 years and traveling was often dangerous
EQ2 fan sites
30 Minutes is a big chunk out of what, at most, lasts maybe 4 hours in the extreme. Cant remember watching 4 hour movie..Unless you count a mini-series, but then you are back to maybe 2 hours tops per session. On the other hand.. some of my favorite all time shows are the view from the cockpit of a train or out of the windshield of a car: "Die Schönsten Bahnstrecken Deutchlands" and "Die Schönsten Autobahnstrecken Deutchlands". Look it up.. its a thing.. I'm even a little disappointed that they skip the dark tunnel bits :P
This is a passive sort of enterteinment and quite zen and relaxing in my oppinion. But definatly not what I want from a game. especially not if I had to hold down a key to keep moving. Its not like I want to watch pitch drip, paint dry, or grass grow for my entertainment.
But having distances matter strategically in a game is important to me. And so is having to do some less excting stuff, like having to go and get my corpse back (to keep on point) or going out and recouping my losses or being forced to back away from an objective to a point where I am relatively strong. Losing ground when losing and gaining ground when winning, to put it simply. Not simply fighting in place till I win.
Back to my main point, though: In a form of entertainment that I am going to enjoy for hundreds if not thousands of hours I may require a little more variety and changes of pace. While I do enjoy playing MOBAs too, even they have boring bits.. It isnt all about the teamfights.
I am looking forward to AC 4: Black Flag. They atleast seem to get what im saying. (though I am quite aware they didnt get the idea from me). Lots of traveling and constant oportunity for getting distracted from the straight and narrow path to the finish. They also get that for a single player game, not all travel is meaningful, so they have lots of fast traveling options too. But for a multiplayer game with even a minimum of strategy, position and distance has to matter. MMOs even more so.
It isnt supposed to be fun. It is supposed to add resistance to the experience and to make the game be about something other than boss fights.
It may be that corpse runs arent the way to go forward. But I think they added a lot to my experience in EQ. Im struggling to think of a feature that could replace it without removing the "quest starter element" or the "conversation starter" that springs from having the next thing to do being to go and get you stuff back somehow.
You can still get the "bad shit happens when you die and you better learn how to play better" effect from item loss or damage, xp loss, or permadeath. Or indeed just a boss reset, by some peoples standards. But they dont offer anything else
In MUDs, travel was (mostly) scripted. You paid attention to the screen because [x] attack could interrupt your transit and drop you into combat; dealt with the combat, and started the script back up. Traveling across 600 "rooms" with a memorized pattern of N E E NE E SE S D U go gate N N E NE....yep, good travel scripts were worth cash, for certain.
You know, it's interesting; I recall MMO threads with players complaining that grey mobs could dismount them...
Sure, travel can be hazardous. And it can be no risk at all. And it can be just stupid--mobs you can't even earn xp from, dropping you into a pointless combat.
Capped? Mostly time-wasting, not much risk. Level 1? Jogging anywhere is usually considerable risk.
Maybe ya'll are mutually unintelligible because you're thinking about totally different situations that you generalize into "Travel".
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I can definatly relate to that.. as I have a bothersome fly on the lose that keeps landing on me arms and hands.. Only danger it represents is getting me annoyed enough to knock over my drink or damage my computer screen trying to get at it..
HAH! I Got it! And it only doubled the time it took for me to finish this post :P
I smote the beast with my mighty hands and lightning reflexes :P
30 minutes wasn't supposed to be a number to get hung up on. It's more the realization that if 12.5%-25% of an entertainment experience is considerably shallower than the rest of the experience it's not going to work.
Uneven depth is probably the core reason it doesn't work. It's certainly possible to enjoy a FarmVille, or a movie of a train moving through scenery, where the depth of the experience is shallow throughout.
The problem comes when you have a game which is deeper than that, but has mandatory patches of shallow gameplay.
It's like watching House of Cards (drama), or Avengers (action), or Cabin in the Woods (horror/comedy) and suddenly in the middle of this highly-engaging movie they show 20-30 minutes of uneventful travel. It would completely break both the pace and mood of the movies, and would be inconsistent with the expectations which were set both before and during the movie.
Zen has a place.
Randomly injecting mandatory zen into an otherwise non-zen-like experience does not work. With zen activities you want them to either encompass the entire experience (FarmVille, Die Schönsten...) or be completely optional (fishing/crafting in WOW.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Not quite the point I was trying to make. Perhaps I shouldn't have said less exciting, but said less desirable when I made the point about corpse runs.
And when it comes to traveling I wasnt advocating uneventful traveling or a passive experience. Like it was said in a AC4 dev video they want something interesting to occur every few minutes when on the open sea. Like whales, storms, targets, being chased by others, and uncharted islands. Stuff like that.. Some of which you can chose to engage in or not and some of it will be forced on you since you arent fast enough or clever enough to outmaneuver the enemy.
In an MMO, with an overall strategic layer as well as a tactical layer, it would be important to have distance and locations mean something. That involves traveling. And while it is not pointless in that situation, can very clearly be made boring. You could have it be cutscene with an in flight movie, an open world train ride, a horse ride or jog where you had to steer, or it could be a race with sneak parts involved and with auto run toggleable so you could focus on your surroundings instead of walking.. because we can both agree walking is not the skill we want to be testing in an MMO... World of QWOP anyone?..
It could also be some deeper sailing mechanic.. where you actually had to handle a sailing ship and not some windpowered motorboat.
Oh damn.. I just said deeper mechanic....I was hoping you would have defined what you meant by deep gameplay and deep combat, before I stepped on that land mine.
First, it is not just the endgame. You can do the solo/co-opp instanced dungeons in the leveling up portion of the game too. There is a lot of LFD leveling in WOW, and D3 is purely instance when you level up (not a MMO, but close enough).
The key point is this. Whether it is a MMO is just semantics. I don't really care. It makes a better GAME for me. Even Skyrim have instanced travel. And better games should always be made. MMOs are moving away from the traditional trappings for a while, for whatever reasons. And i like them as better games, and that is why i am here, and why i play them
I highly doubt you can change whether people call these games MMOs. But again, i don't care about the label. I care if a game is fun (to me).
You just name the reason why i don't want it in games i play.
If it is not fun, there is no point doing it (for me, of course). I play games for fun, not to "make the game be about something else" just because.
Great topic for my 100th post
While I do find corpse runs a bit annoying I find no repercussions for dying in MMO's now more annoying.
Playing: TSW, D&D NW, Defiance (more the tv show than game >.> ) LotRO, DCUO
This point is absolutely correct and epitomizes everything that 'the other side' simply doesn't get.
As ReallyNow mentioned, most of the LOTR story is travel, lol. Things are happening in the (virtual) world, and they are observed and potentially interacted with by traveling. Are current games that much lobbyish in nature? Are there no interactions going on in the game world outside of instances? It must be so, else why would you liken travel to a romp through a forest which is devoid of everything except plant life?
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
reminds me of DOT DOT DOT
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I do not miss corpse runs. But then I don't like travel for the sake of travel. Not in a game where the primary source of progression are things that aren't traveling.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
on a side note,
i thought Two Towers of the book trilogy was kind of boring
it was more about the army warfare in midgard than the travels of Frodo's ring quest
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While there is some travel action in LOTR, the story cuts out most of the travel the characters did and "instant travels" them to the points in the story where action takes place. The books do not have thousands of pages that detail each step Frodo took or each hill he climbed. The story gives us the highlights of their journey and skips past the mundane bits.
No. Most of LOTR story is the interesting stuff happening during travel, not travel itself.
There is no 5 page description of riding a horse on a path, then move 100 feet, then move another 100 feet, then move another 100 feet, and so on.
The book skips to the FUN part.
The same as instant travel in games like SKYRIM.
And yes, current games are that much lobbyish ... you hit a button, and you get to the good parts.