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Facts and Opinions
Kurush
Member Posts: 1,303
I tend to alternate between factual, well-thought out posts and utter incoherency. We'll be dealing with the former today. Or will we?
I've played betas that deserved to be panned. Face of Mankind's initial offering is a good example. It failed thoroughly on several technical and artistic levels, not only falling short of expectations, but falling short of the stated goals of its designers.
Dungeons and Dragons Online definitely has flaws as a game. Your options, in terms of giving your character a distinct appearance, are somewhat lacking. In addition, the game would probably do well to add more varied content. As it stands, the lack of variety in tilesets, in addition to a range of foes that you quickly accustomed yourself to, may make the game's content seem homogenous to certain players after a short duration.
Like many of you, I have just made statements that detail my perceptions of how the game will be received by other gamers. Like many of you, those statements are largely based around an attempt to draw a line between my own feelings and what other gamers want. They are statements, but they are not facts.
That's right. I admitted it. They are opinions. The proper noun 'Dungeons and Dragons Online' contains four words. That is a fact. These statements are not facts:
1. The heavy use of instancing in Dungeons and Dragons Online is a detriment to the experience.
No, I am sorry. It does not. Let us try using Kurush's magic wand of sanity to clean up this statement!
1. The heavy use of instancing in DDO lessens its appeal to those MMORPG gamers who view pve content in large, persistent spaces as a requisite for enjoyment.
Can it be? Can it be that some people will like things that you do not? Obviously, their opinion is less valuable than your own because . . .
2. I played the pen and paper version of Dungeons and Dragons for several years. As such, I am an expert in determining whether Turbine has accomplished its stated goal of creating a reasonable analogy to the pen and paper experience in Dungeons and Dragons Online. Since I believe that the game did not accomplish this objective, it did not.
I am sorry. You are again wrong. Take it away, magic wand!
2. As of 2006, the Dungeons and Dragons role playing game has been around for thirty-two years. It is the most popular pen and paper role playing game, and it is estimated that it is currently played by over twenty million people. Personal preference is a composite of a person's many experiences and personality factors, and as such, it is impossible to infer the preference of the majority of tens of millions of people solely on the basis of my own desires.
Can it be? Can it be that people don't see things my way? Fools, the lot of them, for not sharing my perspective on this matter! After all, I know what I'm talking about because . . .
3. I currently have several characters within the game World of Warcraft. In addition, I have played several other MMORPGs. I have logged a significant number of hours within the virtual worlds of such games. Due to my experience, I am an expert in knowing what factors are required for a MMORPG to be successful. I can safely predict that Dungeons and Dragons Online will ultimately be a failure because it does not meet my personal criterion for success.
You don't say? Well I predict that my magic wand is about to open up a can of
3. During the history of this forum, it has been predicted countless times that ultimately successful games would fail and that vaporware games would become the genre's next star. While the general opinion of this forum may be used as a general indicator for the opinion of the hardcore MMORPG gaming crowd, there are myriad factors to take into consideration when predicting a game's eventual popularity. By definition, niche game are successful because they appeal to the unsatisfied fringe rather than the core of the market. The market has shown, through games like City of Heroes and Guild Wars, that an MMORPG may abandon features typical to the genre and still be successful. Since I do not have access to compiled user response to the product in question, and I am admittedly a member of the market core, having played several traditional MMORPGs, it would be unrealistic for me to predict this game's success or failure as a niche product.
But I'm an expert, you say! No, really, you don't understand. I'm much smarter than you give me credit for, after all . . .
4. I really enjoyed the role playing aspect of the pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons. I find that Dungeons and Dragons Online simply cannot recreate that experience. With this in mind, I think it is fair to assume that this game will not please Dungeons and Dragons fans.
Of course! I had a similar experience myself. You see, I once ate frozen yogurt. It was much colder than regular yogurt, which very much surprised me. They have the same name, if you did not notice. Therefore, I can assume that anybody who likes regular yogurt will find these frozen treats to be an abomination. Please, stand up cry out in unison, "It's not the same!" If you do that, I can zap all of you at once with Mister Wandy.
4. While it is true that Dungeons and Dragons Online does not allow for the same degree of imagination and improvisation that you might find in a pen and paper role playing game, this is a consequence of the shift in medium, and it does not necessarily render the experience any lesser or greater. It would be unrealistic to assume that a person's taste in role playing games directly translates to their taste in video games, and it is with this in mind that Turbine created Dungeons and Dragons Online.
I can hear the cries now! Lies, all lies, they say! Ah, but there's the beauty of it. An honest opinion can never be a lie, can it? By the same token, it can never be a fact. With that, I close this commentary, opening it up for whatever clever responses might follow. To be honest, I don't engage in forum debate very often, so I will likely not respond to the messages on this thread. My only request is that the trolls keep the "you can shove that wand you know where" posts to a minimum.
-Kurush
Comments
Do you honestly believe that 99.9% of the subscribers to this forum have any time for this kind of soul searching self appraisal.
Of course not.
They all have their own magic wands which totaly negate your attempt at rationalisation and logic if it means they have to accept opinions which differ to theirs.
Now stop waving that bloody wand at me unless it can conjure up a pint of Guiness and a meat pie
someone has to post a reply before me, how dare they!
None the less, thank you for your diatribe Mr. Wizard. It was very amusing to read it but not unlike DDO you fail to make much sense, what exactly are you trying to say here? By admiting that you know nothing about nothing, is the meaning of true wisdom?
No one seems to answer simply without going off on tangets; one simple question. Do you think DDO sucks? Just answer yes or no without any grey areas. You seem to be eloquent with your writing and it's hard to imagine a wordsmith such as yourself, would subject yourself to an experience akin to mentally challanged child with a football helmet banging their head against a wall.
I think your just here to wax poetic, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Have you seen the movie "The Weather Man"? It's a really depresing exercise in film, however there is one scene that was funny, where he takes of his gloves and slaps his ex-wifes new fiance, and then proceeds to narrate that you should never slap a man with gloves in front of your father or he will definately think you are a homosexual. That kind of sums up this whole thread nicely.
I have never played Dungeons and Dragons Online.
I disagree with Kurush's opinion yet I respect it. I wish we could have more constructive critism and respect for one another. I don't understand why some people have to ravage about other peoples "unoffensive" opinions.
One of the blessing of coming from iraq is that some of us quickly learn that if we cannot live together in harmony....then people and countires are destroyed.
Good review mate, although I hope you change your mind about DDO.
I just noticed I have 3 stars now.. Huzzah, go me. C'mon post count, pretty soon I will be rank 5 and outlevel everyone and pwn them in forum PVP, the new winter olympic sport that offends everyone equally.
What does it matter if its opinion or fact when reviewing a game? It's "fact" to that person writing.
A simple scan of the DD0 forums can get you a well rounded view of what people think of DD0. You can even go check out the D&D3e forums at ENWorld.
The game will floop so horribly unless they make major changes. It's unfortunate that they ignored the pleas of the alpha and beta testers before release.
Cheers.
http://www.greycouncil.org/
You do realize he was arguing in favor of DDO, and basically saying that whiners like myself are full of hot air. Umm.. hehehe this is too funny. It's no wonder, you like DDO you contradict yourself every minute it seems, and that game is the biggest contradiction ever.
Let's not get political about a stinking video game. The world of Ebberon is a scary enough place without being reminded of all the turmoils of the real one.
That's why I wrote this.
Kurush, I love your post.
And I would like to humbly proclaim that any person that disagrees with what Kurush wrote has the IQ of Mr. Shrub.
This clearly has little to do with DDO but it is a entertaining pun directed at our local trolls.
Cheers trolls! (btw, I still think you trolls are disgusting even though your existence inspired this great post)
Why are you calling our Iraqi friend a Shrub? I agree with you that Kurush is a cool dude and his post worthy of an afternoon read. However, I am very disturbed by his lack of soybean/tofuti representation in his yogurt comparison. Tofu has been descriminated for far too long, and is equally a tasty treat in a solid or liquid concoction.
OR....
You can just say...
DDO is instanced.
DDO is not releasing with druids or monks.
DDO is not PnP.
DDO will cost $$.
DDO will not release with any form of PvP.
You can only recover at a shrine or bar (READ: Every mission you have finite resources).
etc...
Now to me those are all facts... Now... many people will probably have opinions and think I'm knocking DDO. No... I just selectively listed facts.
example:
"No PvP" will make some people happy others sad... but listing it in the manner I did probably caused most readers to think I was complaining about a lack of PvP... and to that all I say is "Unless you phsyic, you have no idea what I think" The only approperate response is "sooo?" or "Yes."
If you try to agrue vs facts... saying something like "Well PvP would be stupid in DDO, that's why it isn't in" your just blowing hot air... because no matter how hard you try to agrue, that fact will remain true that "DDO will not release with any form of PvP"
Pretty clever post, we've seen far to few of thoose around here lately.
@ Bent
Yes thoose are facts, but you put them out as BAD facts, wereas if these features are good or bad are opinions, not in fact, facts.
Wich I think was the whole point the OP were trying to make.
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Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts.
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That's the most asanine thing anyone has ever said in the DDO forum so far. How is a fact bad or good????? A fact is a fact, a shred of undisputable truth. The truth is what it is, there can not be a bad respresentation of the truth unless he is lying in which case it becomes a "bad" fact.
The only thing you can accuse him of is not displaying all the facts, and if you have more to add that you may think are overlooked please add them, otherwise zip it.
Also, when I say facts, I don't mean opinions such as "the maturity of the playerbase is so wonderful" or "the game requires skill and strategy" Those are all subjective opinions and do not constitute facts. So far nobody in favor of DDO in these forums can state in black & white without injecting their own spin.
so...
Ok, you are putting opinion and facts together in the same sentance. All I am saying, and this is not even about DDO, is that Bent listed some facts. Are you saying he is lying? Then what are you saying? I am saying a Fact can neither be good or bad, it is a fact, plain and simple. I am not waiting for facts that show this game in favorable light or in a bad light, I stated if you have other facts to state that are missing please do so. I am not disputining opinion or what people may or may not like. I am saying it is a stupid thing to call facts good or bad as they are supposedly purely truth. In your "opinion" the fact is percieved as good or bad towards that game but again this is opinion not fact. If the poster had stated more clearly what he ment, we would not be having this conversation. So where is the fault in logic?
To the OP, you have put some thought into your opinions and I can respect that. And to a degree you are correct, people can't make a 100% certain prediction that this game will win or lose regardless of whatever the final number of players involved. A given number can be used by any number of positions to show a win or a lose as far as that goes.
As to my experience, it doesn't make me better - it is just a little info for you, I have been playing dnd for 30 years as of this month and I was on the ddo forum the week it opened. So you might imagine I had a desire to see this game through. Several things were appealing in the initial description of the game: The most noticable item to me is the xp for quest completion rather than mob farming coupled with the option that killing some mobs would actually cost you xp. A great dynamic to make it different from the current molds and which was similar to many (I didn't say most!) dnd campaigns which I played in (especially my U.S. Navy days).
Lets take this one issue and think about it a bit. You have a game, which when ddo first opened, most of us thought they would max character levels at 20. Quest only XP type of advancement system rather than hunting mobs in an open area. What could be an issue with that? In a game where you get xp for killing mobs, you can just run out and kill more mobs to get that xp. But in this game you can only quest for xp.
While the questing for xp is good, what the concern is how many quests are there available? If quests give too many xp you advance too quickly and with only 10 levels of play, that is rough. So you have to reduce the xp per quest gained. Which means you need design more quests. This is the real issue from my experience of DDO. The game is so quest dependant they need to up the number of quests available by a significant number. IMO, there should be an order of magnitude more quests available for players to experience. This is where I see a general problem in their design approach vs their product result.
The game still needs a saving throw.
And that's a fact.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
A fact can be presented without opinion. And someone can have an opinion about a fact. Posting facts about a game is redundant, we already know it. Discussing those facts by adding your opinion is what makes for discussion. We already know, as an example, that DDO uses instances for questing. Posting that brings nothing new to the conversation. Posting that DDO has instancing and you think it brings more cohesion to the group makes for a discussion point.
so...
A fact can be presented without opinion. And someone can have an opinion about a fact. Posting facts about a game is redundant, we already know it. Discussing those facts by adding your opinion is what makes for discussion. We already know, as an example, that DDO uses instances for questing. Posting that brings nothing new to the conversation. Posting that DDO has instancing and you think it brings more cohesion to the group makes for a discussion point.
You are the one confused here, my statement was in direct correlation to the statement that those facts the other person listed were "BAD FACTS". I am saying how can a fact be BAD? A fact is truth. People's opinions are what make facts bad or good. Everything else I don't really care or give 2 flying shits about. This is what is in debate. Why do you have to keep dragging DDO and opinions into this. You assume I wish to argue about the DDO game and I do not, I am saying with my statement previously.. "that is crazy how can a fact be bad or good, it's the truth regardless. The commentator of the facts listed facts from the game, if those facts are untrue then please state otherwise, if facts were left out "the good opinionated facts", then please add those so called "good facts" to the thread. Otherwise don't start nit picking about facts.
So yes why even bring this up on a DDO message board, well thats the flow of this thread and it has gone off on a tangent. I did not state the facts, I am wondering how the fact itself is bad or good, when the statement is a fact and not an opinion.
Ok, we all agree, facts are facts. Opinions are opinions. When someone posts something as a fact, it's just that, a fact. When they say if it's good or bad, it becomes an opinion on the fact. Blah blah.. dead thread.
so...