lol .. are we talking about entertainment here? I am glad they don't "influence much more of our lives".
For those of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s, TV influenced our lives a ton. Entertainment shapes culture.
But is that a good thing? Do you talk like a tv character? Or dress like one? Don't get me wrong, i do enjoy a good tv show. But i was not going to start befriending 13 years old girls and hide them in a cabin just because that seems cool on The Stranger Things season 2.
While Stranger Things is great and all, can't say I would be adverse to befriending a few hot female prison inmates
"I'll be back" c'mon who doesn't love quoting famous movie lines
"Not even in the face of Armageddon"
Stranger Things is far over rated. Its not bad...but it doesnt rise to the quality of its fame by a long shot. All my personal friends (yes its true I have them) agree
Reminds me those guys who were like "I don't understand all my relatives and friends voted for Clinton, how could Trump have won?"
wat?
no I was just pointing out that I am not the only person on the planet who thinks its over rated and all my friends thought the same thing independently which is EXTREEMLY statically unlikely to happen in a micro-vacuum.
regardless. yes the majority of people love it, but the reality is the plot and story line is really not that amazing.
if you want something more intresting let me know I have a good list
I like Stranger Things a lot myself. I think it is very reminiscent of the 80s aside from the kids being too well behaved, the kids being too intelligent, and there was no nude scene which was almost always a staple of horror movies from the 80s. It's also not scary. None the less it's fun to watch. It's the 80s modified to fit modern day belief of how life should be (family oriented with a focus on intelligence over fun and stupidity). Having grown up in the 80s and 90s I prefer the actual 80s movies, but that doesn't take away from it being an entertaining show. To each their own.
what people are falling over themselves about on Stranger Things is the setting. I agree the 80s redue is done extreemly well.
But the actual story and actual plot is not really much to it.
I actually agree with you about something!
I too thought Stranger Things was overrated, still a good watch but nothing particularly special. But then, I don't really like the 80s, so the nostalgia didn't touch me.
Man in the High Castle was definitely superior, but like a lot of big budget productions it suffered from really slow pacing. I found that when I tried to watch it one episode at a time, I was constantly waiting for things to actually happen, but when I binge watched it I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
Absolutely. The themepark model is probably the most cloned model in history.
I've already cited 3 examples of MMOs that do not qualify as WoW clones by my definition. EVE, Runescape, Wurm. There are other titles that could fit in there. Darkfall, Mortal Online, etc. I'm not going to give game devs a pass and say "These are not clones" just because 99% of MMO developers choose to make clones though.
But the ammount of features shared in common by themeparks is narrow enough to consider them all clones IMO. Age of Empires and Total War exist in the same genre (Real time strategy.) Empire Earth is an Age of Empires clone because it follows the same general model. Total War is not, it just shares a few key elements.
Themeparks aren't a real genre. It's just a label thrown over the same general game model cloned so many times people started calling it a genre.
GW2 or ESO are about as much WoW clones than WoW is an AC1 clone... I mean, AC1 had quests, WoW has quests, they can only be clones right?
The thing is there are more elements these games share in common than there are that set them apart.
I'm describing a game.
1. In this game you start by picking your race and class. (Just eliminated EVE, Runescape, Wurm, Darkfall etc. as they are all classless systems where your role is defined by what you do, not something chosen on character creation.) 2. You then are thrust into a storyline that takes you through a series of zones where you can find quests to level. The storyline may or may not be something you can abandon if desires but the primary content of the game will still be leveling through quests. (Again EVE, Runescape, Wurm Darkfall etc. don't fit this mold.) 3. Once you are done leveling to max you take part in "endgame content". Primarily group dungeons, raids, and structured PvP content. The primary purpose of which is to get your "endgame gear." (Again, not describing EVE, Wurm or Darkfall with this as they are very unstructured sandboxes with no definite endgame objectives. Runescape maybe a bit.)
But I could be describing WoW here. I could be describing ESO. I could be desrcibing SWTOR or Archeage. I'm not as familiar with GW2 but I know for at least the first part of the game it fits this model.
With such massive and important similarities things like the fact ESO uses a different aiming system or allows more customization within a class really pale in comparison that for all essential purposes, it's really the same damn game as World of Warcraft.
EVE essentially has quests in the form of missions. Darkfall has quests that are straight up called quests. Runescape has quests. "Quests or no quests" isn't the meaningful distinction here. It's that when I play those titles I don't feel like I've played the exact same title hundreds of times before (With the exception of Mortal Online being a straight up Darkfall clone.)
Going back to my RTS example. "I'm describing a game. You start with a small number of units that gather resources and build structures, and structure that produces these units..."
I could be describing Age of Empires, Empire Earth, Starcraft, Halo Wars etc. But you already know I'm not describing a Total War game.
That's the difference between clones like ESO and GW2, and actual, original titles.
lol .. are we talking about entertainment here? I am glad they don't "influence much more of our lives".
For those of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s, TV influenced our lives a ton. Entertainment shapes culture.
But is that a good thing? Do you talk like a tv character? Or dress like one? Don't get me wrong, i do enjoy a good tv show. But i was not going to start befriending 13 years old girls and hide them in a cabin just because that seems cool on The Stranger Things season 2.
While Stranger Things is great and all, can't say I would be adverse to befriending a few hot female prison inmates
"I'll be back" c'mon who doesn't love quoting famous movie lines
"Not even in the face of Armageddon"
Stranger Things is far over rated. Its not bad...but it doesnt rise to the quality of its fame by a long shot. All my personal friends (yes its true I have them) agree
Reminds me those guys who were like "I don't understand all my relatives and friends voted for Clinton, how could Trump have won?"
wat?
no I was just pointing out that I am not the only person on the planet who thinks its over rated and all my friends thought the same thing independently which is EXTREEMLY statically unlikely to happen in a micro-vacuum.
regardless. yes the majority of people love it, but the reality is the plot and story line is really not that amazing.
if you want something more intresting let me know I have a good list
I like Stranger Things a lot myself. I think it is very reminiscent of the 80s aside from the kids being too well behaved, the kids being too intelligent, and there was no nude scene which was almost always a staple of horror movies from the 80s. It's also not scary. None the less it's fun to watch. It's the 80s modified to fit modern day belief of how life should be (family oriented with a focus on intelligence over fun and stupidity). Having grown up in the 80s and 90s I prefer the actual 80s movies, but that doesn't take away from it being an entertaining show. To each their own.
what people are falling over themselves about on Stranger Things is the setting. I agree the 80s redue is done extreemly well.
But the actual story and actual plot is not really much to it.
I actually agree with you about something!
I too thought Stranger Things was overrated, still a good watch but nothing particularly special. But then, I don't really like the 80s, so the nostalgia didn't touch me.
Man in the High Castle was definitely superior, but like a lot of big budget productions it suffered from really slow pacing. I found that when I tried to watch it one episode at a time, I was constantly waiting for things to actually happen, but when I binge watched it I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more.
Just reading the description of Man in High Castle makes me feel like I don't want to watch it. It sounds too serious for escapism. If I am going to watch something serious it might as well be a documentary about something of that nature. At least the story and information are usually real.
The only difference in Total War that disqualifies it under your description is that units are recruited directly through the general/commander as opposed to through a building. Still requires buildings to recruit units, including advanced units.
That doesn't seem like a huge difference to me. The way battles play out seems to be a much larger difference between Total War and other RTSs.
I too thought Stranger Things was overrated, still a good watch but nothing particularly special. But then, I don't really like the 80s, so the nostalgia didn't touch me.
Man in the High Castle was definitely superior, but like a lot of big budget productions it suffered from really slow pacing. I found that when I tried to watch it one episode at a time, I was constantly waiting for things to actually happen, but when I binge watched it I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more.
Just reading the description of Man in High Castle makes me feel like I don't want to watch it. It sounds too serious for escapism. If I am going to watch something serious it might as well be a documentary about something of that nature. At least the story and information are usually real.
I often do that for the same reason (documentaries)
That said Man in the High Castle is exceptionally good.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
The only difference in Total War that disqualifies it under your description is that units are recruited directly through the general/commander as opposed to through a building. Still requires buildings to recruit units, including advanced units.
That doesn't seem like a huge difference to me. The way battles play out seems to be a much larger difference between Total War and other RTSs.
Not really the point I was going for. The point I was going for is with any Age of Empires / Starcraft clone style RTS I can describe a general process they all follow from the start to the end of a match and be fairly specific about it at points, and you won't know if I'm describing an Age of Empires Game, StarCraft, Command and Conquer, Empire Earth etc. because they all play out the same general way from start to finish. They are clone titles.
Sure there are some differences. For instance in Age of Empires you advance through ages while in StarCraft upgrades to your command center / hive / nexus are the closest things and aren't nearly as big of a deal. In Age of Empires you have a large amount of civilizations with only a few key differences while in Starcraft you have 3 very unique races that all play very differently.
But the features which unite these titles are greater than the ones that divide them.
WoW, ESO, SWTOR etc. all play out the same way. They are games built on the same basic framework that follow the same basic model from start to finish with a few key differences.
I simply used that example because is the first feature in a long list of processes that are different for Total War games and Age of Empires, and the same for Age of Empires and other titles that are clones. (Reluctant to say Age of Empires Clone because I'm not sure if Warcraft or AoE came first or if they ripped the model off something else entirely, and unlike with WoW no single title has really made itself the single undisputable king of that series of clones.)
What has mostly happened to the progression of MMORPGs is that computers stopped getting faster. There were a lot of good ideas, that were implausible back in the day and still implausible now.
We won't see much improvement until computers actually make a leap in something more meaningful than graphics.
Things besides graphics aren't dependant on hardware speed though, so I'm not sure why you think more would help. We've got enough hardware for good physics simulation, or for better AI if that existed. We've got more than enough hardware for interactive story, intricate game mechanics, voice chat, deeply developed NPCs, less predictable monsters...
I want to help design and develop a PvE-focused, solo-friendly, sandpark MMO which combines crafting, monster hunting, and story. So PM me if you are starting one.
What has mostly happened to the progression of MMORPGs is that computers stopped getting faster. There were a lot of good ideas, that were implausible back in the day and still implausible now.
We won't see much improvement until computers actually make a leap in something more meaningful than graphics.
Things besides graphics aren't dependant on hardware speed though, so I'm not sure why you think more would help. We've got enough hardware for good physics simulation, or for better AI if that existed. We've got more than enough hardware for interactive story, intricate game mechanics, voice chat, deeply developed NPCs, less predictable monsters...
Very true, @sunandshadow. There is plenty of hardware on the client end to do much more elaborate things than games attempt. The problem, in my view, is that games aren't attempting to do anything more elaborate. Processing power is adequate for much more difficult applications, why haven't we seen game developers attempt anything that can't be reproduced with analog dice?
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
What has mostly happened to the progression of MMORPGs is that computers stopped getting faster. There were a lot of good ideas, that were implausible back in the day and still implausible now.
We won't see much improvement until computers actually make a leap in something more meaningful than graphics.
Things besides graphics aren't dependant on hardware speed though, so I'm not sure why you think more would help. We've got enough hardware for good physics simulation, or for better AI if that existed. We've got more than enough hardware for interactive story, intricate game mechanics, voice chat, deeply developed NPCs, less predictable monsters...
Very true, @sunandshadow. There is plenty of hardware on the client end to do much more elaborate things than games attempt. The problem, in my view, is that games aren't attempting to do anything more elaborate. Processing power is adequate for much more difficult applications, why haven't we seen game developers attempt anything that can't be reproduced with analog dice?
actually games are, just not in the AAA market. I hate to sound like a broken record but its true. yes the graphics are generally not the same but believe me, the feature list blows the fuck away AAA
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
lol .. are we talking about entertainment here? I am glad they don't "influence much more of our lives".
For those of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s, TV influenced our lives a ton. Entertainment shapes culture.
But is that a good thing? Do you talk like a tv character? Or dress like one? Don't get me wrong, i do enjoy a good tv show. But i was not going to start befriending 13 years old girls and hide them in a cabin just because that seems cool on The Stranger Things season 2.
While Stranger Things is great and all, can't say I would be adverse to befriending a few hot female prison inmates
"I'll be back" c'mon who doesn't love quoting famous movie lines
"Not even in the face of Armageddon"
Stranger Things is far over rated. Its not bad...but it doesnt rise to the quality of its fame by a long shot. All my personal friends (yes its true I have them) agree
Reminds me those guys who were like "I don't understand all my relatives and friends voted for Clinton, how could Trump have won?"
wat?
no I was just pointing out that I am not the only person on the planet who thinks its over rated and all my friends thought the same thing independently which is EXTREEMLY statically unlikely to happen in a micro-vacuum.
regardless. yes the majority of people love it, but the reality is the plot and story line is really not that amazing.
if you want something more intresting let me know I have a good list
I don't watch it myself, tried a couple of episodes and got bored. I was just pointing out that the fact your relatives don't like (or like) something rarely makes it a generality.
I personally prefer series like Game of Thrones, Frontier, The Last Kingdom, Outlander, Westworld, Star Trek Discovery, etc...
Where you lived growing up instead of riding around on BMX bikes and battling evil aliens and government agents like we did children were probably seiging castles and battling evil religious orders like the Dark Templars.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
What has mostly happened to the progression of MMORPGs is that computers stopped getting faster. There were a lot of good ideas, that were implausible back in the day and still implausible now.
We won't see much improvement until computers actually make a leap in something more meaningful than graphics.
Things besides graphics aren't dependant on hardware speed though, so I'm not sure why you think more would help. We've got enough hardware for good physics simulation, or for better AI if that existed. We've got more than enough hardware for interactive story, intricate game mechanics, voice chat, deeply developed NPCs, less predictable monsters...
Very true, @sunandshadow. There is plenty of hardware on the client end to do much more elaborate things than games attempt. The problem, in my view, is that games aren't attempting to do anything more elaborate. Processing power is adequate for much more difficult applications, why haven't we seen game developers attempt anything that can't be reproduced with analog dice?
actually games are, just not in the AAA market. I hate to sound like a broken record but its true. yes the graphics are generally not the same but believe me, the feature list blows the fuck away AAA
Indie market have anything like Fallout NV or Fallout 4?
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
your love for the show (as well as most people) is not because of the plot or story but rather because of nostalgia for what feels now like a better time.
Wrong assumption .. at least about me.
I love the show because of good characters, and cool moments like eleven can snap necks with just a flick of her head. The show can be set in 2017 or 1950, and I probably will still love it.
wow .. now i have more respect for you. I have never dressed beyond the narrow parameters of "business casual" for decades
So you were influenced Alex P. Keaton in Family Ties. You didn't even know it.
lol .. of course you assume I watched Family Ties. May be i only watched star trek TNG and figured that has little to do with real life.
It's okay. I was trying to give you a semi complement there because it was a good show. I could have used Ricky Schroeder and Silver Spoons instead. Even I'm not that mean.
haha .. thank you! Actually to be honest, i *did* watch Family Ties and love the Alex Keaton character. So you may actually be right.
Silver spoons .. not so much. Now i am to admit that while i don't dress up as Picard, i did have a Picard action figure in my collection. I will vehemently deny that is a "strong influence" on my life though ... lol.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
What has mostly happened to the progression of MMORPGs is that computers stopped getting faster. There were a lot of good ideas, that were implausible back in the day and still implausible now.
We won't see much improvement until computers actually make a leap in something more meaningful than graphics.
Things besides graphics aren't dependant on hardware speed though, so I'm not sure why you think more would help. We've got enough hardware for good physics simulation, or for better AI if that existed. We've got more than enough hardware for interactive story, intricate game mechanics, voice chat, deeply developed NPCs, less predictable monsters...
Very true, @sunandshadow. There is plenty of hardware on the client end to do much more elaborate things than games attempt. The problem, in my view, is that games aren't attempting to do anything more elaborate. Processing power is adequate for much more difficult applications, why haven't we seen game developers attempt anything that can't be reproduced with analog dice?
I disagree.
I am a software developer. I have worked on everything from large defence contracts through to small websites. I have also worked for a good games company, admittedly in QA rather than dev, but I hung out with the devs a lot.
Hardware is still a very real limitation. You would probably be shocked at just how many calculations are going on every second when playing a game. It is staggering! Not only is the volume staggering, but it all has to be perfectly timed otherwise everything falls apart.
The real barrier to improvement is on the software end. Not in terms of designing interesting things, there are plenty of capable devs for that, but in terms of how we do the fundamentals. I'll give you an example.
Games are sequential - one thing follows another - so timing is extremely crucial to a game running properly. I cannot calculate whether I have shot you before I have calculated where I am aiming, then where you are moving, then whether there is a collision or not. It is thus vitally important that calculations happen in the right order.
What this means is that most games still only utilise a single core on your processor. This is the easiest way to ensure the correct order is followed. Multi-threading (calculations being done on different cores) is an extremely complicated thing to get correct - not due to the hardware, but due to writing the software properly. So, I have a quad-core processor, but most games only use one core. That one core typically sits at 90-95% load whilst the other 3 idle at 20-30%. The software is causing me to hit a hardware limitation.
This gives us the illusion that buying new processors means we're getting more performance, but for gaming that isn't true. We are still hitting hardware limitations on a per-core basis and will continue to do so until game engines improve. This is obviously a generalisation - some games do utilise multi-threading.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
What has mostly happened to the progression of MMORPGs is that computers stopped getting faster. There were a lot of good ideas, that were implausible back in the day and still implausible now.
We won't see much improvement until computers actually make a leap in something more meaningful than graphics.
Things besides graphics aren't dependant on hardware speed though, so I'm not sure why you think more would help. We've got enough hardware for good physics simulation, or for better AI if that existed. We've got more than enough hardware for interactive story, intricate game mechanics, voice chat, deeply developed NPCs, less predictable monsters...
Very true, @sunandshadow. There is plenty of hardware on the client end to do much more elaborate things than games attempt. The problem, in my view, is that games aren't attempting to do anything more elaborate. Processing power is adequate for much more difficult applications, why haven't we seen game developers attempt anything that can't be reproduced with analog dice?
I disagree.
I am a software developer. I have worked on everything from large defence contracts through to small websites. I have also worked for a good games company, admittedly in QA rather than dev, but I hung out with the devs a lot.
Hardware is still a very real limitation. You would probably be shocked at just how many calculations are going on every second when playing a game. It is staggering! Not only is the volume staggering, but it all has to be perfectly timed otherwise everything falls apart.
The real barrier to improvement is on the software end. Not in terms of designing interesting things, there are plenty of capable devs for that, but in terms of how we do the fundamentals. I'll give you an example.
Games are sequential - one thing follows another - so timing is extremely crucial to a game running properly. I cannot calculate whether I have shot you before I have calculated where I am aiming, then where you are moving, then whether there is a collision or not. It is thus vitally important that calculations happen in the right order.
What this means is that most games still only utilise a single core on your processor. This is the easiest way to ensure the correct order is followed. Multi-threading (calculations being done on different cores) is an extremely complicated thing to get correct - not due to the hardware, but due to writing the software properly. So, I have a quad-core processor, but most games only use one core. That one core typically sits at 90-95% load whilst the other 3 idle at 20-30%. The software is causing me to hit a hardware limitation.
This gives us the illusion that buying new processors means we're getting more performance, but for gaming that isn't true. We are still hitting hardware limitations on a per-core basis and will continue to do so until game engines improve. This is obviously a generalisation - some games do utilise multi-threading.
CPU intensive calculations seem to be apparent in a game like Civilization. As you progress through the game it can take quite a while to get to the next turn even with a powerful CPU.
I've tried some multithreading myself in Windows via both the Windows API and.NET. I find it fairly confusing. Especially when you need to move data between threads. To me, some things in programming appear to be made overly complex. Timing things is confusing as well. It seems odd that you can tie up the main message loop in an application if something takes a while for the CPU to finish processing. I find it is almost required for doing anything regarding connecting to remote computers. If you try retrieving data on a remote computer with WMI in .NET and don't use a thread your application will freeze for a while there is an error connecting or retrieving the data.
I am a software developer. I have worked on everything from large defence contracts through to small websites. I have also worked for a good games company, admittedly in QA rather than dev, but I hung out with the devs a lot.
Hardware is still a very real limitation. You would probably be shocked at just how many calculations are going on every second when playing a game. It is staggering! Not only is the volume staggering, but it all has to be perfectly timed otherwise everything falls apart.
The real barrier to improvement is on the software end. Not in terms of designing interesting things, there are plenty of capable devs for that, but in terms of how we do the fundamentals. I'll give you an example.
Games are sequential - one thing follows another - so timing is extremely crucial to a game running properly. I cannot calculate whether I have shot you before I have calculated where I am aiming, then where you are moving, then whether there is a collision or not. It is thus vitally important that calculations happen in the right order.
What this means is that most games still only utilise a single core on your processor. This is the easiest way to ensure the correct order is followed. Multi-threading (calculations being done on different cores) is an extremely complicated thing to get correct - not due to the hardware, but due to writing the software properly. So, I have a quad-core processor, but most games only use one core. That one core typically sits at 90-95% load whilst the other 3 idle at 20-30%. The software is causing me to hit a hardware limitation.
This gives us the illusion that buying new processors means we're getting more performance, but for gaming that isn't true. We are still hitting hardware limitations on a per-core basis and will continue to do so until game engines improve. This is obviously a generalisation - some games do utilise multi-threading.
Some games are CPU heavier then others but you certainly have a point, even though the CPUs are far more powerful we can't use all that power in the same way as we did when we just had a single core.
The graphics card is another matter but since games tend to improve the graphics as the cards improve it limits what can be done.
In any case does most devs aim for a game that can run on most computers (not just on a few state of the art) since they want to maximize their potential playerbase and that means they will technologicalla speaking not use that much resources.
Now, If VR actually becomes something people feel they must have (with good enough games) enough of the gamers would likely upgrade so their computers can run far better looking games just like many gamers got 3D graphics cards rather fast after they came out but we still would get a lot of limitations.
What we really need to break all this is nano, or even better quark scale computers. Something that makes modern computers as obsolete as the microship did to vacuum tubes way back.
Of course there is a lot more you could get out of modern computers, at least in theory. The Commodore 64 certainly used a lot higher percentage of it's power but I fear we would need a far better OS for that, something custom made for games. And yes, that is incredible hard and expensive or someone would already have done it.
Well the opposite of a pessimist,i had high hopes for the market and how much they would evolve.
I guess what nobody figured was the high cost of inflation,i mean i remember 30 cents a gallon let alone 1.15 a litre for gas and a choco bar was a nickle. Point being,most of the big studios have the knowledge ,the people but either don't have the money or won't commit that much money so instead look for designs that are cost effective.
I see 99% are cheap cost effective games,so i obviously get miffed when i see some BS scores and reviews handing out 8's or 9's for HALF ASSED corner cutting work.
The industry is capable of giving us that absolutely drop dead gorgeous ,amazing full of content game but they won't.So do we continue to pay PRO money for amateur game design,i guess seeing the market of late,we do keep paying for sub par game design because nobody is pushing the market.
Too bad really,i had very high hopes,back in the early 80's.. 90's.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I miss the social aspect and the longevity of the communities. Gone are the days where you could play one MMO with the same people for 5+ years.
Good. I don't play games for community and people. I treat most other players as NPCs anyway. If i want to make friends, i have plenty in real life.
and this is exactly why the genre is where it is today, and why we have no AAA MMOs being made anymore.
What are you talking about? Wasn't Destiny 2 just got released? Don't tell me it is not AAA.
And yeah .. the genre is exactly where i like it to be today. More fun, less grind, no dependency on others for fun.
Their aren't MMORPGs being made anymore is what he is meaning.
If he means "MMORPGs" instead of "MMOs", may be he should be more careful with his words and say so. I thought people here cares about accurate usage of their words .. i guess that does not apply to some.
Plus, i have no obligation to "guess" what he actually means, instead of just go by his words.
make a deliberately offensive or provocative online post with the aim of upsetting someone or eliciting an angry response from them.
"if people are obviously trolling then I'll delete your posts and do my best to ban you"
wow .. you just describe what you are trying to do to me.
But .. i am the bigger man. I am not going to be angry. I am just going to be amused. In fact, i am shocked that you will twist my post about using accurate language, which MANY has done so before here, to something twisted (see my pun there!).
So let me ask you this .. do you disagree that language should be used accurately? Or that you do not think there is a difference between MMO and MMORPG?
I get more enjoyment out of multiplayer match/arena type games.
Every now and then I will play an MMO for a few months. Then I just get burnt out from almost always soloing, and the community being a bunch of triggered, dimwits.
Comments
I too thought Stranger Things was overrated, still a good watch but nothing particularly special. But then, I don't really like the 80s, so the nostalgia didn't touch me.
Man in the High Castle was definitely superior, but like a lot of big budget productions it suffered from really slow pacing. I found that when I tried to watch it one episode at a time, I was constantly waiting for things to actually happen, but when I binge watched it I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more.
I'm describing a game.
1. In this game you start by picking your race and class. (Just eliminated EVE, Runescape, Wurm, Darkfall etc. as they are all classless systems where your role is defined by what you do, not something chosen on character creation.)
2. You then are thrust into a storyline that takes you through a series of zones where you can find quests to level. The storyline may or may not be something you can abandon if desires but the primary content of the game will still be leveling through quests. (Again EVE, Runescape, Wurm Darkfall etc. don't fit this mold.)
3. Once you are done leveling to max you take part in "endgame content". Primarily group dungeons, raids, and structured PvP content. The primary purpose of which is to get your "endgame gear." (Again, not describing EVE, Wurm or Darkfall with this as they are very unstructured sandboxes with no definite endgame objectives. Runescape maybe a bit.)
But I could be describing WoW here. I could be describing ESO. I could be desrcibing SWTOR or Archeage. I'm not as familiar with GW2 but I know for at least the first part of the game it fits this model.
With such massive and important similarities things like the fact ESO uses a different aiming system or allows more customization within a class really pale in comparison that for all essential purposes, it's really the same damn game as World of Warcraft.
EVE essentially has quests in the form of missions. Darkfall has quests that are straight up called quests. Runescape has quests. "Quests or no quests" isn't the meaningful distinction here. It's that when I play those titles I don't feel like I've played the exact same title hundreds of times before (With the exception of Mortal Online being a straight up Darkfall clone.)
Going back to my RTS example. "I'm describing a game. You start with a small number of units that gather resources and build structures, and structure that produces these units..."
I could be describing Age of Empires, Empire Earth, Starcraft, Halo Wars etc. But you already know I'm not describing a Total War game.
That's the difference between clones like ESO and GW2, and actual, original titles.
That doesn't seem like a huge difference to me. The way battles play out seems to be a much larger difference between Total War and other RTSs.
That said Man in the High Castle is exceptionally good.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Sure there are some differences. For instance in Age of Empires you advance through ages while in StarCraft upgrades to your command center / hive / nexus are the closest things and aren't nearly as big of a deal. In Age of Empires you have a large amount of civilizations with only a few key differences while in Starcraft you have 3 very unique races that all play very differently.
But the features which unite these titles are greater than the ones that divide them.
WoW, ESO, SWTOR etc. all play out the same way. They are games built on the same basic framework that follow the same basic model from start to finish with a few key differences.
I simply used that example because is the first feature in a long list of processes that are different for Total War games and Age of Empires, and the same for Age of Empires and other titles that are clones. (Reluctant to say Age of Empires Clone because I'm not sure if Warcraft or AoE came first or if they ripped the model off something else entirely, and unlike with WoW no single title has really made itself the single undisputable king of that series of clones.)
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
yes the graphics are generally not the same but believe me, the feature list blows the fuck away AAA
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Might need a new game soon.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
haha .. thank you! Actually to be honest, i *did* watch Family Ties and love the Alex Keaton character. So you may actually be right.
Silver spoons .. not so much. Now i am to admit that while i don't dress up as Picard, i did have a Picard action figure in my collection. I will vehemently deny that is a "strong influence" on my life though ... lol.
He mistakes it for "everyone" when in fact it is defined as:
"Used by a speaker to refer to himself or herself and one or more other people as the object of a verb or preposition."
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us
Clearly your views represent more than just yourself, so the usage of "us" is correct.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I am a software developer. I have worked on everything from large defence contracts through to small websites. I have also worked for a good games company, admittedly in QA rather than dev, but I hung out with the devs a lot.
Hardware is still a very real limitation. You would probably be shocked at just how many calculations are going on every second when playing a game. It is staggering! Not only is the volume staggering, but it all has to be perfectly timed otherwise everything falls apart.
The real barrier to improvement is on the software end. Not in terms of designing interesting things, there are plenty of capable devs for that, but in terms of how we do the fundamentals. I'll give you an example.
Games are sequential - one thing follows another - so timing is extremely crucial to a game running properly. I cannot calculate whether I have shot you before I have calculated where I am aiming, then where you are moving, then whether there is a collision or not. It is thus vitally important that calculations happen in the right order.
What this means is that most games still only utilise a single core on your processor. This is the easiest way to ensure the correct order is followed. Multi-threading (calculations being done on different cores) is an extremely complicated thing to get correct - not due to the hardware, but due to writing the software properly. So, I have a quad-core processor, but most games only use one core. That one core typically sits at 90-95% load whilst the other 3 idle at 20-30%. The software is causing me to hit a hardware limitation.
This gives us the illusion that buying new processors means we're getting more performance, but for gaming that isn't true. We are still hitting hardware limitations on a per-core basis and will continue to do so until game engines improve. This is obviously a generalisation - some games do utilise multi-threading.
I've tried some multithreading myself in Windows via both the Windows API and.NET. I find it fairly confusing. Especially when you need to move data between threads. To me, some things in programming appear to be made overly complex. Timing things is confusing as well. It seems odd that you can tie up the main message loop in an application if something takes a while for the CPU to finish processing. I find it is almost required for doing anything regarding connecting to remote computers. If you try retrieving data on a remote computer with WMI in .NET and don't use a thread your application will freeze for a while there is an error connecting or retrieving the data.
The graphics card is another matter but since games tend to improve the graphics as the cards improve it limits what can be done.
In any case does most devs aim for a game that can run on most computers (not just on a few state of the art) since they want to maximize their potential playerbase and that means they will technologicalla speaking not use that much resources.
Now, If VR actually becomes something people feel they must have (with good enough games) enough of the gamers would likely upgrade so their computers can run far better looking games just like many gamers got 3D graphics cards rather fast after they came out but we still would get a lot of limitations.
What we really need to break all this is nano, or even better quark scale computers. Something that makes modern computers as obsolete as the microship did to vacuum tubes way back.
Of course there is a lot more you could get out of modern computers, at least in theory. The Commodore 64 certainly used a lot higher percentage of it's power but I fear we would need a far better OS for that, something custom made for games. And yes, that is incredible hard and expensive or someone would already have done it.
Well the opposite of a pessimist,i had high hopes for the market and how much they would evolve.
I guess what nobody figured was the high cost of inflation,i mean i remember 30 cents a gallon let alone 1.15 a litre for gas and a choco bar was a nickle.
Point being,most of the big studios have the knowledge ,the people but either don't have the money or won't commit that much money so instead look for designs that are cost effective.
I see 99% are cheap cost effective games,so i obviously get miffed when i see some BS scores and reviews handing out 8's or 9's for HALF ASSED corner cutting work.
The industry is capable of giving us that absolutely drop dead gorgeous ,amazing full of content game but they won't.So do we continue to pay PRO money for amateur game design,i guess seeing the market of late,we do keep paying for sub par game design because nobody is pushing the market.
Too bad really,i had very high hopes,back in the early 80's.. 90's.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Plus, i have no obligation to "guess" what he actually means, instead of just go by his words.
wow .. you just describe what you are trying to do to me.
But .. i am the bigger man. I am not going to be angry. I am just going to be amused. In fact, i am shocked that you will twist my post about using accurate language, which MANY has done so before here, to something twisted (see my pun there!).
So let me ask you this .. do you disagree that language should be used accurately? Or that you do not think there is a difference between MMO and MMORPG?
Every now and then I will play an MMO for a few months. Then I just get burnt out from almost always soloing, and the community being a bunch of triggered, dimwits.
Proof on the internet? You are indeed bold and naive
But by his definition, he did troll me unsuccessful, because i was more amused than angry. Wouldn't you agree to that?