Curse

Burst Cancel · May 24, 2009, 04:50 PM // 16:50

I'm going to go ahead and cite again this overly-cited article: http://www.brokentoys.org/2009/02/03...-mmos-is-hard/

Particularly, see point 5. It doesn't just apply to monster enemies - it applies to player enemies too. Most people don't play games to lose, but they also aren't willing to take games seriously enough to think, practice, or in any way develop the skills necessary to win. So, how do you win while being incompetent? Avoid difficulty as much as possible, of course.

This kind of mentality, and the kind of game design it promotes, is the province of the casual gamer. You'll notice that smaller communities (particularly MUDs), manage to do well with very brutal PvP systems (full world, unrestricted PvP, usually with corpse-looting); there aren't any carebears around to whine about losing and "no fun", because they can't stand to stick around for very long.

If you want real competition, I'd suggest sticking to games that are intrinsically PvP: fighting games, FPS, RTS, etc. RPGs and MMOs tend to attract far too many undesirables, with the exception of dedicated PvP leagues (which tend to have far too many undesirables of a different type).

Bryant Again · May 24, 2009, 08:57 PM // 20:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Longasc

See what happens in WoW, WORLD PVP is even frowned upon on PvP servers. Who bothers with it, it is sometimes even considered bad style to annoy others while questing.

If you consider it "bad style" then you shouldn't be on a PvP server.

That said, that's one of the main things that really attracted me to WoW: Faction vs. Faction combat and kicking the Alliance in tha nuts with my huge shoulderpads (and vice versa :3).

But that wasn't the focus. It was PvE: Instances and Raids. I wanted to be raiding Stormwind and actually being held in high regard for doing so. But instead I had to go through an annoying grind to get Warlord gear. That's not what I had signed up for. At least the PvE was fun.

Quick sidenote in regards to Warhammer Online: I didn't invest into leveling on a PvP server because of how the pairings are organized: Straight down the middle. Sure there are some instances where a pairing criss-crosses, but other than that opposing factions will rarely see each other, and in order to really experience that you *really* have to go out of your way and abandon leveling for a moment. Not good implementation, at least imo.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Longasc

Guild Wars is similar. The more organized the PvP mode is, the less people play it.

This isn't a problem with PvP. This is a problem with access, and it happens to both sides. The same thing happens to PvE: How many people do you think raid as opposed to just grind dailies/instances/dicking around?

Same thing happens with PvP. The more easy to access areas are ALWAYS going to be more popular than what's more prestigious or difficult. You're never going to break that, ever. Granted you could indeed get a bit more people to play GvG and whatnot, but the activity will always be outnumbered by the more accessible arenas.

Is this a bad thing?
Not really. It's hard to break the fact that most people just want to play the game with little effort. You'll see this in every game.
So what is a bad thing?
I'm pretty (i.e. 100%) sure most people will tell you that what GW has evolved into is a pretty good definition of a "bad thing". Sure it still sees a lot of activity, but the appeal to the more in-depth players is gone.

You *can* appeal to only the lowest common denominator and become a "successful". Or you can go the extra mile and appeal to more crowds, both casual and hardcore and become what would actually be a *good* game.

Gun Pierson · May 24, 2009, 09:30 PM // 21:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

Quick sidenote in regards to Warhammer Online: I didn't invest into leveling on a PvP server because of how the pairings are organized: Straight down the middle. Sure there are some instances where a pairing criss-crosses, but other than that opposing factions will rarely see each other, and in order to really experience that you *really* have to go out of your way and abandon leveling for a moment. Not good implementation, at least imo.

Yes, compared to Warhammer Online, GW's pvp is far superior imo. A bunch of players trying to ram the gate while a larger bunch of high dps mages on the walls above kill them. Those guys really have a (class) balance problem. GW's PvE is absolutely better imo, the 'war everywhere' design of the game gets boring quite fast. Like DoW2 was a disapointment to you, so was Warhammer Online to me. Those are the times when I think I shouldn't critisize Anet that much, but hey it's constructive critical feedback.

Bryant Again · May 24, 2009, 09:57 PM // 21:57

WAR suffers from a ton of problems: poorly optimized (considering how "good" it looks), lackluster endgame, bad bad balance, boring endgame, etc.

At first MDPS were having a really hard time going against RDPS. Now the tables might turn entirely with the coming patch and solve nothing.

Gigashadow · May 25, 2009, 12:11 AM // 00:11

Warhammer was absolutely horrible, played up to 40 on a marauder and played various other classes to lower levels. It feels like they started by making a big list of all the best features from other MMOs, and then threw that entire feature list together with a Warhammer flavor and kicked it out the door. Unfortunately the result was not at all cohesive, as the endgame really lacked any sort of direction or incentive for players to play in a particular way.

The implementation was also awful, with high poly characters and a low poly environment. Most other companies have figured out that better textures are the way to go, not cranking up poly counts to ludicrous levels.

They also didn't even start to address the skill lag for years into its development -- in fact until one month before the game released. Every other MMO starts playing the skill animation when you press the key, and then cancels it if the server comes back with "no, you can't do that", giving an appearance of fluidity. Warhammer put the server roundtrip in first, so that everything you cast had that roundtrip lag. It's almost as if they only ever tested it on their internal company LAN, and totally forgot that people outside the LAN don't have 0 ms latency.

Their first attempt at fixing this was a joke, as initially it would play the animation even if your client could not possibly even use that skill at the time, or was on global cooldown, so you could tap the key three times and your character would spazz out playing the animation. I don't know if all their DAOC programmers left years ago or what, this is basic stuff.

The final cockpunch was the fact that it takes 2 minutes to enter the game. The game took a while to load, you had various logo screens to get through, 2 EULAs you had to scroll down and click accept on (later changed to 1), and then finally a long time to login. Guild Wars it takes about 8 seconds from the time I double click the icon on my desktop until I'm moving my character in game.

Gigashadow · May 25, 2009, 12:20 AM // 00:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

I am a fun hater.

PvE "balancing" should focus more on adjusting monster builds and AI to deal with idiotic player tactics that would never work against real people. If this had been Anet's original strategy, they would never have had to resort to monsters with superpowered stats, 50% faster everything, and effectively unlimited energy. Any computer opponent already has the greatest advantage of all: omniscience. The CPU can not only read player inputs, but knows the state of every single variable in the game simultaneously. "Teams" of monsters are in fact a single entity controlled with perfect micro; the CPU doesn't have to worry about communication or coordination, the way a human team would.

Make the computer use those advantages. Give all monster teams monks that can actually heal and pre-prot effectively (after all, the computer knows what the players are targetting). Fill areas with spike teams that have literally uninfusable spikes. Have monsters spread out preemptively (you know, the way players do) so AoE is never effective on its own. Give monster teams more shutdown and interrupts (that never miss).

There's also no reason why monsters should stay the same over time; change their builds to counter what players run. The appropriate response to SF farming is to put touch/signet skills on the monsters ... or just have them ignore/run from the player. There is absolutely no reason monsters should be balling around a player that they can't actually damage - the same goes for any kind of AoE farming build, really. Instead of nerfing Ursan, they could have had monsters run lots of armor-ignoring damage and edenial; alternatively, shut down the HB backline with interrupts, sig of hum, enchantment removal, etc.

The point is, monsters should be credible opponents, not just glorified pinatas with buffed stats.

Sure, you could have mobs dogpile on the weakest player targets, prot everything, and interrupt the important player skills, but then the majority of players would avoid that content like the plague (and your game entirely if everything was like that). Despite proclaims to the contrary, players don't actually want a challenge. What they want is the illusion of challenge.

Burst Cancel · May 25, 2009, 06:13 AM // 06:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gigashadow

Sure, you could have mobs dogpile on the weakest player targets, prot everything, and interrupt the important player skills, but then the majority of players would avoid that content like the plague (and your game entirely if everything was like that). Despite proclaims to the contrary, players don't actually want a challenge. What they want is the illusion of challenge.

I'm well aware of this. See post #61 above.

There's a lot I could say about this topic, but it's hardly worth the effort anymore. Suffice to say, the problem of casual gamers has severely damaged my opinion of game design in general, and killed my hopes of ever seeing any truly great games in the future.

EPO Bot · May 25, 2009, 07:52 AM // 07:52

Can't the elitists just play GvG and stop whining? The only problem i see is that the hardcore want the intire game to be über hard and the casuals want everything to be easy and practically free. A bit of both for all isn't good enough.

Personally, i wished there where twenty places like Aspenwood and JQ but you won't hear me complain about it. Hell! I even would welcome random HA.

aapo · May 25, 2009, 03:23 PM // 15:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

Most people don't play games to lose, but they also aren't willing to take games seriously enough to think, practice, or in any way develop the skills necessary to win.

- No offense intended, but game is a game. It's completely artificial and the only real-life skill needed is simple arithmetic. If this was about learning to play great musical pieces on piano, learning proper language or something like that, your view would be reasonable. But to devote time to learn a computer game is just silly. Some stance-looking skills are actually "skill"s and not "stances". Some rocks block arrows and some rocks don't. You can climb up some mountains, but can't jump one feet high ledge. Place trap on walkway under the bridge and foes on the bridge will trigger it and vice versa. Bodyblock stairs and type /stuck to have server update your true location. Does any of this make any sense if you hadn't compromised your logic to learn how the game works? This game like any other game is a race to find and abuse flaws and bugs. To make things easier you can usually just read the patch notes to figure out next flaw.

Burst Cancel · May 25, 2009, 06:37 PM // 18:37

So, clearly, Chess isn't worth learning either. Trying to be good at that would just be silly! It's a game, after all. And hey, so is Street Fighter. Or Counterstrike. Or Starcraft. And lets not talk about all of those sports that people play.

All games are exercises - you are presented with a set of artificial rules and an artificial goal that you have to achieve within the framework of those rules. You don't have to "compromise your logic" to learn how to play within artificial rules (in point of fact, social norms and even black-letter laws are artificial rules). And the fact that they're artificial doesn't make them any less rewarding to learn, as any Chess player or athlete will tell you.

I'm not really sure where people came up with the idea that any leisure activity necessarily forecloses expending any effort or thought, but that attitude is frankly frightening, and its ubiquity is depressing. We honestly don't need more people who approach games (or anything else, for that matter) like they're taking a dump.

aapo · May 25, 2009, 09:31 PM // 21:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

So, clearly, Chess isn't worth learning either. Trying to be good at that would just be silly! It's a game, after all. And hey, so is Street Fighter. Or Counterstrike. Or Starcraft. And lets not talk about all of those sports that people play.

- Real life games allow certain degree of variety. Take soccer for instance: objective is to get the ball to opponent's goal without using hands. Only somewhat artificial rule is the offside rule, but its purpose is only to prevent giving unfair advantage to attacker. These formalities aside, the game offers myriad of different strategies and feats of ability.

Then there are games which are about rules and nothing but. Most computer games are like this. It doesn't mean they couldn't be fun games, but to consider them "sport" worth "learning" requires quite a bit work not just on PR department. Most successful games in the history have been those which have embraced simplicity and intuitiveness. Guild Wars' skill Physical Resistance offers protection against physical damage, but what when the Warrior attacking you just switches to similar looking blade that deals earth damage? Players shrug their shoulders and say that the skill is just "bad", but it's not the culprit. The design which introduces different damage types and makes their existance irrelevant is flawed. Under no cirsumstances should developers disregard common sense!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

I'm not really sure where people came up with the idea that any leisure activity necessarily forecloses expending any effort or thought, but that attitude is frankly frightening, and its ubiquity is depressing. We honestly don't need more people who approach games (or anything else, for that matter) like they're taking a dump.

- Games are leisure activity for me. Receiving enough enjoyment from the game usually means learning how to play it properly. As soon as the game ceases to be fun, most players including me will just stop playing. This is why any attempts to create "elite" areas in Guild Wars has failed. In all honesty: what is the point of creating something where welcoming sign says

"This is not for everyone. Go grind 10k faction and finish the game first. If you're still here, leech your way ferrying party in order to have the privilige to stand in the mission outpost."?

Perfect analogy would be going to chess club for first time and getting humiliated by stronger players time after time, never receiving help or guidance (GW really offers very little of that). Guess would they get new members in the club?

Longasc · May 25, 2009, 09:43 PM // 21:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

I'm not really sure where people came up with the idea that any leisure activity necessarily forecloses expending any effort or thought, but that attitude is frankly frightening, and its ubiquity is depressing. We honestly don't need more people who approach games (or anything else, for that matter) like they're taking a dump.

Constantly growing "challenge" and difficulty, plus a learning experience on the way was some 10+ years ago the design goal of level designers. And it was good.

We indeed have this "fun must be easy" attitude today paired with a sense of entitlement. At the same time people by now strangely enough seem to become more resistant to the ennui caused by extremely repetitive grinding.

This notion caused games to be dumbed down extremely. We currently experience this phase, just take a look at WoW raiding and GW.

(EDIT: People claim Ulduar is hard - yes, compared to the new Naxxramas, that non guild PUGs cleared within weeks after release... the old Naxxramas is then probably the equivalent to a virtual hell, keke)

It did not make games better or more exciting, it is more like a strawfire. Quick satisfaction, but no more learning experience or sense of accomplishment when you did something.

FeroxC · May 25, 2009, 09:50 PM // 21:50

Quote:

The design which introduces different damage types and makes their existance irrelevant is flawed. Under no cirsumstances should developers disregard common sense!

Hows it flawed? having to adapt to situations is pretty standard mechanic.
If that makes the game too difficult for you maybe you'l find bashing your head against the keyboard would suit you better.

aapo · May 25, 2009, 10:31 PM // 22:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by FeroxC

Hows it flawed?

- What color are black crows?

Sir Pandra Pierva · May 29, 2009, 08:50 PM // 20:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Targren

I'm going to guess it's not Scrabble...

i rolled laughing when i saw that

glacialphoenix · May 29, 2009, 10:47 PM // 22:47

Quote:

We indeed have this "fun must be easy" attitude today paired with a sense of entitlement. At the same time people by now strangely enough seem to become more resistant to the ennui caused by extremely repetitive grinding.

Mindless entertainment sells. Easiest-solution sells. If repetitive grinding is an easy solution, people will do it, because then they can finish something and tell themselves they're good, which... justifies the grinding. I guess. After a while it hits the point where they're convinced that you need to grind in order to achieve what they did.

Back in the Ursan era I met people who ragequit groups because they felt that one guy in the group wasn't high-ranked enough to handle Duncan HM. He was Norn r6. I remember trying to defend his presence in the group.

After enough of this, people get even more convinced that if they can't do it, it's because something is too hard, and not because they aren't doing well enough. Nope. It's the developers' fault for setting something that's too difficult, not because we brought the wrong build, or made a stupid mistake, or overaggroed...

I personally had a lot more fun (and satisfaction) doing HM missions for Zquests on my necro, who has SS r6, no LB to speak of, no Vanguard title, no Norn title, no Asuran title because the only place in GWEN she's entered is Eye of the North (so I could take a look at her in the accountwide armour HoM) than my main. Not that I don't spoil my main excessively, but still.