1. a complete listing of merchandise or stock on hand, work in progress, raw materials, finished goods on hand, etc., made each year by a business concern. 2. the objects or items represented on such a list, as a merchant's stock of goods.
The idea of a person carrying around an inventory is absurd in the first place. I don't care if you're Brock Lesnar, no way are you going to be able to move and fight normally while carrying a spare warhammer, a dragon skull, and three marlboro vines. It's not a question of how tall you are or how much weight you can lift. There's just no way to carry those things in a way that doesn't impede you. A real person carrying a video game character's inventory is just ludicrous.
There's this thing called "abstraction". In the same way that you can simplify the laceration of muscle tissue and loss of blood from a dagger to the hamstring as "losing 220 HP", you can simplify the carrying of a thousand pounds of junk to "I have access to it." Quick, do you have a tie? Are you wearing it or carrying it right now? (Probably not.) But whenever you know you're going to need it, you can get it. You own it, you have access to it, it's "in your inventory" so to speak. Whether you're physically holding it or not is irrelevant.
Same deal here. You find a staff while dungeon crawling. Maybe you're carrying it strapped to your back. Maybe everyone took a break while you ran back to your pack mule at the entrance. Maybe you hired a peasant (or a team of peasants) to follow you around carrying your treasure. Maybe you're leaving it lying there on the ground and saying "Don't let me forget to come back and pick up my staff when we're done with our business here." The actual physical location of the staff is irrelevant; you own it and it's "in your inventory". Only when inventory management is an integral part of the game should you be forced to really decide whether that staff is physically present on your person or lying on the ground.
Take abstraction too far and you get Progress Quest. Take it too far in the opposite direction and you get Dwarf Fortress (which I love, btw). The easy argument in favor of abstraction is that bad complexity adds no depth to the game, so you lose nothing by removing it. The easy argument against abstraction is that it is pandering to people who don't have the skill to deal with the additional complexity. Most games fall nowhere near either of these extremes, though, and you may prefer leaning one rather than the other based on your tastes. But I have to say, I think that abstraction makes a lot of sense in RPGs, including MMORPGs. Most people play them for the story, the spectacle, and the interactions with others. Accurate simulation isn't a key feature, because these aren't sims.
Originally posted by EricDanie We must go deeper.The "problem" is killing a rat and looting a two-handed sword, killing a dragon and looting a full set of shiny new armor.We should be looting scales, teeth, fangs, etc, for use in a crafting system that would be the only source of PvE equipment (exchanging PvP tokens seems perfectly fine). From that point it would become a lot easier to handle inventory logic without creating a huge hassle for players (a realistic inventory without a realistic loot system wouldn't work - you'd kill monsters for like 10 minutes and get overburdened with 5 shields on your backpack. It's the reason I love the Monster Hunter games.Anyway, we play in a MMORPG genre that barely justifies the use of the RPG anymore, there really should be a lot of differences between races even if considering only the implications of the physical differences.
While I am all for certain mechanics making a comeback, I would argue that the rat you just killed has killed 250 other adventurers and their swords / armor / etc lies there on the floor for you to take. No this doesn't make as much sense in the open world .. but it's a mechanic pulled from games with dungeon crawls. At one point there were chests.
That being said, I am all for looting scales / bones / w.e .. and making all pve gear crafteable. its an interesting concept that has been asked for, for years ..
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
I consider encumberance to be a 'dumbed down' mechanic. The devs are not brave enough to put in a realistic inventory system but still feel that they need to restrict player choice and freedom in matters of equipment.
If you want a realistic inventory system, you do not let players carry multiple sets of weapons and armor. If you want to let them carry more than their personal equipment set, you let them use pack animals and/or carts.
Requireing your players to play 'inventory management games' is not role playing. It's just lazy design.
Realistic != more fun.
Do i really want to be able to carry 3 items and run to town to sell (or drop the stuff i earn) every 5 steps?
GAMEPLAY should come first in a game.
A shooter can afford to be realistic in this (i.e. lots of games you can only carry two guns) but a item progression based MMO?
Threads like this are where the elitists really show up. Just because someone doesn't like a feature, inventory mini-game in this case, doesn't mean their bad, or not intelligent. It means that pressing I and carefully putting items in the right slots detracts from the game instead of adding to it.
Of course some games just do pure weight, rather than giving you a bag to play scramble-tiles with.
I love how people can be called dumb and bad because they disliked a dumb and bad idea.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug. 12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
It required thinking. Thinking is outdated and so 1999.
Remember eating and drinking?
Remember picking a certain species for specific attributes to better min/max your class?
Remember corpse runs?
Remember planning with your friends how to get from a city to a dungeon across zones alive?
Remember having good standing with a npc faction but couldn't go to town because your friend in the group was KOS?
Get with it man, it's 2012. Wait in your city (lobby) for your que to pop and warp you to wherever you want to go. Then spam 1112311123 (or use a macro to fight for you) for 15 mins and get the uber loot.
People wanted to play the "killing monsters" game, not the "endless inventory management" game. This allowed developers to have player banks instead of player houses, which players generally found acceptable.
Right there is the problem. MMOs are only about 10% killing monester if it is a true MMO. There is much more in the world than just that.
If I wanted to play a game where all I did was kill monsters I would play a GOOD game (FPS of some sort) If I want to only battle other players I will pull out AOE2
BUT! I want to play a MMORPG! RPG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I would like a world to live in, f*ck killing monster after monster to get the newest gear.
Originally posted by lizardbones People wanted to play the "killing monsters" game, not the "endless inventory management" game. This allowed developers to have player banks instead of player houses, which players generally found acceptable.
Right there is the problem. MMOs are only about 10% killing monester if it is a true MMO. There is much more in the world than just that.
If I wanted to play a game where all I did was kill monsters I would play a GOOD game (FPS of some sort) If I want to only battle other players I will pull out AOE2
BUT! I want to play a MMORPG! RPG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I would like a world to live in, f*ck killing monster after monster to get the newest gear.
You may not find a 'true' MMO for awhile unless you're willing to compromise. Play an MMORPG with some, but not all of the features you want, play on an Arma II sandbox style server or a Minecraft RPG server...that kind of thing.
I wouldn't expect a return of actual encumbrance rules to most MMORPG though.
** edit ** Perpetuum has actual encumbrance limits. The weight you can carry and load onto your mech is limited by your mech's frame. This is one of the only places I would be happy to deal with encumbrance...an actual MechWarrior MMORPG. Not sure about MechWarrior Online, but a MW MMORPG? Oh yeah.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
It required thinking. Thinking is outdated and so 1999.
Remember eating and drinking?
Remember picking a certain species for specific attributes to better min/max your class?
Remember corpse runs?
Remember planning with your friends how to get from a city to a dungeon across zones alive?
Remember having good standing with a npc faction but couldn't go to town because your friend in the group was KOS?
Get with it man, it's 2012. Wait in your city (lobby) for your que to pop and warp you to wherever you want to go. Then spam 1112311123 (or use a macro to fight for you) for 15 mins and get the uber loot.
The problem is games are measured based on how deep/compelling they are.
And while those mechanics often made gaming more of a hassle, they rarely added much in the way of depth.
And so they disappeared.
I couldnt disagree more, those items added depth that you just dont see. The above items you consider as "hassles" is the mentality that has slowly erroded gameplay in modern MMO's.
Others see them for what they are opportunities / planning / resourcesfullness / intelligent game choices etc. But nah they are just hassels right? Toss them out send me to end game in 3 days so I can complain. Just give me more monsters to kill bigger weapons and flashier spells.
It required thinking. Thinking is outdated and so 1999.
Remember eating and drinking?
Remember picking a certain species for specific attributes to better min/max your class?
Remember corpse runs?
Remember planning with your friends how to get from a city to a dungeon across zones alive?
Remember having good standing with a npc faction but couldn't go to town because your friend in the group was KOS?
Get with it man, it's 2012. Wait in your city (lobby) for your que to pop and warp you to wherever you want to go. Then spam 1112311123 (or use a macro to fight for you) for 15 mins and get the uber loot.
Remember when actually characters in an mmorpg had stats like STR, AGI, DEX, WIL, CON or whatever.
Remember when you could build your own fortifications i.e. whole villages with buildings and a wall around.
Remember when th ere was actually fear walking around into enemy territory.
Remember when the term F2P was a phrase and people knew such games were bad quality.
Remember when not that many games in general where out there but people were more happy than nowadays.
Remember the days when companies were not that greedy with dirty marketing tricks and actually released games by gamers and not by stock investors.
It required thinking. Thinking is outdated and so 1999.
Remember eating and drinking?
Remember picking a certain species for specific attributes to better min/max your class?
Remember corpse runs?
Remember planning with your friends how to get from a city to a dungeon across zones alive?
Remember having good standing with a npc faction but couldn't go to town because your friend in the group was KOS?
Get with it man, it's 2012. Wait in your city (lobby) for your que to pop and warp you to wherever you want to go. Then spam 1112311123 (or use a macro to fight for you) for 15 mins and get the uber loot.
The problem is games are measured based on how deep/compelling they are.
And while those mechanics often made gaming more of a hassle, they rarely added much in the way of depth.
And so they disappeared.
I couldnt disagree more, those items added depth that you just dont see. The above items you consider as "hassles" is the mentality that has slowly erroded gameplay in modern MMO's.
Others see them for what they are opportunities / planning / resourcesfullness / intelligent game choices etc. But nah they are just hassels right? Toss them out send me to end game in 3 days so I can complain. Just give me more monsters to kill bigger weapons and flashier spells.
He's the type of gamer that has to buy a new game every 2-3 months because his current one got boring with nothing to do because he beaten it.
I find it odd that it is now commonplace to "beat" MMOs. Before this was unheard of. So was moving from game to game every 2 months like locust.
MMORPGs are dumbed down, lobby-based, co-Ops now. Nothing more.
i'll never understand why people want to go back to days of frustration and tedium that just made the game unfun.
Every inconvenience is a game for someone else.
Something totally unfun for you may be very fun for someone else.
I don't understand why it is so hard to understand.
===========
Saying this that NOT ALL old mmorpg mechanics were good.
That would be most challanging to developers which one to implement and which one to not implement.
Also which one of mechanics ideas to implement but diffrently.
The fun doesn't come from the tedium of running back to your corpse, or grinding the exp you lost back. The fun comes from the thrill of killing the monster with under 10% health left knowing what you were risking. From getting a level and going back and killing a monster you couldn't yesterday. From having the long cast heal land just in time to save the tank. None of that excites when a death or a wipe is just a few minutes to run back and a pittance of gold.
Originally posted by Axehilt
The problem is games are measured based on how deep/compelling they are.
And while those mechanics often made gaming more of a hassle, they rarely added much in the way of depth.
And so they disappeared.
Encumberance actually made sense in EQ. And as for depth, you probably didn't try a monk. It didn't really punish the weaker classes cause they wore lighter armor. If you didn't eat or drink, you got hungry and it did matter, you didn't regen. And sense heading...wandering around GFay as a human with no sense heading and no lightsource...ouch. What do dev's have against the dark? Diablo 1 was spooky and scared the crap out of me, d2 and d3 we're too bright, even in the darkest places.
I couldnt disagree more, those items added depth that you just dont see. The above items you consider as "hassles" is the mentality that has slowly erroded gameplay in modern MMO's.
Others see them for what they are opportunities / planning / resourcesfullness / intelligent game choices etc. But nah they are just hassels right? Toss them out send me to end game in 3 days so I can complain. Just give me more monsters to kill bigger weapons and flashier spells.
They are hassles.
They're a feature which costs players a lot of time or clicks or attention, while their benefits (in terms of "how many interesting decisions does this game system provide?") tend to be extremely low.
When a player calls something a "hassle" (or an "inconvenience") that's exactly what they're describing: lots of effort required, for little payoff (little game depth.)
Meanwhile there are countless other features games can have where the same effort is associated with considerably more interesting decisions being made, which makes the game feel considerably more rewarding.
Don't mistake me for saying a weight system brings zero depth to a game, but man...for the effort required it brings so little depth to a game I don't know why anyone would want that over countless other, deeper game features.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I think the regression in MMORPG gaming parallels the regression in Western humanity that comes with technology. In 20 years or so, it may be people no longer use their arms and legs, and such are withered useless atrophic limbs attached to bloated persons whose eyeball scans cause their game mouses to automatically move across the screens and play games. Even waste will be siphoned through their game chairs, which they never leave, and filtered back through tubes and into their mouths as second harvest nutrition.
The future bodes ill for MMORPG gaming, indeed.
The first thing that popped into my mind when you described this was the movie "Idiocracy". Granted, it's no Academy Award winner, but the premise seems frighteningly prophetic.
Encumberance actually made sense in EQ. And as for depth, you probably didn't try a monk. It didn't really punish the weaker classes cause they wore lighter armor. If you didn't eat or drink, you got hungry and it did matter, you didn't regen. And sense heading...wandering around GFay as a human with no sense heading and no lightsource...ouch. What do dev's have against the dark? Diablo 1 was spooky and scared the crap out of me, d2 and d3 we're too bright, even in the darkest places.
If I create a game exactly like WOW but you have to hit tilde (~) every 30 seconds or your character dies, that has not added depth to the game. That has added hassle.
There's no deep gameplay and no sense of mastery to hitting tilde every 30 seconds.
The same is true of food and encumbrance in just about every game out there (certainly the MMORPGs I've played that used it.) The amount of depth they add in the MMORPGs and RPGs I've seen them in hasn't been zero, but it's been so close to zero as to make them not worth the hassle.
I've seen some non-MMORPGs do encumbrance in a way where it created interesting tradeoff decisions (ie depth) but never in a MMORPG so far.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Originally posted by Axehilt Originally posted by SilverminkEncumberance actually made sense in EQ. And as for depth, you probably didn't try a monk. It didn't really punish the weaker classes cause they wore lighter armor. If you didn't eat or drink, you got hungry and it did matter, you didn't regen. And sense heading...wandering around GFay as a human with no sense heading and no lightsource...ouch. What do dev's have against the dark? Diablo 1 was spooky and scared the crap out of me, d2 and d3 we're too bright, even in the darkest places.
If I create a game exactly like WOW but you have to hit tilde (~) every 30 seconds or your character dies, that has not added depth to the game. That has added hassle.
There's no deep gameplay and no sense of mastery to hitting tilde every 30 seconds.
The same is true of food and encumbrance in just about every game out there (certainly the MMORPGs I've played that used it.) The amount of depth they add in the MMORPGs and RPGs I've seen them in hasn't been zero, but it's been so close to zero as to make them not worth the hassle.
I've seen some non-MMORPGs do encumbrance in a way where it created interesting tradeoff decisions (ie depth) but never in a MMORPG so far.
I would not call inventory mechanics any sort of depth mechanic. With that being said you keep talking about hassles. A hassle can mean many different things to many different people. Looting could be a hassle. Walking could be a hassle. Repairs could be a hassle. Buffs could be a hassle. Leveling could be a hassle. Bosses could be a hassle. Guild mates could be a hassle. Mobs could be a hassle.
This list could go on and on. You do not like to be bothered by such a mechanic. I understand that. I just think that labeling stuff as a hassle because you have limited time is just a generalization. A weight mechanic versus a space mechanic does not necessarily offer fewer trips to unload your burden. You have just latched on to that concept because you feel that one version is better than another.
Honestly, I really don't care all that much which feature is in the game. I play and determine my fun in many different ways. If time is so damn important that walking and traveling throughout my game are hassles. I wake up and take time off from the gaming. I call it a reality check.
I think the future of hassle-less games will be ones where you don't even have to play to progress in. It would take EVE-style timers and apply it to everything.
"You haven't logged in 2 weeks - you're now at rank 21 in magic defense and have a new item [elitist shoulderpads of GTFO]"
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Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4 Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
I absolutely hate weight and other related stuff, I don't mind it being in games that are trying to make a realistic feel, but otherwise it just annoys me.
"Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people." - Eleanor Roosevelt "Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security." -Norman Vincent Peale
I think the OP is really just bringing up what we all know and has been discussed many times (although weight and encumbrance is one that usually doesn't come up so good job). The whole MMO genre is simply a hack and slash fest where too much thinking causes most players to whine and quit. For most people today, a challenge is not fun. They really just want to do easy things that make them feel good. If there was a chance to lose to the game or gods forbid another player, most would quit because it would remind them of their real lives.
I have pretty much given up on MMOs for this reason. IMO, the really good games that still have a challenge are the browser based strategy games. I am playing Illyriad right now and that is a blast. I know- totally different type of game but it has what many of us are looking for. Weight, death, any semblance of realism and any possibility of failure will not return to MMO gaming.
i'll never understand why people want to go back to days of frustration and tedium that just made the game unfun.
Every inconvenience is a game for someone else.
Something totally unfun for you may be very fun for someone else.
I don't understand why it is so hard to understand.
===========
Saying this that NOT ALL old mmorpg mechanics were good.
That would be most challanging to developers which one to implement and which one to not implement.
Also which one of mechanics ideas to implement but diffrently.
why would anyone have fun wasting time on mechanics that are frustrating and boring? no one can tell me that they always have fun every corpse run or camping stuff for 20 hours.
the only thing i can think of is they still believe overcoming bordom and frustration is a sign of acomplishment, rather than what it it is, poor game design.
also i should have added "still" into that quote, since i did play eq1 and felt like overcoming those things somehow made the game more "fun" myself . Wow and other games showed you could create other mechanisms to add challenge and that list is just poor outdated ones that no game company would attempt to add anymore if they want to make money.
i was happy when sony decided to phase out mechanisms like these, too bad the game was played out for me after playing on and off for 10 years. wish they had made it so you don't lose gear about 8 years ago when there were more players, maybe eq would have retained more players, either that or maybe just not have put GoD out, either one.
i realize some people believe these mechanisms are "fun", but i honestly think they are just holding on to that belief because they played a game with it forever and they have now rationalized that belief into "this adds fun to games".
i think you missed what i was really saying, that the mechanisms are bad because they waste players time. or for a while were nothing but junk mechanisms that didn't add anything to the game, like the eating and drinking mechanism that did nothing, not because they inconvenience people. they fixed the issue with food, namely made it have an effect, even thought it sometimes seems broken.
inconvenience is fine, all mmos have inconvenience, but corpse runs are not an inconvenience they are a game breaker for most people.
there is always niche games for that, people play the god awful d3 permadeath thing after all.
fest where too much thinking causes most players to whine and quit.
i think you overestimated the amount of thinking you needed to do in old mmos.
how much skill does it take to play any of these games? not as much as people want to think they do.
i'm not sure why people say you needed more thought in older mmos, it wasn't any different than the new ones.
the new ones just require you to not have to experiment, because from out of the gate it is all spoonfed to you by websites made by people that already did the work.
of course that is how the rest of the internet is, full of information prepackaged by someone else already, in small bites for everyone to consume.
Well, there could be one realistic MMORPG. I do doubt a little if OP would like to play it.
No heavy armor and that armor corrodes after rain/walking through water and your toon has no idea about how to remove corrosion. You can't carry more that 3 weapons at one time (let us say, sword in one hand, bow and arrows on the back and dagger by the belt). If you wear heavy armor and have 3 great weapons, you move 1 meter per day - great speed, great realism. And if you got weapon number 4, you are in trouble since you have nothng to carry it in. Worse with armor: if you found Great Armor of Owning, you have to undress and take on new armor.
If you have simple clothes, they will break from any walking in the forest and you will have hard time by sewing them with needle (it is supposed you work more with your sword than with your needle). Boots will break sooner than everything, so in the middle of the battle they will just ruin.
Oh yes, no stuff enchantement, because no such thing in reality.
No level progression, no uber-strong characters (just because in real life we can't choose what we want on our birthday - +20 to dexterity or +50 to intellect). No experience from killing monster, because if you kill rat you only know how to kill rat, not how to kill Green Goblin of Hell.
Character would became dirty and stinky one day, just because he walked too long in his heavy armor under the sun and therefore has to take a bath leaving all stuff on the shore. Did I mention character would run into excrements of other people/wildlife (and he would have to leave those too: imagine person who eats and does not go to toilet). Character would not know how to eat certain food and if that food is edible.
Any serious wound is deadly: if you are hit to the leg, you may remove arrow or bandage it, but your leg may not recover, so your uber-strong super-levelled Tank is almost useless. To make things worse, enemy can fire to your eye leaving you (if alive) useless for anything.
And if toon is Human (I'm not sure about fantasy races) he would have a need of sexual relations from certain age. And reaching certain age he would just die out of age.
Would OP play game with such immersion and realism?
It required thinking. Thinking is outdated and so 1999.
Remember eating and drinking?
Remember picking a certain species for specific attributes to better min/max your class?
Remember corpse runs?
Remember planning with your friends how to get from a city to a dungeon across zones alive?
Remember having good standing with a npc faction but couldn't go to town because your friend in the group was KOS?
Get with it man, it's 2012. Wait in your city (lobby) for your que to pop and warp you to wherever you want to go. Then spam 1112311123 (or use a macro to fight for you) for 15 mins and get the uber loot.
The problem is games are measured based on how deep/compelling they are.
And while those mechanics often made gaming more of a hassle, they rarely added much in the way of depth.
And so they disappeared.
I couldnt disagree more, those items added depth that you just dont see. The above items you consider as "hassles" is the mentality that has slowly erroded gameplay in modern MMO's.
Others see them for what they are opportunities / planning / resourcesfullness / intelligent game choices etc. But nah they are just hassels right? Toss them out send me to end game in 3 days so I can complain. Just give me more monsters to kill bigger weapons and flashier spells.
He's the type of gamer that has to buy a new game every 2-3 months because his current one got boring with nothing to do because he beaten it.
I find it odd that it is now commonplace to "beat" MMOs. Before this was unheard of. So was moving from game to game every 2 months like locust.
MMORPGs are dumbed down, lobby-based, co-Ops now. Nothing more.
Your description fits almost every MMO shipped in the last 6 years. Im currently playing Gothic 3 full (not the piece of crap steam forsaken gods version) but the one from direct2drive. Tossed on the 1.4 gig community enhanced version pack from CTP and having the most fun in an rpg since maybe morrowind. Its everything I wish an MMO could be.
I think the future of hassle-less games will be ones where you don't even have to play to progress in. It would take EVE-style timers and apply it to everything.
Well, television (drama or sport) has always been a medium where you are completely passive as a viewer and the characters even continue their storylines whether or not you watch. There is likely room for a genre of fantasy entertainment that offers rich simulations, but limited interaction - where you are passively watching the character as much as you are playing it. I have to admit I might even enjoy it.
I think the future of hassle-less games will be ones where you don't even have to play to progress in. It would take EVE-style timers and apply it to everything.
Well, television (drama or sport) has always been a medium where you are completely passive as a viewer and the characters even continue their storylines whether or not you watch. There is likely room for a genre of fantasy entertainment that offers rich simulations, but limited interaction - where you are passively watching the character as much as you are playing it. I have to admit I might even enjoy it.
Aren't 'coach' simulations like that? (I wouldn't know, honestly)
Perhaps there is a niche for RPG 'coach' simulations where you raise up heroes and send them off to do all the hard work for ya.
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Comments
in·ven·to·ry [in-vuhn-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee] noun, plural in·ven·to·ries, verb, in·ven·to·ried, in·ven·to·ry·ing.
1. a complete listing of merchandise or stock on hand, work in progress, raw materials, finished goods on hand, etc., made each year by a business concern.
2. the objects or items represented on such a list, as a merchant's stock of goods.
The idea of a person carrying around an inventory is absurd in the first place. I don't care if you're Brock Lesnar, no way are you going to be able to move and fight normally while carrying a spare warhammer, a dragon skull, and three marlboro vines. It's not a question of how tall you are or how much weight you can lift. There's just no way to carry those things in a way that doesn't impede you. A real person carrying a video game character's inventory is just ludicrous.
There's this thing called "abstraction". In the same way that you can simplify the laceration of muscle tissue and loss of blood from a dagger to the hamstring as "losing 220 HP", you can simplify the carrying of a thousand pounds of junk to "I have access to it." Quick, do you have a tie? Are you wearing it or carrying it right now? (Probably not.) But whenever you know you're going to need it, you can get it. You own it, you have access to it, it's "in your inventory" so to speak. Whether you're physically holding it or not is irrelevant.
Same deal here. You find a staff while dungeon crawling. Maybe you're carrying it strapped to your back. Maybe everyone took a break while you ran back to your pack mule at the entrance. Maybe you hired a peasant (or a team of peasants) to follow you around carrying your treasure. Maybe you're leaving it lying there on the ground and saying "Don't let me forget to come back and pick up my staff when we're done with our business here." The actual physical location of the staff is irrelevant; you own it and it's "in your inventory". Only when inventory management is an integral part of the game should you be forced to really decide whether that staff is physically present on your person or lying on the ground.
Take abstraction too far and you get Progress Quest. Take it too far in the opposite direction and you get Dwarf Fortress (which I love, btw). The easy argument in favor of abstraction is that bad complexity adds no depth to the game, so you lose nothing by removing it. The easy argument against abstraction is that it is pandering to people who don't have the skill to deal with the additional complexity. Most games fall nowhere near either of these extremes, though, and you may prefer leaning one rather than the other based on your tastes. But I have to say, I think that abstraction makes a lot of sense in RPGs, including MMORPGs. Most people play them for the story, the spectacle, and the interactions with others. Accurate simulation isn't a key feature, because these aren't sims.
That being said, I am all for looting scales / bones / w.e .. and making all pve gear crafteable. its an interesting concept that has been asked for, for years ..
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Realistic != more fun.
Do i really want to be able to carry 3 items and run to town to sell (or drop the stuff i earn) every 5 steps?
GAMEPLAY should come first in a game.
A shooter can afford to be realistic in this (i.e. lots of games you can only carry two guns) but a item progression based MMO?
Threads like this are where the elitists really show up. Just because someone doesn't like a feature, inventory mini-game in this case, doesn't mean their bad, or not intelligent. It means that pressing I and carefully putting items in the right slots detracts from the game instead of adding to it.
Of course some games just do pure weight, rather than giving you a bag to play scramble-tiles with.
I love how people can be called dumb and bad because they disliked a dumb and bad idea.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
*starts sobbing* WHhhhyyyyyyy!!
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EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If I wanted to play a game where all I did was kill monsters I would play a GOOD game (FPS of some sort) If I want to only battle other players I will pull out AOE2
BUT! I want to play a MMORPG! RPG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I would like a world to live in, f*ck killing monster after monster to get the newest gear.
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You may not find a 'true' MMO for awhile unless you're willing to compromise. Play an MMORPG with some, but not all of the features you want, play on an Arma II sandbox style server or a Minecraft RPG server...that kind of thing.
I wouldn't expect a return of actual encumbrance rules to most MMORPG though.
** edit **
Perpetuum has actual encumbrance limits. The weight you can carry and load onto your mech is limited by your mech's frame. This is one of the only places I would be happy to deal with encumbrance...an actual MechWarrior MMORPG. Not sure about MechWarrior Online, but a MW MMORPG? Oh yeah.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I couldnt disagree more, those items added depth that you just dont see. The above items you consider as "hassles" is the mentality that has slowly erroded gameplay in modern MMO's.
Others see them for what they are opportunities / planning / resourcesfullness / intelligent game choices etc. But nah they are just hassels right? Toss them out send me to end game in 3 days so I can complain. Just give me more monsters to kill bigger weapons and flashier spells.
Remember when actually characters in an mmorpg had stats like STR, AGI, DEX, WIL, CON or whatever.
Remember when you could build your own fortifications i.e. whole villages with buildings and a wall around.
Remember when th ere was actually fear walking around into enemy territory.
Remember when the term F2P was a phrase and people knew such games were bad quality.
Remember when not that many games in general where out there but people were more happy than nowadays.
Remember the days when companies were not that greedy with dirty marketing tricks and actually released games by gamers and not by stock investors.
He's the type of gamer that has to buy a new game every 2-3 months because his current one got boring with nothing to do because he beaten it.
I find it odd that it is now commonplace to "beat" MMOs. Before this was unheard of. So was moving from game to game every 2 months like locust.
MMORPGs are dumbed down, lobby-based, co-Ops now. Nothing more.
The fun doesn't come from the tedium of running back to your corpse, or grinding the exp you lost back. The fun comes from the thrill of killing the monster with under 10% health left knowing what you were risking. From getting a level and going back and killing a monster you couldn't yesterday. From having the long cast heal land just in time to save the tank. None of that excites when a death or a wipe is just a few minutes to run back and a pittance of gold.
They are hassles.
They're a feature which costs players a lot of time or clicks or attention, while their benefits (in terms of "how many interesting decisions does this game system provide?") tend to be extremely low.
When a player calls something a "hassle" (or an "inconvenience") that's exactly what they're describing: lots of effort required, for little payoff (little game depth.)
Meanwhile there are countless other features games can have where the same effort is associated with considerably more interesting decisions being made, which makes the game feel considerably more rewarding.
Don't mistake me for saying a weight system brings zero depth to a game, but man...for the effort required it brings so little depth to a game I don't know why anyone would want that over countless other, deeper game features.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The first thing that popped into my mind when you described this was the movie "Idiocracy". Granted, it's no Academy Award winner, but the premise seems frighteningly prophetic.
If I create a game exactly like WOW but you have to hit tilde (~) every 30 seconds or your character dies, that has not added depth to the game. That has added hassle.
There's no deep gameplay and no sense of mastery to hitting tilde every 30 seconds.
The same is true of food and encumbrance in just about every game out there (certainly the MMORPGs I've played that used it.) The amount of depth they add in the MMORPGs and RPGs I've seen them in hasn't been zero, but it's been so close to zero as to make them not worth the hassle.
I've seen some non-MMORPGs do encumbrance in a way where it created interesting tradeoff decisions (ie depth) but never in a MMORPG so far.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
If I create a game exactly like WOW but you have to hit tilde (~) every 30 seconds or your character dies, that has not added depth to the game. That has added hassle.
There's no deep gameplay and no sense of mastery to hitting tilde every 30 seconds.
The same is true of food and encumbrance in just about every game out there (certainly the MMORPGs I've played that used it.) The amount of depth they add in the MMORPGs and RPGs I've seen them in hasn't been zero, but it's been so close to zero as to make them not worth the hassle.
I've seen some non-MMORPGs do encumbrance in a way where it created interesting tradeoff decisions (ie depth) but never in a MMORPG so far.
I would not call inventory mechanics any sort of depth mechanic. With that being said you keep talking about hassles. A hassle can mean many different things to many different people. Looting could be a hassle.
Walking could be a hassle.
Repairs could be a hassle.
Buffs could be a hassle.
Leveling could be a hassle.
Bosses could be a hassle.
Guild mates could be a hassle.
Mobs could be a hassle.
This list could go on and on. You do not like to be bothered by such a mechanic. I understand that. I just think that labeling stuff as a hassle because you have limited time is just a generalization. A weight mechanic versus a space mechanic does not necessarily offer fewer trips to unload your burden. You have just latched on to that concept because you feel that one version is better than another.
Honestly, I really don't care all that much which feature is in the game. I play and determine my fun in many different ways. If time is so damn important that walking and traveling throughout my game are hassles. I wake up and take time off from the gaming. I call it a reality check.
Agreed ^
I think the future of hassle-less games will be ones where you don't even have to play to progress in. It would take EVE-style timers and apply it to everything.
"You haven't logged in 2 weeks - you're now at rank 21 in magic defense and have a new item [elitist shoulderpads of GTFO]"
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I think the OP is really just bringing up what we all know and has been discussed many times (although weight and encumbrance is one that usually doesn't come up so good job). The whole MMO genre is simply a hack and slash fest where too much thinking causes most players to whine and quit. For most people today, a challenge is not fun. They really just want to do easy things that make them feel good. If there was a chance to lose to the game or gods forbid another player, most would quit because it would remind them of their real lives.
I have pretty much given up on MMOs for this reason. IMO, the really good games that still have a challenge are the browser based strategy games. I am playing Illyriad right now and that is a blast. I know- totally different type of game but it has what many of us are looking for. Weight, death, any semblance of realism and any possibility of failure will not return to MMO gaming.
why would anyone have fun wasting time on mechanics that are frustrating and boring? no one can tell me that they always have fun every corpse run or camping stuff for 20 hours.
the only thing i can think of is they still believe overcoming bordom and frustration is a sign of acomplishment, rather than what it it is, poor game design.
also i should have added "still" into that quote, since i did play eq1 and felt like overcoming those things somehow made the game more "fun" myself . Wow and other games showed you could create other mechanisms to add challenge and that list is just poor outdated ones that no game company would attempt to add anymore if they want to make money.
i was happy when sony decided to phase out mechanisms like these, too bad the game was played out for me after playing on and off for 10 years. wish they had made it so you don't lose gear about 8 years ago when there were more players, maybe eq would have retained more players, either that or maybe just not have put GoD out, either one.
i realize some people believe these mechanisms are "fun", but i honestly think they are just holding on to that belief because they played a game with it forever and they have now rationalized that belief into "this adds fun to games".
i think you missed what i was really saying, that the mechanisms are bad because they waste players time. or for a while were nothing but junk mechanisms that didn't add anything to the game, like the eating and drinking mechanism that did nothing, not because they inconvenience people. they fixed the issue with food, namely made it have an effect, even thought it sometimes seems broken.
inconvenience is fine, all mmos have inconvenience, but corpse runs are not an inconvenience they are a game breaker for most people.
there is always niche games for that, people play the god awful d3 permadeath thing after all.
i think you overestimated the amount of thinking you needed to do in old mmos.
how much skill does it take to play any of these games? not as much as people want to think they do.
i'm not sure why people say you needed more thought in older mmos, it wasn't any different than the new ones.
the new ones just require you to not have to experiment, because from out of the gate it is all spoonfed to you by websites made by people that already did the work.
of course that is how the rest of the internet is, full of information prepackaged by someone else already, in small bites for everyone to consume.
this is of course, just as planned.
Missing weight thou art?
Well, there could be one realistic MMORPG. I do doubt a little if OP would like to play it.
No heavy armor and that armor corrodes after rain/walking through water and your toon has no idea about how to remove corrosion. You can't carry more that 3 weapons at one time (let us say, sword in one hand, bow and arrows on the back and dagger by the belt). If you wear heavy armor and have 3 great weapons, you move 1 meter per day - great speed, great realism. And if you got weapon number 4, you are in trouble since you have nothng to carry it in. Worse with armor: if you found Great Armor of Owning, you have to undress and take on new armor.
If you have simple clothes, they will break from any walking in the forest and you will have hard time by sewing them with needle (it is supposed you work more with your sword than with your needle). Boots will break sooner than everything, so in the middle of the battle they will just ruin.
Oh yes, no stuff enchantement, because no such thing in reality.
No level progression, no uber-strong characters (just because in real life we can't choose what we want on our birthday - +20 to dexterity or +50 to intellect). No experience from killing monster, because if you kill rat you only know how to kill rat, not how to kill Green Goblin of Hell.
Character would became dirty and stinky one day, just because he walked too long in his heavy armor under the sun and therefore has to take a bath leaving all stuff on the shore. Did I mention character would run into excrements of other people/wildlife (and he would have to leave those too: imagine person who eats and does not go to toilet). Character would not know how to eat certain food and if that food is edible.
Any serious wound is deadly: if you are hit to the leg, you may remove arrow or bandage it, but your leg may not recover, so your uber-strong super-levelled Tank is almost useless. To make things worse, enemy can fire to your eye leaving you (if alive) useless for anything.
And if toon is Human (I'm not sure about fantasy races) he would have a need of sexual relations from certain age. And reaching certain age he would just die out of age.
Would OP play game with such immersion and realism?
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Archeage is suppose to be bringing back some of these old school mechanics, right?
Your description fits almost every MMO shipped in the last 6 years. Im currently playing Gothic 3 full (not the piece of crap steam forsaken gods version) but the one from direct2drive. Tossed on the 1.4 gig community enhanced version pack from CTP and having the most fun in an rpg since maybe morrowind. Its everything I wish an MMO could be.
Well, television (drama or sport) has always been a medium where you are completely passive as a viewer and the characters even continue their storylines whether or not you watch. There is likely room for a genre of fantasy entertainment that offers rich simulations, but limited interaction - where you are passively watching the character as much as you are playing it. I have to admit I might even enjoy it.
Aren't 'coach' simulations like that? (I wouldn't know, honestly)
Perhaps there is a niche for RPG 'coach' simulations where you raise up heroes and send them off to do all the hard work for ya.
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