Good point. If OP really thinks inconveniences are the key, he/she should try playing F2P games for free. There will be plenty of inconveniences there.
No, it is not the same exact argument. One is optional free action with majority choosing fast-travel and the other is an optional purchase majority choosing not to buy. Lets face it, you want to play one way, and you want others to play just like you - to suffer with you. You should find more than enough buddies to tackle all the inconveniences in F2P games.
And lets refrain from using the R-word, OK? We don't want the mods censoring your cute comments.
I hate doing this, but I agree with quirhid. I don't like oppressive designs.
I hate doing this, but I agree with quirhid. I don't like oppressive designs.
All a matter of degree, we keep (all) making the mistake of treating this as another typical black/white forum argument, and it can't work that way.
What the op initiially proposes is (paraphrasing) gaming masochism--pounding your face against the bricks repeatedly results in a better game. Inconvenience is the key--always better? Always??? (demonstrably false)
That's an exaggeration, clearly. But so is the man of straw proposed as the inverse--that any player expressing an opinion to the least bit contrary is simply lazy. (also demonstrably false)
Having discarded both of those polar extremities as being too simplistic and too unrealistic, we can leave ad absurdum behind; the real answer must lie somewhere in between.
Back to exactly 100 posts ago: "There is a huge difference between challenging someone and just throwing up a series of pointless roadblocks"
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I wonder if there will be a time when the masses will be more accepting of not-so-easy or inconvinent features or if the only way out is if a new audience that does enjoy these grow to become the masses.
Not-so-easy .. all the time. D3 sold 10M boxes, and Inferno mode was impossible for most, when it was released. ANd we are not even talking about hard mode.
Inconvenience .. not so much. Personally i wouldn't play a game with a lot of inconvenience in my face.
And not confuse challenging and inconvenience .. they are not the same thing. Try to get to point A to ponit B with stealth gameplay can be challenging. Walking from point A to point B for 20 min doing nothing but walking is inconvenience. I want the first in my game, and not the second.
D3 sold 10m boxes and there is a challenging Inferno mode? How does that even proove that the masses are accepting something more challenging? If anything it says that the masses rather have everything easier now and have an option for a challenge much later if they even bother to get that far.
I guess you forgot to make up a statistic that there is a 20% rise in those that own the game have played inferno mode?
without having read the intervening pages: op, i would argue that thegreater inconvenience would be the difficulty in advancing. no one plays games to grind out tiny improvements. that's what real life is for. most people play games to be/do something awesome. skyrim would be crap if you got mauled by the first dragon, then spent the next hundred hours grinding out slight improvements to be anywhere near it's level of power. challenge is one thing, but inconvenience is not the key to challenge. your princess is in another castle, dude.
All the comments about travel time remind of my time playing ffxi and how, to me at least, it still ranks as the best of the travel experiences I've had in a world. Sure, some of the trips could be tedious, but you really only had to the truly tedious ones once to get access to the new area via the other transportation systems the game had in place. Also, on land, if you had to travel from point A to pont B to accomplish quest C, you were passing the locations you would need to know about for quests D, E, and F, as well as the mobs needed to accomplish those future things. I think that, more than anything, was what struck me as being off about WOW; instead of having the zone challenges mixed together, encouraging and even requiring a certain amount of level mixing, like they were in FFXI, the zones are all each one level range, and once you're past that range, you have no reason to ever return to that zone, rendering the world largely pointless in my opinion, because you never actually get to know any part of it or get atttached to any part of it since you are always moving on 5 levels later never to return. This, to me, is what killed the travel experience; if you don't have a reason to care about your surroundings, and you really don't in most modern games, most people won't. Older games, people were more tolerant of longer travel times because the exploration and avoiding trouble aspects actually mattered; most of the newer games, the world zones are just a fancy lobby and/or temporary holding pen for people of a specific level.
I think this is true of a lot of the "inconveniences" that modern players moan about. Instead of incorporating them into the gameplay and making them part of the game, which the older games tried to do to a certain extent, they get slapped on as extra afterthoughts and/or inconveniences to slow players down, and that is obviously going to annoy a lot of people. Devs have a lot of power in shaping whether something is going to be considered an "inconveniece" or a "challenge" and they have largely failed in that respect in recent years. Until they decide to find an effective middle ground between the need for conveniece and the need for at least some challenge, the chances of it happening are slim to none.
Wow, this thread seems to have become rather polarized. Obviously on any continuum there are two polar opposites. In this case they seem to be Total Convenience and Total Inconvenience.
Total Convenience: The quest giver comes to me and gives me the quest to kill 10 kobolds and loot their candles. I don't have to accept the quest, that happens automatically. Upon the automatic acceptance of the quest I'm magically whisked away to koboldville where the kobolds walk up to me throw thier candles into my bag and fall on their own swords granting me experience and gold. I am then whisked back to the quest giver where he takes the candles out of my bag and puts a rather fetching coif onto my head for me. He then thanks himself so that I don't have to be bothered with the task. Hark, another quest giver approaches...
Seriously though, total inconvenience is at the other end of the spectrum. I have to hail the questgiver and type key phrases back at them. There is no quest log so I write down all of the things that I need to collect on the handy notebook I keep near my keyboard for just such a purpose. I have no idea what mobs drop the items I need let alone where to find them. My character can only walk backwards and the entire game is written in hindi. I don't speak hindi. I find a translator to translate the notes I've taken and come to find out that the game doesn't speak hindi either. My computer explodes.
Neither of these sound fun to me, and while I do tend to lean more towards exploding computers than suicidal kobolds, I think that a better answer must like somewhere closer to the center of the spectrum.
As far as travel. You can have both methods within an explorable world.
Example: Within that world, make portals in certain locations... possibly make the background story that they require runes scattered throughout the world in order to operate them, as they are creations of the ancients who had unlock the power of teleportation. No drop/trade these runes. Each portal has it's own set of runes based on inscriptions on the portals. Or you can make them all useable after getting one set of runes.
As the player discovers them, they can note their locations via exploration, and keep a log on which runes go to which portal based on the inscriptions. Once unlocked...they are able to use them at will if they wish. Or, if one set is needed only....they can use the portals at will. But the player should take heed that porting into an area they know nothing about may be a bad idea..they take their own risks doing so....which makes exploring to find them and take note of the dangers of their locations in advance may be in their best interests.
Don't make these runes mob drops....but fairly hidden throughout the game world in dungeons, treasure chests scattered throughout the world..or maybe even some acquired through chain quests.
Sure, the player will need to explore at first to find them...but once they do, they are free to port as they wish. When players start the game, they want to explore the world out of the initial excitement to see it in all it's glory.
Plus, the game would have mounts as well, and ships. Have things to do at the docks while awaiting a ship. A small PvP arena where players could challenge one another...make bets via NPC's at the arena on who will prevail (gambling), taverns for players to mingle while they wait (Can have a bell rang by an NPC when the ship is due in with them telling where the ship is headed), an AH, games for players to take up (Archery contests, etc, etc.), crafting huts.... Sure..there is a wait for the ships, but there would be things to do while you wait.
This is just one example, although I know not perfect...but really...there are ways to take away downtime.
That's a problem of community moreso than games. If a game has to force you to interact with people with tedium and dead time, there is a larger issue at hand.
The game shouldn't force you to do anything.
HOWEVER.
Current games forces you NOT to interact with other players. You're always doing tasks (quests) ALL the time from the very beginning of the game to the end. Developers want you distracted ALWAYS doing something pre-defined. You have no time to talk, you have to go to Point A to pick up the quests then point B, C, D, E then back to point A to turn in everything then move on to the next hub.
Even trading made so that you don't, god forbid, talk to other players. You go to the online-application called Auction House and search for the item you want. Buyt it out or bid on it, and you're set. Zero player-to-player communication.
The whole philosophy and design concept of recent MMORPG is to FORCE players away from interacting with each other.
I say don't force anyone doing anything, just set the tools and content and make the players choose their own preference of game play. They want to group? give the incentive to do so, don't make the solo-questing path the only effecient path to play. Want to solo? give solo options. Want to grind? sure, if they want to... WHY NOT? I'm all for options and I'm totally against restrictions and pre-defined paths of game play.
Good point. If OP really thinks inconveniences are the key, he/she should try playing F2P games for free. There will be plenty of inconveniences there.
This argument is the exam same argument when people said "if you dislike instant-teleportation from polar opposite points of the world, then don't use that just walk!"... Do I even need to explain why this is retarded?
The difficulties in a world sets the pace of the game. It's the inter-connection between you, other players and the world. If your group were teleported in Castle Ravenloft in 1 second because they touched a blinking neon sign, it doesn't matter if you walk the path 10 minutes... because the actual distance to that dungeon is 1 second. That's it, that's the fact. Your friends, the community, everyone else can reach that point in one second it makes no sense for you to forcing yourself to take a longer route.
It's like saying "Run in circles around yourself for 10 minutes to make taking 3 steps in a city feels longer." Why would I want to do that?
No, it is not the same exact argument. One is optional free action with majority choosing fast-travel and the other is an optional purchase majority choosing not to buy. Lets face it, you want to play one way, and you want others to play just like you - to suffer with you. You should find more than enough buddies to tackle all the inconveniences in F2P games.
And lets refrain from using the R-word, OK? We don't want the mods censoring your cute comments.
First of all.. ALL F2P games suffer a lot fundemental game designs that I don't even want to play to begin with. So, playing these even without paying a penny is just stupid because they lack all the requirements I seek. I am seeking specific game mechanics that are no longer available.
I don't want to be put ina disadvantage. I never said I want to play a game where I am at a disadvantage. So playing a F2P game where people who PAY get an advantage over me is a game I do not want to play.
What I wanted, and I hope you udnerstand this point, is a world where Pace is slower. How do you do that? it's with inconveniences. If you give an option to over come such inconvenience by paying real life money (or by a click of a button) then the whole thing is pointless as explained before.
Bring me a world without insta-gratification, without an "online" shop and with a slower pace and I'd play it. STAY AWAY FROM THIS GAME if you 1) want to be told what to do, 2) want to play a game that rewards you every 2 minutes. Just stay away from it, don't play it. I don't want YOU to suffer. I just want a game suitable to "me" if you don't like it... Leave?
Just don't come to me and ruin my game and ask me to play my way in a game designed to be played your way.
YOU want to play a different genre than what I want to play. YOU just want a DIFFERENT game. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying what I want is better, I am just saying wha tI want is DIFFERENT. and I have ZERO options of the kind of game that I want to play. While YOU have ALL the options scattered all over the market. I hope you're having fun because I'm still waiting for a game that cater to ME and HENCE why I am here in this forum complaining.
First of all.. ALL F2P games suffer a lot fundemental game designs that I don't even want to play to begin with. So, playing these even without paying a penny is just stupid because they lack all the requirements I seek. I am seeking specific game mechanics that are no longer available.
I don't want to be put ina disadvantage. I never said I want to play a game where I am at a disadvantage. So playing a F2P game where people who PAY get an advantage over me is a game I do not want to play.
What I wanted, and I hope you udnerstand this point, is a world where Pace is slower. How do you do that? it's with inconveniences. If you give an option to over come such inconvenience by paying real life money (or by a click of a button) then the whole thing is pointless as explained before.
Bring me a world without insta-gratification, without an "online" shop and with a slower pace and I'd play it. STAY AWAY FROM THIS GAME if you 1) want to be told what to do, 2) want to play a game that rewards you every 2 minutes. Just stay away from it, don't play it. I don't want YOU to suffer. I just want a game suitable to "me" if you don't like it... Leave?
Just don't come to me and ruin my game and ask me to play my way in a game designed to be played your way.
YOU want to play a different genre than what I want to play. YOU just want a DIFFERENT game. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying what I want is better, I am just saying wha tI want is DIFFERENT. and I have ZERO options of the kind of game that I want to play. While YOU have ALL the options scattered all over the market. I hope you're having fun because I'm still waiting for a game that cater to ME and HENCE why I am here in this forum complaining.
I think the whole slower pace, especially waiting for stuff to happen, is somewhat questionable in a game which charges a monthly fee. I can't but imagine that making the best of my gametime is a game in itself and I don't want to do that.
I can watch a movie or listen to an audio book while I'm playing Eve Online. Even during PvP fleet operations you could do it if you didn't need to be on comms. Infact reading audio books, watching movies and generally multitasking is the way I play slow paced games. That is how I play turn-based multiplayer games with my friends, such as Civ4 & 5 and Shogun 2: Total War. See I have no trouble playing slow-paced games; however, I don't want the games to waste my time.
You say your type of gaming is not any better than the next, but at the same time you use terms which were meant, and commonly used, as derogatory (instant-gratification). You may not think you're above anyone but you talk like it.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
I hate doing this, but I agree with quirhid. I don't like oppressive designs.
All a matter of degree, we keep (all) making the mistake of treating this as another typical black/white forum argument, and it can't work that way.
What the op initiially proposes is (paraphrasing) gaming masochism--pounding your face against the bricks repeatedly results in a better game. Inconvenience is the key--always better? Always??? (demonstrably false)
That's an exaggeration, clearly. But so is the man of straw proposed as the inverse--that any player expressing an opinion to the least bit contrary is simply lazy. (also demonstrably false)
Having discarded both of those polar extremities as being too simplistic and too unrealistic, we can leave ad absurdum behind; the real answer must lie somewhere in between.
Back to exactly 100 posts ago: "There is a huge difference between challenging someone and just throwing up a series of pointless roadblocks"
mea culpa. You caught me being lazy
So how do you keep the charm of distance but allow for convenience as well?
Vehicles that have progressively higher speeds for more effort?
So if that's what you want then by all means argue for the least "inconvenience". Oh and you do know that only about 10% of the development cycle of a MMO is spent on end game?
Welcome to the endgame Schmitt Box we made for you content locusts with 10% of our time:
So how do you keep the charm of distance but allow for convenience as well?
Dunno, I was "born" in GS where we walked everywhere. Consider the equivalent of Jogging as your only movement speed, every day, all the way to the cap. But then conveniences (teleport et al) weren't excluded, either. The main slowdown was lack of any form of advancement other than killing critturs, at all, and an (insanely, by mmo standards) accelerating-slope XP curve as you neared the top end.
That particular game was originally paced for a decade average time-to-cap. No "endgame". No Raiding. No PvP. When a toon capped out (as some eventually did), they were done. Elder Statesman time. Not a race many people were interested in winning. "Extra character slot" was a monthly additional fee. Nobody (much) caught the Locust mania, or Alt-itis.
Unlike the op, I don't believe made that particular generation of games was "better" because it was unquestionably "grindier". I don't equate movement rates to "butch".
I still remember it rather fondly, btw, but not for mechanical reasons—mechanically, it was grindier than Lineage. It was a haven for roleplayers, in a way that no game after '97 ever has or will approach. And it was a small enough game that heavy staff/player interaction was still possible...we had unique items, we could personalize a character in ways entirely foreign to MMOs.
Personalize (for MMOs) is now a dirty word, chose one of your three hair styles, please. (So long to the best CC in the genre, we won't see your like again).
But we used to do things in our games other than leveling, hunting, get XP, get gold. Roleplay once entertained me for an entire year, with not a point of experience earned. How foreign is that to the modern mmo world? I spent significant time writing songs for a bardfest that happened annually, with no prizes, just actual performances. I worked out several pieces of what eventually became the game's permanent lore, as a player. (gawk) Those moons up in your sky? I designed those orbits. (Later on, of course, I got paid to do more).
And we had a terrific community. We had a lot of time to get to know each other. :shrug: But it didn't have a thing to do with movement speed, or imprinting our faces on the bricks repeatedly.
How's THAT for Nostalgia Shades?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
The reason why most recent MMORPGs are boring is because they are just too convenient.
When you design an MMORPG that probably aiming to use a subscription model you need to create an environment where the player can delve into for long playing time feeling that they "belong". It is when developers started to turn the world into a "game" of convenience that players started to feel more of being in a "themepark" than being in a world. (and sandbox has nothing to do with it).
The key here is we're so spoiled that everything is made easy to the point that "getting there" feels pointless and effortless. You don't feel accomplishment at all because it's a fact no matter who you are, you WILL achieve everything eventually (which is usually within a few days).
If traveling is too easy, death is unimportant and leveling is very linear and fast.... then what's the point???
Adding such inconveniences to the "World" would give you enough design options to add player-intederependence skills that help overcome such inconveniences. Traveling is too slow? you give, say, 30% of the classes abilities to overcome such a thing (teleporting, speed boost...etc).
The old timers always ask "Why can't I even convince myself to login in?" part of this because there's no sense of "investment" in your character. Everything feels very generic and again too convenient.
If every 2 minutes you're going to loot a gear upgrade, I say tell me why would you feel excited about gear upgrade anymore? I think we need to balance the pace of a game. Traveling pace, combat, leveling and gear upgrade. I think if it takes you 5 days in order to get a minor upgrade would actually make the item a lot more exciting than the recent trivial/redundaness of itemization in the insta-gratification MMORPGs.
You sir, have hit the nail on the head. Very well thought out and written, thank you for summing up what I have been feeling about MMO's for the past several years.
So how do you keep the charm of distance but allow for convenience as well?
Vehicles that have progressively higher speeds for more effort?
I never liked mounts which serve no other purpose other than to be an out-of-combat speed boost. Why not just an automatic out-of-combat speed buff instead (or a combat speed penalty whichever way you look it)?
Mounts add immerison? Yeah, think about that when next time you see someone summoning a mount out of thin air. It is a money sink. Something every player should obtain as soon as possible. It doesn't even add depth because there are no advantages for not having one - you'd be gimping yourself.
Boo to mechanics and choices like that.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Innconvenience only can be "the key" if it has gameplay systems to support it. Without it, it's just a plain annoying timesink to stretch content.
If i have a lifeless static world with no random (worthy) drops from mobs along the way as well as no PVP, and no exploration because of how uninspired "on-rail" streamlining makes those areas, making me walk 5 minutes from A to B is a chore.
If i have a dynamic World, with not obvious bonus encounters and the chance to reap something worth my while /or open pvp possibilities aside from just ganking, forcing me to walk the 5 minutes isn't bad.
Who knows what could happen during that 5 minutes, it could make me rich for just "cleaning" that strange looking camp or end up in a pvp siege with others / faction / clan wars.
Playing: EVE Online Wants to play: ArcheAge, Lineage Eternal: Twilight Resistance / Star Citizen / FFXIV AAR / Neverwinter
Used to play for 5+ years: Lineage 2, Lord of the Rings Online and Ragnarok Online
Utter disappointing MMO experience for 1 - 3 Months: WAR / AoC / SWTOR / RIFT / AION / STO / TSW / GW2 / GW / Vanguard / Planetside2
The reason why most recent MMORPGs are boring is because they are just too convenient.
When you design an MMORPG that probably aiming to use a subscription model you need to create an environment where the player can delve into for long playing time feeling that they "belong". It is when developers started to turn the world into a "game" of convenience that players started to feel more of being in a "themepark" than being in a world. (and sandbox has nothing to do with it).
The key here is we're so spoiled that everything is made easy to the point that "getting there" feels pointless and effortless. You don't feel accomplishment at all because it's a fact no matter who you are, you WILL achieve everything eventually (which is usually within a few days).
If traveling is too easy, death is unimportant and leveling is very linear and fast.... then what's the point???
Adding such inconveniences to the "World" would give you enough design options to add player-intederependence skills that help overcome such inconveniences. Traveling is too slow? you give, say, 30% of the classes abilities to overcome such a thing (teleporting, speed boost...etc).
The old timers always ask "Why can't I even convince myself to login in?" part of this because there's no sense of "investment" in your character. Everything feels very generic and again too convenient.
If every 2 minutes you're going to loot a gear upgrade, I say tell me why would you feel excited about gear upgrade anymore? I think we need to balance the pace of a game. Traveling pace, combat, leveling and gear upgrade. I think if it takes you 5 days in order to get a minor upgrade would actually make the item a lot more exciting than the recent trivial/redundaness of itemization in the insta-gratification MMORPGs.
You sir, have hit the nail on the head. Very well thought out and written, thank you for summing up what I have been feeling about MMO's for the past several years.
Agree 100%. But careful LauraFrost...making sense here gets you berrated and attacked. You also said instant-gratification...incoming about derogatory terms and how you think you are better than everyone else. Oh....too late.
But on a serious note...as I have said before...you don't need inconvenience to make the game the way we would like to see it. At least not in the sese a lot of people are thinking here, and there are ways you can implement other interesting things to do during downtime...depending on what that downtime is. And ways to mix the old with the new. Just need some dev's to do it and quit taking the easy road. Of course they have no desire to do that if the consumer base keeps buying into the easy road design either.
A 20 min boat ride is still boring, trivial, lack of challenge, and inconvenient.
Lots of hoopla with no substance. It boils down to very simple gameplay choices. Tell me, will anyone with a sane mind consider a 20 min boat ride a challenge?
No matter how you design it, a 20 min boat ride .. has very little gameplay .. at most interesting things to look at .. and very far from what a normal person will call a challenge.
5% dps? How about the difference between able to stun-lock a boss, or burn him down before he reaches you? Is that what depth is? Finding different ways to defeat your enemies.
Don't tell me you think depth is sitting on a boat for 20 min doing nothing.
Since when you can stunlock wow bosses?
Anyways, the boat ride itself is not challenging, avoiding it is, or , the other possibility, managing your time around 20minute boat rides since you refuse to participate in pve or some other content, OR have chosen to have a dps increase instead of "friendly with ferry faction".
Which is another argument which sounds so outlandish in the age of "how can i make my toddler eat later in the evening so i can raid?".
Flame on!
You can stunlock D3 bosses. I consider D3 fights more interesting, and more in depth than WOW.
What do you think fast travel is? To enable players to avoid things like 20 min boat ride. When EQ was first released, there were boat rides (and staring at spell book) that you cannot avoid. And if it can be avoided, the inconvience no longer applies, right?
So if that's what you want then by all means argue for the least "inconvenience". Oh and you do know that only about 10% of the development cycle of a MMO is spent on end game?
Welcome to the endgame Schmitt Box we made for you content locusts with 10% of our time:
[ You Are Here ]
Enjoy!
Easy gameplay and easy travel are independent. There is little inconvience in a game like D3, but the end game (inferno) is challenging.
And there is obviously no easy mode for pvp. So it is perfect possible to have a challenging game without much inconvenience.
I don't think MMOs are being built around this mindset anymore.
I mean, when older MMOs were targetting the thousands of nerds you had to fight to keep every sub you got for years on end to cover your expenses. Now, with tens of millions of potential subs, if your nerds and geeks finish the content and quit, four casuals are more than willing to take their place.
Now, you develop an MMO for a massive audience with limited content to keep production cost low so you can turn massive profit over a short term before the playerbase realizes the game has an expected lifetime of months to a year. Then change the sub model to eek out what money you can while you work on the next short-term project.
I just don't see any MMO being a niche target game today unless its backed by a large IP that will pull in curious fans. The inconvenience model you're all discussing is by and large a niche idea. The new MMO audience has spoken and as of this moment casual, easy, solo friendly games are the hot thing.
Best bet is to hope some indie dev group puts out a title worth clinging to, I think it may be your last bastion of hope.
Call me lazy if you want but I don't have time to grind through the same content over and over again in any MMO. The only thing that gives me a sense of accomplishment and makes me feel like I belong is player created player driven content and social gameplay. If bigger grinds make you feel like you 'belong' and sitting at the computer playing monotonous video game gives you a sense of accomplishment then you may be lying to yourself.
I don't think MMOs are being built around this mindset anymore.
I mean, when older MMOs were targetting the thousands of nerds you had to fight to keep every sub you got for years on end to cover your expenses. Now, with tens of millions of potential subs, if your nerds and geeks finish the content and quit, four casuals are more than willing to take their place.
Now, you develop an MMO for a massive audience with limited content to keep production cost low so you can turn massive profit over a short term before the playerbase realizes the game has an expected lifetime of months to a year. Then change the sub model to eek out what money you can while you work on the next short-term project.
I just don't see any MMO being a niche target game today unless its backed by a large IP that will pull in curious fans. The inconvenience model you're all discussing is by and large a niche idea. The new MMO audience has spoken and as of this moment casual, easy, solo friendly games are the hot thing.
Best bet is to hope some indie dev group puts out a title worth clinging to, I think it may be your last bastion of hope.
Pretty funny to see you single out the older group as nerds, when the newer crowd is doing the same things they do. Anyone who plays online games can pretty much be labeled so if you really want to go there.
And they didn't have to fight to keep subs back then. People stayed for years, not week or months because they had the content to keep you enthrawled, and the social climate. It was pretty consistent for years.
This is actually kind of true. I felt more drive to play a game when there was content that was hard and I knew there was very little chance of actually getting it all done. It was overall just more exciting when you finally get the chance to step into a dungeon that is very hard, that not many people have completed before, if anyone had ever completed it. The suspense and mystery was nice.
Unfortunately, at the same time, when things are too hard, it creates fucking ASSHOLES. I remember back in vanilla WoW, I ran Molten Core with two different raid leaders of two different guilds, and we absolutely had to use vent or teamspeak or whatever, and the entire time, the raid leaders just kept telling everyone to "shut the fuck up and listen", and even if we had a follow up question, they'd be like, "I said you're not allowed to speak" or some shit.
So, in the end, inconvenient and hard content is fine, but other players are almost 100% guaranteed to ruin any situation. Hmm. I think I need to take a break from MMO's for a while.
Purple - This is a fundemental problem with the playerbase of today's MMORPG's. You have to have the best gear, you have to have particular stats, you have to have a particular build or you are passed over and not even considered....or rarely are. And personally, I think it's BS. I have seen players with green gear outperform those that hardcore raid and feed off others help to have the top tier gear. It's not always the gear, but the player. Just most people now consider what a player is wearing or wielding their resume of worth. What a load of garbage.
But the reality is, that's what the majority of people who play these games today, the people who pay for the genre to exist, want. I think it's stupid too, but if 98% of the market wants that, that's the way games are going to be made, you can't support a game on 2% of the market.
Red - Yes, not everyone is greedy...but be realistic...a large majority are. Especially the hardcores that will milk an item in an AH for all they can get. No one is promoting greed, it's a natural occurance,. In games and in reality.
I do think people and games are promoting greed. If the best gear, even mob drops, is absurdly expensive in the AH, then people have to work harder to either grind for gold or sell their own loot for ever-increasing amounts to raise the money to buy the things they want to buy. The whole system is designed to drive prices up.
White - I started with old school MMORPG's yes...but that doesn't mean I constantly want long journies. But 9 times out of 10 I still do it. Why? Because I am not in a hurry for the next shiney. I want to relax and enjoy the scenery and content between quests, dungeons, etc. Sure, once in awhile I will take the faster route...but believe it or not...there are people who still like to take the long way at times instead of the fastest and easiest way everytime. Some enjoy it, I am certain I am not the only one. I am saying that for those like me, it's still there to enjoy, but they can add portals for those who want to bypass this. No reason they can't have both.
I'm not in a hurry to get the next shiney either but I want to have fun and wandering around a wilderness that I've been through a hundred times is just not fun. If I want to relax, I'll turn off the computer and go do something relaxing. I'm playing a game because I want to be entertained.
Yellow - Sigh. Again...I know this...but at least this way it varies it from having just one same old tired way of doing it. They could also add different mobs upon changes, different loot tables, possible random treasure chests. I am just saying there are ways to make it not quite as cookie cutter. And where did I ever say I wanted inconveinience? What one person finds inconveinient, another may be able to find the fun. It's only inconveinient to those who don't like a given feature.
This whole thread is about inconvenience? I do agree with you though, I don't want inconvenience in a game for the sake of it being inconvenient or slowing me down. That's not challenge, that's frustration.
Green - Right. This is what I am getting at. Crafted gear, created by a player, SHOULD be different in looks and stats. And yep...Could have it where depending on what "extra" ingredients, or amounts of ingredients you added to weapons and/or armor recipies...it could alter the stats, and weapon integrity. Would also make crafting much deeper and interesting to experiment with.
Of course, the more of that you put in, the more strain you put on people's computers and Internet connections to keep up. That's a lot of data you have to shove down when everyone's armor and weapons are unique. Then, how do you stop people from building penis-swords and obscene things on the back of their armor? Hire a whole bunch of GMs to run around and check? As much as I'd like to think players would be responsible (HA!) and do the right thing, I'm trying to be practical as well. It's a nice idea but just totally unworkable.
Pink - But they DID start as P&P style games because that is who they were targeting in the beginning. But yes...sadly now they are catered to the WoW/console generation. And I know some will jump in and say I am slandering and name calling, blah blah...but I am not...it's what I see has happened since 2004. HOWEVER...probably a bit more so than that, they cater to.....waaaaaaait fooooor it....the old school crowd who want to hold onto playing MMORPG's, but don't have the time for them based on their RL obligations. So of course they don't mind them being turned into fast paced single playerish RPG's and lobby games.
But that's the reality. The old school crowd need to move on and deal with the reality that actually is, not the reality they wish was. It's like saying the old school car crowd who still want to crank-start their engines. Sorry, that's gone now, it's never coming back and they have to deal with it. Old school MMO players have to deal with it too. What existed in 2004 is gone, it's never coming back, deal with it.
But also...once they were commercialized to the populace...they went the way of speed and fast rewards. It's like watching a LotR movie where everyone is on crack and the movie lasts 10 minutes and they save the world. Ho-hum and lack luster IMO.
All games have always been commercialized to the populace. Back in the old days, when most players were tabletop D&D nerds, games were designed to appeal to them. Now that only a minuscule percentage of gamers are that, games no longer take their wishes into account. That's how business works.
It's just the way of society now. No one has patience, and people refuse to see fun in any other way than this...or even the possibilities of what can or could be done. I don't mind fast fun myself...but that is why I play console games or PC FPS games. I USE to play MMORPG's to get lost in a world, become my character, and relax and forget reality...but sadly....they no longer give that feeling. And it isn't because I've been there done that over and over again. It's because those types of MMORPG's are nearly, if not already completely extinct....and it's just sad. I feel if you can't find the time to enjoy an MMORPG in moderation.....you shouldn't be playing them. But again...just my own opinion.
Sorry, I really have very little sympathy or respect for people who try to escape from reality into a fantasy world. Games are and have always been a means to have fun and waste free time. That's all they are, that's all they've ever been, that's all they'll ever be. If life sucks so bad that you have to escape into a video game, something tells me you need to spend less time playing and more time in therapy.
Comments
I hate doing this, but I agree with quirhid. I don't like oppressive designs.
edit: Holy Shit this is post 1138
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
All a matter of degree, we keep (all) making the mistake of treating this as another typical black/white forum argument, and it can't work that way.
What the op initiially proposes is (paraphrasing) gaming masochism--pounding your face against the bricks repeatedly results in a better game. Inconvenience is the key--always better? Always??? (demonstrably false)
That's an exaggeration, clearly. But so is the man of straw proposed as the inverse--that any player expressing an opinion to the least bit contrary is simply lazy. (also demonstrably false)
Having discarded both of those polar extremities as being too simplistic and too unrealistic, we can leave ad absurdum behind; the real answer must lie somewhere in between.
Back to exactly 100 posts ago: "There is a huge difference between challenging someone and just throwing up a series of pointless roadblocks"
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
D3 sold 10m boxes and there is a challenging Inferno mode? How does that even proove that the masses are accepting something more challenging? If anything it says that the masses rather have everything easier now and have an option for a challenge much later if they even bother to get that far.
I guess you forgot to make up a statistic that there is a 20% rise in those that own the game have played inferno mode?
All the comments about travel time remind of my time playing ffxi and how, to me at least, it still ranks as the best of the travel experiences I've had in a world. Sure, some of the trips could be tedious, but you really only had to the truly tedious ones once to get access to the new area via the other transportation systems the game had in place. Also, on land, if you had to travel from point A to pont B to accomplish quest C, you were passing the locations you would need to know about for quests D, E, and F, as well as the mobs needed to accomplish those future things. I think that, more than anything, was what struck me as being off about WOW; instead of having the zone challenges mixed together, encouraging and even requiring a certain amount of level mixing, like they were in FFXI, the zones are all each one level range, and once you're past that range, you have no reason to ever return to that zone, rendering the world largely pointless in my opinion, because you never actually get to know any part of it or get atttached to any part of it since you are always moving on 5 levels later never to return. This, to me, is what killed the travel experience; if you don't have a reason to care about your surroundings, and you really don't in most modern games, most people won't. Older games, people were more tolerant of longer travel times because the exploration and avoiding trouble aspects actually mattered; most of the newer games, the world zones are just a fancy lobby and/or temporary holding pen for people of a specific level.
I think this is true of a lot of the "inconveniences" that modern players moan about. Instead of incorporating them into the gameplay and making them part of the game, which the older games tried to do to a certain extent, they get slapped on as extra afterthoughts and/or inconveniences to slow players down, and that is obviously going to annoy a lot of people. Devs have a lot of power in shaping whether something is going to be considered an "inconveniece" or a "challenge" and they have largely failed in that respect in recent years. Until they decide to find an effective middle ground between the need for conveniece and the need for at least some challenge, the chances of it happening are slim to none.
Wow, this thread seems to have become rather polarized. Obviously on any continuum there are two polar opposites. In this case they seem to be Total Convenience and Total Inconvenience.
Total Convenience: The quest giver comes to me and gives me the quest to kill 10 kobolds and loot their candles. I don't have to accept the quest, that happens automatically. Upon the automatic acceptance of the quest I'm magically whisked away to koboldville where the kobolds walk up to me throw thier candles into my bag and fall on their own swords granting me experience and gold. I am then whisked back to the quest giver where he takes the candles out of my bag and puts a rather fetching coif onto my head for me. He then thanks himself so that I don't have to be bothered with the task. Hark, another quest giver approaches...
Total Inconvenience: Error 37. Retype password. Error 37. Retype password. Error 37. Retype password. Error 37. Retype password. Error 37. Retype password. Error 37. Retype password. Error 37. Retype password. Error 37. Retype password. Error 37. Retype password. Error 37. Retype password. Error 37. Retype password. Error 37. Retype password. Error 37. Retype password. Error 37. Retype password. Error 37. Retype password. Error 37. Retype password...
Seriously though, total inconvenience is at the other end of the spectrum. I have to hail the questgiver and type key phrases back at them. There is no quest log so I write down all of the things that I need to collect on the handy notebook I keep near my keyboard for just such a purpose. I have no idea what mobs drop the items I need let alone where to find them. My character can only walk backwards and the entire game is written in hindi. I don't speak hindi. I find a translator to translate the notes I've taken and come to find out that the game doesn't speak hindi either. My computer explodes.
Neither of these sound fun to me, and while I do tend to lean more towards exploding computers than suicidal kobolds, I think that a better answer must like somewhere closer to the center of the spectrum.
tldr; (convenience + inconvenience) / 2
As far as travel. You can have both methods within an explorable world.
Example: Within that world, make portals in certain locations... possibly make the background story that they require runes scattered throughout the world in order to operate them, as they are creations of the ancients who had unlock the power of teleportation. No drop/trade these runes. Each portal has it's own set of runes based on inscriptions on the portals. Or you can make them all useable after getting one set of runes.
As the player discovers them, they can note their locations via exploration, and keep a log on which runes go to which portal based on the inscriptions. Once unlocked...they are able to use them at will if they wish. Or, if one set is needed only....they can use the portals at will. But the player should take heed that porting into an area they know nothing about may be a bad idea..they take their own risks doing so....which makes exploring to find them and take note of the dangers of their locations in advance may be in their best interests.
Don't make these runes mob drops....but fairly hidden throughout the game world in dungeons, treasure chests scattered throughout the world..or maybe even some acquired through chain quests.
Sure, the player will need to explore at first to find them...but once they do, they are free to port as they wish. When players start the game, they want to explore the world out of the initial excitement to see it in all it's glory.
Plus, the game would have mounts as well, and ships. Have things to do at the docks while awaiting a ship. A small PvP arena where players could challenge one another...make bets via NPC's at the arena on who will prevail (gambling), taverns for players to mingle while they wait (Can have a bell rang by an NPC when the ship is due in with them telling where the ship is headed), an AH, games for players to take up (Archery contests, etc, etc.), crafting huts.... Sure..there is a wait for the ships, but there would be things to do while you wait.
This is just one example, although I know not perfect...but really...there are ways to take away downtime.The game shouldn't force you to do anything.
HOWEVER.
Current games forces you NOT to interact with other players. You're always doing tasks (quests) ALL the time from the very beginning of the game to the end. Developers want you distracted ALWAYS doing something pre-defined. You have no time to talk, you have to go to Point A to pick up the quests then point B, C, D, E then back to point A to turn in everything then move on to the next hub.
Even trading made so that you don't, god forbid, talk to other players. You go to the online-application called Auction House and search for the item you want. Buyt it out or bid on it, and you're set. Zero player-to-player communication.
The whole philosophy and design concept of recent MMORPG is to FORCE players away from interacting with each other.
I say don't force anyone doing anything, just set the tools and content and make the players choose their own preference of game play. They want to group? give the incentive to do so, don't make the solo-questing path the only effecient path to play. Want to solo? give solo options. Want to grind? sure, if they want to... WHY NOT? I'm all for options and I'm totally against restrictions and pre-defined paths of game play.
So you want to say, that you yourself are a machine?
Flame on!
First of all.. ALL F2P games suffer a lot fundemental game designs that I don't even want to play to begin with.
So, playing these even without paying a penny is just stupid because they lack all the requirements I seek. I am seeking specific game mechanics that are no longer available.
I don't want to be put ina disadvantage. I never said I want to play a game where I am at a disadvantage. So playing a F2P game where people who PAY get an advantage over me is a game I do not want to play.
What I wanted, and I hope you udnerstand this point, is a world where Pace is slower. How do you do that? it's with inconveniences. If you give an option to over come such inconvenience by paying real life money (or by a click of a button) then the whole thing is pointless as explained before.
Bring me a world without insta-gratification, without an "online" shop and with a slower pace and I'd play it. STAY AWAY FROM THIS GAME if you 1) want to be told what to do, 2) want to play a game that rewards you every 2 minutes. Just stay away from it, don't play it. I don't want YOU to suffer. I just want a game suitable to "me" if you don't like it... Leave?
Just don't come to me and ruin my game and ask me to play my way in a game designed to be played your way.
YOU want to play a different genre than what I want to play. YOU just want a DIFFERENT game. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying what I want is better, I am just saying wha tI want is DIFFERENT. and I have ZERO options of the kind of game that I want to play. While YOU have ALL the options scattered all over the market. I hope you're having fun because I'm still waiting for a game that cater to ME and HENCE why I am here in this forum complaining.
I think the whole slower pace, especially waiting for stuff to happen, is somewhat questionable in a game which charges a monthly fee. I can't but imagine that making the best of my gametime is a game in itself and I don't want to do that.
I can watch a movie or listen to an audio book while I'm playing Eve Online. Even during PvP fleet operations you could do it if you didn't need to be on comms. Infact reading audio books, watching movies and generally multitasking is the way I play slow paced games. That is how I play turn-based multiplayer games with my friends, such as Civ4 & 5 and Shogun 2: Total War. See I have no trouble playing slow-paced games; however, I don't want the games to waste my time.You say your type of gaming is not any better than the next, but at the same time you use terms which were meant, and commonly used, as derogatory (instant-gratification). You may not think you're above anyone but you talk like it.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
mea culpa. You caught me being lazy
So how do you keep the charm of distance but allow for convenience as well?
Vehicles that have progressively higher speeds for more effort?
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Easymode and Easytravel = Early Endgame.
So if that's what you want then by all means argue for the least "inconvenience". Oh and you do know that only about 10% of the development cycle of a MMO is spent on end game?
Welcome to the endgame Schmitt Box we made for you content locusts with 10% of our time:
[ You Are Here ]
Enjoy!
Dunno, I was "born" in GS where we walked everywhere. Consider the equivalent of Jogging as your only movement speed, every day, all the way to the cap. But then conveniences (teleport et al) weren't excluded, either. The main slowdown was lack of any form of advancement other than killing critturs, at all, and an (insanely, by mmo standards) accelerating-slope XP curve as you neared the top end.
That particular game was originally paced for a decade average time-to-cap. No "endgame". No Raiding. No PvP. When a toon capped out (as some eventually did), they were done. Elder Statesman time. Not a race many people were interested in winning. "Extra character slot" was a monthly additional fee. Nobody (much) caught the Locust mania, or Alt-itis.
Unlike the op, I don't believe made that particular generation of games was "better" because it was unquestionably "grindier". I don't equate movement rates to "butch".
I still remember it rather fondly, btw, but not for mechanical reasons—mechanically, it was grindier than Lineage. It was a haven for roleplayers, in a way that no game after '97 ever has or will approach. And it was a small enough game that heavy staff/player interaction was still possible...we had unique items, we could personalize a character in ways entirely foreign to MMOs.
Personalize (for MMOs) is now a dirty word, chose one of your three hair styles, please. (So long to the best CC in the genre, we won't see your like again).
But we used to do things in our games other than leveling, hunting, get XP, get gold. Roleplay once entertained me for an entire year, with not a point of experience earned. How foreign is that to the modern mmo world? I spent significant time writing songs for a bardfest that happened annually, with no prizes, just actual performances. I worked out several pieces of what eventually became the game's permanent lore, as a player. (gawk) Those moons up in your sky? I designed those orbits. (Later on, of course, I got paid to do more).
And we had a terrific community. We had a lot of time to get to know each other. :shrug: But it didn't have a thing to do with movement speed, or imprinting our faces on the bricks repeatedly.
How's THAT for Nostalgia Shades?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
You sir, have hit the nail on the head. Very well thought out and written, thank you for summing up what I have been feeling about MMO's for the past several years.
I never liked mounts which serve no other purpose other than to be an out-of-combat speed boost. Why not just an automatic out-of-combat speed buff instead (or a combat speed penalty whichever way you look it)?
Mounts add immerison? Yeah, think about that when next time you see someone summoning a mount out of thin air. It is a money sink. Something every player should obtain as soon as possible. It doesn't even add depth because there are no advantages for not having one - you'd be gimping yourself.
Boo to mechanics and choices like that.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Innconvenience only can be "the key" if it has gameplay systems to support it.
Without it, it's just a plain annoying timesink to stretch content.
If i have a lifeless static world with no random (worthy) drops from mobs along the way as well as no PVP, and no exploration because of how uninspired "on-rail" streamlining makes those areas, making me walk 5 minutes from A to B is a chore.
If i have a dynamic World, with not obvious bonus encounters and the chance to reap something worth my while /or open pvp possibilities aside from just ganking, forcing me to walk the 5 minutes isn't bad.
Who knows what could happen during that 5 minutes, it could make me rich for just "cleaning" that strange looking camp or end up in a pvp siege with others / faction / clan wars.
Playing: EVE Online
Wants to play: ArcheAge, Lineage Eternal: Twilight Resistance / Star Citizen / FFXIV AAR / Neverwinter
Used to play for 5+ years: Lineage 2, Lord of the Rings Online and Ragnarok Online
Utter disappointing MMO experience for 1 - 3 Months:
WAR / AoC / SWTOR / RIFT / AION / STO / TSW / GW2 / GW / Vanguard / Planetside2
Agree 100%. But careful LauraFrost...making sense here gets you berrated and attacked. You also said instant-gratification...incoming about derogatory terms and how you think you are better than everyone else. Oh....too late.
But on a serious note...as I have said before...you don't need inconvenience to make the game the way we would like to see it. At least not in the sese a lot of people are thinking here, and there are ways you can implement other interesting things to do during downtime...depending on what that downtime is. And ways to mix the old with the new. Just need some dev's to do it and quit taking the easy road. Of course they have no desire to do that if the consumer base keeps buying into the easy road design either.
You can stunlock D3 bosses. I consider D3 fights more interesting, and more in depth than WOW.
What do you think fast travel is? To enable players to avoid things like 20 min boat ride. When EQ was first released, there were boat rides (and staring at spell book) that you cannot avoid. And if it can be avoided, the inconvience no longer applies, right?
Easy gameplay and easy travel are independent. There is little inconvience in a game like D3, but the end game (inferno) is challenging.
And there is obviously no easy mode for pvp. So it is perfect possible to have a challenging game without much inconvenience.
I don't think MMOs are being built around this mindset anymore.
I mean, when older MMOs were targetting the thousands of nerds you had to fight to keep every sub you got for years on end to cover your expenses. Now, with tens of millions of potential subs, if your nerds and geeks finish the content and quit, four casuals are more than willing to take their place.
Now, you develop an MMO for a massive audience with limited content to keep production cost low so you can turn massive profit over a short term before the playerbase realizes the game has an expected lifetime of months to a year. Then change the sub model to eek out what money you can while you work on the next short-term project.
I just don't see any MMO being a niche target game today unless its backed by a large IP that will pull in curious fans. The inconvenience model you're all discussing is by and large a niche idea. The new MMO audience has spoken and as of this moment casual, easy, solo friendly games are the hot thing.
Best bet is to hope some indie dev group puts out a title worth clinging to, I think it may be your last bastion of hope.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
Pretty funny to see you single out the older group as nerds, when the newer crowd is doing the same things they do. Anyone who plays online games can pretty much be labeled so if you really want to go there.
And they didn't have to fight to keep subs back then. People stayed for years, not week or months because they had the content to keep you enthrawled, and the social climate. It was pretty consistent for years.
This is actually kind of true. I felt more drive to play a game when there was content that was hard and I knew there was very little chance of actually getting it all done. It was overall just more exciting when you finally get the chance to step into a dungeon that is very hard, that not many people have completed before, if anyone had ever completed it. The suspense and mystery was nice.
Unfortunately, at the same time, when things are too hard, it creates fucking ASSHOLES. I remember back in vanilla WoW, I ran Molten Core with two different raid leaders of two different guilds, and we absolutely had to use vent or teamspeak or whatever, and the entire time, the raid leaders just kept telling everyone to "shut the fuck up and listen", and even if we had a follow up question, they'd be like, "I said you're not allowed to speak" or some shit.
So, in the end, inconvenient and hard content is fine, but other players are almost 100% guaranteed to ruin any situation. Hmm. I think I need to take a break from MMO's for a while.
But the reality is, that's what the majority of people who play these games today, the people who pay for the genre to exist, want. I think it's stupid too, but if 98% of the market wants that, that's the way games are going to be made, you can't support a game on 2% of the market.
I do think people and games are promoting greed. If the best gear, even mob drops, is absurdly expensive in the AH, then people have to work harder to either grind for gold or sell their own loot for ever-increasing amounts to raise the money to buy the things they want to buy. The whole system is designed to drive prices up.
I'm not in a hurry to get the next shiney either but I want to have fun and wandering around a wilderness that I've been through a hundred times is just not fun. If I want to relax, I'll turn off the computer and go do something relaxing. I'm playing a game because I want to be entertained.
This whole thread is about inconvenience? I do agree with you though, I don't want inconvenience in a game for the sake of it being inconvenient or slowing me down. That's not challenge, that's frustration.
Of course, the more of that you put in, the more strain you put on people's computers and Internet connections to keep up. That's a lot of data you have to shove down when everyone's armor and weapons are unique. Then, how do you stop people from building penis-swords and obscene things on the back of their armor? Hire a whole bunch of GMs to run around and check? As much as I'd like to think players would be responsible (HA!) and do the right thing, I'm trying to be practical as well. It's a nice idea but just totally unworkable.
But that's the reality. The old school crowd need to move on and deal with the reality that actually is, not the reality they wish was. It's like saying the old school car crowd who still want to crank-start their engines. Sorry, that's gone now, it's never coming back and they have to deal with it. Old school MMO players have to deal with it too. What existed in 2004 is gone, it's never coming back, deal with it.
All games have always been commercialized to the populace. Back in the old days, when most players were tabletop D&D nerds, games were designed to appeal to them. Now that only a minuscule percentage of gamers are that, games no longer take their wishes into account. That's how business works.
Sorry, I really have very little sympathy or respect for people who try to escape from reality into a fantasy world. Games are and have always been a means to have fun and waste free time. That's all they are, that's all they've ever been, that's all they'll ever be. If life sucks so bad that you have to escape into a video game, something tells me you need to spend less time playing and more time in therapy.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
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