Age of Conan held your hand in a ridiculous way, not allowing you to set foot out of Tortage until you fully understood the game.
BS. You could find and read the smugglers note and talk to him to get you out of Tortage early. Not even necessary to finish the destiny quest. Again, you just don´t know what you´re talking about
TSW ... what storyline? [..] And the whole point to this is what? I have no idea.
Yeah, well, your problem if you can´t follow the very well written storyline, it´s not the game´s fault.
TSW ... what storyline? I picked a Templar this time. Got told come to London or not...you have some weird powers. We are Templars but not 'the Templars', we have demons locked up in the basement that you can shoot, stab or use magic on. Fill your boots. Now we are sending you on some errands... And the whole point to this is what? I have no idea.
You never listened to any of the things which were said to you, didnt you?
There are so many games out there, where you get spoonfed your shallow average high-fantasy-bad-dragon-story. Try to actually read and listen to the people in the game. This is just more than black and white; princess and thief; elves and orcs. If you dont like that, stop writing utterly wrong "facts" in forums and move on.
Let the people, who want, play a game where you actually have to think, try out things and learn things for yourself.
Age of Conan held your hand in a ridiculous way, not allowing you to set foot out of Tortage until you fully understood the game.
BS. You could find and read the smugglers note and talk to him to get you out of Tortage early. Not even necessary to finish the destiny quest. Again, you just don´t know what you´re talking about
Yes you could but then you couldn't finish the destiny quest which was the main storyline. You could also get into Tortage bypassing the guard if you knew how. But there was no point.
TSW ... what storyline? [..] And the whole point to this is what? I have no idea.
Yeah, well, your problem if you can´t follow the very well written storyline, it´s not the game´s fault.
Well written storyline? You have powers...unexplained.. go to London meet with this secret society ... no explanation... then do what they say... no explanation. By the way pick a weapon any weapon which is going to now be bound to you. Try it out on some demons we keep here for target practice ... where or should I say which hell did they come from? Rolled a Templar I have no chuffing idea what is going on or why I took over somebodies bodies had some powers, which I lost and now I have to go to Kingsmouth not to save people but to be rather bored shooting Zombies for some Cowboy who wants me to delibertly set them on fire and set off car alarms, for no loot but just XP by the looks of it. Yeah great story loving it... <yawn>
Simple or not, and this is shallow, I was so dam ugly I could not enjoy my character. I mean I had no choice but to make a hideous mirror-cracker. She was foul. Ruined it for me.
You never listened to any of the things which were said to you, didnt you?
No totally bored by the emotionless voice acting.
There are so many games out there, where you get spoonfed your shallow average high-fantasy-bad-dragon-story. Try to actually read and listen to the people in the game. This is just more than black and white; princess and thief; elves and orcs. If you dont like that, stop writing utterly wrong "facts" in forums and move on.
A game is something to play and enjoy, it's an escape. Not something I should need to study or use too many brain cells on. Entertainment is the word my friend. Don't accuse me of writing incorrect facts unless you want back that up with something more than hot air.
Let the people, who want, play a game where you actually have to think, try out things and learn things for yourself.
I have no problem with people who like the game, where I have is problem is with people who like the game trying to convince people who don't like the game they are somehow wrong. That the criticism leveled at the game is not justified.
I love setting,world,back story...I dont care for VA,cut scenes,deep stories,dislike puzzles(thanks God on google), i playing TSW as an mmorpg focused on grouping no matter for what...... yestaday i am in first time use sword & rocked luncher in game(have spend 850+ hours on playing game,ability wheel on 89,9%) ...at final I still enjoying so far from boring.
Originally posted by MightyChasm Simple or not, and this is shallow, I was so dam ugly I could not enjoy my character. I mean I had no choice but to make a hideous mirror-cracker. She was foul. Ruined it for me.
I'm playing a dude, but walking around I see a ton of pretty female toons. I guess some people found some good combos? I suppose it's all subjective.
Isn't this kind of one of the main parts of the RPG genre?
I mean if you want an adventure game that is cool. Any to some extent a good RPG has many aspects of a good adventure game. And the same can be said for a hack n slash or beat em up (to a lesser degree).
But if you take out all wealth of options then you really aren't playing much of an RPG. I play RPGS specifically because I like the options where there are many interesting choices to make.
I will say that secret world has a number of redundant skills and some skills are clearly inferior to others. So it could do with some clean up etc.
I will also say that MMORPGs have become way way too much about creating optimal builds. I have been playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup the last couple months (this is a rogue-like not an MMO although you can play online). Now that game has permadeath and precedural generation so MMOs tend to be far more static.
But what i have come to realize is that although you can plan out an optimal build in Crawl whether or not you actually GET that optimal build can be a very risky bet and since there is perma death and a finite ability to grind try to wait around on trying to find the right spell book to complete your build might just wind up making you weak in the early game and getting you killed by an ogre hiding around the corner. Whereas if you had adapted to what you FOUND rather adamantly adhering to what you PLANNED you are more likely to win. Perhaps later on after getting very strong and stashing alot of items you may readjust your character towards a build you really like but due to the nature of the game: Randomness, possible destruction of resources etc. You still may not really be able to do this.
For example you can only memorize so many spells based on level and spellcasting skill. You may wind up memorizing a few spells you only wanted to help out with mid game things and would idealy use Scrolls of Amensia to forget a few later one. But a) you need to find the spellbook for the other spells and b) you need to find the scrolls and c) anytime you hit with a fire attack there is a chance of your scrolls being permanently destroyed. So you have to think how likely am I to find the spell I want? How likely am I to be able to rearrange 20 spells level worth of spells? Will I find an amulet of conservation to protect my scrolls?
These questions get answer dynamically in the game. If you find an amulet of conservation very early you may wind up memorizing many spells on the assumption you will keep more scrolls than on other play throughs. If you find no amulet and are getting unlucky on scrolls of amnesia you have a very tough choice to make. Often the smarter choice is to take what you are given and make the most of it.
This dynamic of adaption has made MMORPGs stiltled and static and thus people stare at this skill screen trying to shave pennies off the dollar of their character build for hours at a time. The options in Crawl are at least as varied as in the Secret World yet I do not sit there and attempt to absorb all possible build options in one sit down and then design the ultimate thing and its a waste of time to do so. You do of course need to make the most out of everything you get and eck out as much effectiveness as possible far more the Secret World as the game is far harder and frankly quite sadistic sometimes.
See the real problems, I think, is not the options or even complexity so much as almost all MMORPGs are simply an exercise in min/max'ing. And its not that min/max'ing is bad in fact I rather enjoy it. The problem is that there is never any interesting choice as whether to do so. In an MMORPG the answer to "Should I min/max accodring to some pre-defined build?" is always always yes. In Crawl the answer is "It depends."
MMORPGs need to find a way to make the answer also be "It depends" at least for a large portion of the game.
In crawl there is what is called the extended game you need 3 runs to attempt to win the game, but can achieve 15 runes in various dungeon branches. Generally the extended game is where people often but not always seriously min/max and flesh out some sort of build. This is mainly because if you go through enough branches you are fairly likely to find a good portion of whatever special loot you would have needed for a build. However it is often the case that in order to get to say 7 or 8 runes while you may not have the most optimalist build that could ever be, you have cobbled together some sort of very effective build such that grinding out one more +1 on your sword is a rather silly thing to be doing or even lacking a rather powerful spell, while substantial, really deosn't mean much in that you have defeated some of the harder things in the game and the real test for doing a 15 runer is actually playing the game (making smart decisions, knowing when to run etc.) not reaching 100% optimality.
So I am not saying make it really hard to achieve an optimal build nor am I saying have no end-game where people try to min max. What I am saying is the meat of the games needs to present a more interesting choice than pure optimality seeking.
Isn't this kind of one of the main parts of the RPG genre?
I mean if you want an adventure game that is cool. Any to some extent a good RPG has many aspects of a good adventure game. And the same can be said for a hack n slash or beat em up (to a lesser degree).
But if you take out all wealth of options then you really aren't playing much of an RPG. I play RPGS specifically because I like the options where there are many interesting choices to make.
I will say that secret world has a number of redundant skills and some skills are clearly inferior to others. So it could do with some clean up etc.
I will also say that MMORPGs have become way way too much about creating optimal builds. I have been playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup the last couple months (this is a rogue-like not an MMO although you can play online). Now that game has permadeath and precedural generation so MMOs tend to be far more static.
But what i have come to realize is that although you can plan out an optimal build in Crawl whether or not you actually GET that optimal build can be a very risky bet and since there is perma death and a finite ability to grind try to wait around on trying to find the right spell book to complete your build might just wind up making you weak in the early game and getting you killed by an ogre hiding around the corner. Whereas if you had adapted to what you FOUND rather adamantly adhering to what you PLANNED you are more likely to win. Perhaps later on after getting very strong and stashing alot of items you may readjust your character towards a build you really like but due to the nature of the game: Randomness, possible destruction of resources etc. You still may not really be able to do this.
For example you can only memorize so many spells based on level and spellcasting skill. You may wind up memorizing a few spells you only wanted to help out with mid game things and would idealy use Scrolls of Amensia to forget a few later one. But a) you need to find the spellbook for the other spells and b) you need to find the scrolls and c) anytime you hit with a fire attack there is a chance of your scrolls being permanently destroyed. So you have to think how likely am I to find the spell I want? How likely am I to be able to rearrange 20 spells level worth of spells? Will I find an amulet of conservation to protect my scrolls?
These questions get answer dynamically in the game. If you find an amulet of conservation very early you may wind up memorizing many spells on the assumption you will keep more scrolls than on other play throughs. If you find no amulet and are getting unlucky on scrolls of amnesia you have a very tough choice to make. Often the smarter choice is to take what you are given and make the most of it.
This dynamic of adaption has made MMORPGs stiltled and static and thus people stare at this skill screen trying to shave pennies off the dollar of their character build for hours at a time. The options in Crawl are at least as varied as in the Secret World yet I do not sit there and attempt to absorb all possible build options in one sit down and then design the ultimate thing and its a waste of time to do so. You do of course need to make the most out of everything you get and eck out as much effectiveness as possible far more the Secret World as the game is far harder and frankly quite sadistic sometimes.
See the real problems, I think, is not the options or even complexity so much as almost all MMORPGs are simply an exercise in min/max'ing. And its not that min/max'ing is bad in fact I rather enjoy it. The problem is that there is never any interesting choice as whether to do so. In an MMORPG the answer to "Should I min/max accodring to some pre-defined build?" is always always yes. In Crawl the answer is "It depends."
MMORPGs need to find a way to make the answer also be "It depends" at least for a large portion of the game.
In crawl there is what is called the extended game you need 3 runs to attempt to win the game, but can achieve 15 runes in various dungeon branches. Generally the extended game is where people often but not always seriously min/max and flesh out some sort of build. This is mainly because if you go through enough branches you are fairly likely to find a good portion of whatever special loot you would have needed for a build. However it is often the case that in order to get to say 7 or 8 runes while you may not have the most optimalist build that could ever be, you have cobbled together some sort of very effective build such that grinding out one more +1 on your sword is a rather silly thing to be doing or even lacking a rather powerful spell, while substantial, really deosn't mean much in that you have defeated some of the harder things in the game and the real test for doing a 15 runer is actually playing the game (making smart decisions, knowing when to run etc.) not reaching 100% optimality.
So I am not saying make it really hard to achieve an optimal build nor am I saying have no end-game where people try to min max. What I am saying is the meat of the games needs to present a more interesting choice than pure optimality seeking.
Lots of good points in here -- finding that balance between allowing the hardcore theorycrafters do their thing and an EZ mode where everything is laid out is key (and difficult!). I would never want to take away the option for the elitists to do their thing, games could do better with their tutorials and help. Too much help (pop-ups and tooltips) and it's intrusive, and not enough, and you've got people quitting over the learning curve.
Some of this gets handled by the tips that appear on the starter screens, some of it in the forums, but fiinding a way to gracefully offer suggestions and hints in game is tricky. Videos that explain the finer points are one way, as long as they are optional and presented where they make sense. Same for the tooltips. I do like the idea of a "help mode" that can be toggled on or off, that will offer more suggestions than in the normal mode, but don't just automatically make the choice for you -- I think we need more thinking and choice in general in these games. But explaining the fundamentals, and why a particular choice may be better in a particular situation could be done better.
In TSW's case, I think a "help mode" for picking abilities on the wheel could be very good -- understanding which abilities complement each other, and which weapons tend to work better in a particular role for example. Lots of helpful websites out of game, but certain parts of that advice could be integrated.
Isn't this kind of one of the main parts of the RPG genre?
I mean if you want an adventure game that is cool. Any to some extent a good RPG has many aspects of a good adventure game. And the same can be said for a hack n slash or beat em up (to a lesser degree).
But if you take out all wealth of options then you really aren't playing much of an RPG. I play RPGS specifically because I like the options where there are many interesting choices to make.
I will say that secret world has a number of redundant skills and some skills are clearly inferior to others. So it could do with some clean up etc.
I will also say that MMORPGs have become way way too much about creating optimal builds. I have been playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup the last couple months (this is a rogue-like not an MMO although you can play online). Now that game has permadeath and precedural generation so MMOs tend to be far more static.
But what i have come to realize is that although you can plan out an optimal build in Crawl whether or not you actually GET that optimal build can be a very risky bet and since there is perma death and a finite ability to grind try to wait around on trying to find the right spell book to complete your build might just wind up making you weak in the early game and getting you killed by an ogre hiding around the corner. Whereas if you had adapted to what you FOUND rather adamantly adhering to what you PLANNED you are more likely to win. Perhaps later on after getting very strong and stashing alot of items you may readjust your character towards a build you really like but due to the nature of the game: Randomness, possible destruction of resources etc. You still may not really be able to do this.
For example you can only memorize so many spells based on level and spellcasting skill. You may wind up memorizing a few spells you only wanted to help out with mid game things and would idealy use Scrolls of Amensia to forget a few later one. But a) you need to find the spellbook for the other spells and b) you need to find the scrolls and c) anytime you hit with a fire attack there is a chance of your scrolls being permanently destroyed. So you have to think how likely am I to find the spell I want? How likely am I to be able to rearrange 20 spells level worth of spells? Will I find an amulet of conservation to protect my scrolls?
These questions get answer dynamically in the game. If you find an amulet of conservation very early you may wind up memorizing many spells on the assumption you will keep more scrolls than on other play throughs. If you find no amulet and are getting unlucky on scrolls of amnesia you have a very tough choice to make. Often the smarter choice is to take what you are given and make the most of it.
This dynamic of adaption has made MMORPGs stiltled and static and thus people stare at this skill screen trying to shave pennies off the dollar of their character build for hours at a time. The options in Crawl are at least as varied as in the Secret World yet I do not sit there and attempt to absorb all possible build options in one sit down and then design the ultimate thing and its a waste of time to do so. You do of course need to make the most out of everything you get and eck out as much effectiveness as possible far more the Secret World as the game is far harder and frankly quite sadistic sometimes.
See the real problems, I think, is not the options or even complexity so much as almost all MMORPGs are simply an exercise in min/max'ing. And its not that min/max'ing is bad in fact I rather enjoy it. The problem is that there is never any interesting choice as whether to do so. In an MMORPG the answer to "Should I min/max accodring to some pre-defined build?" is always always yes. In Crawl the answer is "It depends."
MMORPGs need to find a way to make the answer also be "It depends" at least for a large portion of the game.
In crawl there is what is called the extended game you need 3 runs to attempt to win the game, but can achieve 15 runes in various dungeon branches. Generally the extended game is where people often but not always seriously min/max and flesh out some sort of build. This is mainly because if you go through enough branches you are fairly likely to find a good portion of whatever special loot you would have needed for a build. However it is often the case that in order to get to say 7 or 8 runes while you may not have the most optimalist build that could ever be, you have cobbled together some sort of very effective build such that grinding out one more +1 on your sword is a rather silly thing to be doing or even lacking a rather powerful spell, while substantial, really deosn't mean much in that you have defeated some of the harder things in the game and the real test for doing a 15 runer is actually playing the game (making smart decisions, knowing when to run etc.) not reaching 100% optimality.
So I am not saying make it really hard to achieve an optimal build nor am I saying have no end-game where people try to min max. What I am saying is the meat of the games needs to present a more interesting choice than pure optimality seeking.
Lots of good points in here -- finding that balance between allowing the hardcore theorycrafters do their thing and an EZ mode where everything is laid out is key (and difficult!). I would never want to take away the option for the elitists to do their thing, games could do better with their tutorials and help. Too much help (pop-ups and tooltips) and it's intrusive, and not enough, and you've got people quitting over the learning curve.
Some of this gets handled by the tips that appear on the starter screens, some of it in the forums, but fiinding a way to gracefully offer suggestions and hints in game is tricky. Videos that explain the finer points are one way, as long as they are optional and presented where they make sense. Same for the tooltips. I do like the idea of a "help mode" that can be toggled on or off, that will offer more suggestions than in the normal mode, but don't just automatically make the choice for you -- I think we need more thinking and choice in general in these games. But explaining the fundamentals, and why a particular choice may be better in a particular situation could be done better.
In TSW's case, I think a "help mode" for picking abilities on the wheel could be very good -- understanding which abilities complement each other, and which weapons tend to work better in a particular role for example. Lots of helpful websites out of game, but certain parts of that advice could be integrated.
Well there is more to it than just tooltips and such. This becomes quite evident when you fight some nightmare mobs. Nightmare mobs usually have some sort of buff that needs to be counters such as "mob heals when you miss them". Thus you need to know the mob and you need to come up with some way to not miss or reduce healing. If you don't you just can't kill the mob even though its not necessarily lots harder than a normal.
The only way I figured this out in part of egypt was by scoping out the buffs and I did it rather by accident after me and another guy tried to DPS em down earlier and were getting nowhere. So Iwent back and tried to figure out what was the deal and I noticed it said the mob was nightmare which I assumed just meant elite so I hovered over the nighrmare icon expecting the typical "This mob is much tougher bring some friends" type blah blah. Instead if specced this heal when the attacker misses thing and I specced out a high accuracy build and soloed those mobs. Once I figured that out I made sure to check in transylvania and there are many alternate types of buffs.
IN the end you need a pretty large number of alternate things in Secret World you really do need to swap between many builds.
Edit:
Forgot to add that this is really the sum total of the analysis of the game outside of how to actually do a quest or dungeon. You basically analyze what a mob does or is weak to what synergies it may have then you select a build for that then go through whatever rotation of skills that build would do. Now this is not abnormal of MMOs. But this is kind of the problem in general with MMOs is basically this dynamic makes them robotic and arcane.
Any good RPG should allow a player to be as involved as they choose to be overall. If it forces a player to get involved beyond their comfortable level, then as an RPG game it has fundamentally failed.
I'm really trying to be objective, and i have to start with i appreciate the game at a higher level because so many of MMO releases have been gawd aweful boring/similar. (PC way of saying im probably bias)
But..even with that said...i feel like people having issues here arent even trying. You dont have to go out of game to have the leveling handed to you. You pick a deck that has the prettiest costume reward to you and build towards it. Not really that hard, they even HIGHLIGHT the skills you need in the wheel for the deck so you dont accidentally build into a non-helpful skill.
There are plenty of quests in a zone, so much so that for those complaining about puzzle complexity you just skip the quest and repeat others that you did like the following day.
For those (fallen lord) who complain about the STORY? WTF man, your definitely not trying. The story missions are some of the most fun/interesting/challenging questlines in a game. Do you pick up a book and want to just read the last page and know EVERYTHING that happened. All i can say is i hope NO DEVELOPER listens to a gripe like yours..there would be nothing left to do.
Having to pick random weapons?? Again..what else do you want? want to be forced to use a certain weapon? You are given the CHOICE, you get to try them ahead of time rather than be pigeon holed into a weapon type unlike a certain force wielding game out right now.. *cough SWTOR cough*
Talisman system vs Armor system? Sorry guys..it's the same thing.. 'ring talisman'= ring slot, 'head talisman= helmet', etc. the items are even listed out graphically in the approximate location on the paper doll. Come on..this isnt rocket science.
Imho people for whatever reason are trying to manufacture controversy where there is none.. unnecessary when there is definitely enough that IS wrong with the game (I'm looking at you cut scene animations)
Originally posted by fallenlords Any good RPG should allow a player to be as involved as they choose to be overall. If it forces a player to get involved beyond their comfortable level, then as an RPG game it has fundamentally failed.
Where did you read that? Your RPG Bible? Did the RPG pope declare the fundamentals of an RPG to be accessibility?
I must have missed so much since the days of ADnD and Ultima.
Please, do go on and enlighten us peasants with your superior knowledge and wisdom.
Well there is more to it than just tooltips and such. This becomes quite evident when you fight some nightmare mobs. Nightmare mobs usually have some sort of buff that needs to be counters such as "mob heals when you miss them". Thus you need to know the mob and you need to come up with some way to not miss or reduce healing. If you don't you just can't kill the mob even though its not necessarily lots harder than a normal.
The only way I figured this out in part of egypt was by scoping out the buffs and I did it rather by accident after me and another guy tried to DPS em down earlier and were getting nowhere. So Iwent back and tried to figure out what was the deal and I noticed it said the mob was nightmare which I assumed just meant elite so I hovered over the nighrmare icon expecting the typical "This mob is much tougher bring some friends" type blah blah. Instead if specced this heal when the attacker misses thing and I specced out a high accuracy build and soloed those mobs. Once I figured that out I made sure to check in transylvania and there are many alternate types of buffs.
IN the end you need a pretty large number of alternate things in Secret World you really do need to swap between many builds.
Edit:
Forgot to add that this is really the sum total of the analysis of the game outside of how to actually do a quest or dungeon. You basically analyze what a mob does or is weak to what synergies it may have then you select a build for that then go through whatever rotation of skills that build would do. Now this is not abnormal of MMOs. But this is kind of the problem in general with MMOs is basically this dynamic makes them robotic and arcane.
What I'd really prefer is more ingame items that are character building tips in disguise. Why not find a tome talking about a particular mob or boss, and ways they are more easily defeated, but do it in story form, so that it actually becomes part of the lore. WoW did a little bit of this recently with the Dungeon Journal (I think that's what it is called), but I'd almost prefer you find it somewhere in the world as an item that you can pick up and possess -- make it part of your library or something. So in preparation for said boss, you can a bit of in-game investigation (as opposed to reading spoiler sites). Trial and error works too I suppose, but finding clues as part of the storyline fits with the theme of the game anyway, so why not work it in?
Originally posted by fallenlords Any good RPG should allow a player to be as involved as they choose to be overall. If it forces a player to get involved beyond their comfortable level, then as an RPG game it has fundamentally failed.
Where did you read that? Your RPG Bible? Did the RPG pope declare the fundamentals of an RPG to be accessibility?
I must have missed so much since the days of ADnD and Ultima.
Please, do go on and enlighten us peasants with your superior knowledge and wisdom.
It's common sense. You pitch an RPG game at a certain level - you have it wrong from the start. You want to accommodate players of all levels. People learn at different rates and have different requirements from the game. Single player games 9/10 times offer an easy, medium, hard - or even very easy, very hard. They do that in order to accommodate people of different game tastes and levels of skill You can enjoy a game as much on easy mode if you are more interested in say the narrative. In essence you need tiers for your gamers from casual to hardcore. The idea should be to turn a casual gamer into a hardcore gamer by pulling them more and more into the game. But ultimately what type of gamer you want to be should be your choice.
OP mentioned TSW 'seems like work' - this is suppose to be a form of entertainment. TSW is hampered by it's learning curve, also the fact nothing very interesting happens at the start. It's boring and mundane, no decent character customisation, no storyline, no interesting NPC's, naff gear, no loot, poor weapons and combat. So I agree with the OP it needs a dumb/easy mode. It's pitched too high from the start. Probably a major reason it has no appeal to the casual gamer.
Well there is more to it than just tooltips and such. This becomes quite evident when you fight some nightmare mobs. Nightmare mobs usually have some sort of buff that needs to be counters such as "mob heals when you miss them". Thus you need to know the mob and you need to come up with some way to not miss or reduce healing. If you don't you just can't kill the mob even though its not necessarily lots harder than a normal.
The only way I figured this out in part of egypt was by scoping out the buffs and I did it rather by accident after me and another guy tried to DPS em down earlier and were getting nowhere. So Iwent back and tried to figure out what was the deal and I noticed it said the mob was nightmare which I assumed just meant elite so I hovered over the nighrmare icon expecting the typical "This mob is much tougher bring some friends" type blah blah. Instead if specced this heal when the attacker misses thing and I specced out a high accuracy build and soloed those mobs. Once I figured that out I made sure to check in transylvania and there are many alternate types of buffs.
IN the end you need a pretty large number of alternate things in Secret World you really do need to swap between many builds.
Edit:
Forgot to add that this is really the sum total of the analysis of the game outside of how to actually do a quest or dungeon. You basically analyze what a mob does or is weak to what synergies it may have then you select a build for that then go through whatever rotation of skills that build would do. Now this is not abnormal of MMOs. But this is kind of the problem in general with MMOs is basically this dynamic makes them robotic and arcane.
What I'd really prefer is more ingame items that are character building tips in disguise. Why not find a tome talking about a particular mob or boss, and ways they are more easily defeated, but do it in story form, so that it actually becomes part of the lore. WoW did a little bit of this recently with the Dungeon Journal (I think that's what it is called), but I'd almost prefer you find it somewhere in the world as an item that you can pick up and possess -- make it part of your library or something. So in preparation for said boss, you can a bit of in-game investigation (as opposed to reading spoiler sites). Trial and error works too I suppose, but finding clues as part of the storyline fits with the theme of the game anyway, so why not work it in?
Yes I think you are on a decent track here, but I think its important to recognize the source of the disease rather than treating symptoms.
This is a fine idea but in the context of a game where people rush about and killing everything as fast as possible and expect to win 99.9% of the time without doing much tactical planning it becomes problematic. Now I am not accusing TSW of being a no-brainer in that with nighmare mobs it throw a wrench into that equation.
But we must all recognize that in basically all MMOs you are basically doing massive amounts of slaughter in a regular basis and the main "challenge" is how efficently you slaughter things to gain xp/loot so that you may continue to efficently mass slaughter your enemies at roughly the same rate.
This is why I was contrasting this to Crawl. In crawl almost every ecounter is something where you must ask yourself "Am I gonan die here?". You have to ask yourself that for two reasons:
a) perma death is such a severe penalty that is demands constant vigilance
b) the game itself is designed to make the encounters dangerous and uncertain. It is a tenant of the devs that Out of Depth monsters are perfectly fine and even good, ie. a hill giant can spawn on level 5 (can one shot most characters). If you procude too much noise you may attracts way too many things. Stuff can cascade out of control quickly or you just get unlucky and be too close to something that can 1 or 2 shot you and you may not be able to run.
This is one reason people play the online version. When you die past level 3 that characters stats get stored in a ghost file and there is a chance that a player ghost will spawn on that level. Player ghosts in crawl are strong and dangerous. people actively play online just to get this extra bit of "Oh holy shit this game is seriously trying to kill me". I had a rather nice character that had 5 runes and could ahve got 15 probably ceratinly could have won the game. But I wnet to pandemonium and one of the maps kept spawning fiends it eventually wore my char down and I thought I could hide in a corner and heal up but the frigging game just kept coming at me over and over frigging over and I got one shotted by a fiend using unressitable hellfire when I had like 15% health. Looking back on it I should have used an emergency power I had from my god. I should have been extra super cautious. But I thought I could eck out some healing. I was wrong and I lost a pretty badass naga transmuter.
So yes in the case of something like Crawl your idea has alot of merit as it can be the difference between winning and losing. But in a typical MMO its basically just a matter of time. Is it worth it to spend all this time figuring things out? Every second i waste is a second I could spend grinding for gear ... Maybe its really just better to power through it all anyway?
Note I am not a proponent of the harsh death penalties of a game like EQ (keep in mind when I played MUDs our DPs were WAY harsher than EQ). I understand why they exist and the reason behind them is sound but they also suck in the context of an MMO. In the context of a grinding game based on character investment the permanent loss of stuff is just annoying. Its not real loss its time punishment. And games like EQ are designed to kill you anyway.
See EQ (and its progeny) and Crawl are fundamentally different. In Crawl escaping and bypassing encounters is expressly part of the balance of the game and it is costed as very advantageous and probably a tactic that most good players would say its almost impossible to win without utilizing. Whereas EQ is designed to kill you when you screw up.
In Crawl you can die when you get unlucky or when you screw up, but you should basically have a number of tricks up your sleeve to escape being unlucky or even a screw up (assuming your screw up was not about not figuring out when to run). In EQ when you screw up (say the tank messes up his taunt and the healer dies) you basically all die (raid party whatever) and you are meant to die.
Thus the DP in EQ is kind of stupid as you are punished without any real ability to avoid. Crawl punishes you far far harsher than EQ ever could, but its punishment is fair. EQ's punishment is not fair, its just a fact of life. Its just sadism to add some spice to life. Crawl is far crueler than EQ but more fair.
The prupose of EQ style DP is to provide a reason for people stop and think. To put some breaks on the headlong rush to grind for phat lootz.
As I said I do not like the EQ and MUD style DPs. But they do serve a purpose. In the absence of something that forces players to stop and take stock of what is the nature of their character and what is the nature of the gameworld, I would suggest your idea will gain little traction.
But not because its a bad idea. Rather why would it ever gain traction in a game that is made on the premise of: Kill kill kill to get moar moar moar.
I mean the first reaction of most MMO players to a mob is to immediately kill it. In Crawl (turn based game) I have literally walked into a room after opening a door and thought about what I am gonna do for 1 minute then closed the door and snuck away. This was the right decision and it took 10 deaths(and some save scumming of local games for testing purposes) of other characters for me to comfortably be able to make this decision reliably.
So when we analyze your idea why would the MMO mentality spend time reading about how mobs work? Wouldn't they just charge in like Leroy Jenkins and just figure it out through trial and error. And wouldn't doing so in the end make their grinding more efficient since only a very small percentage of mobs are ever any real threat?
In my opinion this all comes back to the rush in and kills literally bajillions of mobs styl;e game play of MMOs in general. Some people look back at EQ with rose colored glasses and say its "harsh" DP addressed that, but that is clearly false when you look at the camp and kill gameplay of that game. People sat there for hours doing rote actions to kill stuff.
And that phrase right there is the heart of the matter "rote actions". When your gameplay and game world encourages fast mechanical predefined actions for hours on end I would say you will never be able to achieve the goal of your idea via this implementation or any other. Its simply not advantageous in the context of the game.
TSW addesses this to some degree with nightmare mobs but in this case since its a 50% solution its no real solution. To kill nightmare mobs you must adjust your rote actions, your rote pre-planned build. But the gameplay itself is still just as rote. Once you have determined an appropriate build its business as usual. Thus you cannot use the same skill build on all content so the game is not completely rote. You must occasionally say "Hold on what is this mob types syngery profile?". But the answer is select build XYX then hit 1 2 3 1 2 3 5 1 2 3 during combat and you just run around and do the same standard MMO tactics you always do while in that area. You may have 5 sets of rote actions but it still all rote actions.
You need more than just something makes finding all this out a deep and interesting experience. You need for the gameplay and gameworld you actualy make it mean more than a simple memorized formula of actions.
Note that in all three games mentioned you kill things and get loot and xp (two are skill, one is class based). In all three games it is possible to grind for some numerical advantage (although Crawl is specifically designed to not be grind based and will attempt to kill you it thinks you are grinding a level's respawns and eventually kill the respawns if you survive).
Originally posted by fallenlords Any good RPG should allow a player to be as involved as they choose to be overall. If it forces a player to get involved beyond their comfortable level, then as an RPG game it has fundamentally failed.
Where did you read that? Your RPG Bible? Did the RPG pope declare the fundamentals of an RPG to be accessibility?
I must have missed so much since the days of ADnD and Ultima.
Please, do go on and enlighten us peasants with your superior knowledge and wisdom.
It's common sense. You pitch an RPG game at a certain level - you have it wrong from the start. You want to accommodate players of all levels. People learn at different rates and have different requirements from the game. Single player games 9/10 times offer an easy, medium, hard - or even very easy, very hard. They do that in order to accommodate people of different game tastes and levels of skill You can enjoy a game as much on easy mode if you are more interested in say the narrative. In essence you need tiers for your gamers from casual to hardcore. The idea should be to turn a casual gamer into a hardcore gamer by pulling them more and more into the game. But ultimately what type of gamer you want to be should be your choice.
OP mentioned TSW 'seems like work' - this is suppose to be a form of entertainment. TSW is hampered by it's learning curve, also the fact nothing very interesting happens at the start. It's boring and mundane, no decent character customisation, no storyline, no interesting NPC's, naff gear, no loot, poor weapons and combat. So I agree with the OP it needs a dumb/easy mode. It's pitched too high from the start. Probably a major reason it has no appeal to the casual gamer.
You are not capturing the fact that most MMORPGs are shared, static worlds.
In the case of single player RPGs such as Baldur's gate or Mass Effect or whatever I can select a gameplay profile in the settings.
In the context of MMOs there are one with instances that have difficulty settings (DDO, Champions Online, CoH, etc). But in all cases you get more reward for doing these. Whereas in Single Player games you are almost never punished for selecting the difficulty you like to play.
And because of this more reward for more "risk" (there is no real risk of course, that is all BS) the people who play higher diffculty winding up becoming more effective yet clearly they did not need better rewards since they won at a higher diffculty.
In the end this whole concpt of yours, while not inaccurate, is undermined by the inhereently greedy mentality of the MMORPG genre as its currently implemented.
When I choose the hard setting on a Single Player game I do so because Easy is not that fun, because its too well easy. In an MMO people will choose the Easiest (ie. fastest route) that rewards with the best loot.
The difference in the mentality (which follows implementation) is the source of many perceived ills in the genre. Both player elitism and lack of real subsstance in gameplay/gameworld can be traced to this dynamic at least partially. Its not 100% due to this but its something.
Unfortunately I am unsure there is a real solution to this. You can say well make rewards the same for all difficulties and let people who want a challenge do it that way. But in practice 90% of people will do the easiest difficulty then.
Perhaps what is needed is something like what Path of Exiles does with Leagues. Have a League "shard" per diffculty. You can freely transfer between the leagues, but your equipment stays in the league. Thus you have an equipment set per difficulty, but can freely go back and forth between Leagues to play with friends of any sort.
This way everything within that league is kept on a 1 to 1 basis except for player skill and even player should 80% of the time be on par.
Of course that is not a perfect solution but its perhaps more along the lines of a decent than what currently exists.
TSW was good for about 3 months of play. The first zone was my favorite without a doubt, a town overun by zombies/mmorpg? Yes please!
But it just got stale after a while, the pvp was a huge flop for me. I ran every dungeon like 5-x times, finding a group even as a maxed out healer was difficult, a lot of elitism(i found more so in TSW maybe cause of the small population).
I think Funcom wasted resources on things like the reticule, and opera house or whatever it is.
I found most people really disliked the desert maps(I sure did, probably the worst zones I've ever encountered but can't quite put my finger on why).
TSW was good for about 3 months of play. The first zone was my favorite without a doubt, a town overun by zombies/mmorpg? Yes please!
I found most people really disliked the desert maps(I sure did, probably the worst zones I've ever encountered but can't quite put my finger on why).
Everyone has their favorite zones -- mine is Scorched Desert, but many swear by Transylvania. Hoping the updates for matchmaking and queues in PvP in the next Issue improve things for PvP.
I really like The Secret World. Certain elements of it are superb, easily the best by my standards in the crowded MMO market. The lush environments, the great stories, the horror elements and modern day setting really appeal to me. The dark humor is sharp as a razor.
But at time, TSW seems like work. I read and reread the active and passive skills I'm using, trying to figure out if any of the fourteen I have slotted are useless or if another of the what, over five hundred skills in the game, would be better? Do we really need 500 + skills? All this time reading about theory crafting... I just want to play a game, not study. But because the game is so merciless, you really do have to sink time into it. Some people enjoy this, but I'm not one of them.
The loot is rarely someting I truly enjoy getting, because for every plus to one stat(s) there is usually a minus or two involved as well. So now I have to look at my character stats, try and figure out if this will make my character stronger or weaker or have little effect. Again, time not spent playing the game. I truly enjoy it when I find an item that is all Pluses! Those moments are rare though.
I believe this learning curve is really the one element that stopped TSW from being a runaway success. Because it has so much going for it. It oozes charm and personality. It is like no other game on the market. Its strengths are numerous.
I wish they had a "dumb mode". An option for people like me who just want to play a game, not crunch numbers or look into optimum builds or what have you. I could pick something like "Fighter" and the next screen would say "OK, do you want to use guns, swords or magic?" And from there XP I earned would go into unlocking the best actives and passives. They would be automatically equipped for me.
This is not the game that many of TSW's fans want, I understand that. I am in no way looking down on people who do enjoy the statistics. I just wish it felt less like a chore at times.
What you are saying is that you want an action game, not a RPG. RPG's are about building your character. That obviously requires a lot of thought.
I warn you this game is not for the faint of heart. I used it for comparison only, most MMO players would run away crying from the game. Here are some learndb entries:
what is that will it kill me
Yes.
winrate
This doesn't matter.
singing
It's just like talking, except louder, and longer, and you move your voice up and down.
skills
Here is how you train skills. First you train the skills that you use to kill dudes. Once you are killing dudes well enough, then you train the skills you use to not die to dudes. If you later run into problems killing dudes, you switch back to killdudes skills.
sigmund
A yellow @ with a shiny scythe, a magic wand, and a necklace of player skulls. A notoriously lethal early-game unique human wizard. Typically generated with a wand of lightning, draining, or paralysis when you get a really good character started. Spells: throw flame, confuse, invisibility, magic dart.
sigmund haters: whoever buffed grinder
Sigmund fan club: ##crawl
Proof that Crawl hates you and wants you to die.
Sigmund Zermako the Chopper (L5 HOFi), slain by Sigmund (a +1,+2 scythe) in D:4, with 285 points after 2293 turns and 0:06:29. FUCK!!
xom
thinks this is hilarious!
Xom cannot be prayed to, has no conducts, and accepts no sacrifices. He is not so much worshipped as he is experienced.
When Xom is in a bad mood he gives you random mutations and when he's in a good mood he gives you good mutations. As a result Xom worshippers will typically have good mutation sets or be dead.
0.5: You hear Xom's avuncular chuckle. Erolcha evaporates and reforms as a giant lizard!
Yes, his mutations override an amulet of resist mutation (but not the mutation resistance *mutation* or Zin). Sometimes his potion effect will give you a potion of mutation, and you can resist THAT, but you won't resist the direct hand of Xom changing you. (Except by being undead.)
I admit that I got pretty confused as far as what to do. In order to try new weapons/combos I spent a crap ton of time in the starting zone. Finally when I thought I was ready to move on, I got my arse handed to me by every other mob. I hate to say it, but this game needed levels. (not every game needs them, but this game does). Even at Q level 4, I felt massively under powered with nearly any weapon combo.
I did like the first dungeon though.
build, build and build. I had the same issue....got out of the first area and got mowed down. Deleted that toon, went back to the drawing board and came back to the 2nd area with a vengeance....
I admit that I got pretty confused as far as what to do. In order to try new weapons/combos I spent a crap ton of time in the starting zone. Finally when I thought I was ready to move on, I got my arse handed to me by every other mob. I hate to say it, but this game needed levels. (not every game needs them, but this game does). Even at Q level 4, I felt massively under powered with nearly any weapon combo.
I did like the first dungeon though.
build, build and build. I had the same issue....got out of the first area and got mowed down. Deleted that toon, went back to the drawing board and came back to the 2nd area with a vengeance....
Great avatar, wish more people read Bastiat.
Yeah I spent quite a bit of time I guess you could call it grinding but really I was testing things our for my own curiosity and wind up with a decent spread of skills and good builds. I killed alot of those water zombie guys near the shaodw bug things right before entrance to the next zone. So I went in the next zone having kicked the tires on my skills and had both a heavy defense and heavy offense and a build with a bit of both using a few different startegies (passive heals from procs, active heals from rifle, avoidance from chaos, crit procs etc.).
I both looked for good synergies and also had various things I wanted to figure out. I settled on a build that synergized with have as many attacks possible to get my procs working quickly. It took me a number of hours searching through the skill tree etc to settle on chaos/rifle but I also had stuff from a number of other sections and had starts chaos/blade.
It made the rest of the game way less problematic than for many people. But it was like I dunno a good 5-10 hours of extra work and my motivation was mostly curiosity. Simply power hungeriness would not have gotten past 1 or 2 hours.
Comments
BS. You could find and read the smugglers note and talk to him to get you out of Tortage early. Not even necessary to finish the destiny quest. Again, you just don´t know what you´re talking about
Yeah, well, your problem if you can´t follow the very well written storyline, it´s not the game´s fault.
Secrets of Dragon?s Spine Trailer.. !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwT9cFVQCMw
Best MMOs ever played: Ultima, EvE, SW Galaxies, Age of Conan, The Secret World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2X_SbZCHpc&t=21s
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The Return of ELITE !
You never listened to any of the things which were said to you, didnt you?
There are so many games out there, where you get spoonfed your shallow average high-fantasy-bad-dragon-story. Try to actually read and listen to the people in the game. This is just more than black and white; princess and thief; elves and orcs. If you dont like that, stop writing utterly wrong "facts" in forums and move on.
Let the people, who want, play a game where you actually have to think, try out things and learn things for yourself.
Hodor!
I playing TSW in ,, dumber ,, mode
I love setting,world,back story...I dont care for VA,cut scenes,deep stories,dislike puzzles(thanks God on google), i playing TSW as an mmorpg focused on grouping no matter for what...... yestaday i am in first time use sword & rocked luncher in game(have spend 850+ hours on playing game,ability wheel on 89,9%) ...at final I still enjoying so far from boring.
I'm playing a dude, but walking around I see a ton of pretty female toons. I guess some people found some good combos? I suppose it's all subjective.
Isn't this kind of one of the main parts of the RPG genre?
I mean if you want an adventure game that is cool. Any to some extent a good RPG has many aspects of a good adventure game. And the same can be said for a hack n slash or beat em up (to a lesser degree).
But if you take out all wealth of options then you really aren't playing much of an RPG. I play RPGS specifically because I like the options where there are many interesting choices to make.
I will say that secret world has a number of redundant skills and some skills are clearly inferior to others. So it could do with some clean up etc.
I will also say that MMORPGs have become way way too much about creating optimal builds. I have been playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup the last couple months (this is a rogue-like not an MMO although you can play online). Now that game has permadeath and precedural generation so MMOs tend to be far more static.
But what i have come to realize is that although you can plan out an optimal build in Crawl whether or not you actually GET that optimal build can be a very risky bet and since there is perma death and a finite ability to grind try to wait around on trying to find the right spell book to complete your build might just wind up making you weak in the early game and getting you killed by an ogre hiding around the corner. Whereas if you had adapted to what you FOUND rather adamantly adhering to what you PLANNED you are more likely to win. Perhaps later on after getting very strong and stashing alot of items you may readjust your character towards a build you really like but due to the nature of the game: Randomness, possible destruction of resources etc. You still may not really be able to do this.
For example you can only memorize so many spells based on level and spellcasting skill. You may wind up memorizing a few spells you only wanted to help out with mid game things and would idealy use Scrolls of Amensia to forget a few later one. But a) you need to find the spellbook for the other spells and b) you need to find the scrolls and c) anytime you hit with a fire attack there is a chance of your scrolls being permanently destroyed. So you have to think how likely am I to find the spell I want? How likely am I to be able to rearrange 20 spells level worth of spells? Will I find an amulet of conservation to protect my scrolls?
These questions get answer dynamically in the game. If you find an amulet of conservation very early you may wind up memorizing many spells on the assumption you will keep more scrolls than on other play throughs. If you find no amulet and are getting unlucky on scrolls of amnesia you have a very tough choice to make. Often the smarter choice is to take what you are given and make the most of it.
This dynamic of adaption has made MMORPGs stiltled and static and thus people stare at this skill screen trying to shave pennies off the dollar of their character build for hours at a time. The options in Crawl are at least as varied as in the Secret World yet I do not sit there and attempt to absorb all possible build options in one sit down and then design the ultimate thing and its a waste of time to do so. You do of course need to make the most out of everything you get and eck out as much effectiveness as possible far more the Secret World as the game is far harder and frankly quite sadistic sometimes.
See the real problems, I think, is not the options or even complexity so much as almost all MMORPGs are simply an exercise in min/max'ing. And its not that min/max'ing is bad in fact I rather enjoy it. The problem is that there is never any interesting choice as whether to do so. In an MMORPG the answer to "Should I min/max accodring to some pre-defined build?" is always always yes. In Crawl the answer is "It depends."
MMORPGs need to find a way to make the answer also be "It depends" at least for a large portion of the game.
In crawl there is what is called the extended game you need 3 runs to attempt to win the game, but can achieve 15 runes in various dungeon branches. Generally the extended game is where people often but not always seriously min/max and flesh out some sort of build. This is mainly because if you go through enough branches you are fairly likely to find a good portion of whatever special loot you would have needed for a build. However it is often the case that in order to get to say 7 or 8 runes while you may not have the most optimalist build that could ever be, you have cobbled together some sort of very effective build such that grinding out one more +1 on your sword is a rather silly thing to be doing or even lacking a rather powerful spell, while substantial, really deosn't mean much in that you have defeated some of the harder things in the game and the real test for doing a 15 runer is actually playing the game (making smart decisions, knowing when to run etc.) not reaching 100% optimality.
So I am not saying make it really hard to achieve an optimal build nor am I saying have no end-game where people try to min max. What I am saying is the meat of the games needs to present a more interesting choice than pure optimality seeking.
Lots of good points in here -- finding that balance between allowing the hardcore theorycrafters do their thing and an EZ mode where everything is laid out is key (and difficult!). I would never want to take away the option for the elitists to do their thing, games could do better with their tutorials and help. Too much help (pop-ups and tooltips) and it's intrusive, and not enough, and you've got people quitting over the learning curve.
Some of this gets handled by the tips that appear on the starter screens, some of it in the forums, but fiinding a way to gracefully offer suggestions and hints in game is tricky. Videos that explain the finer points are one way, as long as they are optional and presented where they make sense. Same for the tooltips. I do like the idea of a "help mode" that can be toggled on or off, that will offer more suggestions than in the normal mode, but don't just automatically make the choice for you -- I think we need more thinking and choice in general in these games. But explaining the fundamentals, and why a particular choice may be better in a particular situation could be done better.
In TSW's case, I think a "help mode" for picking abilities on the wheel could be very good -- understanding which abilities complement each other, and which weapons tend to work better in a particular role for example. Lots of helpful websites out of game, but certain parts of that advice could be integrated.
Well there is more to it than just tooltips and such. This becomes quite evident when you fight some nightmare mobs. Nightmare mobs usually have some sort of buff that needs to be counters such as "mob heals when you miss them". Thus you need to know the mob and you need to come up with some way to not miss or reduce healing. If you don't you just can't kill the mob even though its not necessarily lots harder than a normal.
The only way I figured this out in part of egypt was by scoping out the buffs and I did it rather by accident after me and another guy tried to DPS em down earlier and were getting nowhere. So Iwent back and tried to figure out what was the deal and I noticed it said the mob was nightmare which I assumed just meant elite so I hovered over the nighrmare icon expecting the typical "This mob is much tougher bring some friends" type blah blah. Instead if specced this heal when the attacker misses thing and I specced out a high accuracy build and soloed those mobs. Once I figured that out I made sure to check in transylvania and there are many alternate types of buffs.
IN the end you need a pretty large number of alternate things in Secret World you really do need to swap between many builds.
Edit:
Forgot to add that this is really the sum total of the analysis of the game outside of how to actually do a quest or dungeon. You basically analyze what a mob does or is weak to what synergies it may have then you select a build for that then go through whatever rotation of skills that build would do. Now this is not abnormal of MMOs. But this is kind of the problem in general with MMOs is basically this dynamic makes them robotic and arcane.
OP
I'm really trying to be objective, and i have to start with i appreciate the game at a higher level because so many of MMO releases have been gawd aweful boring/similar. (PC way of saying im probably bias)
But..even with that said...i feel like people having issues here arent even trying. You dont have to go out of game to have the leveling handed to you. You pick a deck that has the prettiest costume reward to you and build towards it. Not really that hard, they even HIGHLIGHT the skills you need in the wheel for the deck so you dont accidentally build into a non-helpful skill.
There are plenty of quests in a zone, so much so that for those complaining about puzzle complexity you just skip the quest and repeat others that you did like the following day.
For those (fallen lord) who complain about the STORY? WTF man, your definitely not trying. The story missions are some of the most fun/interesting/challenging questlines in a game. Do you pick up a book and want to just read the last page and know EVERYTHING that happened. All i can say is i hope NO DEVELOPER listens to a gripe like yours..there would be nothing left to do.
Having to pick random weapons?? Again..what else do you want? want to be forced to use a certain weapon? You are given the CHOICE, you get to try them ahead of time rather than be pigeon holed into a weapon type unlike a certain force wielding game out right now.. *cough SWTOR cough*
Talisman system vs Armor system? Sorry guys..it's the same thing.. 'ring talisman'= ring slot, 'head talisman= helmet', etc. the items are even listed out graphically in the approximate location on the paper doll. Come on..this isnt rocket science.
Imho people for whatever reason are trying to manufacture controversy where there is none.. unnecessary when there is definitely enough that IS wrong with the game (I'm looking at you cut scene animations)
Where did you read that? Your RPG Bible? Did the RPG pope declare the fundamentals of an RPG to be accessibility?
I must have missed so much since the days of ADnD and Ultima.
Please, do go on and enlighten us peasants with your superior knowledge and wisdom.
What I'd really prefer is more ingame items that are character building tips in disguise. Why not find a tome talking about a particular mob or boss, and ways they are more easily defeated, but do it in story form, so that it actually becomes part of the lore. WoW did a little bit of this recently with the Dungeon Journal (I think that's what it is called), but I'd almost prefer you find it somewhere in the world as an item that you can pick up and possess -- make it part of your library or something. So in preparation for said boss, you can a bit of in-game investigation (as opposed to reading spoiler sites). Trial and error works too I suppose, but finding clues as part of the storyline fits with the theme of the game anyway, so why not work it in?
Yes I think you are on a decent track here, but I think its important to recognize the source of the disease rather than treating symptoms.
This is a fine idea but in the context of a game where people rush about and killing everything as fast as possible and expect to win 99.9% of the time without doing much tactical planning it becomes problematic. Now I am not accusing TSW of being a no-brainer in that with nighmare mobs it throw a wrench into that equation.
But we must all recognize that in basically all MMOs you are basically doing massive amounts of slaughter in a regular basis and the main "challenge" is how efficently you slaughter things to gain xp/loot so that you may continue to efficently mass slaughter your enemies at roughly the same rate.
This is why I was contrasting this to Crawl. In crawl almost every ecounter is something where you must ask yourself "Am I gonan die here?". You have to ask yourself that for two reasons:
a) perma death is such a severe penalty that is demands constant vigilance
b) the game itself is designed to make the encounters dangerous and uncertain. It is a tenant of the devs that Out of Depth monsters are perfectly fine and even good, ie. a hill giant can spawn on level 5 (can one shot most characters). If you procude too much noise you may attracts way too many things. Stuff can cascade out of control quickly or you just get unlucky and be too close to something that can 1 or 2 shot you and you may not be able to run.
This is one reason people play the online version. When you die past level 3 that characters stats get stored in a ghost file and there is a chance that a player ghost will spawn on that level. Player ghosts in crawl are strong and dangerous. people actively play online just to get this extra bit of "Oh holy shit this game is seriously trying to kill me". I had a rather nice character that had 5 runes and could ahve got 15 probably ceratinly could have won the game. But I wnet to pandemonium and one of the maps kept spawning fiends it eventually wore my char down and I thought I could hide in a corner and heal up but the frigging game just kept coming at me over and over frigging over and I got one shotted by a fiend using unressitable hellfire when I had like 15% health. Looking back on it I should have used an emergency power I had from my god. I should have been extra super cautious. But I thought I could eck out some healing. I was wrong and I lost a pretty badass naga transmuter.
So yes in the case of something like Crawl your idea has alot of merit as it can be the difference between winning and losing. But in a typical MMO its basically just a matter of time. Is it worth it to spend all this time figuring things out? Every second i waste is a second I could spend grinding for gear ... Maybe its really just better to power through it all anyway?
Note I am not a proponent of the harsh death penalties of a game like EQ (keep in mind when I played MUDs our DPs were WAY harsher than EQ). I understand why they exist and the reason behind them is sound but they also suck in the context of an MMO. In the context of a grinding game based on character investment the permanent loss of stuff is just annoying. Its not real loss its time punishment. And games like EQ are designed to kill you anyway.
See EQ (and its progeny) and Crawl are fundamentally different. In Crawl escaping and bypassing encounters is expressly part of the balance of the game and it is costed as very advantageous and probably a tactic that most good players would say its almost impossible to win without utilizing. Whereas EQ is designed to kill you when you screw up.
In Crawl you can die when you get unlucky or when you screw up, but you should basically have a number of tricks up your sleeve to escape being unlucky or even a screw up (assuming your screw up was not about not figuring out when to run). In EQ when you screw up (say the tank messes up his taunt and the healer dies) you basically all die (raid party whatever) and you are meant to die.
Thus the DP in EQ is kind of stupid as you are punished without any real ability to avoid. Crawl punishes you far far harsher than EQ ever could, but its punishment is fair. EQ's punishment is not fair, its just a fact of life. Its just sadism to add some spice to life. Crawl is far crueler than EQ but more fair.
The prupose of EQ style DP is to provide a reason for people stop and think. To put some breaks on the headlong rush to grind for phat lootz.
As I said I do not like the EQ and MUD style DPs. But they do serve a purpose. In the absence of something that forces players to stop and take stock of what is the nature of their character and what is the nature of the gameworld, I would suggest your idea will gain little traction.
But not because its a bad idea. Rather why would it ever gain traction in a game that is made on the premise of: Kill kill kill to get moar moar moar.
I mean the first reaction of most MMO players to a mob is to immediately kill it. In Crawl (turn based game) I have literally walked into a room after opening a door and thought about what I am gonna do for 1 minute then closed the door and snuck away. This was the right decision and it took 10 deaths(and some save scumming of local games for testing purposes) of other characters for me to comfortably be able to make this decision reliably.
So when we analyze your idea why would the MMO mentality spend time reading about how mobs work? Wouldn't they just charge in like Leroy Jenkins and just figure it out through trial and error. And wouldn't doing so in the end make their grinding more efficient since only a very small percentage of mobs are ever any real threat?
In my opinion this all comes back to the rush in and kills literally bajillions of mobs styl;e game play of MMOs in general. Some people look back at EQ with rose colored glasses and say its "harsh" DP addressed that, but that is clearly false when you look at the camp and kill gameplay of that game. People sat there for hours doing rote actions to kill stuff.
And that phrase right there is the heart of the matter "rote actions". When your gameplay and game world encourages fast mechanical predefined actions for hours on end I would say you will never be able to achieve the goal of your idea via this implementation or any other. Its simply not advantageous in the context of the game.
TSW addesses this to some degree with nightmare mobs but in this case since its a 50% solution its no real solution. To kill nightmare mobs you must adjust your rote actions, your rote pre-planned build. But the gameplay itself is still just as rote. Once you have determined an appropriate build its business as usual. Thus you cannot use the same skill build on all content so the game is not completely rote. You must occasionally say "Hold on what is this mob types syngery profile?". But the answer is select build XYX then hit 1 2 3 1 2 3 5 1 2 3 during combat and you just run around and do the same standard MMO tactics you always do while in that area. You may have 5 sets of rote actions but it still all rote actions.
You need more than just something makes finding all this out a deep and interesting experience. You need for the gameplay and gameworld you actualy make it mean more than a simple memorized formula of actions.
Note that in all three games mentioned you kill things and get loot and xp (two are skill, one is class based). In all three games it is possible to grind for some numerical advantage (although Crawl is specifically designed to not be grind based and will attempt to kill you it thinks you are grinding a level's respawns and eventually kill the respawns if you survive).
You are not capturing the fact that most MMORPGs are shared, static worlds.
In the case of single player RPGs such as Baldur's gate or Mass Effect or whatever I can select a gameplay profile in the settings.
In the context of MMOs there are one with instances that have difficulty settings (DDO, Champions Online, CoH, etc). But in all cases you get more reward for doing these. Whereas in Single Player games you are almost never punished for selecting the difficulty you like to play.
And because of this more reward for more "risk" (there is no real risk of course, that is all BS) the people who play higher diffculty winding up becoming more effective yet clearly they did not need better rewards since they won at a higher diffculty.
In the end this whole concpt of yours, while not inaccurate, is undermined by the inhereently greedy mentality of the MMORPG genre as its currently implemented.
When I choose the hard setting on a Single Player game I do so because Easy is not that fun, because its too well easy. In an MMO people will choose the Easiest (ie. fastest route) that rewards with the best loot.
The difference in the mentality (which follows implementation) is the source of many perceived ills in the genre. Both player elitism and lack of real subsstance in gameplay/gameworld can be traced to this dynamic at least partially. Its not 100% due to this but its something.
Unfortunately I am unsure there is a real solution to this. You can say well make rewards the same for all difficulties and let people who want a challenge do it that way. But in practice 90% of people will do the easiest difficulty then.
Perhaps what is needed is something like what Path of Exiles does with Leagues. Have a League "shard" per diffculty. You can freely transfer between the leagues, but your equipment stays in the league. Thus you have an equipment set per difficulty, but can freely go back and forth between Leagues to play with friends of any sort.
This way everything within that league is kept on a 1 to 1 basis except for player skill and even player should 80% of the time be on par.
Of course that is not a perfect solution but its perhaps more along the lines of a decent than what currently exists.
TSW was good for about 3 months of play. The first zone was my favorite without a doubt, a town overun by zombies/mmorpg? Yes please!
But it just got stale after a while, the pvp was a huge flop for me. I ran every dungeon like 5-x times, finding a group even as a maxed out healer was difficult, a lot of elitism(i found more so in TSW maybe cause of the small population).
I think Funcom wasted resources on things like the reticule, and opera house or whatever it is.
I found most people really disliked the desert maps(I sure did, probably the worst zones I've ever encountered but can't quite put my finger on why).
Everyone has their favorite zones -- mine is Scorched Desert, but many swear by Transylvania. Hoping the updates for matchmaking and queues in PvP in the next Issue improve things for PvP.
What you are saying is that you want an action game, not a RPG. RPG's are about building your character. That obviously requires a lot of thought.
my favorite zone is Egypt,my character living in Hotel Ghiza
dev site
http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/
wiki
http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Crawl_Wiki
online webtiles (shared player ghosts)
http://crawl.akrasiac.org:8080/#lobby
LearnDB
http://crawl.develz.org/learndb/index.html
I warn you this game is not for the faint of heart. I used it for comparison only, most MMO players would run away crying from the game. Here are some learndb entries:
build, build and build. I had the same issue....got out of the first area and got mowed down. Deleted that toon, went back to the drawing board and came back to the 2nd area with a vengeance....
Great avatar, wish more people read Bastiat.
Yeah I spent quite a bit of time I guess you could call it grinding but really I was testing things our for my own curiosity and wind up with a decent spread of skills and good builds. I killed alot of those water zombie guys near the shaodw bug things right before entrance to the next zone. So I went in the next zone having kicked the tires on my skills and had both a heavy defense and heavy offense and a build with a bit of both using a few different startegies (passive heals from procs, active heals from rifle, avoidance from chaos, crit procs etc.).
I both looked for good synergies and also had various things I wanted to figure out. I settled on a build that synergized with have as many attacks possible to get my procs working quickly. It took me a number of hours searching through the skill tree etc to settle on chaos/rifle but I also had stuff from a number of other sections and had starts chaos/blade.
It made the rest of the game way less problematic than for many people. But it was like I dunno a good 5-10 hours of extra work and my motivation was mostly curiosity. Simply power hungeriness would not have gotten past 1 or 2 hours.