What quality? If we take another look at Skyrim, most of its landmass is completely empty and most of its dungeons are same-ish and populated by bandits or draugr. Most of its quests are simple "go there, kill that" quests without branching storylines. Its writing is mediocre at best. On the other hand, there are games like The Witcher 2, with high-quality quests, solid writing and hand-made environment, but they only provide less than 40 hours of content.
As for my comments on CoD (not FPS gameplay), yes, it's pretty much that simple. CoD's single-player campaigns are utter crap and its MP component barely changes between titles. There are better shooters out there, of course, but CoD is what people play and - I suppose - like.
There are some SP games with plenty of complex systems, such as Wizardry 8, but people tend to ignore them and favor the next shiny thing with lots of hype.
Which CoD? I admit they are riding on their success from CoD: Modern Warfare still, but CoD has had very solid campaigns compared to other FPSs. It is a solid game, very high level of polish and well-thought-out multiplayer. Writing has took a nose-dive since Black Ops tho.
Complexity is not the same as depth. A game doesn't have to be complicated in order to be deep or entertaining. People just might not care what Wizardry 8 has to offer. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Last CoD I played was the one that came before Black Ops. I played through what I assume was roughly half of its campaign and it was nowhere near as good as that of, say, Half-Life 2 or FarCry 3. Actually, FC3 comes to mind as a shooter with a SP that had some gameplay depth and a decently-written story, but it's more of an exception to the rule.
I'm talking mostly about complexity because depth and entertainment value are very debatable qualities. Originally, the TC claimed that SP games have more features and are more polished than MMOs. More features means more complexity. That claim doesn't hold water IMO.
Yes, some SP games are great. Some have great stories. Some are strategy games with enormous amounts of depth, complexity and polish. However, the average AAA SP game is a lot simpler than an average AAA MMO. It's not a bad thing. Tomb Raider is one of my favorite action/platforming games and it's very simple and straightforward. It also had an enormous budget and a development cycle of five years. Dragon Age: Origins had an even longer development cycle and the aforementioned Wizardy 8 was in development for seven years, I think. So, complex SP games take a long time to develop, too. That leaves us with "more bug fixes", which is a good thing.
Of course, you could compare GW2 or SWTOR with something like Braid, but people don't do that because most of them have some common sense.
Also, here's a nice video of CoD for you. It's an exception, of course, but I think it illustrates why I don't like CoD's SP quite well. My favorite part begins at 13:30.
Originally posted by QSatu The argument that mmo devs are less skilled that's why it takes them longer to make games is bs. Just go and read some devs interviews and basically all agree that making an mmo is the hardest task you can get in gaming industry.
I know several of the guys who did the C+ work on a...well, it's a currently available commercial engine (cough).
And yes, they could code rings around me, without question. But I just wrote Crittur AI script (and everyone knows how easy AI is, why can't those lazy devs do it better, right?)
Simple fact is that the general gamer rabblerabble just isn't educated enough on the systems involved to have a valid opinion. Nor will they believe the individuals who might be, because they're certain that everyone at EvilCo who might say so is lying, and if you're another anonymous face on a message board, you're lying too.
:fingers in the ears: SP games and MMO are exactly the same animal. Lalalala, I can't hear you.
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.
Originally posted by Bladestrom Mmos are more difficult to make, and as you day offer an experience you get in single player game. Re bugs, a single player game has 1 release- if they had to release new content frequently after release then the bug count would rise. Also, look up 'agile versus waterfall' development'. Explains a lot about why consumers benefit from frequent but less than perfect releases.
MMOS are not tested as rigorously as single player games because THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT. Take SimCity as Example, it was in a state that most MMOS would get away with easy. EA was forced to give away free stuff and even then will suffer from this bad release for a long time.
This excuse that MMOS are difficult and so much harder to develop than single player games is the biggest bullshit i ever heard.
"Give players systems and tools instead of rails and rules"
Originally posted by Bladestrom Mmos are more difficult to make, and as you day offer an experience you get in single player game. Re bugs, a single player game has 1 release- if they had to release new content frequently after release then the bug count would rise. Also, look up 'agile versus waterfall' development'. Explains a lot about why consumers benefit from frequent but less than perfect releases.
MMOS are not tested as rigorously as single player games because THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT. Take SimCity as Example, it was in a state that most MMOS would get away with easy. EA was forced to give away free stuff and even then will suffer from this bad release for a long time.
This excuse that MMOS are difficult and so much harder to develop than single player games is the biggest bullshit i ever heard.
Personally I wouldn't like to say as I am not educated in any programming language, though I did a course on web publishing and found it the most boring and tedious process I had done in a long time. Now going back to your statement, unless you have the qualifications and the expertise to do what these developers do, then you really shouldn't make such claims. One thing I do know though is that they can be very expensive to develop in comparison.
This excuse that MMOS are difficult and so much harder to develop than single player games is the biggest bullshit i ever heard.
The perfect position, unassailable.
So gamers construct this world of negativity, where they hold these common 'everyone knows' positions. And because they repeat them so often (argumentum ad nauseam) to each other, they become accepted folk wisdom, and other gamers naturally agree they must be correct.
No support is offered here, it's proved by assertion.
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.
Originally posted by QuirhidMMOs are games, Iselin. They can share much the same code, same assets, same developers, overlapping target audience... They teach game design by assigning students to develop board/card games. And you can certainly compare games and their similarities with each other. For example, how lame duck situation should be avoided in all games and sports. MMOs are not on a pedestial."...complexities unimaginable in single player games..." No one in the industry would make a comment like that. Not only that but you're misquoting Quiz.Yes, MMOs suffer from certain limitations, but by no means does this result in "unimaginable complexity". If anything, those limitations are holding them back, and if there is any genius in MMO design, it is precisely how to best cope with those limitations - make the best of what you got.
From a tech standpoint they are more complex. When it comes to design they have rather different design goals. You must take other players into account in your design. Its why Skyrim with a bunch of other people around just does not make sense. Merely making a game "fun" is not enough if that game is not fun with other people. I agree that "unimaginable complexity" is absurd, but so is comparing a single player game to an mmo. Its like comparing masturbation to sex, they are similar in some respecs, but really are not comparable.
Just saying something isn't comparable doesn't make them not comparable. Neither does using bad analogies, however amusing they may be. Compare the questing in Skyrim to the questing in SWToR. One or the other will score more points with players. Compare the PvP offered in League of Legends with the PvP offered in WoW or GW2. One or the other will score more points with the players. Compare the story in Mass Effect 1 or 2 to the story told in The Secret World or SWToR. One or the other will score more points with the players. Saying two things can't be compared is a cop out.
A game is nota set of individual features, its the sum of its parts. You cant compare the story of an mmo and a single player game because of the way each type of game interacts with the rest of features. Also again...this are very subjective matters.
The only way you could compare quality of two games is if you had a chart with how much money was spent on each game and how it was used in it....imho.
When games are reviewed by "professionals", and by people on these forums, it's the individual features that are referred to and individual experiences that are described. There is no indescribable or ineffable feature or experience of MMOs that cannot be discussed or compared to the features and experiences available in single player games. It doesn't equal rocket appliances, it's just video games.
My post above shows a simple way to compare the features of MMOs and single player games. It's not an impossible task. It's also not that hard to compare the build quality of single player games and MMOs either. Did bugs in the game get reported on in the press? That's one way to see how important the bugs are.
If there is an experience available in MMOs that isn't available in single player games, then describe it, and cite that as the reason that people would put up with things in MMOs that they wouldn't put up with in single player RPGs. Or cite the examples of why the idea that players are putting up with more irritants is just wrong or only a general perception, not reality. Don't just say, "They can't be compared", drop your mic and leave the stage like that says something.
** ** **
Try this. On launch day Deux Ex, Bioshock Infinite and Silent Hill all just ran. I think this is the normal experience for single player games. The standard experience for MMOs is not being able to log in. So there's the starting point. When the game launches, what percentage of the people who bought the game can play the game? See? They can be compared.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
The same question applies to games like Skyrim, Oblivion or Morrowind. They tend to have weaker game-play than your other AAA titles, they also feature far more problems on the bug side, yet they offer something you don't find elsewhere.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Originally posted by lizardbones Don't just say, "They can't be compared", drop your mic and leave the stage like that says something.
"Now, ignoring the exponentially larger amount of work that goes into an MMO, because the general gaming public neither knows nor cares about that additional work; why does the general gaming public seem more forgiving towards the flaws of MMOs?"
Don't just say "ignoring that they're different" and conclude that they must be the same. :shrug:
General charges, general responses.
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.
Simple fact is that the general gamer rabblerabble just isn't educated enough on the systems involved to have a valid opinion. Nor will they believe the individuals who might be, because they're certain that everyone at EvilCo who might say so is lying, and if you're another anonymous face on a message board, you're lying too.
Perhaps not, but the general gamer rabblerabble at the ones whose money that is paying for the game so their opinion is the only one that matters in the grand scheme of things, valid or not.
And to answer the OP, I believe the reason you are looking is a combination of two 4-letter words, hope and hype. We hope that the next game will be as good as the hype so we are willing to accept lower quality products in the hope that the game will get better. Unfortunately most recent offering have proven to be little more than hype so we are left to hope than the next game along will be better.
IMO is the rising cost of making the games themselves. There's a lot that goes into it. I do think developers have lofty aspirations as to what their game would be and have but realism due to cost brings it way down.
The OP ask why do we accept lower quality games. The individual makes the determination of what is a lower quality game and what is a good game. It's subjective.
" raving rabid teaches Spock and Uhura to dance! "
All my opinions are just that..opinions. If you like my opinions..coolness.If you dont like my opinion....I really dont care. Playing: ESO, WOT, Smite, and Marvel Heroes
Simple fact is that the general gamer rabblerabble just isn't educated enough on the systems involved to have a valid opinion. Nor will they believe the individuals who might be, because they're certain that everyone at EvilCo who might say so is lying, and if you're another anonymous face on a message board, you're lying too.
Perhaps not, but the general gamer rabblerabble at the ones whose money that is paying for the game so their opinion is the only one that matters in the grand scheme of things, valid or not.
I acknowledge that combating "everybody knows" is a somewhat hopeless position.
Sill, it's the only thing that stops this forum from drowning in angst.
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.
Simple fact is that the general gamer rabblerabble just isn't educated enough on the systems involved to have a valid opinion. Nor will they believe the individuals who might be, because they're certain that everyone at EvilCo who might say so is lying, and if you're another anonymous face on a message board, you're lying too.
Perhaps not, but the general gamer rabblerabble at the ones whose money that is paying for the game so their opinion is the only one that matters in the grand scheme of things, valid or not.
And to answer the OP, I believe the reason you are looking is a combination of two 4-letter words, hope and hype. We hope that the next game will be as good as the hype so we are willing to accept lower quality products in the hope that the game will get better. Unfortunately most recent offering have proven to be little more than hype so we are left to hope than the next game along will be better.
IMO "Hope and Hype" have nothing to do with playing a game, speaking for myself here of course. I see no reason to continue to play (put up with) things I dislike simply on the belief it may get better. Too many options out there to do be doing that, It's simply a matter of having fun or enjoying the subject matter ( if it's story oriented). Playing a game is more of a here and now type of thing for me.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
With the advent of mmo focused middle-ware engines, the majority of that hard work and added costs should no longer be there. In the last 8 years, I can only think of 1 MMO that required more capability than what BigWorld or Hero Engine are capable of. Players should be expecting more out of developers for less costs now.
I think the big problem with mmo development is poor management. If you read the employee review of mmo studios you will see the underlying problem. The guys in charge lack focus and change their minds costing millions and sometimes requiring to completely rework a product.
The upshot is that if you compare MMO development to single player game or multiplayer game development, it seems like the MMO developers produce lower quality products, with fewer features, longer development cycles and a lot more bug fixes.
Now, ignoring the exponentially larger amount of work that goes into an MMO, because the general gaming public neither knows nor cares about that additional work; why does the general gaming public seem more forgiving towards the flaws of MMOs?
I think it's because MMOs offer an experience that just isn't available in other games. Running around in a virtual world with other people doing stuff around you. This is something that is missing from every other type of game, and it's something that people miss when they don't have it. Players are willing to put up with more to get that feeling.
Originally posted by zymurgeist Because we're foolish and desperate. Because we're more interested in new and shiny promises than a functioning foundation to build upon. Jumbo jets are more difficult and expensive to build than lawn mowers. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be thoroughly tested because "oh heck they're going to blow up and fall out of the sky now and then, it's inevitable." There will be problems with anything complex but companies not making every attempt to minimize them is our fault. If you make stupid mistakes your company should die not prosper. A lot of unfair charges are laid against corporations but one that applies to any large organization is that they reduce moral hazard and accountability. They hide incompetence and increase waste. Some of that is acceptable if the product is profitable but when you look at MMORPG landscape it's clearly a dog's breakfast.
To me, it's not that MMOs are harder or more complex than single player games, but that the interactions between the systems is different enough that each presents it's own unique challenges. With SP games, the challenges are usually clear and don't change much, making them much easier to tackle, whereas with MMOs, the predictability of when and where the problems will occur and what they will be is much lower given the sheer number of moving parts. SP games tend to break when the big systems don't work right; MMOs tend to break when some creative player finds a random corner case and starts to exploit the heck out of it. All in all, the nature of the challenges MMO developers have to deal with is what makes them more difficult, not their scope, and, unfortunately, it's that precise nature that makes it that much harder to release a comparatively bug free game without heavy testing by a lot of users. If there is an unacceptable habit right now, it's the tendency for both player and developer to treat the beta like the finished product rather than a significant part of the testing phase, meaning that fewer bugs are getting caught and handled before the game advances to a point that there are too many players on the servers to do anything about them.
As for comparing the two, it can and should be done, as long the limitations of such comparisons are understood. These comparisons are very important in better understanding the strengths and limitations of both genres. To me, comparisons need to be made with both SP games and other MMOs at the same time; each set of comparison yields a different set of necessary information.
Originally posted by Icewhite Originally posted by lizardbonesDon't just say, "They can't be compared", drop your mic and leave the stage like that says something.
"Now, ignoring the exponentially larger amount of work that goes into an MMO, because the general gaming public neither knows nor cares about that additional work; why does the general gaming public seem more forgiving towards the flaws of MMOs?"
Don't just say "ignoring that they're different" and conclude that they must be the same. :shrug:
General charges, general responses.
I didn't say they are the same product. I said don't use the amount of work it takes to produce an MMO as an excuse. If that were true, people would be excusing everything about SWToR because it took so much more effort and money to produce. Nobody forced any of these developers to make an MMO. They chose to do it. If there are issues inherent in building an MMO, they should have been up to the task before they started instead of producing products that are not complete when they release or can't run when they release.
The details exist, in this thread and in many of the posts on this forum. Making excuses for the issues that MMOs have doesn't make them go away. The question is, what are MMO players getting out of the deal that they will continue to play a game where logging in is required, but they can't login when the game releases? Where the game's economy is an integral part of the game, but game systems are exploited on an infrequent but regular basis to break the economy? Where games that are released in beta are collecting money from players for temporary cash shop items and unlocks?
The answer is not, "It is much harder to produce MMOs compared to single player games."
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Originally posted by lizardbones The answer is not, "It is much harder to produce MMOs compared to single player games."
Except that you acknowledged that to be true in your first post of this thread.
Adopting any stance except "rawr, get the pitchforks, everything sucks, burn the heretics" gets this 'apologist' response, and people get genuinely angry about it. If you're not fer us, you're agin us, moderate viewpoints need not apply.
We're going in circles here. 6 3/4 pages of treading water.
You've scored the usual batch of "me toos", from the usual suspects. And you've generated another pretty typical negative energy thread. w00t. Is that sufficient? What more were you hoping to accomplish? You poked the wet badger with the stick and now he's angry--what is your next step? What good is an angry badger, exactly?
The question is, what are MMO players getting out of the deal that they will continue to play a game ?
Let's assume, for a moment, this particular question is what you're awaiting an answer to.
Can you not just assign any motivation that you want them to have? Because there's X million players, and X million answers; that's going to be a lot of complex answers, not simple talking points. The only thing we can guarantee is that "gamers" are not a single group, that react in a single way, to any listed stimulus X.
Do you want to believe that "gamers" are dim people who just can't see how EvilCo is taking advantage of them (despite the four million threads of evidence to the contrary)? Go with that answer.
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.
Originally posted by zymurgeist Because we're foolish and desperate. Because we're more interested in new and shiny promises than a functioning foundation to build upon. Jumbo jets are more difficult and expensive to build than lawn mowers. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be thoroughly tested because "oh heck they're going to blow up and fall out of the sky now and then, it's inevitable." There will be problems with anything complex but companies not making every attempt to minimize them is our fault. If you make stupid mistakes your company should die not prosper. A lot of unfair charges are laid against corporations but one that applies to any large organization is that they reduce moral hazard and accountability. They hide incompetence and increase waste. Some of that is acceptable if the product is profitable but when you look at MMORPG landscape it's clearly a dog's breakfast.
Good example...lawnmowers and airplanes. Especially considering that in the US "More Than 600 Children Undergo Mower-Related Amputations Each Year" http://www.amputee-coalition.org/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=1206... and that's just amputations and children under 10. Airplane accidents per year (all airplanes not just jumbo jets)? ~ 150 average.
Next analogy?
This thread... amazing how a deeply held prejudice ("Those evil corporations pumping out shitty themepark clones are just ripping us off, Jim!) can withstand any and all evidence to the contrary...not to mention common sense.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Originally posted by lizardbonesThe answer is not, "It is much harder to produce MMOs compared to single player games."
Except that you acknowledged that to be true in your first post of this thread.
Adopting any stance except "rawr, get the pitchforks, everything sucks, burn the heretics" gets this 'apologist' response, and people get genuinely angry about it. If you're not fer us, you're agin us, moderate viewpoints need not apply.
We're going in circles here. 6 3/4 pages of treading water.
You've scored the usual batch of "me toos", from the usual suspects. And you've generated another pretty typical negative energy thread. w00t. Is that sufficient? What more were you hoping to accomplish? You poked the wet badger with the stick and now he's angry--what is your next step? What good is an angry badger, exactly?
What the bloody hell are you talking about?
Let me repeat. MMOs not only have issues that do not exist in single player games, but comparing game play aspects that are common to both types of games, the single player games come out ahead. Call it polish, call it quality, whatever. I'm not going through the examples yet again. Some people have said this point of view is wrong, which is entirely possible, but I haven't seen any examples. If that point of view is wrong, show us why. I'm perfectly happy with being wrong.
The second response is that it's impossible to compare MMOs with single player games. This response doesn't make any sense to me. Of course they can be compared. You can compare apples and oranges if you want, as long as you take into consideration that you're comparing apples and oranges. Again, not going into the examples.
The third response seems to be, yes, there are qualitative deficiencies in MMO development, but it doesn't matter because it's so much harder to develop an MMO. Nobody disputes that it is indeed much harder to develop an MMO. I'm saying it doesn't matter how much harder it is to develop an MMO if there are qualitative deficiencies, why are people putting up with them? Why are people spending even more money this year over last year and every year prior to this point. What is the feature or experience in MMOs that allows this to happen?
I'm not saying, "People are stupid for buying MMOs", I'm asking, "What is the feature of MMOs that makes these obvious deficiencies irrelevant?" My friend's eight year old son isn't player SWToR as much as he can because of the huge amount of development required to build SWToR. It's something else. What is it?
** ** **
I maybe should have known better than to ask such a question here. If people can't even admit that there are things players are putting up with, then it's impossible to figure why they're putting up with things.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I'm not saying, "People are stupid for buying MMOs", I'm asking, "What is the feature of MMOs that makes these obvious deficiencies irrelevant?"
Expecting a simple answer to an enormously complex question.
Simplest answer is that not everyone sees doom in all directions. Easy, truthful.
Now, are we done with this thread?
"My friend's eight year old son isn't player SWToR as much as he can because of the huge amount of development required to build SWToR. It's something else. What is it?"
He likes it?
He's not concerned whether EvilCo is taking advantage of him? (That's something you learn from reading forums...I'm assuming he does not. Consider: would you want him to?)
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'm not saying, "People are stupid for buying MMOs", I'm asking, "What is the feature of MMOs that makes these obvious deficiencies irrelevant?"
I'm not saying "Jim is stupid for marrying Mary". I'm asking "What is the feature of Mary that makes her obvious deficiencies irrelevant?"
Someone on the first page said something about an imperfect world and imperfect people. It couldn't be that simple...could it? Could it be maybe that we take the good with the bad, balance them and decide when something is good enough? Or maybe that people with common sense know "shit happens"?
Edit: damn! Ice beat me to the punch. He types good!
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Years of MUD, and (possibly the last) graduating class in America that had a required typing course. But I'm actually quite a bit more prone to typo than I once was, minor nerve damage r. hand.
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.
Years of MUD, and (possibly the last) graduating class in America that had a required typing course. But I'm actually quite a bit more prone to typo than I once was, minor nerve damage r. hand.
LOL, I took "College" typing in my senior year, and I think we were the last graduating class to learn how to use a slide rule in Chemistry class (11th grade)
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
LOL, I took "College" typing in my senior year, and I think we were the last graduating class to learn how to use a slide rule in Chemistry class (11th grade)
Somewhere down in a dusty storage box in the basement. Along with those 50s HS books...heh.
If Civilization Fails To Collapse before my son moves out of the house, I can throw that box out
:bookshelf: I can see Fortran '77 from where I sit... I inherited my father's packrat-itis..
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.
Comments
Last CoD I played was the one that came before Black Ops. I played through what I assume was roughly half of its campaign and it was nowhere near as good as that of, say, Half-Life 2 or FarCry 3. Actually, FC3 comes to mind as a shooter with a SP that had some gameplay depth and a decently-written story, but it's more of an exception to the rule.
I'm talking mostly about complexity because depth and entertainment value are very debatable qualities. Originally, the TC claimed that SP games have more features and are more polished than MMOs. More features means more complexity. That claim doesn't hold water IMO.
Yes, some SP games are great. Some have great stories. Some are strategy games with enormous amounts of depth, complexity and polish. However, the average AAA SP game is a lot simpler than an average AAA MMO. It's not a bad thing. Tomb Raider is one of my favorite action/platforming games and it's very simple and straightforward. It also had an enormous budget and a development cycle of five years. Dragon Age: Origins had an even longer development cycle and the aforementioned Wizardy 8 was in development for seven years, I think. So, complex SP games take a long time to develop, too. That leaves us with "more bug fixes", which is a good thing.
Of course, you could compare GW2 or SWTOR with something like Braid, but people don't do that because most of them have some common sense.
Also, here's a nice video of CoD for you. It's an exception, of course, but I think it illustrates why I don't like CoD's SP quite well. My favorite part begins at 13:30.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RULv6HbgEjY
I know several of the guys who did the C+ work on a...well, it's a currently available commercial engine (cough).
And yes, they could code rings around me, without question. But I just wrote Crittur AI script (and everyone knows how easy AI is, why can't those lazy devs do it better, right?)
Simple fact is that the general gamer rabblerabble just isn't educated enough on the systems involved to have a valid opinion. Nor will they believe the individuals who might be, because they're certain that everyone at EvilCo who might say so is lying, and if you're another anonymous face on a message board, you're lying too.
:fingers in the ears: SP games and MMO are exactly the same animal. Lalalala, I can't hear you.
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.
MMOS are not tested as rigorously as single player games because THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT. Take SimCity as Example, it was in a state that most MMOS would get away with easy. EA was forced to give away free stuff and even then will suffer from this bad release for a long time.
This excuse that MMOS are difficult and so much harder to develop than single player games is the biggest bullshit i ever heard.
Personally I wouldn't like to say as I am not educated in any programming language, though I did a course on web publishing and found it the most boring and tedious process I had done in a long time. Now going back to your statement, unless you have the qualifications and the expertise to do what these developers do, then you really shouldn't make such claims. One thing I do know though is that they can be very expensive to develop in comparison.
The perfect position, unassailable.
So gamers construct this world of negativity, where they hold these common 'everyone knows' positions. And because they repeat them so often (argumentum ad nauseam) to each other, they become accepted folk wisdom, and other gamers naturally agree they must be correct.
No support is offered here, it's proved by assertion.
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.
When games are reviewed by "professionals", and by people on these forums, it's the individual features that are referred to and individual experiences that are described. There is no indescribable or ineffable feature or experience of MMOs that cannot be discussed or compared to the features and experiences available in single player games. It doesn't equal rocket appliances, it's just video games.
My post above shows a simple way to compare the features of MMOs and single player games. It's not an impossible task. It's also not that hard to compare the build quality of single player games and MMOs either. Did bugs in the game get reported on in the press? That's one way to see how important the bugs are.
If there is an experience available in MMOs that isn't available in single player games, then describe it, and cite that as the reason that people would put up with things in MMOs that they wouldn't put up with in single player RPGs. Or cite the examples of why the idea that players are putting up with more irritants is just wrong or only a general perception, not reality. Don't just say, "They can't be compared", drop your mic and leave the stage like that says something.
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Try this. On launch day Deux Ex, Bioshock Infinite and Silent Hill all just ran. I think this is the normal experience for single player games. The standard experience for MMOs is not being able to log in. So there's the starting point. When the game launches, what percentage of the people who bought the game can play the game? See? They can be compared.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
"Now, ignoring the exponentially larger amount of work that goes into an MMO, because the general gaming public neither knows nor cares about that additional work; why does the general gaming public seem more forgiving towards the flaws of MMOs?"
Don't just say "ignoring that they're different" and conclude that they must be the same. :shrug:
General charges, general responses.
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.
Perhaps not, but the general gamer rabblerabble at the ones whose money that is paying for the game so their opinion is the only one that matters in the grand scheme of things, valid or not.
And to answer the OP, I believe the reason you are looking is a combination of two 4-letter words, hope and hype. We hope that the next game will be as good as the hype so we are willing to accept lower quality products in the hope that the game will get better. Unfortunately most recent offering have proven to be little more than hype so we are left to hope than the next game along will be better.
The Enlightened take things Lightly
IMO is the rising cost of making the games themselves. There's a lot that goes into it. I do think developers have lofty aspirations as to what their game would be and have but realism due to cost brings it way down.
The OP ask why do we accept lower quality games. The individual makes the determination of what is a lower quality game and what is a good game. It's subjective.
" raving rabid teaches Spock and Uhura to dance! "
All my opinions are just that..opinions. If you like my opinions..coolness.If you dont like my opinion....I really dont care.
Playing: ESO, WOT, Smite, and Marvel Heroes
I acknowledge that combating "everybody knows" is a somewhat hopeless position.
Sill, it's the only thing that stops this forum from drowning in angst.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.
IMO "Hope and Hype" have nothing to do with playing a game, speaking for myself here of course. I see no reason to continue to play (put up with) things I dislike simply on the belief it may get better. Too many options out there to do be doing that, It's simply a matter of having fun or enjoying the subject matter ( if it's story oriented). Playing a game is more of a here and now type of thing for me.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
With the advent of mmo focused middle-ware engines, the majority of that hard work and added costs should no longer be there. In the last 8 years, I can only think of 1 MMO that required more capability than what BigWorld or Hero Engine are capable of. Players should be expecting more out of developers for less costs now.
I think the big problem with mmo development is poor management. If you read the employee review of mmo studios you will see the underlying problem. The guys in charge lack focus and change their minds costing millions and sometimes requiring to completely rework a product.
This is my take on the situation: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/385428/When-Will-Consumers-Ever-Learn.html
+1 could not have said it better myself.
To me, it's not that MMOs are harder or more complex than single player games, but that the interactions between the systems is different enough that each presents it's own unique challenges. With SP games, the challenges are usually clear and don't change much, making them much easier to tackle, whereas with MMOs, the predictability of when and where the problems will occur and what they will be is much lower given the sheer number of moving parts. SP games tend to break when the big systems don't work right; MMOs tend to break when some creative player finds a random corner case and starts to exploit the heck out of it. All in all, the nature of the challenges MMO developers have to deal with is what makes them more difficult, not their scope, and, unfortunately, it's that precise nature that makes it that much harder to release a comparatively bug free game without heavy testing by a lot of users. If there is an unacceptable habit right now, it's the tendency for both player and developer to treat the beta like the finished product rather than a significant part of the testing phase, meaning that fewer bugs are getting caught and handled before the game advances to a point that there are too many players on the servers to do anything about them.
As for comparing the two, it can and should be done, as long the limitations of such comparisons are understood. These comparisons are very important in better understanding the strengths and limitations of both genres. To me, comparisons need to be made with both SP games and other MMOs at the same time; each set of comparison yields a different set of necessary information.
Don't just say "ignoring that they're different" and conclude that they must be the same. :shrug:
General charges, general responses.
I didn't say they are the same product. I said don't use the amount of work it takes to produce an MMO as an excuse. If that were true, people would be excusing everything about SWToR because it took so much more effort and money to produce. Nobody forced any of these developers to make an MMO. They chose to do it. If there are issues inherent in building an MMO, they should have been up to the task before they started instead of producing products that are not complete when they release or can't run when they release.
The details exist, in this thread and in many of the posts on this forum. Making excuses for the issues that MMOs have doesn't make them go away. The question is, what are MMO players getting out of the deal that they will continue to play a game where logging in is required, but they can't login when the game releases? Where the game's economy is an integral part of the game, but game systems are exploited on an infrequent but regular basis to break the economy? Where games that are released in beta are collecting money from players for temporary cash shop items and unlocks?
The answer is not, "It is much harder to produce MMOs compared to single player games."
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Except that you acknowledged that to be true in your first post of this thread.
Adopting any stance except "rawr, get the pitchforks, everything sucks, burn the heretics" gets this 'apologist' response, and people get genuinely angry about it. If you're not fer us, you're agin us, moderate viewpoints need not apply.
We're going in circles here. 6 3/4 pages of treading water.
You've scored the usual batch of "me toos", from the usual suspects. And you've generated another pretty typical negative energy thread. w00t. Is that sufficient? What more were you hoping to accomplish? You poked the wet badger with the stick and now he's angry--what is your next step? What good is an angry badger, exactly?
The question is, what are MMO players getting out of the deal that they will continue to play a game ?
Let's assume, for a moment, this particular question is what you're awaiting an answer to.
Can you not just assign any motivation that you want them to have? Because there's X million players, and X million answers; that's going to be a lot of complex answers, not simple talking points. The only thing we can guarantee is that "gamers" are not a single group, that react in a single way, to any listed stimulus X.
Do you want to believe that "gamers" are dim people who just can't see how EvilCo is taking advantage of them (despite the four million threads of evidence to the contrary)? Go with that answer.
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.
Good example...lawnmowers and airplanes. Especially considering that in the US "More Than 600 Children Undergo Mower-Related Amputations Each Year" http://www.amputee-coalition.org/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=1206 ... and that's just amputations and children under 10. Airplane accidents per year (all airplanes not just jumbo jets)? ~ 150 average.
Next analogy?
This thread... amazing how a deeply held prejudice ("Those evil corporations pumping out shitty themepark clones are just ripping us off, Jim!) can withstand any and all evidence to the contrary...not to mention common sense.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
What the bloody hell are you talking about?
Let me repeat. MMOs not only have issues that do not exist in single player games, but comparing game play aspects that are common to both types of games, the single player games come out ahead. Call it polish, call it quality, whatever. I'm not going through the examples yet again. Some people have said this point of view is wrong, which is entirely possible, but I haven't seen any examples. If that point of view is wrong, show us why. I'm perfectly happy with being wrong.
The second response is that it's impossible to compare MMOs with single player games. This response doesn't make any sense to me. Of course they can be compared. You can compare apples and oranges if you want, as long as you take into consideration that you're comparing apples and oranges. Again, not going into the examples.
The third response seems to be, yes, there are qualitative deficiencies in MMO development, but it doesn't matter because it's so much harder to develop an MMO. Nobody disputes that it is indeed much harder to develop an MMO. I'm saying it doesn't matter how much harder it is to develop an MMO if there are qualitative deficiencies, why are people putting up with them? Why are people spending even more money this year over last year and every year prior to this point. What is the feature or experience in MMOs that allows this to happen?
I'm not saying, "People are stupid for buying MMOs", I'm asking, "What is the feature of MMOs that makes these obvious deficiencies irrelevant?" My friend's eight year old son isn't player SWToR as much as he can because of the huge amount of development required to build SWToR. It's something else. What is it?
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I maybe should have known better than to ask such a question here. If people can't even admit that there are things players are putting up with, then it's impossible to figure why they're putting up with things.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Expecting a simple answer to an enormously complex question.
Simplest answer is that not everyone sees doom in all directions. Easy, truthful.
Now, are we done with this thread?
"My friend's eight year old son isn't player SWToR as much as he can because of the huge amount of development required to build SWToR. It's something else. What is it?"
He likes it?
He's not concerned whether EvilCo is taking advantage of him? (That's something you learn from reading forums...I'm assuming he does not. Consider: would you want him to?)
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'm not saying "Jim is stupid for marrying Mary". I'm asking "What is the feature of Mary that makes her obvious deficiencies irrelevant?"
Someone on the first page said something about an imperfect world and imperfect people. It couldn't be that simple...could it? Could it be maybe that we take the good with the bad, balance them and decide when something is good enough? Or maybe that people with common sense know "shit happens"?
Edit: damn! Ice beat me to the punch. He types good!
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Years of MUD, and (possibly the last) graduating class in America that had a required typing course. But I'm actually quite a bit more prone to typo than I once was, minor nerve damage r. hand.
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.
LOL, I took "College" typing in my senior year, and I think we were the last graduating class to learn how to use a slide rule in Chemistry class (11th grade)
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Somewhere down in a dusty storage box in the basement. Along with those 50s HS books...heh.
If Civilization Fails To Collapse before my son moves out of the house, I can throw that box out
:bookshelf: I can see Fortran '77 from where I sit... I inherited my father's packrat-itis..
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.