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I am just tired of all the killing and war...
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Even my little pony has villians
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.05/ultima.html
Killers have more fun.
I did battle with ignorance today, and ignorance won.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
To some extent, stealth gameplay just give more choices, and have more shades of violence. The core is still conflict resolution even if avoidance & seek help from others become a part of it. It is fun .. i like it .. but the point is that it is still about violence, or the avoidance of it.
Secondly, i doubt it is suitable for a MMORPG. What is the point of stealth if you have 100 players infiltrating the same base? If you limit it to small group (like in an instanced), you may as well just do a lobby-based co-op game, which exists today.
Thanks,
Mike
Working on Social Strategy MMORTS (now Launched!) http://www.worldalpha.com
Care Bears? Boy that's dating yourself.
Thanks,
Mike
Working on Social Strategy MMORTS (now Launched!) http://www.worldalpha.com
Hello Kitty online?
Farmville?
As called out on the first page of the thread:
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
i think the game industry needs to have more variety of game styles and genres. Almost every game you purchase nowadays is focused on combat.
Nowadays zombie games are all about who kill more zombies.... back in the day when resident evil started it was all about who can survive the zombies and that was more fun.
I love a well made combat in my games but i would prefer to purchase a game where i can use visceral combat as a last resort specially if its a horror survival game like Resident evil and Dead space or a stealth game like Metal gear, Thief, Splinter cell, Deus ex, etc.
I would like to see similar survival mechanics in mmos where you can progress your character by surviving and only fight in PvE when necessary. For example, if the land is peaceful i dont need questing to kill rats. Dynamic content would add town sieges by both AI and enemy players so you fight when its necessary to survive (hunting for food and leathers or fighting back active enemies that are actually to invade you in real time, not just walking around in the forest).
Also, A sneaking mechanic like Skyrim for PvE while taking a more dynamic approach of the same mechanic for PvP. For example, sneaking in the shadows can render you totally invisible in PvP as long as you stay in the shadows.
The problem is that increasingly one is forced to accept only combat or no combat, whereas many people would prefer a game that incorporates both. The past has shown it can be done, so it's not an unrealistic expectation.
As a 39yo I completely agree and wonder about that myself. The only games seem to be pushing nothing but combat or combatlike activities. It's big time problem for me. I like combat as much as the next guy and I like it to be balanced....but there are times when some of us would like nothing more then to work on a trade or something, build, fish, enjoy the scenery and the world around us without having to fight all the time. Like....The zones in places in most of these games tend to have something big happening where some enemy is there taking up every square inch, and that simply respawn after about a minute of being dead by popping back up out of the ether.
No time to do anything in these games everything has to be rushed. Rush to the max level because that's where all the major game updates will focus, rush to the end of crafting because the gear uses stats, rush to the end of the dungeon because that's where the boss is, for even more fighting.
I'm glad some of these games are waking a bit to what people want these days but they really globally need to put forth more effort because some of us just want peace and quiet but to explore and enjoy the world we're in in these titles. Why can't more devs do that I wonder?
Also, there doesn't seem to be a combo of the two in most games. It's like they're afraid to cater to all audiences or something. I can't imagine that would be too difficult I know about the skills vs leveling thing but I'm talking about open world explorers/crafter/hobbiers vs hard core raiders.
I'm not seeing any mmo's out right now that has a beautiful world to wanderlust around in without the need to fight every minute and with the ability to make things or setup shop that combines open world combat/gear progression.
That was my point. If all they offer is combat why have a world just make a game that is a giant thunderdome and players can runaround smacking each other. Give us some depth. Viable crafting and world worth exploring. I hated EQ crafting but the world was interesting and worth exploring. I loved DAoC I could have my combat, my crafting and housing it was all good and then trials of atlantis happened.
In isolation, a complaint about combat-centric gaming is preposterous. Plenty of non-combat games exist.
Combined with a demand to also have combat and also have several other specific features, the request becomes "make my perfect MMORPG" which obviously is less likely to occur.
It might not be completely unlikely -- I mean, Skyrim exists as a game which unapologetically does nothing great (except art) yet which still seems to entertain a lot of people -- but it's less likely than expecting specialized (and therefore higher-quality) titles. And among those specialized titles are plenty of non-combat games.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Mabinogi?
Eve?
There is always going to be conflict in the world as we all have differing views, regardless of anyone who says otherwise.
Games reflect our world, thus there is violence in our games. The only reason to not have violence is if we are all happy and at peace, which will never happen. YAY VIOLENCE!
There is something more subtle about battle-fatigue than simply the desire for a non-violent game, it's about having a path that leads to non-violence.
You would have a point except that MMOs were supposed to be persistent "worlds," i.e. not hyper specialized games but spaces where combat and non combat activities not only both existed, but supported each other. Older game did this but very few games today even attempt it despite having a much larger capacity to do so and successfully pull it off. Such games will never be on the cutting edge of graphics or animations, and not every system in the game is going to be completely unique and eye-popping, but it is entirely within the realm of possibility to create a combination of subsystems that delivers a more interesting game overall. Too many people (and both devs and players are guilty of it) focus too much on individual aspects of the game rather than the overall experience, and that is limiting to the genre as a whole. Specialized, cutting edge games have a place, but so do more generalized games where the focus is less on individual systems and more on the game as a whole.
As an example (non-MMO I know, but it works), Final Fantasy 7 is seen as one of the best games ever made despite the combat being largely unoriginal and having very few truly unique systems and a relatively mundane story; despite this it worked because what they did implement worked well as a complete package, and this helped people perceptions of the game as a whole. It's successor, Final Fantasy 8, went cutting edge on both story and game mechanics, on the other hand, and ended being so disjointed and complex that it never really got much of a following. Final Fantasy 9 tried going the other way, seemingly having simplicity as a core design of it's different elements, and ended up being too bland for a lot of people. What the two latter games failed to understand was balance and the big picture. Neither were bad in their own right, and both had some interesting mechanics, but neither were able to blend the different mechanics together. MMOs today have very similar problems; the individual features themselves may be great, but most devs aren't doing anything to blend them into a complete game where they work together. The biggest difference between WoW and EVE and the rest of the market isn't what they implement, it's how they implement it to create an inviting and interesting game overall. It's not even significantly harder to do if you plan to do so from the start, so the idea that something must be specialized to be a quality game feels flat and more like an excuse to me.
They're not "supposed" to have a lot of activity variety any more than they're "supposed" to not have activity variety.
MMORPGs are simply MMORPGs. If you're a shared, online, persistent game world involving progression, story, and a low or non-existent twitch element, you're a MMORPG.
You don't get to say your favorite MMORPG style is what MMORPGs are "supposed" to be any more than I do.
While some of your second paragraph is true, I feel obligated to point out that FF7 is a game which has one core system with very few other types of gameplay. FF7 is an example of the type of focused "you're going to be doing this 90% of the time" type of game I'm talking about. Few RPGs diverge from that formula, with notable exceptions being Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3, because as you point out: a well-implemented version of those games is a complete blast.
The path to implementing something well is putting most of your eggs in that basket and iterating on the design. You don't have time to iterate if you split between too many game systems.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
and from this poster's sig i think we can understand his pov. and i agree with it. half the fun of original SWG was the farming and building. i didnt get involved in the GCW till a bit late in the game. and that was fun too, but ya. there should be more.
i could see the limits of the kill-only strategy as early as my friend's jedi grind. it just made no sense: become a powerful jedi by committing acts of mass extinction and genocide. a game cant just be that unless it has strong community support for it already.
its one of the things i liked about Vanguard. not only did they have a robust and useful crafting system, but their Diplomacy system could not only be leveled on its own, but it provided useful unlocks and buffs for other styles of play.
that is innovation and we honestly havent seen much of that in recent years.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse