Then I might suggest that you take your dispute to the game developers and not me as I am not making the games with such thinking in mind: They are. I am only pointing out what I have seen happen over the last 6 years or so and commenting thusly. While I do not think a "slider" would work in practice (sounds ok in theory) and note that DDO has done so in an off way (having 3(4) difficulty levels for its dungeon instances with the player having to complete the easier setting before running it again at a higher one; which by the way is not fun to me as I'm not a fan of running the same content over and over in hopes it is more challenging). STO is talking of a slider as well, which again, isn't enticing to me (as I've literally done every working mission they have in game now) as I'd rather the content just be challenging (and me fail a few times and have to figure out tactics to defeat it other than going in with guns blazing) in the first. By your reasoning then every viewpoint here, yours included, fails as they are all from a solitary viewpoint, regardless of if they are shared by a great many others.
Well you're basically describing exclusive content, which is similar to saying "I want a good portion of gamers to be absolutely crushed and incapable of completing this chunk of content." Which is not terrible in limited quantity, but inefficient (the same manhours are spent making the content, but fewer players get to experience it.) Given that you've already done every quest in STO, hopefully you can appreciate the need for efficient content development. Difficulty sliders efficiently let one set of existing content provide challenge to a wider range of players.
Difficulty sliders don't mean repeating content. That's not an ideal implementation. Games should aim for something more like CoX, where the difficulty settings exist from the start and are rewarding enough that that's how you advance the fastest. DDO's forced-to-repeat difficulty isn't optimal. Your STO comments seem more disgruntled by the overriding issue of content quantity, which makes your challenge comments sound a little off.
As for viewpoints? Everyone's statements are made from an imperfect point of view, but that doesn't mean there aren't narrow and broad views. Asking for games to be specifically tailored to your precise tastes and skill is a narrow request. Discussing the perceived desires of more people than oneself is a broader -- which is why I discuss things like tweakable difficulty instead of demanding that every game is perfectly tailored to my skill (because that'd be far too hard for the majority of players, and the games would never sell.)
I suppose in a convoluted way that makes my desire for "the broad view" motivated by selfish factors -- the desire to see companies stay profitable so they can keep making me games.
Again, difficulty sliders may work for you but I don't particularly go for the idea. I'd prefer overall a game designed to be a little more difficult that what is being put into the offering bowl today. I have the luxury of not worrying about a "wider range" of gamers. That's a business concern and one for the companies, not me. Sure, I understand the business decision to go the route but that doesn't mean I have to agree with it. Ultimately as the consumer I can take my money to games that offer more of a challenge or, if the industry sum total goes the "wider range" route, I can pull my money out of the industry and find another vice. Either way I'm just fine with.
My comments about STO are just that, my comments. Your allocation of emotions to my typing has caused you to over-analyze to your own detriment. Probably best just to take things at "face" value and either let them tell you they are disgruntled or ask instead of ascribing the trait. But no, I am not. Just stating a fact of where I was at with respect to their content. Indeed I am far from being the first and accompanied by players that fall into many categories, to include so-called "casuals".
As for "broad and narrow" request, there is room for both and neither is "more correct" than the other. There is an argument that over saturation of broad requests has lead to the homogeneous look of MMOs being made today in the majority of their features. Narrow requests bring to the table a greater possibility of more unique aspects and ultimately bring about a greater variety in offerings.
Companies can also stay profitable by offering up something that every other storefront isn't. The trouble is this genre of gaming hasn't matured to a point where the companies making the games has realized that yet, in my view.
Anyway, this has been fun, but we are pretty off topic and in honesty I have other things more important to do. Take care.
Khal
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Ganking is psychotic behavior? Damn.. some of you seem to take it way too seriously. Ganking/griefing is hilarious and fun and it happens to everyone in an open pvp game. If I am on the receiving end of a gank, I get pissed but I accept it as part of the game's freedom, thats why I play it . Psychotic behavior is crying like a bitch and making wild personal accusations about a group of people that you do not know just because you were ganged up on or killed by a higher level and it wasn't a "fair" fight. We're talking about pvp in MMO's.. it should be unpredictable, exciting, emotional, and at times unfair.
Ganking is psychotic behavior? Damn.. some of you seem to take it way too seriously. Ganking/griefing is hilarious and fun and it happens to everyone in an open pvp game. If I am on the receiving end of a gank, I get pissed but I accept it as part of the game's freedom, thats why I play it . Psychotic behavior is crying like a bitch and making wild personal accusations about a group of people that you do not know just because you were ganged up on or killed by a higher level and it wasn't a "fair" fight. We're talking about pvp in MMO's.. it should be unpredictable, exciting, emotional, and at times unfair.
I actually agree with the yellow bit of your post. As for the rest...
Going quickly back through the thread, I don't think anyone specifically coined ganking as "psychotic", which is defined as "a person afflicted with psychosis". Personally, however, I do define griefing as a sociopathic behavior. I mean, a griefer to me is someone who sets out specifically to ruin another player's fun, and will take extreme measures to do so. Things such as killing someone repeatedly at a spawn point to the purpose of not allowing that person to play the game at all is one example that comes to mind. A griefer's actions do in my mind fall into the category of a person "whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience", with specific emphasis on the latter portion of that definition. I find nothing funny or fun about a person doing that type of thing. Also, a psychotic shouldn't be confused with a psychopath, because there is a fairly large difference between the two. As I stated in an earlier response to this thread, ganking within certain contexts doesn't display this type of behavior specifically, but in any case griefing does.
To be clear, I do agree that the potential of being ganked does add a sense of unpredictability, excitement, and emotion to a game that otherwise would not have such risk. It's why its always been my choice to play PVP servers in games that have the option to avoid it. That doesn't make it everyone's cup of tea.
As a side note, I don't intend this post to seem like a smart-assed or condescending response. It just seemed to me that you needed some clarity on the subject, which could perhaps give you some insight as to why people feel the way they do about it.
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." George Bernard Shaw
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Oscar Wilde
Ganking is psychotic behavior? Damn.. some of you seem to take it way too seriously. Ganking/griefing is hilarious and fun and it happens to everyone in an open pvp game. If I am on the receiving end of a gank, I get pissed but I accept it as part of the game's freedom, thats why I play it . Psychotic behavior is crying like a bitch and making wild personal accusations about a group of people that you do not know just because you were ganged up on or killed by a higher level and it wasn't a "fair" fight. We're talking about pvp in MMO's.. it should be unpredictable, exciting, emotional, and at times unfair.
I actually agree with the yellow bit of your post. As for the rest...
Going quickly back through the thread, I don't think anyone specifically coined ganking as "psychotic", which is defined as "a person afflicted with psychosis". Personally, however, I do define griefing as a sociopathic behavior. I mean, a griefer to me is someone who sets out specifically to ruin another player's fun, and will take extreme measures to do so. Things such as killing someone repeatedly at a spawn point to the purpose of not allowing that person to play the game at all is one example that comes to mind. A griefer's actions do in my mind fall into the category of a person "whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience", with specific emphasis on the latter portion of that definition. I find nothing funny or fun about a person doing that type of thing. Also, a psychotic shouldn't be confused with a psychopath, because there is a fairly large difference between the two. As I stated in an earlier response to this thread, ganking within certain contexts doesn't display this type of behavior specifically, but in any case griefing does.
To be clear, I do agree that the potential of being ganked does add a sense of unpredictability, excitement, and emotion to a game that otherwise would not have such risk. It's why its always been my choice to play PVP servers in games that have the option to avoid it. That doesn't make it everyone's cup of tea.
As a side note, I don't intend this post to seem like a smart-assed or condescending response. It just seemed to me that you needed some clarity on the subject, which could perhaps give you some insight as to why people feel the way they do about it.
But again, it seems people like yourself are taking it way too seriously. We can argue the symantics, but my position still applies... you can't know that someone is a sociopath because they gank. Ok, continuiously standing by a spawn point to kill someone over and over is a little weird, but there could be many reasons for why someone does that. In any case I'm not about to make that kind of psychological analysis about someone over something they do in a computer game. One reason being that I know people who gank and like to piss people off in pvp games, and they're awesome people in real life. You never know. Some of the most pathetic psychopathic people could be playing a pve carebear system just to try and fit in with people and kill monsters.
Ganking is psychotic behavior? Damn.. some of you seem to take it way too seriously. Ganking/griefing is hilarious and fun and it happens to everyone in an open pvp game. If I am on the receiving end of a gank, I get pissed but I accept it as part of the game's freedom, thats why I play it . Psychotic behavior is crying like a bitch and making wild personal accusations about a group of people that you do not know just because you were ganged up on or killed by a higher level and it wasn't a "fair" fight. We're talking about pvp in MMO's.. it should be unpredictable, exciting, emotional, and at times unfair.
I actually agree with the yellow bit of your post. As for the rest...
Going quickly back through the thread, I don't think anyone specifically coined ganking as "psychotic", which is defined as "a person afflicted with psychosis". Personally, however, I do define griefing as a sociopathic behavior. I mean, a griefer to me is someone who sets out specifically to ruin another player's fun, and will take extreme measures to do so. Things such as killing someone repeatedly at a spawn point to the purpose of not allowing that person to play the game at all is one example that comes to mind. A griefer's actions do in my mind fall into the category of a person "whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience", with specific emphasis on the latter portion of that definition. I find nothing funny or fun about a person doing that type of thing. Also, a psychotic shouldn't be confused with a psychopath, because there is a fairly large difference between the two. As I stated in an earlier response to this thread, ganking within certain contexts doesn't display this type of behavior specifically, but in any case griefing does.
To be clear, I do agree that the potential of being ganked does add a sense of unpredictability, excitement, and emotion to a game that otherwise would not have such risk. It's why its always been my choice to play PVP servers in games that have the option to avoid it. That doesn't make it everyone's cup of tea.
As a side note, I don't intend this post to seem like a smart-assed or condescending response. It just seemed to me that you needed some clarity on the subject, which could perhaps give you some insight as to why people feel the way they do about it.
But again, it seems people like yourself are taking it way too seriously. We can argue the symantics, but my position still applies... you can't know that someone is a sociopath because they gank. Ok, continuiously standing by a spawn point to kill someone over and over is a little weird, but there could be many reasons for why someone does that. In any case I'm not about to make that kind of psychological analysis about someone over something they do in a computer game. One reason being that I know people who gank and like to piss people off in pvp games, and they're awesome people in real life. You never know. Some of the most pathetic psychopathic people could be playing a pve carebear system with no real reason to play the game other than trying to fit in with people (like a clan) and kill monsters.
Eh, I was going to get into a nice, long-winded explanation of my position, but it's already on this and my other reply.
You're still confused on what I, personally, view as the difference between ganking and griefing. Go back and re-read my responses here, because you honestly haven't figured it out.
Also, being an "awesome person" in reality doesn't give you a pass to be a douche in a game, because just the same, those are people as well. People who, as you claim are "awesome" but have the desire to act out against people in such a way to intentionally "piss people off" have their own issues one way or another. Regardless, it's the people aiming to cause another person grief that I'm slapping a label on, and that type of person is not the average or the normal. I'm referring to the real hardcore scumbags that will take any and every measure to control your game time through causing you problems. Those are your sociopathic griefers.
I mean, what is an MMO if it's not a place to socially interact with other people? What does it say of a person if their only activities are based on screwing with someone else's good time to have their own fun? I just don't see how this is a confusing, or being taken "too seriously".
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." George Bernard Shaw
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Oscar Wilde
Comments
Well you're basically describing exclusive content, which is similar to saying "I want a good portion of gamers to be absolutely crushed and incapable of completing this chunk of content." Which is not terrible in limited quantity, but inefficient (the same manhours are spent making the content, but fewer players get to experience it.) Given that you've already done every quest in STO, hopefully you can appreciate the need for efficient content development. Difficulty sliders efficiently let one set of existing content provide challenge to a wider range of players.
Difficulty sliders don't mean repeating content. That's not an ideal implementation. Games should aim for something more like CoX, where the difficulty settings exist from the start and are rewarding enough that that's how you advance the fastest. DDO's forced-to-repeat difficulty isn't optimal. Your STO comments seem more disgruntled by the overriding issue of content quantity, which makes your challenge comments sound a little off.
As for viewpoints? Everyone's statements are made from an imperfect point of view, but that doesn't mean there aren't narrow and broad views. Asking for games to be specifically tailored to your precise tastes and skill is a narrow request. Discussing the perceived desires of more people than oneself is a broader -- which is why I discuss things like tweakable difficulty instead of demanding that every game is perfectly tailored to my skill (because that'd be far too hard for the majority of players, and the games would never sell.)
I suppose in a convoluted way that makes my desire for "the broad view" motivated by selfish factors -- the desire to see companies stay profitable so they can keep making me games.
Again, difficulty sliders may work for you but I don't particularly go for the idea. I'd prefer overall a game designed to be a little more difficult that what is being put into the offering bowl today. I have the luxury of not worrying about a "wider range" of gamers. That's a business concern and one for the companies, not me. Sure, I understand the business decision to go the route but that doesn't mean I have to agree with it. Ultimately as the consumer I can take my money to games that offer more of a challenge or, if the industry sum total goes the "wider range" route, I can pull my money out of the industry and find another vice. Either way I'm just fine with.
My comments about STO are just that, my comments. Your allocation of emotions to my typing has caused you to over-analyze to your own detriment. Probably best just to take things at "face" value and either let them tell you they are disgruntled or ask instead of ascribing the trait. But no, I am not. Just stating a fact of where I was at with respect to their content. Indeed I am far from being the first and accompanied by players that fall into many categories, to include so-called "casuals".
As for "broad and narrow" request, there is room for both and neither is "more correct" than the other. There is an argument that over saturation of broad requests has lead to the homogeneous look of MMOs being made today in the majority of their features. Narrow requests bring to the table a greater possibility of more unique aspects and ultimately bring about a greater variety in offerings.
Companies can also stay profitable by offering up something that every other storefront isn't. The trouble is this genre of gaming hasn't matured to a point where the companies making the games has realized that yet, in my view.
Anyway, this has been fun, but we are pretty off topic and in honesty I have other things more important to do. Take care.
Khal
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
Ganking is psychotic behavior? Damn.. some of you seem to take it way too seriously. Ganking/griefing is hilarious and fun and it happens to everyone in an open pvp game. If I am on the receiving end of a gank, I get pissed but I accept it as part of the game's freedom, thats why I play it . Psychotic behavior is crying like a bitch and making wild personal accusations about a group of people that you do not know just because you were ganged up on or killed by a higher level and it wasn't a "fair" fight. We're talking about pvp in MMO's.. it should be unpredictable, exciting, emotional, and at times unfair.
I actually agree with the yellow bit of your post. As for the rest...
Going quickly back through the thread, I don't think anyone specifically coined ganking as "psychotic", which is defined as "a person afflicted with psychosis". Personally, however, I do define griefing as a sociopathic behavior. I mean, a griefer to me is someone who sets out specifically to ruin another player's fun, and will take extreme measures to do so. Things such as killing someone repeatedly at a spawn point to the purpose of not allowing that person to play the game at all is one example that comes to mind. A griefer's actions do in my mind fall into the category of a person "whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience", with specific emphasis on the latter portion of that definition. I find nothing funny or fun about a person doing that type of thing. Also, a psychotic shouldn't be confused with a psychopath, because there is a fairly large difference between the two. As I stated in an earlier response to this thread, ganking within certain contexts doesn't display this type of behavior specifically, but in any case griefing does.
To be clear, I do agree that the potential of being ganked does add a sense of unpredictability, excitement, and emotion to a game that otherwise would not have such risk. It's why its always been my choice to play PVP servers in games that have the option to avoid it. That doesn't make it everyone's cup of tea.
As a side note, I don't intend this post to seem like a smart-assed or condescending response. It just seemed to me that you needed some clarity on the subject, which could perhaps give you some insight as to why people feel the way they do about it.
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
George Bernard Shaw
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
I actually agree with the yellow bit of your post. As for the rest...
Going quickly back through the thread, I don't think anyone specifically coined ganking as "psychotic", which is defined as "a person afflicted with psychosis". Personally, however, I do define griefing as a sociopathic behavior. I mean, a griefer to me is someone who sets out specifically to ruin another player's fun, and will take extreme measures to do so. Things such as killing someone repeatedly at a spawn point to the purpose of not allowing that person to play the game at all is one example that comes to mind. A griefer's actions do in my mind fall into the category of a person "whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience", with specific emphasis on the latter portion of that definition. I find nothing funny or fun about a person doing that type of thing. Also, a psychotic shouldn't be confused with a psychopath, because there is a fairly large difference between the two. As I stated in an earlier response to this thread, ganking within certain contexts doesn't display this type of behavior specifically, but in any case griefing does.
To be clear, I do agree that the potential of being ganked does add a sense of unpredictability, excitement, and emotion to a game that otherwise would not have such risk. It's why its always been my choice to play PVP servers in games that have the option to avoid it. That doesn't make it everyone's cup of tea.
As a side note, I don't intend this post to seem like a smart-assed or condescending response. It just seemed to me that you needed some clarity on the subject, which could perhaps give you some insight as to why people feel the way they do about it.
But again, it seems people like yourself are taking it way too seriously. We can argue the symantics, but my position still applies... you can't know that someone is a sociopath because they gank. Ok, continuiously standing by a spawn point to kill someone over and over is a little weird, but there could be many reasons for why someone does that. In any case I'm not about to make that kind of psychological analysis about someone over something they do in a computer game. One reason being that I know people who gank and like to piss people off in pvp games, and they're awesome people in real life. You never know. Some of the most pathetic psychopathic people could be playing a pve carebear system just to try and fit in with people and kill monsters.
I actually agree with the yellow bit of your post. As for the rest...
Going quickly back through the thread, I don't think anyone specifically coined ganking as "psychotic", which is defined as "a person afflicted with psychosis". Personally, however, I do define griefing as a sociopathic behavior. I mean, a griefer to me is someone who sets out specifically to ruin another player's fun, and will take extreme measures to do so. Things such as killing someone repeatedly at a spawn point to the purpose of not allowing that person to play the game at all is one example that comes to mind. A griefer's actions do in my mind fall into the category of a person "whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience", with specific emphasis on the latter portion of that definition. I find nothing funny or fun about a person doing that type of thing. Also, a psychotic shouldn't be confused with a psychopath, because there is a fairly large difference between the two. As I stated in an earlier response to this thread, ganking within certain contexts doesn't display this type of behavior specifically, but in any case griefing does.
To be clear, I do agree that the potential of being ganked does add a sense of unpredictability, excitement, and emotion to a game that otherwise would not have such risk. It's why its always been my choice to play PVP servers in games that have the option to avoid it. That doesn't make it everyone's cup of tea.
As a side note, I don't intend this post to seem like a smart-assed or condescending response. It just seemed to me that you needed some clarity on the subject, which could perhaps give you some insight as to why people feel the way they do about it.
But again, it seems people like yourself are taking it way too seriously. We can argue the symantics, but my position still applies... you can't know that someone is a sociopath because they gank. Ok, continuiously standing by a spawn point to kill someone over and over is a little weird, but there could be many reasons for why someone does that. In any case I'm not about to make that kind of psychological analysis about someone over something they do in a computer game. One reason being that I know people who gank and like to piss people off in pvp games, and they're awesome people in real life. You never know. Some of the most pathetic psychopathic people could be playing a pve carebear system with no real reason to play the game other than trying to fit in with people (like a clan) and kill monsters.
Eh, I was going to get into a nice, long-winded explanation of my position, but it's already on this and my other reply.
You're still confused on what I, personally, view as the difference between ganking and griefing. Go back and re-read my responses here, because you honestly haven't figured it out.
Also, being an "awesome person" in reality doesn't give you a pass to be a douche in a game, because just the same, those are people as well. People who, as you claim are "awesome" but have the desire to act out against people in such a way to intentionally "piss people off" have their own issues one way or another. Regardless, it's the people aiming to cause another person grief that I'm slapping a label on, and that type of person is not the average or the normal. I'm referring to the real hardcore scumbags that will take any and every measure to control your game time through causing you problems. Those are your sociopathic griefers.
I mean, what is an MMO if it's not a place to socially interact with other people? What does it say of a person if their only activities are based on screwing with someone else's good time to have their own fun? I just don't see how this is a confusing, or being taken "too seriously".
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
George Bernard Shaw
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde