Ya know, I tend to lean left, WAY left on some issues. I think we should have single payer health care, for example.
But if there is one thing on this earth that should be a free market, where the almighty dollar rules the day, it is observational/interactive entertainment.
If you're not happy with capitalism driving the MMO market, then what ON EARTH could you possibly be good with capitalism driving?
As far as getting what you want... the ONLY way that will happen is, if money/wealth is no longer an issue, and creating an MMO requires little or no effort. At that point, you can make the MMO you want YOURSELF, then stew in your own juices as you listen to other players STILL talk about how all anybody makes anymore is crap.
All that said, OP, when you say modern MMO's have no imagination, I feel bad for you. Because ultimately, the imagination required in an interactive/observational medium is a two way street. No author's imagination can stimulate the unimaginative observer. And if you recognize no imagination in any MMO made these days, while many, many others can... that says more about you than it does the MMO market.
Maybe it's because I came from a time when:
-One of the most beloved movie characters was a 2 foot tall back loaded puppet that sounded like Miss Piggy and talked backwards...
-a killer shark was 20% plastic fin, and 80% music...
...a time when our imagination had to be strong enough to see past technological limitations and "fill in the blanks"...
...maybe then, that's why my imagination is strong enough to not have to take everything at face value. That the wall of text that is my next quest can actually BE a story, if it's well written.
That your imagination doesn't seem to be strong enough to bridge the gap... I just feel bad for you.
All this veiled attempts to try to show you are superior because you have better taste than what is offered currently. Such arrogance really is so comical. What you honestly think that what is popular is catering to the common denominator and therefore inferior by that definition of being common ? You think what you want in games these days is so special and grand it should be considered and made because it is an awesome game if it ever was made.
I suppose we all have an inflated view of what our taste are. We feel proud that we have supported some poor indy company in their production because it showed we were above the unwashed masses. I guess it would follow that what we like is a cut above others because after all how can we be so crass as to like what the masses do.
Yes this is the main problem I see on these boards people having an inflated opinion of themselves and snidely suggesting that if you happen to enjoy WoW you are one of those unwashed and does not know better masses that are responsible for the current state of this genre.
I think it is time to get off those high horses and come down from that rarified air and realise we play games because we enjoy them . Things are popular not because it is a McDonalds' syndrome but that it is genuinely fun.
Have fun though with your 'I am the minority that have superior taste and interest' complex. I will go join the masses.
I agree with you to a point. When you are having more fun posting on this forum than playing in any MMO currently available, something is wrong. It's easier to say that it's something wrong with the genre because you have enjoyed it for so long and suddenly you look around and everything has changed. Maybe it's just you who has changed, but maybe the games have actually become inferior in fun to some peoples' standards. It's not necessarily an attack on people who enjoy current MMOs. It's just hard to understand how people could enjoy something in such a dilapidated, watered-down form, after having seen it in all it's glory. Surely this is only one opinion, but it is shared by many specifically in this thread. That doesn't mean it's wrong any more than those who enjoy current MMOs. Just different taste is all.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Originally posted by Robsolf Ya know, I tend to lean left, WAY left on some issues. I think we should have single payer health care, for example. But if there is one thing on this earth that should be a free market, where the almighty dollar rules the day, it is observational/interactive entertainment. If you're not happy with capitalism driving the MMO market, then what ON EARTH could you possibly be good with capitalism driving? As far as getting what you want... the ONLY way that will happen is, if money/wealth is no longer an issue, and creating an MMO requires little or no effort. At that point, you can make the MMO you want YOURSELF, then stew in your own juices as you listen to other players STILL talk about how all anybody makes anymore is crap. All that said, OP, when you say modern MMO's have no imagination, I feel bad for you. Because ultimately, the imagination required in an interactive/observational medium is a two way street. No author's imagination can stimulate the unimaginative observer. And if you recognize no imagination in any MMO made these days, while many, many others can... that says more about you than it does the MMO market. Maybe it's because I came from a time when: -One of the most beloved movie characters was a 2 foot tall back loaded puppet that sounded like Miss Piggy and talked backwards... -a killer shark was 20% plastic fin, and 80% music... ...a time when our imagination had to be strong enough to see past technological limitations and "fill in the blanks"... ...maybe then, that's why my imagination is strong enough to not have to take everything at face value. That the wall of text that is my next quest can actually BE a story, if it's well written. That your imagination doesn't seem to be strong enough to bridge the gap... I just feel bad for you.
In some ways it seems like the games suck the imagination right out of you. They don't want you to use your imagination because it doesn't follow protocol. I have seen people use their imagination in MMOs only to have a patch come to effectively shut down whatever it was that was going on.
It's not just the developers who seem to shun imagination. Try being imaginative in many of today's MMOs and most players will laugh at you or just ignore you. I can let my imagination run wild in single player games, because they afford that. MMORGPGS used to afford that as well, but in my opinion many games have become much more cookie cutter where stepping outside the box is means for failure and ridicule.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Ya know, I tend to lean left, WAY left on some issues. I think we should have single payer health care, for example.
But if there is one thing on this earth that should be a free market, where the almighty dollar rules the day, it is observational/interactive entertainment.
If you're not happy with capitalism driving the MMO market, then what ON EARTH could you possibly be good with capitalism driving?
As far as getting what you want... the ONLY way that will happen is, if money/wealth is no longer an issue, and creating an MMO requires little or no effort. At that point, you can make the MMO you want YOURSELF, then stew in your own juices as you listen to other players STILL talk about how all anybody makes anymore is crap.
All that said, OP, when you say modern MMO's have no imagination, I feel bad for you. Because ultimately, the imagination required in an interactive/observational medium is a two way street. No author's imagination can stimulate the unimaginative observer. And if you recognize no imagination in any MMO made these days, while many, many others can... that says more about you than it does the MMO market.
Maybe it's because I came from a time when:
-One of the most beloved movie characters was a 2 foot tall back loaded puppet that sounded like Miss Piggy and talked backwards...
-a killer shark was 20% plastic fin, and 80% music...
...a time when our imagination had to be strong enough to see past technological limitations and "fill in the blanks"...
...maybe then, that's why my imagination is strong enough to not have to take everything at face value. That the wall of text that is my next quest can actually BE a story, if it's well written.
That your imagination doesn't seem to be strong enough to bridge the gap... I just feel bad for you.
Wow Rob this post is most insiteful and 100 percent true thanks for this bit of editorial on tihs waaaay too long lived post, I honestly check in on it every other day to see if anyone has anything truly insiteful to say on the subject (most often not) but this is certainly one time I am glad to have checked back in on the topic.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
To start, I am not involved in the video game industry and have only consumed these products for roughly eight years. Maybe this is not news any longer, and maybe I've been a moron myself for consistently hoping that newly developed mmorpgs are actually going to be worth something, but I think it's about time I take a leave from MMOs or video games entirely.
Modern mmo's have nothing to do with imagination, immersiveness, ingenuity, creativity, aesthetic appeal, or anything. They have become streamlined bullshit that is solely consisted of the most repetitious actives targeting the weakest aspects of human behavior. In looking at recent online games like Warhammer, WoW, STO, EQ2, Aion, FFXIV, etc, it appears that all these games boast is increased accessibility in character customization, repetitive dungeons, riskless PvP, boring quests and other gameplay mechanics that do little for the human imagination. They offer shiny graphics but absolutely no substance. Community aspects are ignored and solely limited to chat channels and dungeon finders. Consistently, all of what used to make MMORPGs fun for me is now being considered nonessential and removed so the greatest possible amount of players will subscribe.
It would be hard to write this post without bringing up Blizzard, World of Warcraft, and the effect it has had on the online game industry, something that everyone here knows. I used to have respect for Blizzard for being able to maintain superiority in producing a fun, immersive game. Now, my mind has changed. Cataclysm's dungeons are going to be even more linear. They are revamping dungeons by removing various nonessential wings. What happened to the enjoyment of exploring dungeons through a feeling of risk?
I resubbed WoW to play through WotLK. I did two years after the expansion had come out. Playing my 80 priest through the dungeon finder was a seriously disturbing experience. Every group pushes through 5 man heroics as fast as possible. They have all seem the bosses, know all of the loot, and only do it for badges and now for justice points. No one talks to one another, they have no patience if someone needs to take a piss or needs to know the strategy for the boss, or anything. People are running these dungeons purely for the small amount of badges they will receive to buy loot that will be useless in the next patch (let alone the next expansion.) So this brings me to my next point:
Go take a look at any game developer conference and look at what classes they are offering. You will not notice an emphasis on positive game design through ingenuity, rather, the focus is upon how to maintain a grind without making it feel like one, cognitive psychology in players (this scares the shit out of me), marketing models, the new intrigue in item shops and f2p models, and other crap that is solely for the purpose of making money and increasing subscribers.
These developers don't give a shit about your experience of the game, or creating new forms of art and play through virtual worlds. Now it's about taking advantage of your need to gather and hoard items, the psychological addiction of loot probability (gambling essentially), keeping you on the treadmill for as long as possible, and creating an overall experience that treats the player as some patient who needs his/her fix of MMO crack.
Where is the imagination that Dungeons & Dragons offered, or tabletop Warhammer? These games, along with fantasy literature, was the basis upon where MMOs got their ideas. EQ1, Ultima, Diablo 2, DAoC, FFXI, all offered aspects of gaming that appreciated social community, the unknowing of traveling without a map, open forms of PvP, experience loss, hard dungeons, etc. Old MMORPG experience was about risk and feeling like something unexpected could happen at any play session.
That doesn't exist anymore. Well maybe we can say that this is the "new" generation of MMOs. But then what does it offer in terms of creative, enjoyable content? My bet is that the 12 million subscribers of WoW aren't really even enjoying the game, they are rather not interested enough with their real lives and are seeking some form of accomplishment through gathering gold and items.
I think there is something seriously ethically wrong about the way developers are designing games, and I think that we as the players need to speak up and not act like mice or sheep. Online games should enhance the creative aspects of the individual, and the desire to experience fantasy-like elements with others in a virtual world. They should be about the competition we cannot enjoy in real life, through a playful manner, but also stimulate the collaborative aspects that we as a species can act upon.
I haven’t even touched upon the artistic direction in games today. The main focus is realism. Fu*k realism. Video games are not about imitating real life; they are supposed to be imaginary. I want to see surreal landscapes with twisted skies and feel as if I'm walking through something that does not or never will exist physically. I don't need polished armor and enhanced light and shadows to make me feel like I'm in the world. I want the visual aspect to be left up to me as the observer to attach my own meaning and aesthetic appreciation. Screw how good the water ripple effects are, show me a castle that has been built into a giant mountain that I know I can approach and explore, without having a lighted entry way with a bunch of quest NPCS sitting outside.
Inevitably, I'm going to be told to quit MMOs and leave it up to the people who enjoy them now. Well I probably will, but I do want people to be more skeptical about the games that are coming out in the past few years. Don't just consume them as if they were McDonalds or Starbucks. These games are ideas, and ideas can't be capitalized and streamlined just to get subscribers. We need to ask more of developers, or support independent companies that are trying to make better games (and I try to do this myself.)
That's the end of my rant. I guess I feel like I've spent too many years hoping that MMOs will take a creative turn and approach the potential that they can offer. Sadly, we are going to see more hunks of overpriced shit like SWTOR and Tera.
Here's a good article about how MMOs are trying to get you addicted:
You Just make this Industry and the players Banging theirs head all over the places and wondering ! what the Heck Is This, I'll Bet they not even realize a bunch of Punks like you can make this Industry so fragiles with a little annoying statments here and there.
That has to be one of the best, most well thought out post I've seen here in some time and it nails why the genre has lost some of it's lustre for many of us long time MMOer's.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
All this veiled attempts to try to show you are superior because you have better taste than what is offered currently. Such arrogance really is so comical. What you honestly think that what is popular is catering to the common denominator and therefore inferior by that definition of being common ? You think what you want in games these days is so special and grand it should be considered and made because it is an awesome game if it ever was made.
Have fun though with your 'I am the minority that have superior taste and interest' complex. I will go join the masses.
I have to admit, as a musician, I used to be part of that crowd. Used to get so irritated that the latest FotM would come out and pretty much be crap, while so many talented bands/solo artists would be struggling along. I was convinced that I knew what people SHOULD be listening to, cuz dammit, I'm a musician! I should be the authority on such things!
Then, at some point, I realized that that's pretty much like a Furnace Manufacturer telling you how warm you should keep your house.
Sure, my opinion is important. As important as anyone elses. No more, no less. IMO Lady Gaga is crap. Much of her popularity probably stems from clever or "shove it down their throat" marketing, but when it comes to this, my opinion is worth no more than anyone elses.
I can't imagine ANYONE thinking that an opinion is more valid because it's a popular one, so I can't, for the life of me, figure out why some people think their opinion is more valid because it's an UNpopular one.
Ya know, I tend to lean left, WAY left on some issues. I think we should have single payer health care, for example.
But if there is one thing on this earth that should be a free market, where the almighty dollar rules the day, it is observational/interactive entertainment.
If you're not happy with capitalism driving the MMO market, then what ON EARTH could you possibly be good with capitalism driving?
As far as getting what you want... the ONLY way that will happen is, if money/wealth is no longer an issue, and creating an MMO requires little or no effort. At that point, you can make the MMO you want YOURSELF, then stew in your own juices as you listen to other players STILL talk about how all anybody makes anymore is crap.
All that said, OP, when you say modern MMO's have no imagination, I feel bad for you. Because ultimately, the imagination required in an interactive/observational medium is a two way street. No author's imagination can stimulate the unimaginative observer. And if you recognize no imagination in any MMO made these days, while many, many others can... that says more about you than it does the MMO market.
Maybe it's because I came from a time when:
-One of the most beloved movie characters was a 2 foot tall back loaded puppet that sounded like Miss Piggy and talked backwards...
-a killer shark was 20% plastic fin, and 80% music...
...a time when our imagination had to be strong enough to see past technological limitations and "fill in the blanks"...
...maybe then, that's why my imagination is strong enough to not have to take everything at face value. That the wall of text that is my next quest can actually BE a story, if it's well written.
That your imagination doesn't seem to be strong enough to bridge the gap... I just feel bad for you.
In some ways it seems like the games suck the imagination right out of you. They don't want you to use your imagination because it doesn't follow protocol. I have seen people use their imagination in MMOs only to have a patch come to effectively shut down whatever it was that was going on.
It's not just the developers who seem to shun imagination. Try being imaginative in many of today's MMOs and most players will laugh at you or just ignore you. I can let my imagination run wild in single player games, because they afford that. MMORGPGS used to afford that as well, but in my opinion many games have become much more cookie cutter where stepping outside the box is means for failure and ridicule.
This isn't really a good response to what he is saying, while I see that you may feel this way. My biggest problem is that most of these criticisms of the industry truly only work for someone who has not played many mmorpg's at all. Let me give you an example, how many times have you heard critics decry all that is crafting in mmorpg's whether they are talking about the upcoming crafting setup in TOR or the "shallow" crafting of WOW only to say "SWG crafting was great". Well yes they did have a few more layers of complexity to it with percent based criticals but is it truly different than what you get in all the games they dismiss? You gather materials in some way or another you click some UI button or another and get a small crafting timer before the item is created for you, is it really "different"?
Ironically you end this statement with "games have become much more cookie cutter where stepping outside the box is means for failure and ridicule". Well my question is who do we blame for that? Developers don't ridicule and refuse to purchase the products of the competition this is a practice roundly excercised by the mmorpg players. As such these posts are often just complaints not about the devs and what they do but attempts at convincing the rest of the community that they simply can't or shouldn't like what they already do like.
By and large players of games like WOW,AION,LOTRO don't go around "preaching" in the general forums or of certain games about how games like Darkfall and Fallen Earth are getting it wrong we simply ignore that which does not appeal to us and I'm forced to wonder why it is so hard for those who find seventy five percent of the mmorpgs created to be the anti christ to do the same.
Maybe I am just a different kind of player because truth be told while I had up to a point played just about every single player rpg I didn't like them all, as a matter of fact if you could take ten games from any period I may have really liked 3 or 4. Does this call for posts about how the entire rpg genre is going up in flames due to the actions of the capitalists taking over the genre? No you just realize and take pride in the fact that you are harder to please than most and have most distiguished tastes and find what you like. the attitude of many of the gamers who follow trains of thought like the op's are simply "running off into a corner to hold their breath until they are blue in the face" in hopes of making the masses see things the way they do.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
To start, I am not involved in the video game industry and have only consumed these products for roughly eight years. Maybe this is not news any longer, and maybe I've been a moron myself for consistently hoping that newly developed mmorpgs are actually going to be worth something, but I think it's about time I take a leave from MMOs or video games entirely.
Modern mmo's have nothing to do with imagination, immersiveness, ingenuity, creativity, aesthetic appeal, or anything. They have become streamlined bullshit that is solely consisted of the most repetitious actives targeting the weakest aspects of human behavior. In looking at recent online games like Warhammer, WoW, STO, EQ2, Aion, FFXIV, etc, it appears that all these games boast is increased accessibility in character customization, repetitive dungeons, riskless PvP, boring quests and other gameplay mechanics that do little for the human imagination. They offer shiny graphics but absolutely no substance. Community aspects are ignored and solely limited to chat channels and dungeon finders. Consistently, all of what used to make MMORPGs fun for me is now being considered nonessential and removed so the greatest possible amount of players will subscribe.
It would be hard to write this post without bringing up Blizzard, World of Warcraft, and the effect it has had on the online game industry, something that everyone here knows. I used to have respect for Blizzard for being able to maintain superiority in producing a fun, immersive game. Now, my mind has changed. Cataclysm's dungeons are going to be even more linear. They are revamping dungeons by removing various nonessential wings. What happened to the enjoyment of exploring dungeons through a feeling of risk?
I resubbed WoW to play through WotLK. I did two years after the expansion had come out. Playing my 80 priest through the dungeon finder was a seriously disturbing experience. Every group pushes through 5 man heroics as fast as possible. They have all seem the bosses, know all of the loot, and only do it for badges and now for justice points. No one talks to one another, they have no patience if someone needs to take a piss or needs to know the strategy for the boss, or anything. People are running these dungeons purely for the small amount of badges they will receive to buy loot that will be useless in the next patch (let alone the next expansion.) So this brings me to my next point:
Go take a look at any game developer conference and look at what classes they are offering. You will not notice an emphasis on positive game design through ingenuity, rather, the focus is upon how to maintain a grind without making it feel like one, cognitive psychology in players (this scares the shit out of me), marketing models, the new intrigue in item shops and f2p models, and other crap that is solely for the purpose of making money and increasing subscribers.
These developers don't give a shit about your experience of the game, or creating new forms of art and play through virtual worlds. Now it's about taking advantage of your need to gather and hoard items, the psychological addiction of loot probability (gambling essentially), keeping you on the treadmill for as long as possible, and creating an overall experience that treats the player as some patient who needs his/her fix of MMO crack.
Where is the imagination that Dungeons & Dragons offered, or tabletop Warhammer? These games, along with fantasy literature, was the basis upon where MMOs got their ideas. EQ1, Ultima, Diablo 2, DAoC, FFXI, all offered aspects of gaming that appreciated social community, the unknowing of traveling without a map, open forms of PvP, experience loss, hard dungeons, etc. Old MMORPG experience was about risk and feeling like something unexpected could happen at any play session.
That doesn't exist anymore. Well maybe we can say that this is the "new" generation of MMOs. But then what does it offer in terms of creative, enjoyable content? My bet is that the 12 million subscribers of WoW aren't really even enjoying the game, they are rather not interested enough with their real lives and are seeking some form of accomplishment through gathering gold and items.
I think there is something seriously ethically wrong about the way developers are designing games, and I think that we as the players need to speak up and not act like mice or sheep. Online games should enhance the creative aspects of the individual, and the desire to experience fantasy-like elements with others in a virtual world. They should be about the competition we cannot enjoy in real life, through a playful manner, but also stimulate the collaborative aspects that we as a species can act upon.
I haven’t even touched upon the artistic direction in games today. The main focus is realism. Fu*k realism. Video games are not about imitating real life; they are supposed to be imaginary. I want to see surreal landscapes with twisted skies and feel as if I'm walking through something that does not or never will exist physically. I don't need polished armor and enhanced light and shadows to make me feel like I'm in the world. I want the visual aspect to be left up to me as the observer to attach my own meaning and aesthetic appreciation. Screw how good the water ripple effects are, show me a castle that has been built into a giant mountain that I know I can approach and explore, without having a lighted entry way with a bunch of quest NPCS sitting outside.
Inevitably, I'm going to be told to quit MMOs and leave it up to the people who enjoy them now. Well I probably will, but I do want people to be more skeptical about the games that are coming out in the past few years. Don't just consume them as if they were McDonalds or Starbucks. These games are ideas, and ideas can't be capitalized and streamlined just to get subscribers. We need to ask more of developers, or support independent companies that are trying to make better games (and I try to do this myself.)
That's the end of my rant. I guess I feel like I've spent too many years hoping that MMOs will take a creative turn and approach the potential that they can offer. Sadly, we are going to see more hunks of overpriced shit like SWTOR and Tera.
Here's a good article about how MMOs are trying to get you addicted:
There is your problem you have played games that do not interest you, its sounds like you want harder PVP, better combat and such, you should be playing games like MO, DFO, asehron call 1, back in the day... UO back in teh day.. fallen earth.
Up coming Earthrise all have better PVP than the games you mention, these forums love to bash thegames I have played.. because they had rough starts and are made my smaller companys.. I ntoiced these forums say that and I ended uo listen to some games and I love dthem wished I never listen to them
Alot of people do and compay the games u named is all the same kind of games now I see why your bored and you dislike what is going on.
I will give you advise change the kind of games u play and stop listening to people about bad games, they only say there bad because of people here, and they can't handle the PVP in those games,
You want PVP with risk and reward play some of those games, all of those games have plenty of people to play with, I do not care what anyone says on these forums, I have fun and play with tons of people.
The only game that is low on POP is AC 1 and because its old now, but in its prime played itf or6yrs and had a guiild with 2k members and had a blast you missed out, we had hardcore PVP and questing was about lore, no hand holding and you got some nice items, nothing like today, I wish they make an AC3, or someoen make a AC clone I would play it now.
MO once its a better state which its getting there slowly its till new, it will be like UO, hardcore PVP, with risk, reward not like that candy arse game WOW, WARHAMMER and other you named..
In some ways it seems like the games suck the imagination right out of you. They don't want you to use your imagination because it doesn't follow protocol. I have seen people use their imagination in MMOs only to have a patch come to effectively shut down whatever it was that was going on.
It's not just the developers who seem to shun imagination. Try being imaginative in many of today's MMOs and most players will laugh at you or just ignore you. I can let my imagination run wild in single player games, because they afford that. MMORGPGS used to afford that as well, but in my opinion many games have become much more cookie cutter where stepping outside the box is means for failure and ridicule.
This isn't really a good response to what he is saying, while I see that you may feel this way. My biggest problem is that most of these criticisms of the industry truly only work for someone who has not played many mmorpg's at all. Let me give you an example, how many times have you heard critics decry all that is crafting in mmorpg's whether they are talking about the upcoming crafting setup in TOR or the "shallow" crafting of WOW only to say "SWG crafting was great". Well yes they did have a few more layers of complexity to it with percent based criticals but is it truly different than what you get in all the games they dismiss? You gather materials in some way or another you click some UI button or another and get a small crafting timer before the item is created for you, is it really "different"?
Ironically you end this statement with "games have become much more cookie cutter where stepping outside the box is means for failure and ridicule". Well my question is who do we blame for that? Developers don't ridicule and refuse to purchase the products of the competition this is a practice roundly excercised by the mmorpg players. As such these posts are often just complaints not about the devs and what they do but attempts at convincing the rest of the community that they simply can't or shouldn't like what they already do like.
By and large players of games like WOW,AION,LOTRO don't go around "preaching" in the general forums or of certain games about how games like Darkfall and Fallen Earth are getting it wrong we simply ignore that which does not appeal to us and I'm forced to wonder why it is so hard for those who find seventy five percent of the mmorpgs created to be the anti christ to do the same.
Maybe I am just a different kind of player because truth be told while I had up to a point played just about every single player rpg I didn't like them all, as a matter of fact if you could take ten games from any period I may have really liked 3 or 4. Does this call for posts about how the entire rpg genre is going up in flames due to the actions of the capitalists taking over the genre? No you just realize and take pride in the fact that you are harder to please than most and have most distiguished tastes and find what you like. the attitude of many of the gamers who follow trains of thought like the op's are simply "running off into a corner to hold their breath until they are blue in the face" in hopes of making the masses see things the way they do.
I actually agree with you, but fail to see how anything that you said has to do with imagination, which is what I was responding to.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
In some ways it seems like the games suck the imagination right out of you. They don't want you to use your imagination because it doesn't follow protocol. I have seen people use their imagination in MMOs only to have a patch come to effectively shut down whatever it was that was going on.
It's not just the developers who seem to shun imagination. Try being imaginative in many of today's MMOs and most players will laugh at you or just ignore you. I can let my imagination run wild in single player games, because they afford that. MMORGPGS used to afford that as well, but in my opinion many games have become much more cookie cutter where stepping outside the box is means for failure and ridicule.
Do you have any example regarding your first 'graph? Of a patch that ruined things for you?
I wouldn't say they don't want you to use your imagination. If your imagination is in gear, the game will feel that much better to you, no matter what your imagination is cooking up. Exceptions being, of course, the disruption of other folks' gameplay. That whole WoW zombie event thingie from a few years back comes to mind...
CO sucked the imagination right out of me, I can tell ya that. It was more of a case where they kept trying to fill in the blanks where I didn't want the filled. Like naming the powers specific things.
"Eldritch bolt", for example. "Dude, don't be naming my powers! It's not an Eldritch Bolt! It's 'Weird, PHD's' mage bolt of excessive Ouchery!"
In some ways it seems like the games suck the imagination right out of you. They don't want you to use your imagination because it doesn't follow protocol. I have seen people use their imagination in MMOs only to have a patch come to effectively shut down whatever it was that was going on.
It's not just the developers who seem to shun imagination. Try being imaginative in many of today's MMOs and most players will laugh at you or just ignore you. I can let my imagination run wild in single player games, because they afford that. MMORGPGS used to afford that as well, but in my opinion many games have become much more cookie cutter where stepping outside the box is means for failure and ridicule.
This isn't really a good response to what he is saying, while I see that you may feel this way. My biggest problem is that most of these criticisms of the industry truly only work for someone who has not played many mmorpg's at all. Let me give you an example, how many times have you heard critics decry all that is crafting in mmorpg's whether they are talking about the upcoming crafting setup in TOR or the "shallow" crafting of WOW only to say "SWG crafting was great". Well yes they did have a few more layers of complexity to it with percent based criticals but is it truly different than what you get in all the games they dismiss? You gather materials in some way or another you click some UI button or another and get a small crafting timer before the item is created for you, is it really "different"?
Ironically you end this statement with "games have become much more cookie cutter where stepping outside the box is means for failure and ridicule". Well my question is who do we blame for that? Developers don't ridicule and refuse to purchase the products of the competition this is a practice roundly excercised by the mmorpg players. As such these posts are often just complaints not about the devs and what they do but attempts at convincing the rest of the community that they simply can't or shouldn't like what they already do like.
By and large players of games like WOW,AION,LOTRO don't go around "preaching" in the general forums or of certain games about how games like Darkfall and Fallen Earth are getting it wrong we simply ignore that which does not appeal to us and I'm forced to wonder why it is so hard for those who find seventy five percent of the mmorpgs created to be the anti christ to do the same.
Maybe I am just a different kind of player because truth be told while I had up to a point played just about every single player rpg I didn't like them all, as a matter of fact if you could take ten games from any period I may have really liked 3 or 4. Does this call for posts about how the entire rpg genre is going up in flames due to the actions of the capitalists taking over the genre? No you just realize and take pride in the fact that you are harder to please than most and have most distiguished tastes and find what you like. the attitude of many of the gamers who follow trains of thought like the op's are simply "running off into a corner to hold their breath until they are blue in the face" in hopes of making the masses see things the way they do.
I actually agree with you, but fail to see how anything that you said has to do with imagination, which is what I was responding to.
I wasn't addressing "imagination" because I didn't think anything you said invalidated Robsolfs point, that imagination i s a two way street, while some found there imagination stimulated by the crafting in SWG and none of the games released since it doesn't mean something is wrong with the games as much as the imagination of the person playing the game.
I ultimately felt the post was relevant really in questioning why people in the mmorpg community seem to play every mmorpg and expect them all to stimulate there imaginations and then when they don't get angered and begin the smear campaigning. I'm not saying you do it either because quite honestly your post seemed to me just to give the feeling you get in general from the games created but while that is how you feel it only served to strengthen the post that got us both started which was from Robsolf.
I thought I did a decent job of pointing out that simply your own personal chemical makeup prevents you from seeing the imagination in games like those you complain about but that does not mean anything absolute.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
I loved your post Robs on the shark. Agree 100% that lack of imagination on our part could be one problem . We seem to have had more fun when we had less tools. Imagination is indeed a wonderful thing. We get better toys but the fun is less somehow. I recall getting a monopoly set finally when before because my dad never bought me one I made one. We used that set once whereas my made up one was used so much it fell apart.
I know that the unpopular opinion always gets martyred somehow. How come the popular opinion becomes dull as the dishcloth while the unpopular one is cool. It is so unfair why anything popular gets put down as Britney Spears and McDonald while the unpopular is cool like some unappreciated art that will make millions once the painter dies.
To be honest I am tired of seeing this discussion in one form or another crop up and inevitably the big bulk of the blame goes on WoW. I feel we have villainized it enough that we should realise the problem is elsewhere. Anyway my contribution to this topic seems to have hit a wall I am not able to see beyond fun .I play for fun a simple litmus . When a game is fun I play. I do not spend my time dissecting the game trying to find out how very uninnovative or lacking in features it is.
There is your problem you have played games that do not interest you, its sounds like you want harder PVP, better combat and such, you should be playing games like MO, DFO, asehron call 1, back in the day... UO back in teh day.. fallen earth.
Up coming Earthrise all have better PVP than the games you mention, these forums love to bash thegames I have played.. because they had rough starts and are made my smaller companys.. I ntoiced these forums say that and I ended uo listen to some games and I love dthem wished I never listen to them
Alot of people do and compay the games u named is all the same kind of games now I see why your bored and you dislike what is going on.
I will give you advise change the kind of games u play and stop listening to people about bad games, they only say there bad because of people here, and they can't handle the PVP in those games,
You want PVP with risk and reward play some of those games, all of those games have plenty of people to play with, I do not care what anyone says on these forums, I have fun and play with tons of people.
The only game that is low on POP is AC 1 and because its old now, but in its prime played itf or6yrs and had a guiild with 2k members and had a blast you missed out, we had hardcore PVP and questing was about lore, no hand holding and you got some nice items, nothing like today, I wish they make an AC3, or someoen make a AC clone I would play it now.
MO once its a better state which its getting there slowly its till new, it will be like UO, hardcore PVP, with risk, reward not like that candy arse game WOW, WARHAMMER and other you named..
From my observation, it's been mostly the so-called hardcore PvP'ers that bash the games you mention.
I haven't seen anybody posting, "I h8 DFO cuz of FFA PvP/looting", for example. Most players know that that's the nature of the game and if they don't like FFA PvP/looting then they don't play.
Most complaints I've seen, come from your very camp, regarding bugs, balance, and bad coding.
In short, I don't see ANYBODY complaining that DFO should be more like LotRO. On the other hand, I see people complaining fairly often that LotRO should have gone FFA PvP.
I wasn't addressing "imagination" because I didn't think anything you said invalidated Robsolfs point, that imagination i s a two way street, while some found there imagination stimulated by the crafting in SWG and none of the games released since it doesn't mean something is wrong with the games as much as the imagination of the person playing the game.
I ultimately felt the post was relevant really in questioning why people in the mmorpg community seem to play every mmorpg and expect them all to stimulate there imaginations and then when they don't get angered and begin the smear campaigning. I'm not saying you do it either because quite honestly your post seemed to me just to give the feeling you get in general from the games created but while that is how you feel it only served to strengthen the post that got us both started which was from Robsolf.
I thought I did a decent job of pointing out that simply your own personal chemical makeup prevents you from seeing the imagination in games like those you complain about but that does not mean anything absolute.
SWG crafting was brilliant, methinx, not just because it was complex. I think it was brilliant because mastering its complexity resulted in a pretty nice payoff in usefulness of the item, and discovery - having knowledge BEYOND the recipe made a difference. When you look at newer complex systems, like FFXIV's and Fallen Earth's, they(to my knowledge) lack that element of payoff and discovery. They require specific ingredients to make a specific thing, which will be no different than the one somebody else crafted. But I'm floating off topic...
Most folks, when they try to play every game of a particular genre and don't like any of them, would come to the conclusion that that genre just isn't for them. For example, I've never been a big platform game guy. Thing is, I'm not gonna go ripping into the platform gaming industry because they don't make something I enjoy.
All this veiled attempts to try to show you are superior because you have better taste than what is offered currently. Such arrogance really is so comical. What you honestly think that what is popular is catering to the common denominator and therefore inferior by that definition of being common ? You think what you want in games these days is so special and grand it should be considered and made because it is an awesome game if it ever was made.
I suppose we all have an inflated view of what our taste are. We feel proud that we have supported some poor indy company in their production because it showed we were above the unwashed masses. I guess it would follow that what we like is a cut above others because after all how can we be so crass as to like what the masses do.
Yes this is the main problem I see on these boards people having an inflated opinion of themselves and snidely suggesting that if you happen to enjoy WoW you are one of those unwashed and does not know better masses that are responsible for the current state of this genre.
I think it is time to get off those high horses and come down from that rarified air and realise we play games because we enjoy them . Things are popular not because it is a McDonalds' syndrome but that it is genuinely fun.
Have fun though with your 'I am the minority that have superior taste and interest' complex. I will go join the masses.
It is interesting that you attack me personally while suggesting that I'm the one coming from a superior attitude.
I have critisized only the people who make games and the general behavior of the masses. I have repeadedly said that I am asking for game developers to respect the individual and their creative potential. Whether or not you agree with me, I am not in any way saying that my personal tastes are better than other peoples. I have not called anyone stupid or ignorant.
There is an enormous difference between attacking a collective attitude of a given demographic versus attacking an individual directly.
And there is no "masses" anyway. You can never fully align yourself with a majority, you will always be seperate. I would encourage you to create your own beliefs and not attempt to integrate yourself with the larger whole, because it is impossible.
And my imagination is doing well, thank you. There is a difference between participating in mental activities such as art and music, where the creator is also the observer, and in a scripted game where you are told what you perceive through large texts above everyones head, linear dungeons, and other pieces of virtual creation that have no interest in allowing the player to respond creativiely.
Also, cheyane, having an inflated opinion of yourself is inherant to all human life. None of us have intrinsic value just because we were born. It is through observations of ourselves and our community that we create worth. In that sense, we are all extremely arrogant, but who cares? The universe is populated with sextillions of billions of stars and planets, and somehow we seem to think it matters what we think of ourselves?
socialism and communism will be great once we get to that level of technology like Star Trek and can just fabricate anything for free. Till then as long as stuff cost money and people expect to be paid for work, idea, or products then yes....they are fail.
Are you really making the assumption that the humankind/Earth in the Star Trek Universe is a socialist or communist society?
The goal of humankind in Star Trek is to strive towards bettering oneself and humanity.
If economics were present in the Star Trek Universe (Focusing on Earth)...
Communism gives people incentive to do as little as possible as they are not rewarded individually.
Capatalism gives people incentive to do as much as possible as they are rewarded individually.
In this case, you would be wrong.
However, the problem you face here when trying to assign Capitalism or Communism to Star Trek, is that economics are redundant and non-existent due to replicators.
Therefore, Star Trek has it's own utopian society that is not largely similar to an of the choices above.
I know this kinda borders on trolling, but I found the title of this thread quite amusing. I wonder what it would be like if video games were instead produced by Genius-IQ Communist Vampire Slayers.
anyhow, excuse the interrption.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall Currently Playing: ESO
All this veiled attempts to try to show you are superior because you have better taste than what is offered currently. Such arrogance really is so comical. What you honestly think that what is popular is catering to the common denominator and therefore inferior by that definition of being common ? You think what you want in games these days is so special and grand it should be considered and made because it is an awesome game if it ever was made.
I suppose we all have an inflated view of what our taste are. We feel proud that we have supported some poor indy company in their production because it showed we were above the unwashed masses. I guess it would follow that what we like is a cut above others because after all how can we be so crass as to like what the masses do.
Yes this is the main problem I see on these boards people having an inflated opinion of themselves and snidely suggesting that if you happen to enjoy WoW you are one of those unwashed and does not know better masses that are responsible for the current state of this genre.
I think it is time to get off those high horses and come down from that rarified air and realise we play games because we enjoy them . Things are popular not because it is a McDonalds' syndrome but that it is genuinely fun.
Have fun though with your 'I am the minority that have superior taste and interest' complex. I will go join the masses.
So because some people are making observations as to where the focus of the industry has been shifting, and how this shift correlates into MMOs being changed or made no longer being appealing... is an exercise in them simply saying "I'm better than you because you like this and I don't".
Sorry, but you're missing the point.
I can't speak for all the others, but I personally don't care if you like WoW or whatever other overly popular MMO there is. I do care that the industry has turned into nothing but "WoW", because my personal taste in MMOs is direly under-represented, compared to what it used to be. The fact that the majority of games are trying to emulate WoW because business men are getting involved and trying to maximize profits by trying to design general mass market appeal games, is just that, a fact.
If you take offense to the fact that you fall into the mass market audience, well, that's your problem. I'm not trying to put you down or take your game away, I'm just stating a fact that mass market games are designed and developed by business men who only care about taking people's money.
What I find entirely ironic, is that if people criticize the big popular mass market games, we're labeled as trying to coem off as being superior. Yet, when the fans of the mass market games critisize or bash people who are fans of more niche games and game concepts, it's not?
socialism and communism will be great once we get to that level of technology like Star Trek and can just fabricate anything for free. Till then as long as stuff cost money and people expect to be paid for work, idea, or products then yes....they are fail.
Are you really making the assumption that the humankind/Earth in the Star Trek Universe is a socialist or communist society?
The goal of humankind in Star Trek is to strive towards bettering oneself and humanity.
If economics were present in the Star Trek Universe (Focusing on Earth)...
Communism gives people incentive to do as little as possible as they are not rewarded individually.
Capatalism gives people incentive to do as much as possible as they are rewarded individually.
In this case, you would be wrong.
However, the problem you face here when trying to assign Capitalism or Communism to Star Trek, is that economics are redundant and non-existent due to replicators.
Therefore, Star Trek has it's own utopian society that is not largely similar to an of the choices above.
In this case you would be only partially wrong.
Until then... stop watching the Daily Show
Not capitalism, not socialism, not communism, gives people the option for bettering themselves but democracy.
If we are to discuss humanity, the type of market one's society lives in is not the most essential system. True that we all need to eat and find ways to trading goods, but people will not find compassion and understanding through capital gains or through government control over property. These are seperate issues.
And in my own experience, working in high school with a Mormon conservative family that operated a small bakery franchise, it did not have a positive effect on their already established sense of compassion and family values. It actually forced them to become very superficial as a family in order to make enough money. The forms of marketing they had to subject themsleves to really blew my mind. I figured at one point they'd be on the street waving bread loafs around in order to draw attention and potential sales. And it's not like they were forced into this lifestyle. They had enough money living in the country but decided to move to the city in order to start a small business. I highly doubt that their establishment is even in operation any more.
Anyways, it's not like we live in a fully capitalistic society anyways. Multinational corporations controlling everything isn't really what Adam Smith was thinking about when he discussed Laissez-faire forms of market.
I cannot understand why you would think they need to develop the type of game you want. They are using their money to develop a game that they want to. How does this make them morons or greedy ? Why can't they cater to the popular versions ?
That is the problem I have with your complaints. That you seem to feel they owe you something. You do also perhaps not openly but by implication blame the popular games for making money making the developers more keen to develop more WoW games. Even referred to WoW in the original post.
You criticize them for their choice to develop games that might make them money over your type of game. ( For the life of me I am not entirely certain what type of animal this your type of game is either ).You say your type of game is under represented and that is their fault how . This is what I do not understand. They owe you nothing, absolutely nothing. Yet you are mad at them. You are mad that innovation and creativity has been compromised for greed in trying to make a popular game is the argument you advance. That is your take but I do not see it from that point of view I do not agree that merely following or copying another game's success will kill it. You can be as creative while trying to make money. Copying in itself is not a problem ,in fact in my opinion you should copy the good things and try to develop in other areas. WoW actually copied a lot from other games and improved on it and they achieved success with that formula. They might not have reached that plateau just now.
So in your ire you call these companies names and say they are greedy. They are free to choose to develop whatever they fancy just as you are free to not play the game. You are not entitled to the type of game you want unless you are funding said development. I do not think it is fair to label these companies for following a business model where they want to make money. That they have failed in trying to clone WoW is also not WoW's fault. That is another sore point how people get mad at WoW for other companies trying to emulate them.
Imitation is not the best form of flattery it seems in this genre.
It is the tone of the posts here that sound like you all feel superior. May be I am mistaken but generally people tend to look down on you if you play WoW. I am not even playing an MMO right now but leaving that aside it does not take a mind reader to see what goes on in the minds of people who do not like the popularity of WoW. They do heap the insults thickly on WoW players and no I am not making specific accusations just general observations.
I also have no problem admitting to having played WoW and (gasp), enjoyed it. I do not have an inferiority complex and like water off a duck's back I really could not care less what others think of my taste in games. I just play what I fancy and have been playing since Everquest. I do however read and from my reading noticed that people do make assumptions on a WoW's player's intellect. If I attributed such a quality to you then I do apologise if you never looked down on a WoW player.
If economics were present in the Star Trek Universe (Focusing on Earth)...
Communism gives people incentive to do as little as possible as they are not rewarded individually.
Capatalism gives people incentive to do as much as possible as they are rewarded individually.
In this case, you would be wrong.
However, the problem you face here when trying to assign Capitalism or Communism to Star Trek, is that economics are redundant and non-existent due to replicators.
Therefore, Star Trek has it's own utopian society that is not largely similar to an of the choices above.
Profit isn't the only reason people choose to do things. For many, it's not even in the top 5.
For example, anyone that chooses to be an artist of any kind, with the idea of making lots of money, is bound to be extremely disappointed.
The whole Star Trek "economy", or what little we know about it, is that folks basic needs are met by technology, so then those people are liberated from doing jobs that no one would enjoy, and so, have the freedom to choose a career based on the things they love to do.
We as human beings have an innate need to accomplish things, to progress, to improve ourselves. A profit motive isn't necessary to nurture that.
ST is based partly on a post scarcity society, at least as far as I can tell. It's popular within SciFi as it allows for advancment of story structure that would otherwise be impossible.
----- The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
I loved your post Robs on the shark. Agree 100% that lack of imagination on our part could be one problem . We seem to have had more fun when we had less tools. Imagination is indeed a wonderful thing. We get better toys but the fun is less somehow. I recall getting a monopoly set finally when before because my dad never bought me one I made one. We used that set once whereas my made up one was used so much it fell apart.
I know that the unpopular opinion always gets martyred somehow. How come the popular opinion becomes dull as the dishcloth while the unpopular one is cool. It is so unfair why anything popular gets put down as Britney Spears and McDonald while the unpopular is cool like some unappreciated art that will make millions once the painter dies.
To be honest I am tired of seeing this discussion in one form or another crop up and inevitably the big bulk of the blame goes on WoW. I feel we have villainized it enough that we should realise the problem is elsewhere. Anyway my contribution to this topic seems to have hit a wall I am not able to see beyond fun .I play for fun a simple litmus . When a game is fun I play. I do not spend my time dissecting the game trying to find out how very uninnovative or lacking in features it is.
Sometimes. Sometimes a game DOES suck. But if I were a player that believed that every game, or every MMO out there was just horrible crap, I'd either think MMO's aren't for me, or that I left my soul in my gym bag or something.
Methinx we as humans tend to root for the underdog, as most of us have spent more time feeling like the underdog than we have feeling like the ruler of the universe. But in the end, to assume that everything popular is bad is pretty much as valid an assumption as thinking everything that's popular is good. Same logic would certainly apply to unpopular opinions.
I'm all for loving/hating WoW til' the cows come home; I've certainly done both. But I'd have to take an awful lot for granted to think that the devs lacked imagination. I guess it just comes from my money-job of leading and supporting in-house financial software. Knowing how every aspect of a piece of software requires so much scrutiny. Then being in music, and have someone listen to 30 seconds of a song borne of years and years of practice and hard work from several people, and say, "meh, sounds like everything else out there."
But then, I just did that to Lady Gaga, so who am I to bitch?
Comments
Ya know, I tend to lean left, WAY left on some issues. I think we should have single payer health care, for example.
But if there is one thing on this earth that should be a free market, where the almighty dollar rules the day, it is observational/interactive entertainment.
If you're not happy with capitalism driving the MMO market, then what ON EARTH could you possibly be good with capitalism driving?
As far as getting what you want... the ONLY way that will happen is, if money/wealth is no longer an issue, and creating an MMO requires little or no effort. At that point, you can make the MMO you want YOURSELF, then stew in your own juices as you listen to other players STILL talk about how all anybody makes anymore is crap.
All that said, OP, when you say modern MMO's have no imagination, I feel bad for you. Because ultimately, the imagination required in an interactive/observational medium is a two way street. No author's imagination can stimulate the unimaginative observer. And if you recognize no imagination in any MMO made these days, while many, many others can... that says more about you than it does the MMO market.
Maybe it's because I came from a time when:
-One of the most beloved movie characters was a 2 foot tall back loaded puppet that sounded like Miss Piggy and talked backwards...
-a killer shark was 20% plastic fin, and 80% music...
...a time when our imagination had to be strong enough to see past technological limitations and "fill in the blanks"...
...maybe then, that's why my imagination is strong enough to not have to take everything at face value. That the wall of text that is my next quest can actually BE a story, if it's well written.
That your imagination doesn't seem to be strong enough to bridge the gap... I just feel bad for you.
I agree with you to a point. When you are having more fun posting on this forum than playing in any MMO currently available, something is wrong. It's easier to say that it's something wrong with the genre because you have enjoyed it for so long and suddenly you look around and everything has changed. Maybe it's just you who has changed, but maybe the games have actually become inferior in fun to some peoples' standards. It's not necessarily an attack on people who enjoy current MMOs. It's just hard to understand how people could enjoy something in such a dilapidated, watered-down form, after having seen it in all it's glory. Surely this is only one opinion, but it is shared by many specifically in this thread. That doesn't mean it's wrong any more than those who enjoy current MMOs. Just different taste is all.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
In some ways it seems like the games suck the imagination right out of you. They don't want you to use your imagination because it doesn't follow protocol. I have seen people use their imagination in MMOs only to have a patch come to effectively shut down whatever it was that was going on.
It's not just the developers who seem to shun imagination. Try being imaginative in many of today's MMOs and most players will laugh at you or just ignore you. I can let my imagination run wild in single player games, because they afford that. MMORGPGS used to afford that as well, but in my opinion many games have become much more cookie cutter where stepping outside the box is means for failure and ridicule.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Wow Rob this post is most insiteful and 100 percent true thanks for this bit of editorial on tihs waaaay too long lived post, I honestly check in on it every other day to see if anyone has anything truly insiteful to say on the subject (most often not) but this is certainly one time I am glad to have checked back in on the topic.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
lets Rock this Industry shall we
Ps.
OP, awesome post.
That has to be one of the best, most well thought out post I've seen here in some time and it nails why the genre has lost some of it's lustre for many of us long time MMOer's.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
I have to admit, as a musician, I used to be part of that crowd. Used to get so irritated that the latest FotM would come out and pretty much be crap, while so many talented bands/solo artists would be struggling along. I was convinced that I knew what people SHOULD be listening to, cuz dammit, I'm a musician! I should be the authority on such things!
Then, at some point, I realized that that's pretty much like a Furnace Manufacturer telling you how warm you should keep your house.
Sure, my opinion is important. As important as anyone elses. No more, no less. IMO Lady Gaga is crap. Much of her popularity probably stems from clever or "shove it down their throat" marketing, but when it comes to this, my opinion is worth no more than anyone elses.
I can't imagine ANYONE thinking that an opinion is more valid because it's a popular one, so I can't, for the life of me, figure out why some people think their opinion is more valid because it's an UNpopular one.
This isn't really a good response to what he is saying, while I see that you may feel this way. My biggest problem is that most of these criticisms of the industry truly only work for someone who has not played many mmorpg's at all. Let me give you an example, how many times have you heard critics decry all that is crafting in mmorpg's whether they are talking about the upcoming crafting setup in TOR or the "shallow" crafting of WOW only to say "SWG crafting was great". Well yes they did have a few more layers of complexity to it with percent based criticals but is it truly different than what you get in all the games they dismiss? You gather materials in some way or another you click some UI button or another and get a small crafting timer before the item is created for you, is it really "different"?
Ironically you end this statement with "games have become much more cookie cutter where stepping outside the box is means for failure and ridicule". Well my question is who do we blame for that? Developers don't ridicule and refuse to purchase the products of the competition this is a practice roundly excercised by the mmorpg players. As such these posts are often just complaints not about the devs and what they do but attempts at convincing the rest of the community that they simply can't or shouldn't like what they already do like.
By and large players of games like WOW,AION,LOTRO don't go around "preaching" in the general forums or of certain games about how games like Darkfall and Fallen Earth are getting it wrong we simply ignore that which does not appeal to us and I'm forced to wonder why it is so hard for those who find seventy five percent of the mmorpgs created to be the anti christ to do the same.
Maybe I am just a different kind of player because truth be told while I had up to a point played just about every single player rpg I didn't like them all, as a matter of fact if you could take ten games from any period I may have really liked 3 or 4. Does this call for posts about how the entire rpg genre is going up in flames due to the actions of the capitalists taking over the genre? No you just realize and take pride in the fact that you are harder to please than most and have most distiguished tastes and find what you like. the attitude of many of the gamers who follow trains of thought like the op's are simply "running off into a corner to hold their breath until they are blue in the face" in hopes of making the masses see things the way they do.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
There is your problem you have played games that do not interest you, its sounds like you want harder PVP, better combat and such, you should be playing games like MO, DFO, asehron call 1, back in the day... UO back in teh day.. fallen earth.
Up coming Earthrise all have better PVP than the games you mention, these forums love to bash thegames I have played.. because they had rough starts and are made my smaller companys.. I ntoiced these forums say that and I ended uo listen to some games and I love dthem wished I never listen to them
Alot of people do and compay the games u named is all the same kind of games now I see why your bored and you dislike what is going on.
I will give you advise change the kind of games u play and stop listening to people about bad games, they only say there bad because of people here, and they can't handle the PVP in those games,
You want PVP with risk and reward play some of those games, all of those games have plenty of people to play with, I do not care what anyone says on these forums, I have fun and play with tons of people.
The only game that is low on POP is AC 1 and because its old now, but in its prime played itf or6yrs and had a guiild with 2k members and had a blast you missed out, we had hardcore PVP and questing was about lore, no hand holding and you got some nice items, nothing like today, I wish they make an AC3, or someoen make a AC clone I would play it now.
MO once its a better state which its getting there slowly its till new, it will be like UO, hardcore PVP, with risk, reward not like that candy arse game WOW, WARHAMMER and other you named..
I actually agree with you, but fail to see how anything that you said has to do with imagination, which is what I was responding to.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Do you have any example regarding your first 'graph? Of a patch that ruined things for you?
I wouldn't say they don't want you to use your imagination. If your imagination is in gear, the game will feel that much better to you, no matter what your imagination is cooking up. Exceptions being, of course, the disruption of other folks' gameplay. That whole WoW zombie event thingie from a few years back comes to mind...
CO sucked the imagination right out of me, I can tell ya that. It was more of a case where they kept trying to fill in the blanks where I didn't want the filled. Like naming the powers specific things.
"Eldritch bolt", for example. "Dude, don't be naming my powers! It's not an Eldritch Bolt! It's 'Weird, PHD's' mage bolt of excessive Ouchery!"
I wasn't addressing "imagination" because I didn't think anything you said invalidated Robsolfs point, that imagination i s a two way street, while some found there imagination stimulated by the crafting in SWG and none of the games released since it doesn't mean something is wrong with the games as much as the imagination of the person playing the game.
I ultimately felt the post was relevant really in questioning why people in the mmorpg community seem to play every mmorpg and expect them all to stimulate there imaginations and then when they don't get angered and begin the smear campaigning. I'm not saying you do it either because quite honestly your post seemed to me just to give the feeling you get in general from the games created but while that is how you feel it only served to strengthen the post that got us both started which was from Robsolf.
I thought I did a decent job of pointing out that simply your own personal chemical makeup prevents you from seeing the imagination in games like those you complain about but that does not mean anything absolute.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
I loved your post Robs on the shark. Agree 100% that lack of imagination on our part could be one problem . We seem to have had more fun when we had less tools. Imagination is indeed a wonderful thing. We get better toys but the fun is less somehow. I recall getting a monopoly set finally when before because my dad never bought me one I made one. We used that set once whereas my made up one was used so much it fell apart.
I know that the unpopular opinion always gets martyred somehow. How come the popular opinion becomes dull as the dishcloth while the unpopular one is cool. It is so unfair why anything popular gets put down as Britney Spears and McDonald while the unpopular is cool like some unappreciated art that will make millions once the painter dies.
To be honest I am tired of seeing this discussion in one form or another crop up and inevitably the big bulk of the blame goes on WoW. I feel we have villainized it enough that we should realise the problem is elsewhere. Anyway my contribution to this topic seems to have hit a wall I am not able to see beyond fun .I play for fun a simple litmus . When a game is fun I play. I do not spend my time dissecting the game trying to find out how very uninnovative or lacking in features it is.
From my observation, it's been mostly the so-called hardcore PvP'ers that bash the games you mention.
I haven't seen anybody posting, "I h8 DFO cuz of FFA PvP/looting", for example. Most players know that that's the nature of the game and if they don't like FFA PvP/looting then they don't play.
Most complaints I've seen, come from your very camp, regarding bugs, balance, and bad coding.
In short, I don't see ANYBODY complaining that DFO should be more like LotRO. On the other hand, I see people complaining fairly often that LotRO should have gone FFA PvP.
SWG crafting was brilliant, methinx, not just because it was complex. I think it was brilliant because mastering its complexity resulted in a pretty nice payoff in usefulness of the item, and discovery - having knowledge BEYOND the recipe made a difference. When you look at newer complex systems, like FFXIV's and Fallen Earth's, they(to my knowledge) lack that element of payoff and discovery. They require specific ingredients to make a specific thing, which will be no different than the one somebody else crafted. But I'm floating off topic...
Most folks, when they try to play every game of a particular genre and don't like any of them, would come to the conclusion that that genre just isn't for them. For example, I've never been a big platform game guy. Thing is, I'm not gonna go ripping into the platform gaming industry because they don't make something I enjoy.
It is interesting that you attack me personally while suggesting that I'm the one coming from a superior attitude.
I have critisized only the people who make games and the general behavior of the masses. I have repeadedly said that I am asking for game developers to respect the individual and their creative potential. Whether or not you agree with me, I am not in any way saying that my personal tastes are better than other peoples. I have not called anyone stupid or ignorant.
There is an enormous difference between attacking a collective attitude of a given demographic versus attacking an individual directly.
And there is no "masses" anyway. You can never fully align yourself with a majority, you will always be seperate. I would encourage you to create your own beliefs and not attempt to integrate yourself with the larger whole, because it is impossible.
And my imagination is doing well, thank you. There is a difference between participating in mental activities such as art and music, where the creator is also the observer, and in a scripted game where you are told what you perceive through large texts above everyones head, linear dungeons, and other pieces of virtual creation that have no interest in allowing the player to respond creativiely.
Also, cheyane, having an inflated opinion of yourself is inherant to all human life. None of us have intrinsic value just because we were born. It is through observations of ourselves and our community that we create worth. In that sense, we are all extremely arrogant, but who cares? The universe is populated with sextillions of billions of stars and planets, and somehow we seem to think it matters what we think of ourselves?
Are you really making the assumption that the humankind/Earth in the Star Trek Universe is a socialist or communist society?
The goal of humankind in Star Trek is to strive towards bettering oneself and humanity.
If economics were present in the Star Trek Universe (Focusing on Earth)...
Communism gives people incentive to do as little as possible as they are not rewarded individually.
Capatalism gives people incentive to do as much as possible as they are rewarded individually.
In this case, you would be wrong.
However, the problem you face here when trying to assign Capitalism or Communism to Star Trek, is that economics are redundant and non-existent due to replicators.
Therefore, Star Trek has it's own utopian society that is not largely similar to an of the choices above.
In this case you would be only partially wrong.
Until then... stop watching the Daily Show
I know this kinda borders on trolling, but I found the title of this thread quite amusing. I wonder what it would be like if video games were instead produced by Genius-IQ Communist Vampire Slayers.
anyhow, excuse the interrption.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
So because some people are making observations as to where the focus of the industry has been shifting, and how this shift correlates into MMOs being changed or made no longer being appealing... is an exercise in them simply saying "I'm better than you because you like this and I don't".
Sorry, but you're missing the point.
I can't speak for all the others, but I personally don't care if you like WoW or whatever other overly popular MMO there is. I do care that the industry has turned into nothing but "WoW", because my personal taste in MMOs is direly under-represented, compared to what it used to be. The fact that the majority of games are trying to emulate WoW because business men are getting involved and trying to maximize profits by trying to design general mass market appeal games, is just that, a fact.
If you take offense to the fact that you fall into the mass market audience, well, that's your problem. I'm not trying to put you down or take your game away, I'm just stating a fact that mass market games are designed and developed by business men who only care about taking people's money.
What I find entirely ironic, is that if people criticize the big popular mass market games, we're labeled as trying to coem off as being superior. Yet, when the fans of the mass market games critisize or bash people who are fans of more niche games and game concepts, it's not?
Not capitalism, not socialism, not communism, gives people the option for bettering themselves but democracy.
If we are to discuss humanity, the type of market one's society lives in is not the most essential system. True that we all need to eat and find ways to trading goods, but people will not find compassion and understanding through capital gains or through government control over property. These are seperate issues.
And in my own experience, working in high school with a Mormon conservative family that operated a small bakery franchise, it did not have a positive effect on their already established sense of compassion and family values. It actually forced them to become very superficial as a family in order to make enough money. The forms of marketing they had to subject themsleves to really blew my mind. I figured at one point they'd be on the street waving bread loafs around in order to draw attention and potential sales. And it's not like they were forced into this lifestyle. They had enough money living in the country but decided to move to the city in order to start a small business. I highly doubt that their establishment is even in operation any more.
Anyways, it's not like we live in a fully capitalistic society anyways. Multinational corporations controlling everything isn't really what Adam Smith was thinking about when he discussed Laissez-faire forms of market.
I cannot understand why you would think they need to develop the type of game you want. They are using their money to develop a game that they want to. How does this make them morons or greedy ? Why can't they cater to the popular versions ?
That is the problem I have with your complaints. That you seem to feel they owe you something. You do also perhaps not openly but by implication blame the popular games for making money making the developers more keen to develop more WoW games. Even referred to WoW in the original post.
You criticize them for their choice to develop games that might make them money over your type of game. ( For the life of me I am not entirely certain what type of animal this your type of game is either ).You say your type of game is under represented and that is their fault how . This is what I do not understand. They owe you nothing, absolutely nothing. Yet you are mad at them. You are mad that innovation and creativity has been compromised for greed in trying to make a popular game is the argument you advance. That is your take but I do not see it from that point of view I do not agree that merely following or copying another game's success will kill it. You can be as creative while trying to make money. Copying in itself is not a problem ,in fact in my opinion you should copy the good things and try to develop in other areas. WoW actually copied a lot from other games and improved on it and they achieved success with that formula. They might not have reached that plateau just now.
So in your ire you call these companies names and say they are greedy. They are free to choose to develop whatever they fancy just as you are free to not play the game. You are not entitled to the type of game you want unless you are funding said development. I do not think it is fair to label these companies for following a business model where they want to make money. That they have failed in trying to clone WoW is also not WoW's fault. That is another sore point how people get mad at WoW for other companies trying to emulate them.
Imitation is not the best form of flattery it seems in this genre.
It is the tone of the posts here that sound like you all feel superior. May be I am mistaken but generally people tend to look down on you if you play WoW. I am not even playing an MMO right now but leaving that aside it does not take a mind reader to see what goes on in the minds of people who do not like the popularity of WoW. They do heap the insults thickly on WoW players and no I am not making specific accusations just general observations.
I also have no problem admitting to having played WoW and (gasp), enjoyed it. I do not have an inferiority complex and like water off a duck's back I really could not care less what others think of my taste in games. I just play what I fancy and have been playing since Everquest. I do however read and from my reading noticed that people do make assumptions on a WoW's player's intellect. If I attributed such a quality to you then I do apologise if you never looked down on a WoW player.
That's pretty short-sighted and, well, cynical, IMO.
Profit isn't the only reason people choose to do things. For many, it's not even in the top 5.
For example, anyone that chooses to be an artist of any kind, with the idea of making lots of money, is bound to be extremely disappointed.
The whole Star Trek "economy", or what little we know about it, is that folks basic needs are met by technology, so then those people are liberated from doing jobs that no one would enjoy, and so, have the freedom to choose a career based on the things they love to do.
We as human beings have an innate need to accomplish things, to progress, to improve ourselves. A profit motive isn't necessary to nurture that.
That's the end of my OT rant on the subject.
ST is based partly on a post scarcity society, at least as far as I can tell. It's popular within SciFi as it allows for advancment of story structure that would otherwise be impossible.
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The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
Sometimes. Sometimes a game DOES suck.
But if I were a player that believed that every game, or every MMO out there was just horrible crap, I'd either think MMO's aren't for me, or that I left my soul in my gym bag or something.
Methinx we as humans tend to root for the underdog, as most of us have spent more time feeling like the underdog than we have feeling like the ruler of the universe. But in the end, to assume that everything popular is bad is pretty much as valid an assumption as thinking everything that's popular is good. Same logic would certainly apply to unpopular opinions.
I'm all for loving/hating WoW til' the cows come home; I've certainly done both. But I'd have to take an awful lot for granted to think that the devs lacked imagination. I guess it just comes from my money-job of leading and supporting in-house financial software. Knowing how every aspect of a piece of software requires so much scrutiny. Then being in music, and have someone listen to 30 seconds of a song borne of years and years of practice and hard work from several people, and say, "meh, sounds like everything else out there."
But then, I just did that to Lady Gaga, so who am I to bitch?