I was looking at the BDO forums, and some people were complaining because the snowing they have added for the seasonal event is preventing them to do some drying (fish,etc.) more often than not.
(Please note that you can see the different weather systems on the map and can easily go somewhere outside of the snowing range...)
I personally love little things like that in my mmos, which there seems to be less and less of.. (probably because most people want to have what they want right when they want it..), but I was wondering what do most people around here think about game mechanics like that, where you can't do everything right when you want to, and where you have to either be patient or go out of your way to get something done?
ex.: Drying when it's not raining/snowing. Waiting for night time or day time to have access to some npcs, etc. ?
Also, do you have other examples of such things that you found pretty nice or pretty awful?
Comments
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I don't really care if a game is ''real'' or not though since none of it really is and somethings you just can't make close to real and can only be explained by magic, so why bother.
MMORPG players are among the biggest babies in the gaming world. Any deviation from the expected hits the MMORPG player like a truck with a big load of unfair bulging under the tarps.
Unfortunately these people are the current majority. The old guard converted or quit or sit around pinning for the old day on forums like these.
On one hand, I really like those extra touches. It goes to show a level of thoughtfulness not shown by many developers. It adds that tiny bit of detail to the game that makes it more immersive and helps draw the veil over the conductor behind the scenes.
On the other hand, it can be incredibly inconvenient when I only have a few hours to play and it happens to be raining right when I need to dry some fish. Perhaps its hours of darkness every time I log into the game for a week, meaning that the crucial NPC I need to talk to is always in bed.
I find that this type of realism works far better in single player games where the player has some control over whether they want to experience those situations at that time. For instance, if it's raining in Skyrim, then I can simply push a button and "wait out" the storm; making an hour or more pass instantly. If an NPC is asleep, then I can go take a rest myself in a nearby bed, or again, just wait out till dawn.
This option is not available in a shared experience where one player may want the cover of darkness to help him burglarize someones home, while another player just wants the damn sun to rise so they can buy a sword.
-Ever-Increasing easy play that is optimized for a short session
-Solo-Play emphasis
-Perceived Absolute Equality
-Low to No Frustration in Gameplay with most situations resolving by allowing the player to simply do the same thing Again until success.
-Responsiveness to the slightest bit of whining (with concessions or coddling) instead of encouraging more inventive or cooperative play.
-Treating inconvenience and adversity as forbidden elements
-Combat Success as the only focus of the games
There will always be the big market share games that aim for the lowest common denominator, but there can be niche games that do just fine. Cloning WoW or GW2 going forward will result in failure for sure, so games should be largely made to carve their own space. Some new Big Dumb will come out to displace WoW
eventually, but in the meantime there is some space to save the genre. A big part of the problem, however, are the players who have been conditioned to be extremely petulant creatures of comfort and routine.
In this case it sounds like they added this in. Great they have more weather affects. The problem seems to lie in that players can only dry fish in certain areas. No that is not real. So by adding "realism" in one area they made something else broken and less real.
As a general rule if you add "realism" into a game and it makes other actions fail because the player cannot circumvent a narrow mechanic then adding that realism without changing the other is a bad idea.
--John Ruskin
So there has to be a careful balancing act between realism and an inconvenience which would cost the company a paying player. To be harshly literal, the publisher does not care that someone who can play 12 hours a day doesn't mind the inconvenience. Especially when the guy who works 8-12 hour days, with a significant disposable income, stops paying because the four hours he can play after work are inconvenient.
I'd be surprised if BDO keeps this game feature in. Someone out there is thinking to themselves right now, is it really worth playing this game if I can't do what I want right now because it's raining? That's never a question that any publisher with two brain cells ever wants their player base asking themselves.
Personally, I think that these types of realism features should be for niche titles, or single player games. Neither of which fits BDO's description.
or this; better put
Not saying this is the case in this game, but if a game has a low a time sink and then they suddenly add a high time sink mechanic that is a failure on the studios part. It would not fit with the rest of the game and the player base who plays a low time sink game is most likely not interested in a high time sink mechanic.
Adding something just for the sake of adding it useless. It should fit with the rest of the game and foster a desired emotional response from the player base.
--John Ruskin
Agreed.
I could be wrong, but I think there was a time, a long period of time, where people made something of quality both for the ability to sell it and as a point of pride in one's work. This includes games. Games used to be, how shall I say this without getting the "new isn't worse than old" crowd going crazy and ignoring existence, 'better put together'. Yes, things were made to be sold. Yes, things were better made. Yes, both can and did exist at the same time.
People used to make things better. Real materials, real consideration, real effort. Things are just, cheaper now, in quality and not so much in price. The price has stayed basically the same, in my opinion.
I think people made things better because they were trying to sell it, because they were spending a considerable portion of their time in their limited life working on it.
Now, and I could be wrong, it seems people are making things cheaper in quality and trying to get as many people to buy it as possible. Things used to sell themselves, somewhat, based solely off of quality and availability. Now, things are being pushed into our view and it is clear there is less effort, less consideration, less quality put into these products. Yet, they are still asking for the price of what used to be considerably better built.
Currently Playing:
Fallout 4 (Xbox One)
Puzzle Pirates (PC)
Dreadtooth on Emerald Ocean
"Dying's the easy way out. You won't catch me dying. They'll have to kill me before I die!"
Still, we need games like it. I am rather tired that all game only cateer to a specific group of players, a group while is the largest it is not such huge percentage of the playerbase as some here think.
I like realism, I wish MMOs had seasons as well. A season could last 1 Irl month and have specific plants, mobs and even some npcs and shops (A harvest shop for cooking mats in the autumn for instance). Yes, getting off season crafting mats and drops from off season mobs could get expensive but it would make the game feel more alive.