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Do you believe in freedom?
Malcanis
Member UncommonPosts: 3,297
Do you think freedom of action in MMOs should be an important or even overriding principle?
Give me liberty or give me lasers
Comments
Freedom to act by permission? .. sure.
Freedom to act as an absolute? .. nope.
Games have rules, c'est la vie.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
yes, in fact I find a lack of freedom in a game to be insulting.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Pretty vague question, but I'll say no, it shouldn't be an overriding principle.
First and foremost, a game should be fun. If it's not fun, it doesn't matter that there's a billion things to do if they're all boring, mundane and/or tedious.
It is still important that there is variety in a game, which I suppose is a kind of freedom. I'm not going to pay $X/month for a game where I end up doing the same thing over and over day in and day out. Even if that one thing I can do starts fun, it'll be boring after doing it a thousand times over.
Choice is what I care about. Interesting choices are fun. Constraints cause choices to be interesting. The choice itself is a form of freedom, while constraint is the opposite of freedom.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Freedom of choice is always a good thing in a MMO game, but it can go too far if you are allowed the freedom to make choices for other players.
The same goes for developers not offering enough choices and/or different paths because it forces a choice upon the player, one that they would not have made otherwise.
Freedom is overrated.
If I can do anything, the game sucks.
If I can't do anything, the game sucks.
Do you believe in life after love?
well relational perspective is good for this conversation. As an example, does EQ2 allow for freedom? Not really, you cant realistically go check out a new zone unless you are of the proper level. For the most part you have to fight your way into the content. Can you realistically progress with quests? No not really.
Fallen Earth on the other hand you can realistically go great distances at low level and still find something to do. You can also realistically progress with questing. In other games like FE you can also not be bound by one class, but instead take a skill based only approach.
In most cases these are the things we are talking about when discusssing freedoms in MMO's
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Nope. MMOs are games. The guiding principle is they should be entertaining. Everything else is just noise.
Ok, Emanuell Kant.
--John Ruskin
Freedom is one of the most important aspects of an MMO, at least to me.
If I want to play an RPG on rails there's lots of really, really good single-player games that offer that. But in an MMO environment being one face in a crowd of people who all have more-or-less identical stories to tell. That really waters down the experience for me, and is one the reason themepark-style games just don't hold my interest anymore.
It's also the main reason I've been playing EvE for almost 3 years even though it pisses me off on an almost daily basis sometimes. You ask 100 year-long WoW players their stories and you'll get 100 very simliar variations on the same basic themes (I arena, I level alts, I raid, I'm casual and do heroics and easy raids with my buddies). You ask 100 year-old EvE players the same question and you'll get 100 totally different answers with 100 different ways they got to that point.
That's how MMOs should be, and I think the way the next revolutionary PC MMO will be. Someone with funding, clout, and ability just needs to take that kind of an experience and make it accessible to a mass audience. It's certainly possible, just nobody's done it yet. I'd be surprised if this isn't the tack Blizzard takes with their new MMO though - remember back in 2003 everyone thought they were stupid for trying to enter a market with no growth potential that was already dominated by Everquest - just look through old posts on this site from back then if you don't believe me.
I don't care what you say about freedom, no Draenei in this household is going to marry a blood elf!
Do you believe in opression?
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
And you see this as a good thing=) I quit Eve after about a week on and off, because it pissed me off on a minute by minute basis.
I bet every story in EVE has to do with selling something,mining something or fighting someone, because what else is there to do in the game? As if anyone cares about stories in their game of choice. Seriously if you're still dwelling on things you did, stories or accomplishment in a videogame, a year or so after you quit, seek help, because your life is empty or you're still a teenager and haven't realized accomplishments in a videogame are meaningless=)
Games do have freedom, the freedom to choose between the range of available options offered by the game. Games do not have absolute freedom, nor should they. Games by their very nature have rules, you can't arbitrarily decide to violate the rules on a whim, any more than you can call in a fantasy airstrike in the game of Life.
Unfortunately, some people want to use games as a cheap substitute for reality. Those people need serious professional help.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
What is freedom without some oppresion to compare it against?
Give me liberty or give me lasers
Freedom of Character build? yes
Freedom to choose a shit ton of options/features/tools and not be lead by the balls to an endgame? yes
Freedom to bash the shit out of any newb in any area while their learning the game or wanting to just pve? No
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
I Can't think of an MMO that's not about stories TBH. The only question is who rights it. There are many great games out there for people that are too lazy to right their own.
as long as those so called freedoms have consequences that are equivalent and said offender is willing to pay them why not let the penalty fit the crime now freedom to do whatever you want with no repercussions is really not freedom(maybe in a griefers point of view but)
I believe in quality,
Freedom is useless without good choices. This is where most games fall flat, sure you can pick from a variety of things to do, but none of them are particularly interesting.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
you mean like the freedom to attack anyone on the server, at any time, any where?
No, I think that makes for a gank fest, and not a very fun game.
I prefer restrictions that make for a fun game. That's why I think RvR is more fun that FFA PvP.
I know that ruins the game for FFA players, but their style ruins the game for me, and you can't make everyone happy in the same game.
Games for wimps have rules, like WoW.
Real games with real PvP don't have any rules.
sry everything has rules break the rules face the consequence or who really are the true wimps?
if you cant do the time dont do the crime real games with real pvp have rules with real consequences for breaking them so your statement is pretty much in line and = to what you were trying flame just kinda like opposite day or a mirror image
um, you can't kill anyone in a game without rules. How do you pvp if there are no pvp rules?
Second life has no rules. You can be a mermaid if you want to.
It's interesting that this seems to be the first thing that everyone thinks of when the word "freedom" is mentioned.
Give me liberty or give me lasers