You missed it, then. DAOC was fine upon release.[/quote]
Unfortunately, gameplay-wise, I think DAOC was better on release than it is now :(
What’s not to understand? EQ has a very unique (when it was invented) gameplay model: you get folks together, you go out and kill random mob after random mob (or go through a dungeon) in a world where nothing really changes, your character eventually levels up, you go do the same thing against similar mobs with more HP. I don’t mean to be dissing EQ–I loved EQ when it first came out, played it for a year. But now that I’ve done that sort of thing, I want something new.
Think of it like this: when they made a Jedi Knight II, they didn’t just make DOOM with a Star Wars theme. They used 3D graphics, they had force powers, interesting weapons, etc etc just like the other modern shooters have. When people say “SWG is like EQ in space,” what they mean is that SWG just uses the same mechanics as EQ, without moving anything forward or giving you anything new and interesting to do.
On the community stuff, I couldn’t agree with Ben more. You shouldn’t try to “make a community” by forcing people to do boring things together in order to play. It’s fine to have people need crafters for weapons and stuff like that, but the crafting itself should be fun and interesting. It would even be fine to make people need music/dancing, if you could somehow come up with a way to make watching music/dancing interesting. I can’t think of a way (well, not in a T-rated game :twisted: ), but that’s why I’m not a game designer and nobody is paying me $60 + $15 a month for my game ideas.
doh! I just realized something… $15/month is like $22/month Canadian!
jesus! I aint buying dis game!!!
Dance, Dance Revolution: the MMORPG.
Anyone notice that Game Informer gave Galaxies a 9.5 in their June issue, which has been out for weeks?
All I can say to comments about crafting and entertaining not being fulfilling is to talk to folks that played crafters and entertainers in beta. I didn’t. Some folks didn’t like particular professions very much (and a good deal of that had to do with auxilliary problems like a intermittantly functioning Bazaar that made it hard to sell or buy goods there as well as less than compelling newbie items to be crafted or sold - entertainers went through a period when it was hard to gain experience and they also have a tough time getting money through tips - depending on where they are).
OTOH, I met a couple - the wife was an armorer and the husband a clothier, who didn’t want to do anything but survey for resources, plant harvesters, and experiment on clothing schematics with a variety of resources. They had all the adventure they could handle just going to personal harvesters planted in dangerous places - I met them because I had some useful field skills (medic and scout) while being a good combatant. Then there was the weaponcrafter who made items infinitely better than the usual junk on the bazaar. He thought people complaining about crafting just weren’t trying very hard - his idea of fun really was experimenting and improving what he could make.
Maybe not even my idea of a good time but these folks liked it.
I’ve met entertainers in just about every cantina I’ve been in and some camps as well. Beginning entertainers do have a tough time of it as they’re quite limited in what they can do but it still heals BF so they’ll have an audience even if not a very lively or high tipping bunch. However, catching a group that worked together in some of the hotter cantinas on Bria server was a treat. These guys had riffs and variations, coordinated different instruments, and even had synchronized moves they could do. One group even had a front man that would just gyrate like a nut and sing original lyrics. As good as seeing a band IRL? Maybe not. However, the occasional gun or fistfights and the occasional great banter more than made up for it.
The economy needs alot of work, IMHO, it needs balancing and newbies need more purpose. Back when schematic revocation was in newbies were more needed to make lower level parts for experienced artisans but now, because in beta these artisans complained loudly about having to be dependant on others, newbies are mostly stuck making lower level items that only other newbies will buy - and newbies don’t stay newbies for very long. This meant that the idea of Use Experience, or getting experience for people buying and using your items (and encouraging folks to make stuff other people would want to buy - rather than just grinding out items for experience) took a backseat for a while. UXP is back in but as an auxilliary source of experience at this point.
It’s not a fatal issue but it does put a little more grind into crafting than fun stuff but the fun stuff is still there if you ask some of the folks I hang with.
Yes, actually.[/quote]
Anyone have any thoughts on that?
(Did I miss a thread somewhere else?)
Edit: Doh. Totally missed the linky. Thx, Matthew.
It is (or at least was) fairly standard practice for many game magazines to err on the side of caution when reviewing unfinished games and give them high scores. There are all kinds of reasons for this. One is that if unfinished games were to start getting slammed in reviews, publishers would be less likely to make them available for review in the future, thus making the mags even later to market with their reviews.
Another reason is that unfinished builds are often provided to a magazine as part of an exclusive review arrangement/front cover deal. How the game will be reviewed inside is never (at least not in my experience) part of the deal, but the publisher can usually rest easy in the knowledge that if the mag is making a big fuss about an exclusive review on its front cover, chances are the review will skew favorable. “WE’VE GOT THE EXCLUSIVE REVIEW OF MEGA BLASTER III - AND IT SUCKS!” is a cover line rarely seen.
The explanation given by the editor of Game Informer referenced in the ShackNews forum (above) is one that’s been regurtitated by editors for years, and it never stands up to close examination. Basically:
“Well, the publisher gave it to us and told us we could review it, and that’s what we go by. If they don’t like the rating, that’s their problem for giving us an unfinished build to review.”
First of all, the latter part of the argument hardly ever comes into play for the reasons outlined above. In this case, given the likely state of SWG when GI reviewed it, a 9.5 score seems unrealistic, all subjectivity aside, and I have a hard time believing that the score was in no way influenced by the way-ahead timing of the review.
As for the “Well, they said we could review it” part, this just plain doesn’t hold up. If we assume (I hope correctly) that the review is there to service the reader, how does basing that review on a version of the game that’s not representative of what will actually be available to buy do anything but dis-service the reader? Claiming that the softco said it was okay is a cop-out and only implicates the softo in the magazine’s dis-service to readers. It certainly doesn’t excuse it.
The more beta comments I read, the more dissapointed I get… not because the game seems to be crap, but that the game sounds pretty cool and really needs at LEAST two or three more months of beta. If they had released this in xmas 2003, I don’t hink you’d see as much complaining. In fact when they delayed it from xmas 2002 aroundabouts I was expecting at least a release arnd xmas 2003. And its not like Sony is bleeding cash like Interplay or anything (this game could be a major cash cow in the LONG run). And now that the games going live I think it will be MUCH harder to balance and revise and players will be MORE pissed (nerf syndrome). Imo, releasing this game in the summer, buggy and unfinished, probably will do more harm than good, financially as well imo. Chalk up another smarty pants decision for the suits!
etc
Jesus, Brian, you’re like the anti-thesis of Tom Chick. He throws his beret into the air, raises his fasts, and screams ‘Fuck Star Wars!’ while you simply unzip your pants and ask ‘in which hole?’
Never understood why a person would want to pay to play a guy that bakes food or sings in a game. I tried to be a smith in UO and it was about the most boring thing I’ve done. I mean the whole point of a game like a RPG is to escape to a fictional world to be a powerful wizard, warrior etc. not to be a great…baker?
To me MMORPGs have failed to recreate the hero experience because they take out failure and replace it with time. The heros aren’t the smartest, most original, bravest or luckiest SOBs, they’re the saps who spend hundreds of hours a month playing. I know all the stereotypes of the hardcore MMORPG gamer and how the hamster wheel keeps the subscribers hooked, and how all these considerations compell designers to make the same damn thing over and over, but someday a company will be brave enough to put the RP back into RPGs. Wholly dynamic world, one life per character, no limits. Be the wizard who tries to take over the world, and pay the ultimate price when you fail. Make a game allowing that much feedom and adventures would write themselves. But nope, just monster spawn, monster spawn, item drop, monster spawn.
I just found SWG beta … ummm … boring. Sure its a pretty game. Sure it has some nice inovations (like the waypoint and guiding line systems), sure I liked how the “classes” worked but nontheless, I found it a tedious game. More so then EQ even. Maybe because advancement was so slooow.
BTW the dancing and singing is pretty cool.
Ultimately the problem with SWG is that it’s inviting you to become a hero…along with 10000+ other players. It ain’t gonna happen. There was only one Harrison Ford in Star Wars. And there was only one Mark Hamill (who later became disfigured in an auto accident). And then there are the entertainers. But that particular scene lasts, what, three minutes? If I’m going to pay $15/mo, I want to be Harrison Ford or Mark Hamill (pre-disfigurement), not some weird looking alien dude with a futuristic musical instrument that sounds oddly like a sax played by a human being. That’s not my idea of fun. If I’m shipped a free copy of SWG, I’ll do it. I’ll be an entertainer for three minutes, playing the sax. After that, this game gets dragged to the recycle bin. Unless I get to shoot Harrison Ford in the groin. Then I’ll keep playing.
Only solution is to wait for a server reset currently.
Jesus christ. This is officially the worst game bug ever.
Was DAOC playable on release by normal game standards, or MMORPG standards?
No, MetK, I don’t even like Star Wars all that much to tell the truth. I find the entire setting cobbled together (mainly thanks to the EU) compared to settings like Dune or even RPG settings like Harn, World of Darkness or Tekumel. I did and do love the original trilogy but it’s more from nostalgia than the fact it finds a place next to Apocalypse Now or Brazil on my DVD/VHS shelf.
What I do like is a MMORPG setting that feels like a plausible place to be. Others have been ridiculously simplistic, uninvolving, and inflexible paens to a thousand players involved in single player games. Games in which I was told what my character was going to do and why. I’ve always hated scripted content which only rewarded the guys with the best macros or best walkthroughs. I’ve always hated the levelling system and insanely stupid inherent problems, or rewards, of power inflation that went along with it.
Heros? As someone else pointed out what exactly does it take or even mean to be a hero on a typical MMORPG? Hundreds of hours of free time and very little else. You don’t mean dick to the community because there’s very little holding any sort of community together other than a gang mentality or, in the case of roleplayers, an elaborate self-deception that your persona and society actually mattered in the scheme of things. Being little more than a flea on the back of a dog doesn’t thrill me.
I’ve played beta. I’ve seen how societies form already in SWG. I’ve seen what characters talk about and are interested in (as players) and this is the stuff of continuity and suspension of disbelief. They want and are looking for things that make sense. Levelling has been minimized, and complaints notwithstanding, there are far more powergamers with issues about how easy it is to advance than there are people talking about how hard it it. The majority of people I encountered in beta, whether crafters or hardcore PvPers were having fun and plan to get the game. Even another skeptical MUSHer, Nasrudin, who didn’t think he was long for SWG is now a hearty defender of it.
The common wisdom of a set that prides itself on nonchalance and brutal skepticism isn’t particularly the common opinion of folks who’ve played beta or the wisdom of a lifetime roleplayer and gamer like myself.
Anyone who read my dialogue with Mr. Smart about Battlecruiser knows I at least try to be tough but honest. Anyone who knows anything at all about what I write knows that I’m very interested in games that seem to push the envelope of immersion. In fact, it was an encounter with one of somebody here - after a long rant of mine about why all MMORPGs suck as would SWG - that got me involved with the community over there.
The game may not appeal to everyone as it is out of the box. At this point in beta there are serious bugs (which are certainly being feverishly worked on as we speak). And this is only the beginning of the development of the game - there is much that was cut or delayed in terms of content. All fair.
But SWG is very close to the sort of MMORPG I’ve been wanting to play for a long time. And practically all of the folks I ran with in beta feel the same way.
You missed them: Multiplayer Battletech, AD&D: Neverwinter Nights, Asheron’s Call 1, etc.
For all its warts Neocron had what I thought was the best combat system of any MMORPG. A hybrid real-time first person or third person (your choice) twitch combat that took into account the players’ stats, implants etc. I can say that in the 3 months I played combat never once became rote and boring.
By normal standards. It was lag free, as bug free as any other PC game, and stable.
– Xaroc