Yeah, cause no one should be allowed to talk about game design if they aren’t actually working in the industry.
Why does this board exist again?
Ha ha, suck it, blind people!!
My God, HRose, you’re a genius! You’ve just invented Guild Wars.
I meant, as others said, that that is the aspect of MMOs that I like. Not the only aspect, but typically women tend to do more socialization … and that’s why there’s a growing number of women playing MMOs. And generally, men tend to tend to be somewhat less social, unless it’s to organise teams to take out content. And of course, there are exceptions to these generalizations.
And it really was such a fantastic system.
Shame the game was completely soulless.
How much did you play Guild Wars? I felt that it was pretty soulless at first too, but I’ve been playing it again lately, and it is growing on me I must say.
Yes, my love.
Don’t make me karate-chop you in half!
Of course there is a strong social aspect to MMO gameplay, just as there is in online forum cultures or letter correspondence or whatever. Interacting with people face to face is only one type of social interaction. Whether this sort of social interaction is as “valid” or as “good” as the type where you have a cup of coffee with your buddies isn’t the point. The point is, some people are attracted to the aspects of MMO gameplay such as chatting with guildmates, helping other players out, keeping abreast of the “gossip” of the server world, and so forth.
MMO gameplay creates certain social pressures. Here is an obvious one: “I need to keep playing for another hour because I committed to this instance run and I don’t want to leave the other 4 players in the lurch.” This is a quite different gameplay “addiction” mechanic than something like “I want to get another level” which you might equally see in a single player game.
Windbag hRose = new Windbag();
hRose.addResponse( “TL,DR” );
hRose.addResponse( “OMGWTFBBQ” );
The Republic has no need of chemists!
You aren’t a very good programmer. It doesn’t make sense to have an addResponse function on a Windbag object. It would make more sense to populate a Response object, and then pass the response object to the Windbag object. Possibly via a callback method.
hRose = NULL;
…?
That’s the condensed version?
Normally reserved for Koontz.
We need a wheel of HRose.
I had the player demigod idea years before HRose ever did, you can ask my roommates from six years ago. I didn’t go all weak tit and say demigods though, I decided players with enough followers, resources and the approval of game masters could become full-scale gods, such that their existence transforms and instead of walking around and fighting, they inhabit a realm or dimension where they dispense benefits to followers in need, attract followers, and are sometimes summoned forth by high level priest followers to manifest their hugemongous avatars on the field of battle. (Like a gigantic red slime the size of a town versus a horseman the size of a mountain.) The god and their followers have a symbiotic relationship.
Six years ago.
So, ha.
Of course, the Greeks do have a bit of the drop on me.
It seems to me you’ve identified several “false positives”, of a sort, in your listing of problems:
- The first thing players ask about a new game is “can I solo?”
This statement is misleading and a basis of your post. The reason the first thing (some) players ask is “can I solo?” is because grouping is the de facto standard of MMOs, so being able to solo is something else.
After having played WoW, however, I (and other friends of mine) are certainly going to start asking “Is grouping going to be encouraged enough that some of the population will adopt it?” In WoW there is no grouping outside instances (or, at least, it is extremely rare.) I like grouping in an MMO. I’ve never ask “Can I group in your game?” before because it was a stupid question. Post WoW it isn’t anymore.
Posing that statement then then claiming it immediately follows that all players are SICK (all caps, of course) of grouping is not logical. You don’t know that information, you only know that (some) players are vocal about things they want.
- “I want to play the fucking game at my own pace, in my own way, screwing up the way I like, in the order I like and without hearing a fucking annoying noob getting in my way, getting me killed, criticizing what I’m doing or spoiling me the whole thing.”
This statement seems absurdly broken to me. You, essentially, want to impose your will over others in a totalitarian fashion without others being able to impose any will over you. Such a unidirectional exchange can’t exist in any multiplayer environment and that environment continue to thrive.
All in all, I guess I want to know:
Why are you in MMOs? I mean, how do they contribute to a fun game when your design philosophy revolves around the statement “I’m SICK of other players”?
Chris Woods
HRose,
I think you would enjoy the new MMORPG Morrowind: Oblivion. It seems to have a lot of the features you have mentioned, and the chat filters insure that you will not have quests spolied and can play at your own pace.
Everyone else…SHHHHH!
I’d love if you came over and did a code review of all the rest of my forum post code! We can discuss the future of AspectJ and Ajax and talk about how much trouble you’ve had finding a girlfriend.