to be honest duff, he's not stretching it by much :/
Gameplay wise most MMOs can rather easily be boiled down to that formula without much of a fight. The thing that seperates MMOs from just killing monsters all day in an FF game is the other players and possibly PvP. That'll likely be the case for quite some time until strange things like 'imagination' and 'creativity' enter the barren mental realm that is MMO design development <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
<!--quoteo(post=1583442:date=Dec 3 2006, 01:57 AM:name=Geminosity)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Geminosity @ Dec 3 2006, 01:57 AM) [snapback]1583442[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> to be honest duff, he's not stretching it by much :/
Gameplay wise most MMOs can rather easily be boiled down to that formula without much of a fight. The thing that seperates MMOs from just killing monsters all day in an FF game is the other players and possibly PvP. That'll likely be the case for quite some time until strange things like 'imagination' and 'creativity' enter the barren mental realm that is MMO design development <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" /> <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Actually, he is stretching it by a large margin. As I said, once you've got every item, reached max level, and done the story line, why would you continue to fight monsters FF? Whereas in an MMO, there are still levels to reach, still items to attain, and yes, have fun with guild members, and help them achieve the previous goals.
Okay, leave singleplayer games aside then. But bear in mind that the bulk of multiplayer games are not pay-toplay. What about Natural Selection? What about Counter-Strike? What about Starcraft? What about Guild Wars? None of these cost monthly fees, all of them can potentially be played as long as you have other people to play with them, and all of them are a lot cheaper than pay-to-play games once you've played them for a couple of months, if not earlier.
Pay-to-play games are uneconomic, that is my thesis. Instead of just dismissing my examples as "oh but you get tired of that very quickly" (I could claim the same for any pay-to-play game - in the end it's completely subjective and a matter of personal opinion and taste), please deal with the economic factors and explain to me how it is cheaper to play a pay-to-play game for a year versus playing, say, Starcraft for the same amount of time. And people HAVE played Starcraft for that long. Hell, people are STILL playing it, now, eight years after it came out.
I've said several times, even the economical value of something is subjective, so it's pointless comparing the economical value of something in a theoretical situation. I've put more hours into WoW for it''s cost then I have Starcraft, therefore it is more economical.
Yeah, but you present that as an absolute statement when it is completely relative to your personal situation. You can't just go making universal declarations based on your personal experience.
<!--quoteo(post=1583639:date=Dec 3 2006, 05:54 PM:name=lolfighter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(lolfighter @ Dec 3 2006, 05:54 PM) [snapback]1583639[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Yeah, but you present that as an absolute statement when it is completely relative to your personal situation. You can't just go making universal declarations based on your personal experience. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I'm not making universal declarations. Not once have I done so. It's more economical for me, which I've pointed out several times, and won't be the same for everyone. We're kinda going round in circles here.
This is almost embarrassing to read. You guys are argueing over the <i>economic</i> value of <i>play time</i> of a <i>video game</i>. <i>What does it matter?</i>
If you have the money to do a pay for play game, and enjoy it, then what does it matter?
<!--quoteo(post=1583674:date=Dec 3 2006, 08:17 PM:name=Aldaris)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Aldaris @ Dec 3 2006, 08:17 PM) [snapback]1583674[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> I'm not making universal declarations. Not once have I done so. It's more economical for me, which I've pointed out several times, and won't be the same for everyone. We're kinda going round in circles here. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> No, but you defended universal declarations, namely those of DiscoZombie. I don't claim that you made them, but when I called him out you spoke up in defense of his statements. I am not disputing that the single individual may consider a pay-to-play to be cost-effective, but to apply that across the board is to ignore the actual economics, or to claim that pay-to-play games inherently offer more play time than other games.
His choice of words applied his statements to everyone. I had to dispute that since "everyone" is a group of people that includes me. And his statements don't apply to me. Pay-to-play games have not offered me more play time than other games. Most of them have offered me less.
<!--quoteo(post=1583455:date=Dec 3 2006, 03:20 AM:name=Aldaris)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Aldaris @ Dec 3 2006, 03:20 AM) [snapback]1583455[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Actually, he is stretching it by a large margin. As I said, once you've got every item, reached max level, and done the story line, why would you continue to fight monsters FF? Whereas in an MMO, there are still levels to reach, still items to attain, and yes, have fun with guild members, and help them achieve the previous goals. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
silly Ald... I already said in the post you replied to that <b>The thing that seperates MMOs from just killing monsters all day in an FF game is the other players and possibly PvP</b>. Also if you have every item, done the story and reached max level then funnily enough it means much the same in an MMO as it does in FF. Sure a content patch might come eventually but until that hits you're in FF land (aside from other players again).
Totally off the track now but it always kinda irks me that people say 'guild members' when they're actually talking about all the people in MMOs (or should be). What about all the other people in the game? It's like people forget how to be social once they join a silly clan. This is why I will never, ever join a guild in any game... they're just daffy :/
<!--quoteo(post=1583776:date=Dec 4 2006, 12:42 AM:name=Geminosity)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Geminosity @ Dec 4 2006, 12:42 AM) [snapback]1583776[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> silly Ald... I already said in the post you replied to that <b>The thing that seperates MMOs from just killing monsters all day in an FF game is the other players and possibly PvP</b>. Also if you have every item, done the story and reached max level then funnily enough it means much the same in an MMO as it does in FF. Sure a content patch might come eventually but until that hits you're in FF land (aside from other players again).
Totally off the track now but it always kinda irks me that people say 'guild members' when they're actually talking about all the people in MMOs (or should be). What about all the other people in the game? It's like people forget how to be social once they join a silly clan. This is why I will never, ever join a guild in any game... they're just daffy :/ <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Well, about the bold bit, and my reply, I was just agreeing with you, so sorry about that <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" /> In the example of FF, there's very little to no replayability once you have reached max level etc (I admit, I've only played FF7 though). MMO, there's other classes and different ways of playing them, races and starting areas to bide time between content releases, once you've done everything you want to with your main character, and content releases tend to happen faster then you can build up these alt characters. I don't see it as being the same as reaching the end of a single player game.
Why should I be thinking about the other players in an MMO? 99% of the other people I meet in an MMO are idiots, who are only using each other for their own benefit to get small content done, and rarely provide any reason to talk to again, as I find the silly banter that shows social skills and character are very rarely shown by people in MMOs. There are only so many people you can get to know intimately, before you start losing track of names and faces. Guilds quite simply make it possible to get to know a managable amount of people easily, and actually start to want to help people and socialise, rather then thinking about only ones self. To me, guilds do the opposite to what you say: They make the game far more sociable. Oh, and what's to stop you from joining a guild or clan, and still being talkative to random people outside of the guild?
<!--quoteo(post=1583776:date=Dec 3 2006, 07:42 PM:name=Geminosity)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Geminosity @ Dec 3 2006, 07:42 PM) [snapback]1583776[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Totally off the track now but it always kinda irks me that people say 'guild members' when they're actually talking about all the people in MMOs (or should be). What about all the other people in the game? It's like people forget how to be social once they join a silly clan. This is why I will never, ever join a guild in any game... they're just daffy :/ <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wait... what? If being a guild is making you LESS social you are doing something wrong... Guilds are there to allow you to more easily socialize with people on a regular basis and form an almost "family" mentality. If you refuse to join guilds and such in MMOs, you are missing out on ALOT of stuff.
<!--quoteo(post=1583815:date=Dec 3 2006, 09:20 PM:name=Xyth)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Xyth @ Dec 3 2006, 09:20 PM) [snapback]1583815[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Wait... what? If being a guild is making you LESS social you are doing something wrong... Guilds are there to allow you to more easily socialize with people on a regular basis and form an almost "family" mentality. If you refuse to join guilds and such in MMOs, you are missing out on ALOT of stuff. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree, it's the world OUTSIDE of guilds that's scary... people saying 'cna I hav 1 gold 4 training plz?' or 'r u a grl irl?' and people ninja looting items in instances and generally not knowing how to play... guilds are an attempt at finding friendship, sanity, and skill in the sea of 12 year olds playing on the family computer.
There are guilds of different types. Some of them are quite outward and friendly to non-members. Others are all "lol ur not member of teh Leetkilla Death Posse, SUYF!"
I refuse to join guilds because i've been part of many in the past and some were even good ones.
Even to this day I constantly get begged by guild leaders to join them (and I mean 'in person' with them chatting, not the random sign-ups people slap in your face without even talking to you). Why?
Because I'm not brainwashed by the guild mentality; I can and will speak to and help almost everyone and am keenly aware of the fact that the game isn't infact populated by 12 year olds who talk in leetspeek. Truth of the matter is the annoying people are just really vocal and there's plenty of people who are nice. Even some of the riotous kids are fine once you calm them down. I get a lot of guild leaders after me because they know how good I'd be for recruiting (some even admit as much) while of course I get some people just wanting me in their guild because they like me :p
The reasons guilds are actually anti-social is because people end up in their xenophobic lil' communities talking in their private lil chatrooms. I can't put up with that nonsense when i'm used to the 'old ways' where a bustling city was a bustling city (no guild chat or even global chat so everyone talked in local) rather than a city full of thousands of very very silent people. Sure they do have people who'd still talk to people outside their guild but lets be honest; most people are too lazy to switch chat channels that often and enduring the headache of having two isolated conversations that are unaware of each other and demanding your attention. If you throw voice programs like teamspeak or whatever into the mix it just gets worse as they don't even bother reading the chatbox anymore.
Maybe it's just me but I want to play <b>M</b>MOs. These days it feels more like GMOs or Guilded Multiplayer Online.
Sorry if I come off as pissy but I just get tired with all the banner waving and in-guild drama and the bizarre need of many people to 'belong'. I know there's people out there who make very nice guilds but you know what? they don't need to make guilds... just use the frigging friends list like any sane person. The epic feel of these games is draining away as is the <b>real</b> sense of community.
then again... maybe my experiences just don't mirror everyone elses? I've noticed this alot. A friend of mine was once asked to describe Neocron and the game he described sounded so unlike the game I'd played I just looked at him in disbelief and in the middle of the class shouted "WHAT?". He'd said that it had been a very lonely game and there'd been lots of idiots and gankers. By contrast my game had been full of fun. People working together, meeting new characters, making unlikely allies and enemies and having memorable moments of unexpected teamwork.
I play my games with two rules... Help people and have fun. My sense of identity is strong enough that I don't need to belong (and I often get offended when people try to make me belong to them... I'm nobody's to take). Net result is I usually fill the friends list to bursting within the first week, meet lots of fun people, get to help lots of people and I'm not tied away in some silly lil guild trying to feel special or sheltered from a non-existant storm.
I'm sorry but between unnecessary guilds and silly lil chat channels I feel the true spirit of community that MMOs were once capable of is a shattered shadow of its former and glorious self.
You miss out on more being in a guild than you ever could by not being in one... it's just sad that so many people don't realise it.
<b>edit:</b> on a weird note I'm always a lot more happy-go-lucky and cheery in games. I tend to rant a lot on forums for some reason... maybe it's because there's no dragons to vent my frustrations on? :3
when you put it that way, you make a lot of sense, but I could still never see myself not being in a guild. Call me xenophobic if you want, but I refuse to even do anything outside my guild anymore in WoW. Let's say I want to run Scarlet Stratholm. Let's say I run it with 4 people I just met in Org. One will not know what he's doing and contribute nothing to the group, one will roll on items that aren't meant for his class and insist it's his right, one will leave in the middle of the instance... it's just not worth it to me. When I run an instance in a pick-up group, I have about a 70% failure rate, and even the successes are like pulling teeth. When I run the instance with my guild, we clear it in 40 minutes.
I think games that used to feel more 'massive' because they didn't have guilds, or 'cliques', were that way because you didn't NEED a guild to get things done. the most you'd need to do anything in RO for example was one or two people to group with. That made the game feel smaller to me. If I wanted to chat with a bunch of other people while playing solo, I might as well play a single player game and run IRC on another monitor.
If you like to help people, there's tons of opportunities to do that in an endgame guild in WoW. be the guild enchanter and enchant everyone's equipment, be an engineer and drop repair bots; just by showing up on a raid night, you're helping 39 people run the instance they want to run. a guild full of 50+ people is more than enough people for me to socialize with.
And even though you're mostly right that people in guilds are less social with people outside the guild, there's no law saying that has to be the case. Heck, I even found my current guild by starting up a conversation with someone not only from another guild, but another SERVER, in a cross-server battleground. now THAT person is in another guild, and a friend from my last server followed me to this server...
Guilds are for a sense of community, like there is on a message board like this. You can make one-on-one friends with a friends list, but you can't have a sense of community with one. If you're so good at finding quality people among the teeming masses, maybe you should start your OWN guild, so you could talk to everyone on your friends list at the same time <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
<!--quoteo(post=1583969:date=Dec 4 2006, 05:36 AM:name=Geminosity)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Geminosity @ Dec 4 2006, 05:36 AM) [snapback]1583969[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Because I'm not brainwashed by the guild mentality; I can and will speak to and help almost everyone and am keenly aware of the fact that the game isn't infact populated by 12 year olds who talk in leetspeek. Truth of the matter is the annoying people are just really vocal and there's plenty of people who are nice. Even some of the riotous kids are fine once you calm them down. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Do you see the irony there? You argue that not all people should be characterized by the actions of a few, but then go on to <i>do just that</i> with calling all guildies "Brainwashed" "Xenophobes". If the guilds you are dealing with refuse to help or talk to people who aren't in a guild, or are in a different guild, you are hanging out with the wrong damn people. I have never met/joined a single guild that were that elitest (I've heard of ones that are pretty bad, elitest wise. They were the minority by far though). Last time I checked, guilds didn't prevent you from talking in general channel or grouping with non-guilded people... With your arguement, why have friends? You will end up only talking with your friends right, and not meeting new people?
I agree with hating guild drama however, but once again it only seems to ever be between the 1 or 2 big guilds on a server and is easy to avoid.... by not joining them...
And about switching chat channels: /join lookingforgroup on any WoW server and see how many conversations are being held by "Xenophobic" guildies. Plenty. And I think it's alot harder to have to maintain constant /w conversations with multiple people then a simple /g.
The truth of the matter (Most of the time) is that a guild is nothing more then a way for people to maintain easier contact with their friends, and form new friends through that contact. Nothing more then a way to have a constant private chat room.
I've got no problem with you not wanting to be part of a guild. But to go ahead and start making sweeping generalizations about groups in general is just stupid.
heh, ok my wording was a tad OTT but I was having a rant and sweeping generalisations had already been made before I entered the fray :p
Despite a bit of hyperbole I did mention several times that not all 'guildies' are bad and that some guilds are actually fine though. Easily missed in amongst all that I suppose :3
I'll be honest... guild drama is just something I hear about, I've never experienced it myself really XD I'm surprised elitism came up though as I didn't really mention it :o
ok... let's see...
'xenophobic' is admittedly not really what's going on, though in some rare cases it is alarmingly close to the point. For most guilded people though, it's a simple case of it being too much hastle to talk on lots of channels. Net result is they'll stick to a few and migrate out of local.... this means for most people that they're silent. I'll admit I don't really know what goes on in the 'LFG' channel as I never use it. Almost all my grouping is done by actual conversation and the LFG channel merely serves as a place for people to spam their "LFG LVL 3 class numbers accronyms" stuff where I don't have to read it :p
I also detest /w for anything outside of quick concise messages. Anyone who tries to have a full conversation with me usually ends up being told to come find me or I pop up near them with a smile. Local chat for the win :3
I suppose if I had to be precise my problem isn't guilds at all but guild systems; the special uniforms, priveledges and chat channels designed to pull innocent people into little organised clumps and shut them away from each other. Guilds have always been around but fairly innocent, it's only when the games started catering to them and holding them up as some kind of twisted holy grail (and people started falling into the trap) that it became a problem.
I've had to face the issue several times of having people trying to get me to make a guild. The main reason for this is often that devs puposefully make the friends system clunkier and inferior to the guild systems. Admittedly I don't think making the friends system better would help (friends lists would just be the new guilds :p ). Then again I'm a bit odd... I like adventure and travelling in games. If I want to talk to anyone regardless of where they are I'd just use IRC or something instead. For me the best chat system has been PSO's... no whispers, no channels, just local chat and a simple email system that's clunky enough to stop most people trying to have full conversations over it.
In a game like that the actual 'meeting' of your virtual characters has significance and impact and makes the game a lot more interesting as far as I'm concerned. Then again in PSO once you had someone's ID card you could warp directly to wherever they were :3
anyhoo... I wandered a bit there.
To tackle the whole 'epic' thing disco, I don't really think being put in a seperate world with 40 people feels epic... and there's something cool about stumbling across other people in dungeons. If a game is flexible enough you end up with massive movements of teamwork without any strings needing to be attached; a perfect example being the Ragnarok dungeon player shops. People would rest around these shops to protect them while the shop obviously afforded them with vital goodies like hp potions and the like. These impromptu arrangements would often turn into safe encampments with many many people. It made the world feel a lot more alive and less predictable or set in stone. That's a lot more epic to me than "yeah, we were group number 30804893 to defeat the dreaded dragon instance." It's something organic and community-based; no guilds required :p
As for joining a guild to help people... why limit myself? why only help 39 people when I can help so many more? I often give away goodies and do lil jobs for free to amuse myself and help out. Used to pleasantly surprise people in Neocron a lot by setting up a small encampment in dungeons and fixing all their weapons for them (no charge). In Asheron's call 2 i'd often batter together random things and give them to new players just because I could and they enjoyed it.
I want to play with the masses, not the few :D
I guess i'm glad it works for some people as is but I still feel it's killing the 'big communities' I joined MMOs for years ago. A mere 50 people is never enough to keep my very fleeting attention occupied :p
Part of the arguement is that you don't have to only help people you are guilded with, I don't think anybody is going to stop you from going and doing random acts of kindness just because you agreed to join their guild.
I think you are pinning the blame for the lack of social connection between people on the wrong targets, it isn't the guilds fault if its members are introverts, they would be that way regardless of guild or not. If you are talking about people being to lazy to use multiple chat channels in addition to /g, what makes you think they will be anymore social if they weren't in a guild? Most likely they would be LESS social being as they aren't comfortable around other folks they haven't gotten to know yet.
Also: You were talking about guild ranks and such as if every guild is some kind of nazi-esque regime that has some tyrannical hold over its players. In the majority of guilds, ranks mean very little. They are frequently there as nothing more then a way to categorize and organize large ranks of people (having class leaders and such makes it easier to organize large amounts of people, it would be very difficult for one person to know the ins and outs of all the classes and players of a guild...). Guilds are also a nice way to be sure of the skill/abilities of a group, not that Im against PUGs or anything, but I know that when I group with guildies that Im going to get whatever I want done.
Now, I believe we are talking about two different games here (Im talking about WoW), so maybe things are set up radically differently in other ones, so that might change the arguement, but I doubt they can be that different.
Xyth, the whole idea of how guilds affect MMOs comes from witnessing the change. I can theorise why but at the end of the day MMOs have changed. They used to be realms where everyone would talk to each other and now it's a lot harder to get a conversation out of some people.
I also never mentioned guild ranks anywhere outside of maybe mentioning leaders... sure you're not thinking of someone else's post like lolfighter or something? :/
You might be talking about WoW but I'm talking about every single MMO I've ever played (so basically most of them minus Everquest and Everquest II :p ).
At the end of the day I just know from experience that as games have become more and more guild-system centric both conversation and community have been dying. It doesn't really effect me directly I guess as I seem to be able to drag a conversation out of most people but it's a lot less easy-going than it used to be and what started out as a logical irritation towards guilds has, through constant exposure, turned into a fairly illogical searing hate of them and all they bring.
I guess I'm a heck of lot more annoyed because devs actually try to enforce guilding; guilds seem to come with lots of in-built game mechanic priveledges. City of Heroes/Villains for example get super bases... oh and the more people you have the more cash you get to spend on your base. Net result is constant recruiting and lots of people with the "I NEED a guild" mentality.
To be honest though I find it kinda hard to argue about this point rationally at all because it stirs me up so much. I guess in some ways I see guilds as a crutch that prevents people from growing and inhibits the game community. I basically believe they're all harm and little good.
The guilds themselves are not to blame as I've said... it's the guild systems that are the root of the problem. that and the really silly idea people seem to now have drummed into them that being in a guild is necessity. The truth is my anger is never directed at people in guilds, ever. I feel sorry for them... to me they're victims :/
but I think guilds are implemented by game designers to bring people closer together and put in some organization... and without a large group to work together with toward a collective goal (killing onyxia, ragnaros, whatever), many if not most people (myself included) would feel like we had nothing left to do in WoW.
guilds are required to organize large-scale raid type playing, and large-scale raid type playing is required for longevity of the game. If at level 60 all there was left to do in WoW was run 5 person instances or start a new char, I would have given the game up quickly.
I will definitely admit that the people in the more 'hardcore' guilds (including myself) don't really interact with the world outside the guild too much, but I think the 'hardcore' guild people are the minority. I would guess that while maybe only like 10% of the player base of WoW is unguilded, probably 70% of them are in smallish guilds and talk to the outside world as much as they talk to their 10 guildies.
when people don't talk, I'm not entirely sure the guild mentality is to blame. say I join a battleground in WoW. I might crack a joke about the other team or my team or something else, and often no one will answer. I don't immediately assume it's because they're too busy talking to guildies; I usually guess it has more to do with people being more interested in playing than talking, and I'm a stranger so they don't really have anything to say to me.
I definitely don't feel like conversation and community are dying. I'm always having conversations, and yes, they're usually in my guild channel or raid channel. The best conversations are in my guild's class channel, because the 4 or 5 people on that channel are the ones I know best. And community? well, the guild is a community. guild chat, message board chat... and the server is a community. server forums on the official WoW website are always thriving. of course a large portion of what goes on there is people flaming each other, but there's also people just making conversation. My last server had a new thread every day called 'workchat' - where people from the server would just talk to each other while at work.
I do know the feeling you're alluding to though. It is cool how, in some games, you don't really know where anyone is, and you might wander into a cave and find someone already there... and you could theoretically make friends or whatever, but it rarely worked out that way in my experience. I remember a bit of that in RO... but in the long run, most of the chat there was surly people yelling at each other for KSing or infringing on their xp zone...
HellbillyA whole title out of pity...Join Date: 2002-11-02Member: 3931Members, NS1 Playtester, Constellation
Technically it did.
As of 4th of december no paid subscriptions will be made. When you buy the game you get one month free, so if you bought the game today, you would make an account, register payment options and only be charged 4th of january if you wish to play more, which...oh yeah thats right, is when it's free to play <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />
fair enough Disco. In truth I don't think I'll ever be convinced though.
I have noticed that action game can lead to less conversation because the players are obviously too busy pressing buttons to stay alive; that obviously doesn't help either. But oddly in very very active games like PSO I still found conversation a lot more flowing and easy-going than in the likes of WoW where on the odd occassion it almost feels like pulling teeth :3
As for raids being necessary for longevity? It's one method I guess. Not one I like though as it feels rather artificial and grindy and I honestly don't like the gameplay it leads to... I guess it's more like a military game than an adventure when there's 40 of you doing a pre-planned run through a set territory. Some people like that, but it's not for me :/
For me, I'd prefer a game where people are the game. Something like Trails of Ascension. I'd much rather play in a world shaped by people's actions where my motivations and my character's are their own rather than something dictated to me by some text. Set questing has it's place and all but I think endgame for the type of gamer I am is better as Sandbox style :3
Ragnarok was the closest thing for me to this... it wasn't a sandbox game but the world had been filled with lots of lil toys and empty spaces for players to fill and use and they did. It was fun seeing the roleplay pubs and I enjoyed playing 'pyramid guide' as I helped lower level players make their way through the maze to the thief's guild so they could pursue their 'career' XD They're elements often so lacking in more modern MMOs I find... though each MMO seems to have some sort of mechanic or quirk I enjoy in the end.
I've not played archlord but... uh... to be honest you're the first person to ever speak kindly of it that I've seen hellbilly :o
I'm hoping Carpe Diem might be good but it's hard to tell... it's the first MMO I'm aware of with a central protagonist who'll be played by a GM and who goes around razing the country side. Aim of the game is to either find the four swords and unite them to kill him or, if you're that way inclined, you can join his evil legion and try and overthrow the good king o.O
Could be great, could be ick... only time will tell.
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Gameplay wise most MMOs can rather easily be boiled down to that formula without much of a fight. The thing that seperates MMOs from just killing monsters all day in an FF game is the other players and possibly PvP.
That'll likely be the case for quite some time until strange things like 'imagination' and 'creativity' enter the barren mental realm that is MMO design development <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
to be honest duff, he's not stretching it by much :/
Gameplay wise most MMOs can rather easily be boiled down to that formula without much of a fight. The thing that seperates MMOs from just killing monsters all day in an FF game is the other players and possibly PvP.
That'll likely be the case for quite some time until strange things like 'imagination' and 'creativity' enter the barren mental realm that is MMO design development <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
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Actually, he is stretching it by a large margin. As I said, once you've got every item, reached max level, and done the story line, why would you continue to fight monsters FF? Whereas in an MMO, there are still levels to reach, still items to attain, and yes, have fun with guild members, and help them achieve the previous goals.
Pay-to-play games are uneconomic, that is my thesis. Instead of just dismissing my examples as "oh but you get tired of that very quickly" (I could claim the same for any pay-to-play game - in the end it's completely subjective and a matter of personal opinion and taste), please deal with the economic factors and explain to me how it is cheaper to play a pay-to-play game for a year versus playing, say, Starcraft for the same amount of time. And people HAVE played Starcraft for that long. Hell, people are STILL playing it, now, eight years after it came out.
Yeah, but you present that as an absolute statement when it is completely relative to your personal situation. You can't just go making universal declarations based on your personal experience.
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I'm not making universal declarations. Not once have I done so. It's more economical for me, which I've pointed out several times, and won't be the same for everyone. We're kinda going round in circles here.
If you have the money to do a pay for play game, and enjoy it, then what does it matter?
I'm not making universal declarations. Not once have I done so. It's more economical for me, which I've pointed out several times, and won't be the same for everyone. We're kinda going round in circles here.
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No, but you defended universal declarations, namely those of DiscoZombie. I don't claim that you made them, but when I called him out you spoke up in defense of his statements. I am not disputing that the single individual may consider a pay-to-play to be cost-effective, but to apply that across the board is to ignore the actual economics, or to claim that pay-to-play games inherently offer more play time than other games.
His choice of words applied his statements to everyone. I had to dispute that since "everyone" is a group of people that includes me. And his statements don't apply to me. Pay-to-play games have not offered me more play time than other games. Most of them have offered me less.
Actually, he is stretching it by a large margin. As I said, once you've got every item, reached max level, and done the story line, why would you continue to fight monsters FF? Whereas in an MMO, there are still levels to reach, still items to attain, and yes, have fun with guild members, and help them achieve the previous goals.
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silly Ald... I already said in the post you replied to that <b>The thing that seperates MMOs from just killing monsters all day in an FF game is the other players and possibly PvP</b>. Also if you have every item, done the story and reached max level then funnily enough it means much the same in an MMO as it does in FF. Sure a content patch might come eventually but until that hits you're in FF land (aside from other players again).
Totally off the track now but it always kinda irks me that people say 'guild members' when they're actually talking about all the people in MMOs (or should be). What about all the other people in the game? It's like people forget how to be social once they join a silly clan.
This is why I will never, ever join a guild in any game... they're just daffy :/
silly Ald... I already said in the post you replied to that <b>The thing that seperates MMOs from just killing monsters all day in an FF game is the other players and possibly PvP</b>. Also if you have every item, done the story and reached max level then funnily enough it means much the same in an MMO as it does in FF. Sure a content patch might come eventually but until that hits you're in FF land (aside from other players again).
Totally off the track now but it always kinda irks me that people say 'guild members' when they're actually talking about all the people in MMOs (or should be). What about all the other people in the game? It's like people forget how to be social once they join a silly clan.
This is why I will never, ever join a guild in any game... they're just daffy :/
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Well, about the bold bit, and my reply, I was just agreeing with you, so sorry about that <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" /> In the example of FF, there's very little to no replayability once you have reached max level etc (I admit, I've only played FF7 though). MMO, there's other classes and different ways of playing them, races and starting areas to bide time between content releases, once you've done everything you want to with your main character, and content releases tend to happen faster then you can build up these alt characters. I don't see it as being the same as reaching the end of a single player game.
Why should I be thinking about the other players in an MMO? 99% of the other people I meet in an MMO are idiots, who are only using each other for their own benefit to get small content done, and rarely provide any reason to talk to again, as I find the silly banter that shows social skills and character are very rarely shown by people in MMOs. There are only so many people you can get to know intimately, before you start losing track of names and faces. Guilds quite simply make it possible to get to know a managable amount of people easily, and actually start to want to help people and socialise, rather then thinking about only ones self. To me, guilds do the opposite to what you say: They make the game far more sociable. Oh, and what's to stop you from joining a guild or clan, and still being talkative to random people outside of the guild?
Totally off the track now but it always kinda irks me that people say 'guild members' when they're actually talking about all the people in MMOs (or should be). What about all the other people in the game? It's like people forget how to be social once they join a silly clan.
This is why I will never, ever join a guild in any game... they're just daffy :/
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Wait... what? If being a guild is making you LESS social you are doing something wrong... Guilds are there to allow you to more easily socialize with people on a regular basis and form an almost "family" mentality. If you refuse to join guilds and such in MMOs, you are missing out on ALOT of stuff.
Wait... what? If being a guild is making you LESS social you are doing something wrong... Guilds are there to allow you to more easily socialize with people on a regular basis and form an almost "family" mentality. If you refuse to join guilds and such in MMOs, you are missing out on ALOT of stuff.
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I agree, it's the world OUTSIDE of guilds that's scary... people saying 'cna I hav 1 gold 4 training plz?' or 'r u a grl irl?' and people ninja looting items in instances and generally not knowing how to play... guilds are an attempt at finding friendship, sanity, and skill in the sea of 12 year olds playing on the family computer.
Even to this day I constantly get begged by guild leaders to join them (and I mean 'in person' with them chatting, not the random sign-ups people slap in your face without even talking to you).
Why?
Because I'm not brainwashed by the guild mentality; I can and will speak to and help almost everyone and am keenly aware of the fact that the game isn't infact populated by 12 year olds who talk in leetspeek. Truth of the matter is the annoying people are just really vocal and there's plenty of people who are nice. Even some of the riotous kids are fine once you calm them down. I get a lot of guild leaders after me because they know how good I'd be for recruiting (some even admit as much) while of course I get some people just wanting me in their guild because they like me :p
The reasons guilds are actually anti-social is because people end up in their xenophobic lil' communities talking in their private lil chatrooms. I can't put up with that nonsense when i'm used to the 'old ways' where a bustling city was a bustling city (no guild chat or even global chat so everyone talked in local) rather than a city full of thousands of very very silent people.
Sure they do have people who'd still talk to people outside their guild but lets be honest; most people are too lazy to switch chat channels that often and enduring the headache of having two isolated conversations that are unaware of each other and demanding your attention.
If you throw voice programs like teamspeak or whatever into the mix it just gets worse as they don't even bother reading the chatbox anymore.
Maybe it's just me but I want to play <b>M</b>MOs. These days it feels more like GMOs or Guilded Multiplayer Online.
Sorry if I come off as pissy but I just get tired with all the banner waving and in-guild drama and the bizarre need of many people to 'belong'. I know there's people out there who make very nice guilds but you know what? they don't need to make guilds... just use the frigging friends list like any sane person.
The epic feel of these games is draining away as is the <b>real</b> sense of community.
then again... maybe my experiences just don't mirror everyone elses? I've noticed this alot.
A friend of mine was once asked to describe Neocron and the game he described sounded so unlike the game I'd played I just looked at him in disbelief and in the middle of the class shouted "WHAT?".
He'd said that it had been a very lonely game and there'd been lots of idiots and gankers.
By contrast my game had been full of fun. People working together, meeting new characters, making unlikely allies and enemies and having memorable moments of unexpected teamwork.
I play my games with two rules... Help people and have fun. My sense of identity is strong enough that I don't need to belong (and I often get offended when people try to make me belong to them... I'm nobody's to take). Net result is I usually fill the friends list to bursting within the first week, meet lots of fun people, get to help lots of people and I'm not tied away in some silly lil guild trying to feel special or sheltered from a non-existant storm.
I'm sorry but between unnecessary guilds and silly lil chat channels I feel the true spirit of community that MMOs were once capable of is a shattered shadow of its former and glorious self.
You miss out on more being in a guild than you ever could by not being in one... it's just sad that so many people don't realise it.
<b>edit:</b> on a weird note I'm always a lot more happy-go-lucky and cheery in games. I tend to rant a lot on forums for some reason... maybe it's because there's no dragons to vent my frustrations on? :3
I think games that used to feel more 'massive' because they didn't have guilds, or 'cliques', were that way because you didn't NEED a guild to get things done. the most you'd need to do anything in RO for example was one or two people to group with. That made the game feel smaller to me. If I wanted to chat with a bunch of other people while playing solo, I might as well play a single player game and run IRC on another monitor.
If you like to help people, there's tons of opportunities to do that in an endgame guild in WoW. be the guild enchanter and enchant everyone's equipment, be an engineer and drop repair bots; just by showing up on a raid night, you're helping 39 people run the instance they want to run. a guild full of 50+ people is more than enough people for me to socialize with.
And even though you're mostly right that people in guilds are less social with people outside the guild, there's no law saying that has to be the case. Heck, I even found my current guild by starting up a conversation with someone not only from another guild, but another SERVER, in a cross-server battleground. now THAT person is in another guild, and a friend from my last server followed me to this server...
Guilds are for a sense of community, like there is on a message board like this. You can make one-on-one friends with a friends list, but you can't have a sense of community with one. If you're so good at finding quality people among the teeming masses, maybe you should start your OWN guild, so you could talk to everyone on your friends list at the same time <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
Because I'm not brainwashed by the guild mentality; I can and will speak to and help almost everyone and am keenly aware of the fact that the game isn't infact populated by 12 year olds who talk in leetspeek. Truth of the matter is the annoying people are just really vocal and there's plenty of people who are nice. Even some of the riotous kids are fine once you calm them down.
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Do you see the irony there? You argue that not all people should be characterized by the actions of a few, but then go on to <i>do just that</i> with calling all guildies "Brainwashed" "Xenophobes". If the guilds you are dealing with refuse to help or talk to people who aren't in a guild, or are in a different guild, you are hanging out with the wrong damn people. I have never met/joined a single guild that were that elitest (I've heard of ones that are pretty bad, elitest wise. They were the minority by far though). Last time I checked, guilds didn't prevent you from talking in general channel or grouping with non-guilded people... With your arguement, why have friends? You will end up only talking with your friends right, and not meeting new people?
I agree with hating guild drama however, but once again it only seems to ever be between the 1 or 2 big guilds on a server and is easy to avoid.... by not joining them...
And about switching chat channels: /join lookingforgroup on any WoW server and see how many conversations are being held by "Xenophobic" guildies. Plenty. And I think it's alot harder to have to maintain constant /w conversations with multiple people then a simple /g.
The truth of the matter (Most of the time) is that a guild is nothing more then a way for people to maintain easier contact with their friends, and form new friends through that contact. Nothing more then a way to have a constant private chat room.
I've got no problem with you not wanting to be part of a guild. But to go ahead and start making sweeping generalizations about groups in general is just stupid.
Despite a bit of hyperbole I did mention several times that not all 'guildies' are bad and that some guilds are actually fine though. Easily missed in amongst all that I suppose :3
I'll be honest... guild drama is just something I hear about, I've never experienced it myself really XD
I'm surprised elitism came up though as I didn't really mention it :o
ok... let's see...
'xenophobic' is admittedly not really what's going on, though in some rare cases it is alarmingly close to the point. For most guilded people though, it's a simple case of it being too much hastle to talk on lots of channels. Net result is they'll stick to a few and migrate out of local.... this means for most people that they're silent.
I'll admit I don't really know what goes on in the 'LFG' channel as I never use it. Almost all my grouping is done by actual conversation and the LFG channel merely serves as a place for people to spam their "LFG LVL 3 class numbers accronyms" stuff where I don't have to read it :p
I also detest /w for anything outside of quick concise messages. Anyone who tries to have a full conversation with me usually ends up being told to come find me or I pop up near them with a smile. Local chat for the win :3
I suppose if I had to be precise my problem isn't guilds at all but guild systems; the special uniforms, priveledges and chat channels designed to pull innocent people into little organised clumps and shut them away from each other. Guilds have always been around but fairly innocent, it's only when the games started catering to them and holding them up as some kind of twisted holy grail (and people started falling into the trap) that it became a problem.
I've had to face the issue several times of having people trying to get me to make a guild. The main reason for this is often that devs puposefully make the friends system clunkier and inferior to the guild systems. Admittedly I don't think making the friends system better would help (friends lists would just be the new guilds :p ).
Then again I'm a bit odd... I like adventure and travelling in games. If I want to talk to anyone regardless of where they are I'd just use IRC or something instead.
For me the best chat system has been PSO's... no whispers, no channels, just local chat and a simple email system that's clunky enough to stop most people trying to have full conversations over it.
In a game like that the actual 'meeting' of your virtual characters has significance and impact and makes the game a lot more interesting as far as I'm concerned. Then again in PSO once you had someone's ID card you could warp directly to wherever they were :3
anyhoo... I wandered a bit there.
To tackle the whole 'epic' thing disco, I don't really think being put in a seperate world with 40 people feels epic... and there's something cool about stumbling across other people in dungeons.
If a game is flexible enough you end up with massive movements of teamwork without any strings needing to be attached; a perfect example being the Ragnarok dungeon player shops.
People would rest around these shops to protect them while the shop obviously afforded them with vital goodies like hp potions and the like. These impromptu arrangements would often turn into safe encampments with many many people. It made the world feel a lot more alive and less predictable or set in stone.
That's a lot more epic to me than "yeah, we were group number 30804893 to defeat the dreaded dragon instance." It's something organic and community-based; no guilds required :p
As for joining a guild to help people... why limit myself? why only help 39 people when I can help so many more? I often give away goodies and do lil jobs for free to amuse myself and help out.
Used to pleasantly surprise people in Neocron a lot by setting up a small encampment in dungeons and fixing all their weapons for them (no charge). In Asheron's call 2 i'd often batter together random things and give them to new players just because I could and they enjoyed it.
I want to play with the masses, not the few :D
I guess i'm glad it works for some people as is but I still feel it's killing the 'big communities' I joined MMOs for years ago. A mere 50 people is never enough to keep my very fleeting attention occupied :p
I think you are pinning the blame for the lack of social connection between people on the wrong targets, it isn't the guilds fault if its members are introverts, they would be that way regardless of guild or not. If you are talking about people being to lazy to use multiple chat channels in addition to /g, what makes you think they will be anymore social if they weren't in a guild? Most likely they would be LESS social being as they aren't comfortable around other folks they haven't gotten to know yet.
Also: You were talking about guild ranks and such as if every guild is some kind of nazi-esque regime that has some tyrannical hold over its players. In the majority of guilds, ranks mean very little. They are frequently there as nothing more then a way to categorize and organize large ranks of people (having class leaders and such makes it easier to organize large amounts of people, it would be very difficult for one person to know the ins and outs of all the classes and players of a guild...). Guilds are also a nice way to be sure of the skill/abilities of a group, not that Im against PUGs or anything, but I know that when I group with guildies that Im going to get whatever I want done.
Now, I believe we are talking about two different games here (Im talking about WoW), so maybe things are set up radically differently in other ones, so that might change the arguement, but I doubt they can be that different.
now stop moaning...
/played
I also never mentioned guild ranks anywhere outside of maybe mentioning leaders... sure you're not thinking of someone else's post like lolfighter or something? :/
You might be talking about WoW but I'm talking about every single MMO I've ever played (so basically most of them minus Everquest and Everquest II :p ).
At the end of the day I just know from experience that as games have become more and more guild-system centric both conversation and community have been dying.
It doesn't really effect me directly I guess as I seem to be able to drag a conversation out of most people but it's a lot less easy-going than it used to be and what started out as a logical irritation towards guilds has, through constant exposure, turned into a fairly illogical searing hate of them and all they bring.
I guess I'm a heck of lot more annoyed because devs actually try to enforce guilding; guilds seem to come with lots of in-built game mechanic priveledges. City of Heroes/Villains for example get super bases... oh and the more people you have the more cash you get to spend on your base. Net result is constant recruiting and lots of people with the "I NEED a guild" mentality.
To be honest though I find it kinda hard to argue about this point rationally at all because it stirs me up so much. I guess in some ways I see guilds as a crutch that prevents people from growing and inhibits the game community. I basically believe they're all harm and little good.
The guilds themselves are not to blame as I've said... it's the guild systems that are the root of the problem. that and the really silly idea people seem to now have drummed into them that being in a guild is necessity.
The truth is my anger is never directed at people in guilds, ever. I feel sorry for them... to me they're victims :/
guilds are required to organize large-scale raid type playing, and large-scale raid type playing is required for longevity of the game. If at level 60 all there was left to do in WoW was run 5 person instances or start a new char, I would have given the game up quickly.
I will definitely admit that the people in the more 'hardcore' guilds (including myself) don't really interact with the world outside the guild too much, but I think the 'hardcore' guild people are the minority. I would guess that while maybe only like 10% of the player base of WoW is unguilded, probably 70% of them are in smallish guilds and talk to the outside world as much as they talk to their 10 guildies.
when people don't talk, I'm not entirely sure the guild mentality is to blame. say I join a battleground in WoW. I might crack a joke about the other team or my team or something else, and often no one will answer. I don't immediately assume it's because they're too busy talking to guildies; I usually guess it has more to do with people being more interested in playing than talking, and I'm a stranger so they don't really have anything to say to me.
I definitely don't feel like conversation and community are dying. I'm always having conversations, and yes, they're usually in my guild channel or raid channel. The best conversations are in my guild's class channel, because the 4 or 5 people on that channel are the ones I know best. And community? well, the guild is a community. guild chat, message board chat... and the server is a community. server forums on the official WoW website are always thriving. of course a large portion of what goes on there is people flaming each other, but there's also people just making conversation. My last server had a new thread every day called 'workchat' - where people from the server would just talk to each other while at work.
I do know the feeling you're alluding to though. It is cool how, in some games, you don't really know where anyone is, and you might wander into a cave and find someone already there... and you could theoretically make friends or whatever, but it rarely worked out that way in my experience. I remember a bit of that in RO... but in the long run, most of the chat there was surly people yelling at each other for KSing or infringing on their xp zone...
It just went Free to Play today.
As of 4th of december no paid subscriptions will be made. When you buy the game you get one month free, so if you bought the game today, you would make an account, register payment options and only be charged 4th of january if you wish to play more, which...oh yeah thats right, is when it's free to play <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />
I have noticed that action game can lead to less conversation because the players are obviously too busy pressing buttons to stay alive; that obviously doesn't help either. But oddly in very very active games like PSO I still found conversation a lot more flowing and easy-going than in the likes of WoW where on the odd occassion it almost feels like pulling teeth :3
As for raids being necessary for longevity? It's one method I guess. Not one I like though as it feels rather artificial and grindy and I honestly don't like the gameplay it leads to... I guess it's more like a military game than an adventure when there's 40 of you doing a pre-planned run through a set territory. Some people like that, but it's not for me :/
For me, I'd prefer a game where people are the game. Something like Trails of Ascension. I'd much rather play in a world shaped by people's actions where my motivations and my character's are their own rather than something dictated to me by some text. Set questing has it's place and all but I think endgame for the type of gamer I am is better as Sandbox style :3
Ragnarok was the closest thing for me to this... it wasn't a sandbox game but the world had been filled with lots of lil toys and empty spaces for players to fill and use and they did. It was fun seeing the roleplay pubs and I enjoyed playing 'pyramid guide' as I helped lower level players make their way through the maze to the thief's guild so they could pursue their 'career' XD
They're elements often so lacking in more modern MMOs I find... though each MMO seems to have some sort of mechanic or quirk I enjoy in the end.
I've not played archlord but... uh... to be honest you're the first person to ever speak kindly of it that I've seen hellbilly :o
I'm hoping Carpe Diem might be good but it's hard to tell... it's the first MMO I'm aware of with a central protagonist who'll be played by a GM and who goes around razing the country side. Aim of the game is to either find the four swords and unite them to kill him or, if you're that way inclined, you can join his evil legion and try and overthrow the good king o.O
Could be great, could be ick... only time will tell.