battlewraith
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Posts posted by battlewraith
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18 minutes ago, StarseedWarrior said:
Hard disagree ive watched this happen in countless mmos and people do leave in droves while they gain as massive amount of numbers they can you really do not know what your talking about with this. And it does effect the rest of the community that play mmos like this, city of heroes was never about pling anyway its a feature of homecoming its an mmo about the journey as much as the endgame. Also regardless of how someone wants to play an mmo it does not change the facts for example when people expect to solo and solo content to be catered to them when there are countless amazing single player games to be played.
Mmorpgs that arent manipulated for the most part keep the concept of an mmorpg to begin with its not an mmolite.
Bullshit. The biggest moment for me in terms of people leaving happened in the first year (2004). I had two mid sized sgs just basically get bored and quit because the content wasn't rolling out fast enough. Half of them went to WoW. I think that early period was the starkest decline for the population and there wasn't even AE yet. I don't know what "countless" means, but I played Age of Warhammer, WoW, Guild Wars 2, and SWTOR--and didn't see people leaving in droves because of pling in any of them.
Pling was frowned on during the duration of the subscription years--because they wanted people to have to grind slowly to keep them paying. The fact that it was there kept certain demographics (min/maxers, farmers, pvpers) from going to other games. If you completely got rid of it right now, I'm pretty sure it would take a sizeable chunk out of the around 11k daily players you have right now.
There are tons of great single player games out there. There are tons of great multiplayer games out there as well. Games that are not based on design decisions and graphics engines that are 20 years old. So it's really bizarre to have people argue that there is a proper "mmorpg concept" that should be followed here. It's a sandbox as much as anything else and that's why it still works.
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1 hour ago, ZemX said:
Just can't stop making shit up, can you? I didn't call it an "honored path." It's nothing more or less than MY advice. Plain and simple. If someone chooses to ignore it, how is it unreasonable of me to say that person who ignored my advice shouldn't come back to me with their complaints? Sounds pretty reasonable to me.
That was satire, not making shit up. I was mocking the judgmental tone of it.
Is your perspective on people taking your advice unreasonable? Not really.
What is?
1. Insisting on lumping all players into one box to fit how you feel people should learn the game. ["I disagree that it depends all that much on the player."]
2. Ignoring that these discussions about how people should learn or experience the game are centered on baseless platitudes that have been around since PLing became a thing (ie from the beginning). I've never seen any evidence that it causes people to get bored and leave the game faster or there is some sort of epidemic of bad teaming from people who pled to 50 and don't know how to play. Neither of which is a problem now that the game is f2p.
Now maybe you think I'm strawmanning you. You said people should spend "some" time playing.
Ok, how much time should they spend traditionally leveling. And how are you arriving at this amount?
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49 minutes ago, ZemX said:
Then knock yourself out, chief! But don't come to me asking how to get to Peregrine Island after that to join some team. Don't complain about not being able to keep up with that team moving through the mission. Don't, in fact, complain about anything you could have learned for yourself quite simply. You followed someone else's advice. Ask them. Choice was yours... and so are the consequences.
Yes, the consequences. The utter ruin that will befall someone if they stray from the honored path. The fact that people like you will turn their back on them...
Oh well? If someone asks me a question, I just answer it. If a newly pled 50 asked me what to do, I'd probably ask them what they wanted to do and give them some tips. If someone on a pickup team dies, i rezz them. If they keep getting killed, I maybe keep an eye on them and try to stop that from happening. Probably the worst case scenario is that they would friend me and then later I would forget who they were or something.
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5 minutes ago, ZemX said:
Wrong. But thanks for illustrating how this thread became such a mess of strawman arguments by... immediately employing another strawman.
It's not an argument, just an impression based on the assumptions you seemed to be feeding into that post. The simple answer to your question-- "is it in the best interests of new players to do X" -- is that it depends on the player. You want to picture people that need your wisdom--knock yourself out.
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24 minutes ago, ZemX said:
I don't know why this thread is such a mess of strawman bullshit arguments. It's really a very simple question: Do you think it's in a new player's best interests to be carried to 50 on their first toon and THEN try to figure out the game -or- should they try actively playing first to see if they like it and maybe learn something on their own first?
I suspect you can't relate some of the perspectives in this thread because you assume some kind of blank slate player that somehow hears about this game and just picks it up with no preconceptions.
I don't. I think people like that do start the game but are brought in by friends or family--so they have some sort of mentorship/help. My image of somebody seeking out and starting a 20 year old MMO on their own is that this person is a gamer, has played a variety of games, and most likely understand what drives MMOs-- grinding resources. That person might know, before they even roll a character, they they want a maxed out character that will be able to efficiently grind resources for other characters/objectives/etc. It's in that person's best interests to cut out the grind and let them go straight to what they actually want to do. I think the "learn after you're 50" part would be pretty trivial. At that point, they may or may not be interested in the 1-50 leveling content.
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6 hours ago, Apogee said:
On a more important and off topic note, how is the new set? Are you done building Barad-Dur?
It just came in the mail a few days ago. We have Orthanc and my wife has been waiting like 10 years to get a Barad-Dur (wtf Lego?), so she's going to have the building be a deliberately slow process. The only thing assembled so far is the fell beast.
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2 hours ago, tidge said:
It's the doubling down, with no introspection, and a hint of "I'm just saying..." that I felt warranted it. Advocating for segregation into "Like Minded" groups sealed the deal.
Yeah the rationale behind it doesn't matter. I don't care about downvotes in a discussion. So to hear someone say "I spared you" a downvote, like it's the scarlet letter or something, is just funny.
Also,
HAIL SATAN!
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15 minutes ago, Neiska said:
Because I was mostly wondering if it was possible? I replied to someone else that I don't expect such a thing to actually come to pass or be a viable solution.
Looks like you did not get spared a second time, lol.
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12 minutes ago, cranebump said:
While I find this an apt description of the situation, I'd like to point out that the youngest Boomers would be around 62 years old. So I don't think all of the "lazy kids" comments come from a swath of sextagenerians (and older) playing this game, mainly because I'm thinking the average age here has got to be lower than that. Surely we can spread some of this "get off my lawn!" love around (you out there, Gen X)?:-)
In all seriousness, though, I guess my question is whether "where it all leads" is only about reaching Incarnate status. If there are multiple modes and approaches to play, then wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that there are also multiple "end points?"
Mainly, though, there's this: skipping straight to 50 feels a like fast forwarding to the end of Citizen Kane. You know what Rosebud is, but you have no idea what that means. Not the best analogy, I suppose, but, in keeping with it, you'd then find yourself with a gillion questions, some of which people who've watched the movie all the way through may or may not answer. You'll also find yourself being rudely told to go back and watch the damned thing.
I think you've just caused yourself more frustration doing it that way. But, hey--you saved yourself 1 hour and 56 minutes, so...grats.
It's more about a boomer state of mind. I expect that most of the routine posters here are GenX or millenials, but a lot of the nostalgia-driven discussions here remind me of those "don't become your parents" Geico ads.
For a lot of people that are still playing this game, it is something of a masterpiece. I'm not here to dispute that. But I think there is a problem when those people insist that the things that they adore about it are THE defining features the new players should be coached to recognize. Citizen Kane was remarkable for it's artful use of a bunch of, for the time, non standard storytelling and cinematic techniques. Those techniques are now commonplace in media. It's entirely possible that contemporary viewers would simply find it boring and want their time back. Likewise, new gamers might have an interest in some aspect of the superhero gamplay but not care about the lowbie grind, or the lore.
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Typical Chat you see in this game:
AE farm:
"Thanks for the invite!"
"Reset"
PI +4 radios:
"Thanks for the invite"
Mission ends. Waits for next waypoint.
BAF
"PUSH THE BUTTON!"
"Boobs!"
"team 1 go N" etc.
"Watch the health!"
"Stay on team if you want to go again."
Granted the BAF comments are truly Shakespearian compared to a farm.
A so-called AE baby needs to understand how teams work. How entering a mission or trial works. How to qualify for participating in certain things (e.g having an alpha slot unlocked).
And they need to be able to read chat and follow simple instructions (something traditional players are often bad at).
If they can do these things, it really does not matter if they don't understand their powers or how the combat mechanics work. The farmer kills everything. The radio team nukes stuff before you can even get a hit in. The roided out BAF participants are in danger of, at most, failing to get a badge.
The game is not hard. The learning curve is deep because the layers of ad hoc noodley game from different eras of development. Aesthetics and writing that hit hard in the early 2000s probably doesn't have the same effect on a contemporary audience 20 years later. The (dare I say it) boomer take on this is the same as it was at the beginning--people that want to skip content are lazy kids that will just wander in and get bored and cause irritations and then leave. I'm going to say the opposite--people come in and see a quaint game that is obviously a grindfest at the core. And they quite reasonably want to see where it all leads before committing a serious chunk of their leisure time to engaging with it.
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I remember the first time I encountered a rikti in a mission. "wtf is that?"
I didn't know what I was doing, didn't understand defense mechanics, damage types, took the power descriptions seriously, etc.
So I fought this alien and lost.
I then made a solemn vow: I would learn to play better. I would get more experience, powers, enhancements.
I would improve, and then I would come back and have the satisfaction of....
--nope. I just got a bunch of inspirations, popped them and kicked it's ass.
But I'll be damned if I sit here idly in the year of our lord 2024 watching these damned filthy farmers and their "gimme gimme gimme culture" rob new people of the experience of using standard game mechanics to cheese encounters. The long winding, tab-targetting road of vicarious heroism should not be sullied in this way!
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I call bullshit on the whole "farmers ruining the enjoyment of a new player's game" thing. You roll a character, and start playing the normal way. If that was really an enjoyable progression, then people wouldn't be tempted to get pled on a farm right? Except that has always been the case--ever since the beginning there have always been people looking to skip the grind of killing X number of skulls, thousands of clockwork in a tf, or whatever. It was not at all uncommon to just grind xp by street sweeping.
But what happens if I get a 50 right away? My enjoyment of the game is ruined because lvl 50 content is boring? lol.
I could always just roll a new lowbie character and have that wonderful slow-grind experience any time I want right? Or exemplar down?
If getting experience of the late game destroys the enjoyment of the early game--that doesn't speak well of the quality of the experience of the early game.
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Lol maybe I'm on the wrong server. All they seem to talk about on excelsior lately is some Boss Baby movie and references to pandas.
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Or maybe the problem doesn't have anything to do with learning the game. It's pretty straightforward to roll a character, pop into Atlas, run up to some purse snatcher, maybe defeat a few of them, and then gas out. You have to take a knee to get end and health back. And this state of affairs will pretty much continue until you can grind enough resources to make a build that will permit continual activity. Imagine a version of Mario Kart where you had to stop and gas up the cart every 40 seconds.
And what do you do in the meantime? Defeat thousands of mobs in extremely repetitive encounters in order to follow some narrative threads. Can't imagine why anyone would want to skip any of that.
This game is loaded with early 2000s game design-isms. It could be that new players recognize that MMOs are basically about communal grinding and don't want to go through a tedious asthma-attack simulator to get to what are actually the core activities for most players. The failure, if anything, is the inability to see that.
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I just hope something is done...um...immediately. After 20 years of absolute ruthless negligence it really feels like the hammer could fall any second now.
And this fragile dreamworld-- this poetic house of cards if you will -- could all come tumbling down.
And for what?
The lack of a sign.
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This thread reads like a bunch of retirees having a debate at their condo association meeting.
1. Someone let their dog poop on my lawn, it's clearly against the bylaws!
2. What do you want us to do about it?
3. PUT A SIGN THERE SO THAT THEY KNOW IT'S WRONG!
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Moderation in all things people.
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I watched a video titled "Maximus has the Idiot Savant perk" and it made a lot of sense. Viewing his character in light of that playstyle really him click with me a lot more lol.
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"At some point, eventually, in the fullness of time"-- expressed on the forums of a 2 decades old MMO. lol.
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58 minutes ago, sbloyd said:
It's close to the classic blue-and-orange complementary colour scheme!
Yeah in theory. In practice it doesn't necessarily work out that way. Especially with different types of media.
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3 hours ago, Questor said:
I did this commission of the Clockwork King awhile ago. It was drawn on 9x12 tan toned art paper and colored using a combination of Copic markers and colored pencils.
Very cool! It's not an obvious color combo to me, but that blue looks good against the tan.
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My understanding is that the Wachowski's didn't even want to do the fourth movie but had to in order to keep some sort of creative control over the series. I think their goal for it was to basically undo the heroic arc of the first film so that the studio wouldn't keep making more. Very disappointing that it didn't work out that way.
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23 minutes ago, sbloyd said:
I look at it similar to the shift when photography became a thing and artists revolted against it. Artists shifted and new styles became prominent, and then the landscape settled again with photography being another tool in the artists' kit.
I've been playing with Midjourney for about a year. It's ridiculous how much more advanced it's gotten in a year. They now have a function for consistent characters that works pretty well. I don't know where things will lead with the technology, but it would not be implausible to think that within 5 years ALL digital art production involves AI and that some things like traditional polygonal modeling and rendering become niche if not outright obsolete.
I think what's difficult for people to get at this stage is that this technology produces great results very quickly and very cheaply (in terms of skill required). We're still in a stage were it makes noticeable mistakes, but that should go away relatively soon. So you will have a technology that can produce professional quality results at lightning speed. Any user will be able to produce more content in a month than a conventional artist would be able to in a year. There's speculation in AI circles that when things reach this state there will be a general shift away from digital work being perceived as art. "Artists" will be people making things by hand.
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1 hour ago, EnnVee said:
I will take your Hand-Crafted art over AI stuff ANY DAY OF THE WEEK !!!
❤️
Thanks! Glad to hear it!
Taming Leaching
in Suggestions & Feedback
Posted
This is a game. In order to keep people paying $15 a month, there was a variety of gameplay options added to grind for things.
I don't know in what context Matt said "players are always going to find a way to get as much as they can with as little time investment as possible" but to see someone quote that and then start talking about people acting badly is hilarious. What Matt is describing there is a good capitalist. Or simply anyone who values their time. If you're a developer for an MMO and that is some sort of major revelation--maybe you should be working on a more linear, story driven sort of game?
Maybe after all these years the solution to the concerns about things like leaching is for a portion of the Homecoming budget to be spent on mailing Xanax to the people who can't seem to let things go.