All Posts by gestalt11

Originally posted by Locklain

How long do you people think you "deserve" for open beta?  Do you know what open beta is for?  It is not in place for the cheap bastards to have a free ride in a game and once its up to cancel and move on to the next free ride.  Open beta is there to stress test the servers before launch to make sure the servers can handle the amount of people.

The level cap that is in place also as a test strategy.  Narrow down the areas that people can be in will insure that there will be TONS in one place.  I have no idea why everyone wants to see what rank they can get to when the servers will be wiped anyway.

That is all well and fine.  But without other infomation and in the context of other marketing but no confirmation due to the NDA it is also a very good way to deceive and bait and switch people.

Many people also look at the Open Beta as a way to see if the Devs are really doing what they say they are doing. 

I have a low opinion of the Open Beta process.  But I also have a low opinion of the MMO reviewers.  We need look no farther than AoC's reviews to see just how badly badly off they are.

So we need some way to verify what the real state of the game is.  And the limits on the OB, however practical and reasonable, are also clear obstructions to this.

So we either need the NDA lifted or we need a longer and less restricted Open Beta.  Otherwise we are simply being chumps.

I do not really see why a long and unrestricted Open Beta is in Mythics business interests.  But they need to give us some way to vet things otherwise this is all just marketing sleight of hand.  And I post that with the intention of implying the sneakiness and misdirection that it does.

Their is an NDA.  There is purposely hidden and incomplete knowledge.  We have to use a functional approach.  If they walk like a duck and quack like a duck we must assume its a duck until they show us their duck costumes.

When they show me their duck costume then that will be fine.  Until then if they do weasel things then they are weasels.

I am 95% certain WAR is in a good state at the moment.  Far far better than AoC

However I would not recomend anyone make buying decisions based on that.  Make your decisions based on how they act.  And if they act like weasels, then make your decisions accordingly or else they will treat like the weasels they are.

If someone makes a decision to act like weasel then clearly they are capable of acting like a weasel.  Perhaps they only do it sometimes.  But when they do it to something important to you that is all that matters.

The current Open Beta stuff and MJ's previous posts about when NDA would be lifted are weaselish.  People should act accordingly.  Even if you like Mythic don't reward them for being weasels.  Don't write them off but don't let get away with crap either.

I say fine if they want to do what they are doing, but release the NDA.  Either release the NDA or make a long "Beta".  I have a low opinion of Open Betas so i say release the NDA.

If they don't then they are acting weasel-like.  And that will delay my purchase by at least a month.  I am no one's chump.

Originally posted by Myrdek

What the hell is that crap? 1 week??? Their probably doing this to not give time for people to cancel their preorder, this is complete crap.

I'm cancelling mine, no way I'm getting screwed like some were with Funcom

I don't think that is it.  I think its more marketing.  Probably the EA marketing guys convinced MJ that doing a short OB will be better since it will whet the appetite but not let people play the whole game for "free" and also generate buzz etc.

I just wish MJ had stuck to his guns and released the NDA with a reasonable amount of time to go.  I don't care if open beta is short, but I want to hear what the tester have to say.

I understand why they are doing it, but in this case the marketing weasels are a bad thing to listen to.  Don't release an MMO using weasel tactics.  It sets a bad precedent for later on.  They may get short term hype and impulse buys.  But in the end that is not worth losing the very good cache you would get if you released the NDA with a month to go in a show of confidence.

I knew this was going to happen with the Open Beta, since I had some inside info.  But I was hoping they would release the NDA with a month to go.

Look Open Beta are no longer about testing.  They are just a code word for "Preview event".  And that is what Mythic is doing.  A preview event.

Its the NDA that is important not open beta.  Open Beta don't mean poop.   I would like to hear what the real testers have to say,  and i would like to hear it right about now.

Originally posted by metalhead980

Henchmen need to be balanced so they don't overpower everything.

In GW they are far from balanced.

With my heroes and henchmen I get maybe two or three attacks off before they kill the whole damn pack.

It makes me feel like I'm not needed and totally kills the game for me.

It's like watching someone else play an MMO.

 

 

 

The higher level content in GW such as higher stuff in Realm of Torment or Eye of the north do not work this way.  Ever.

Stuff in realm of torment will rip you apart if you just let the NPCs attack willy nilly.

Originally posted by Ender4

I voted no, they should be pushing these games towards more grouping and a stronger community.  If people want a solo game let them go and find a single player game.

One could argue that anything that makes variable size groups possible and effective will actually increase grouping.

One of the biggest complaints about groups is you can't do anything until it FULLY formed.  If you can get 4 people do some stuff and recruit while you do those thing.  Essentially having 0% downtime then you will have alleviated one of the major problems of groups.

This is the fundamental problem with the forced grouping mentality.  They bleive you have to push and force people into doing things.  The other side of the coin is to make it as easy as possible to play in groups.  Geasing the wheels instead of pushing harder?

Which will work?  Well I hate forced grouping.  I don belong to a Union in real life and I don't want to be in one in a video game. 

Either way the debate between pushing people and greasing the wheels is a debate that won't be solved in this thread and is really debated ona number of fronts in real life as well.

Suffice it to say it is important to note that there is more than one way to have grouping be common.  In fact there are MMORPGs in existence right now that would tend to show that forced group is actually less effective at what you want, namely City of Heroes.

So the idea behind your goal is fine.  I am not sure its soemthing i agree with, but that is moot.  But I am actually fairly certain your implementation of that goal is far from optimal even though there are examples of it providing a solution that solution is far from optimal and also causes a number of social ills in games.

Originally posted by Wickersham

Originally posted by RedwoodSap

Don't like it and won't play games that use it. It's a way of circumventing grouping with real people and you should either group with real people or solo and thus rely only on your individual skills. Pets are ok but not squads of NPCs to replace real people.

I don't think it's a squad I think it's 1 NPC per person.  So you're pretty much a creature handler except you don't directly control the NPC, it just tags along and does what it does.

This seems to be a way for people who can't find a group or find the right people to be able to experience content.  Not everyone works 9-5 mon-fri some folks get home at 3 in the morning and work odd days thru the week.

I think it's a good thing, I doubt a group will choose a simpleton NPC over a human player.  I mean you'd still make LFG attempts and if you didn't get someone you'll take your minion.

So basically the hireling is plan B.

DDO is according to Dev posts in the DDO forums going to be 1 henchman per player with a max group size of 6.  Therefore the most hirelings any group could ever have is 3.

So a "soloer" could duo and a duo could have a 4 -man etc etc.

Some people say the hireling costs a feat.  I have not seen dev confimation on that and frankly I think it would be a terrible idea as feats are very hard to change and in short supply.  This would cause a division between people built to party and people built to have henchies and separate people into camps that do not mix.  Very bad idea if they implement it in that way, IMO.

GW, for those who do not know, can fill an entire group with henchies/heroes.

Originally posted by Sevensodd

This is what i'm talking about.   Stop making up peoples minds for them.  Lets them make their own decisions.  Lets say an ex-girlfriend of yours warned EVERY POSSIBLE FUTURE girlfriend to avoid you at all costs because your a loser that plays videos games and has no job (assuming you have had a girlfriend, if not just pretend what it would be like).  How is that fair?  Its not.  Just because some girl didn't like you doesn't mean some other girl won't be into you playing games all day and having no job.  Please if  you do not understand my metaphors, do not respond.

Do you really think everyone is that stupid.  If one girl does this and no other then she is probably a little nutty, if you have multiple women doing this then there is probably something wrong with you.

This sort of stuff happens all the time.  Making up people's minds for them indeed. 

Well I am off to practice my powers of mind control.

So according to this article:

http://www.massively.com/2008/08/16/massively-catches-up-with-dungeons-and-dragons-online-at-gen-con/

DDO is planning on adding a hireling feature to the game in tne next MOD probably by end of october.  Now for me this is great becasue frankly I wind of up canceling DDO whenever I get a char to about level 6 or 7 because I start to feel very restricted on what i can do.

But DDO is not the only game to have this.  Guild Wars has both hirelings and more customizable heroes.  Interestingly DDO and Guild Wars are also structured fairly similar (a meeting space with many instances).  One of the crituques of GW hirelings and especially heroes is, accodingly to some people, it killed grouping.  Hirelings were mediocre but heroes were fully customizable and some things, like minion masters, may actually simply been better as NPCs since its mostly repetitive action. 

Now I am not saying that argument is true and I have never seen reliable data to back that up.  And of course one could argue it just let people have better if smaller pickup groups.  I dunno you can make a lot of arguments.

One if the interesting aspects of this is that DDO instances reward the same whether one person or 6 people do it.  In GW having a hireling or heroes reduces your drops and splits up xp as does adding a real person.  Also DDO isntances are generally balanced for ~4 good players.  In general most of the content for both games are made to make progress through an instance with no help at all rather problematic.  GW of course released with hirelings  to make solo progress possible, DDO did not but has no penalty or reward that I know of that is analogous to how GW handles group size.

It is certainly fairly persuasive that there is potential for undermining grouping incentivies.  Of course maybe that doesn't matter.  Especially in DDO.  Anyone who plays that and is not a powergamer might love the chance to let the powergamers zerg an instance however they want so that they can play at their own pace rather than sprint through a new instance.  When you see how many of the instances wind up working and how some players play them very differently some of this kind of goes out the window.

According to this article:

http://www.massively.com/2008/08/16/massively-catches-up-with-dungeons-and-dragons-online-at-gen-con/

The information and opinion we have given you may be moot.  I am referring to the Hirelings feature planned for Mod 8.

I am not sure of the specifics (ie. how many each person and/or group can have) or whether they will actually be effective (ie. a rogue hireling disarming something on elite when the box is after the trap may not work). 

But at the very least  your 3 man group would turn into a 4 man and probably be able to cover the bases.  And if you could get a hireling each then you could probably just make a good rogue char, full in with something else for your friends depending on strategy and take a couple clerics and maybe a fighter and probably be pretty good for most non-exceptional things

I would like to get a survey of opinion on this matter.  Namely what people prefer as far as how resources for "special" attacks are managed.

There have been a number of variation on actual gameplay over the years in MMORPGs.  From FPS like RPG's in Tabula Rasa to colision based fighting in DDO or AoC or non-auto attack combat in City of heroes.

But what almost every one of these shares, outside of Guild Wars, is that the resource, mana/spell points/action points, are usually taken from a large pool that regenerates rather slowly in combat.  Some games such as LOTRO have added power management to a class (the loremaster can fill a blue bar like a healer can fill a green bar) and have a stats to increase In Combat Power Regen.  Some games neglect it completely.

For the most part most games give you a fairly static known quantity to work with and only a fight that lasts fairly long or chain combat initianations are particuarly important.  In older games like EQ and especially many MUDs, this was somewhat of a different proposition since power out of combat may have regenerated fairly slow.

For those of you who do not play GW or simply never played it much because it was too instanced or did not like it, the main diffrence is that GW classes have much smaller energy pools somewhere between 25 and 60 and most have around 30-40.  Instead of a large power pool to play with the regeneration is much faster.  Depending on class you have a native regen 2 or 3 or 4 energy per 3 seconds.  Thus many GW classes have 4 pips of energy regen and will regenerate to full  energy in roughly 10 seconds or so.

So what we have is basically a large static pool with minor regen versus a small dynamic pool with major regen.

What are the consequences? 

Well GW tends to be more about pacing than a static budget.  It also allows for recoveries.  In other words in say WoW if a druid plays an endurance game and wears you down to low power you are done basically out of gas and then he kills you at his leisure.  You basically blew out your tires and can't do much to change things if you failed to think ahead.  In GW you might be able to make a strategic withdrawal, recover fairly quickly and alter tactics.  Of course they might also have trapped you and use spike skills when you are low.

It also means that fights in GW can basically last for a very long time at a fairly furious pace if people are managing the pace of recovery smartly, if we disreagard that they are trying to kill each other.  Whereas in most MMOs, especially in PvP, there must be rest breaks and enforced lulls even for encounters that are meant to last a long time

So which is better?

I am sort of of the opinion that the large pools of mana seen in a game like WoW are sort of out dated.  Without the slow out of combat regen these large pools really do nothing except at the margins such as certain PvP fights or raids.  For the most part 50% of fighting you do in WoW or LOTRO it simply doesn't matter what your regen is or your total power pool is.  Not until you fight an elite or something  However slow out of combat regen is boring.  I always hated it in MUDs, I do not think its a good game mechanic to put back in place, although some people do like that.

On the other hand its easier for people to understand static pools with an obvious budget.  Whereas a rate and how to use that rate is a bit harder for people to grasp.

To the OP.  Funcom charges money for a "Free" trial.  They deserve everything they are getting.  Rarely have I seen a bigger bunch of weasels.

Depends.

If you knew exactly what you were doing and had tons of money you could actually solo a lot of things even on hard.  It might be rather slow in many cases though.

But basically around level 6 or 7 most normal players run in full groups.  You can do it with 3 or even one but you will need to have things down very well.

One nice thing about DDO is that player skill and knowledge really do count for alot.  One not so nice thing is that the way the instances are made is does not offer you much other than doing instances balacned for a well equipped well coordinated group of 4 or a group of 6 who may be kind of meh (ie. a pick up group).

I do not consider DDO small group firendly and certainly not anywhere near solo friendly.  If for no other reason than its simplt too slow and punishing to do it that way.

However the DDO instances are very fun and challenging when done solo or in small groups.  Its just not a great way to progress.  Not at all.

Originally posted by Spec0p

Originally posted by Bfighter

I still play for the PVP. Last night in Kheshatta saw  6-7 guilds with teams running around PVPing. Even a few running full raid groups. Alot of people left the game but it still feels active on Deathwhisper.

This is still fun for me.

 

It isn't the single server where that happens. Most of the haters are only into PvE, that is their main prob... Everyone complaining about the game, but still playing PvE on a game that was announced as PvP, fun.. lol

Well I've from multiple people, in person not just on these forums, that PvP is crap waht with gems and front loaded combos.

So I don't buy this one dimensional arguement.

In fact I would go so far as to say the only people playing are people who like PvP but have no idea what good PvP is like.  Because PvE is obviously problematic and all that is left in PvP is "Boom Headshot" gank squads.

What you call the old fun style is crap I hated since before EQ1 existed when I played MUDs.  I'm glad developers finally wised up.

It was especially frustrating since the MUD devs were like talking to walls on this issue.  Much like the people who are still proponent of that masochism they seem to believe subjective opinion is objective fact..

I don't like masochism.  Never have, never will.  Stop trying to claim its fun or superior or for the big boys or meaningful.

No soup for you!!

I was not playing CoH when ED happened but I have played it since before Inventions were added.

ED was the right call.  And was actually correctly named even.  The old system did actually make more "cookie cutter" choices.  In general the stacking of bonuses is extremely powerful gets out of hand very fast.  I  and others have gotten races and classes nerfed in MUDs utilizing this principle years before EQ or UO was released.    Its not really new or all that hidden.  Min/max and its power is widespread knowledge

I don't hold ED against the CoH devs and I do not think anyone really should.  However they do have a right to have been pissed that they didn't think of it before release.

The debates that go on in CoH that are tengential to ED about the "superness" of your character and just how powerful people who are playing super heroes should be are interesting.  But hopefully people realize that min/max gone crazy and every single person 6 slotting hasten was not good.

IO's are a much better thing.  The adds tons, just tons, more customization and also give very many pros and cons to various builds.  Yet at the same, within decent limits, they do still allow quite "super" things.  You can build a domintor for perma domination, but you do give up a lot of other stuff.

You do still see somewhat of the same problem in that EVERY dominator builds for perma-dom, but for the most part it still much better.  And other classes that do not completely center around one ability often wind up seeing a lot of different variation with interesting tradeoffs.  well in the case of typed defense the tradeoff sucks but that can be fixed with some "itemization".

So I think when you consider both ED and IO you see two sides of the issue done right.  Both allowing for "superness" with limits but also not letting things get completely out hand and everyone taking the same power and slotting exactly the same because its just too good.

And yeah for the most part AoC will need to do a similar thing.  But while ED was necessary and a good idea, IO took quite a number of issues to come out and without IO's ED was not a 100% solution to all concerns even if it was necessary.

WoW battleground PvP will always be vastly inferior to Guild Wars GvG due to the underlying infrastructure.  I consider WoW PvP well done but amateurish in comparison.

So clearly I am not a WoW PvP fan. 

But to say they have done nothing in the PvP area over 3 years is just flat out wrong.  Besides what are they supposed to do with say Warsong gulch?  Its just a capture the flag map. I mean that kind of stuff has been around for decades before WoW was even released.  Really not a lot they can do to the old stuff.  And clearly they have added some new stuff as well.

I don't think explanations will really help you definitely try the trial.  The trial is pretty good, gives almost a full capabilities.

The problem is that DDO is both fairly faithful but also a fairly wide departure since the combat is real time/collision based. 

Just how much people think it captures D&D varies widely.  For example playing a rogue and disarming traps and doing acrobatics is captured far better than any other MMO has ever even come close to ( except maybe Neocron ).

But its also mainly centered on dungeon crawls if you want a campaign style thing then it will be alot different.

Originally posted by slask777

Originally posted by gestalt11

Maybe we should run an experiment. 

 

We should report Slask and see if he gets banned.

 

If he doesn't then Admin is a hypocrite accoding to his own post in this very thread.  If he does then um well uh will you feel good about the state of things?  Because I won't.

 

Sorry Slask you get to be the sacrificial lamb.

 

hehe...go ahead. Wouldn't be the first time I got a ban around here First a tempban, but still...

Unfortunately I don't report people for personal attacks and refuse to do so.   I only report gold spammers.  So I guess we will never know.

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by Nadril

If it was just another shit game we'd get over it. However, this was a widely hyped up beyond extreme (tons of E3 awards) piece of shit game to where the company STILL PR hypes the game after its release.

Throw in lies and blatant incompetency (charging Credit cards early among other things) and you have a great recipe.

 

But in the end.... you should still get over it.  Game stinks, you don't like it... forget about it.  Let go of the hate, its only a 50 buck game, not the end of all your life's hopes, dreams and ambitions.

 

 

Doesn't work this way if people feel mislead or taken advantage of.  Then it becomes personal.  I am not excusing or advocating this, I am simply stating that is the way it works and has always worked for humans.

The its only $50 is fine if the game was just not their cup of tea or had well known and admitted bugs.  But once it crosses over into the realm that AoC has crossed it becomes a whole other kettle of fish.

So this quip doesn't really work in this case.  Because the source is not that the game stinks the source is that they feel personally wronged.