All Posts by Kez95

Originally posted by dsulli1410

Virtual Skinner's Box

Exactly.  People who are interested in why people enjoy  clicking on buttons over and over and over should study B. F. Skinner and operant conditioning.

Originally posted by Felyza

The game was very fun for the first month, was dragging by month 2, and now that I'm about to hit the 3 month mark, I'm shopping for a new time-waster.

This was my finding also.  Actually, this has been my finding on 4 out of every 5 MMORPGs I have played.  The exceptions being those that weren't fun even for a month.

The problem with quality MMORPGs is content, specifically lack thereof.  The next-gen MMORPG will have incredibly powerful, fun, easy to use tools that will allow its customers to create and model mobs, dungeons, item, trees, shrubs, etc., and upload them to the world.  The balancing would be done by the developers but a constant flow of new content would be neverending. 

For example, a talented artist could fully render in 3D a creature and upload it with the tools provided.  The community could vote on its quality and the best ones would get in the game.  That person would receive 2 months free play time, get to name the mob, and possibly other rewards.  The devs role would be to put attributes to that mob (strong, resistent to fire, level 30-31, social, drop table, etc.) and  place it in the world.

Other people could make dungeons, outdoor areas, towers, whatever, using the powerful tools.  Others could create and upload audio, both music and sound effects.  This is how I envision future, successful MMORPGs because people, like me at least, aren't going to grind garbage and pay for it any longer.

The most important dynamic type of gameplay that I'd like to see is this: I just finished a quest and I'm running back to the questgiver in a town or village.  I find out as I approach that the town is being ransacked by some evil mobs, and as I go to the questgiver find out that he's dead and/or on his dieing breath with some new quest and it's all completely random due to the attack.  The town is literally falling apart and parts of buildings are flying around and I'm trying to get the heck outta town and avoid / kill the mobs / save the quest giver's family, etc.  Other players are running around going "what the heck is going on?", a true feeling of dynamic curiousity mixed with panic.

In the following weeks the townspeople start visibly rebuilding and there are new quests to help them, etc.  This would require a huge amount of content coding and is why I've never seen it done very often if ever.

A few weeks later the town is rebuilt but now there's some evil mayor who is in control and more quests to do for the townsfolk and/or the mayor.  You could get a quest and be the first person to poison the mayor secretly and change the town forever, or he catches you and you can never get back in the city because the guards know you and kill on sight.

A few weeks later a grand dragon flies by and fries half the town, etc.  You get the idea.  Random events that change the landscape, NPCs, and quests in ways that even a newbie would go "whoa what the heck is going on here" while a bunch of veterans show up and do fun, challenging stuff also.  Massive NPCs would be focused on players and the town guards their level so newbies wouldn't get slaughtered at every event and have no fun.

On one server, the town you grew up in would be completely in ruins while on another would be just fine, and on another, infested with demons that just don't seem to go away.

I love the concept of player run cities with walls, gates, trainers and shops.  The problem that  I saw in Shadowbane is that you'd put a lot of time into building up your city with your friends and then some huge guild would just destroy it all. So in terms of membership, and making money off your MMORPG, if your entire guild just lost everything but the gear on their back, you can bet that some people, maybe even a ton of them would just quit, losing you lots of customers.

Also, those battles in Shadowbane were fun but massively laggy, so your engine would need to handle 500 people at once and so far, I don't know of any game that can do that well at all in one single battle.

Maybe if someone took your city you'd still keep it, but pay heavy taxes to the conqueror or something similar.  At some point, they could rebel and force the conquerors to fight now or lose their hold.  Also, the bigger a guild gets conquering others, the more random NPC attacks it would have, giving the conquered places a chance to rebel while the huge guild is busy with the sudden infestation of a thousand demons rampaging it's main castle, etc. 

There would need to be many mechanisms to help balance the game or the big guild who has a stranglehold on the best resources will ruin the game for most.  Spying, scouting, diplomacy, trading, and secret attacks would need to play a major part and a lot of people really enjoy doing that instead of just grinding mobs.

I like the concept, they are fun ideas, but the problems as I see them are

(1) Lag, if you are trying to react to what your opponent is doing, only the most lag free people will play the game, others will just die constantly and quit.  The way to solve this is to have slower animations that have more of a window to react to.  This too however would cause a lot of people to quit because combat is too slow or "it's all just about countering my enemy" or "it's just dumb luck, you chose left and I chose block middle."

(2) Movement.  Remember in PvP people don't just stand there, they are moving all around holding down their forward key and tapping strafe, left, right, jumping, turning, controlling the camera, etc.  So if they are holding down at least one key and have their fingers ready to move other directions, it's not easy for most people to then try and hit one of 6 or 8 other keys for a specific area to attack.  The solution to this would be a complex mouse or joystick that had many buttons set up nicely for this kind of game, but most computer users don't want to go buy more stuff.  So if you could make the left mouse button do one kind of attack (or left side), and the right do another (right side), then have some toggle key for high/low and parry/attack it might be ok but pretty limited due to controlling movement / targeting / camera / specific attack areas / specialized skills all at once.

It is possible to make quests different each time, but requires lots of extra code for each individual quest and that takes precious developer time.  It seems like developers get a quest done, make sure it is balanced and bug free, and move on, not much else.  Games boast the number of quests they have and are choosing quantity over quality.

I agree with previous posts, that the biggest problem is the land grab / land space issue.  I have played at the initial start of tale 3 and it was fun because my guild knew where to go and what to do, right away.  After we were set up, however, people came near us and it was impossible to expand and the limited resources were being overused.

I have also played in the middle of tale 2 and it was hell.  Everyone seemed helpful, but if you build anything near them they start freaking out.  Simple resources are plentiful but important ones are not, and there is a definite "get out of here" attititude among I would say 90% of the people.

People invest hundreds of hours clicking on stuff so when you come by threatening "their" space they naturally get upset.  Also, travel in this game is not fast unless you skill up and get travel skills and whatnot, which take time.  So, the closer you are to the cities, schools, and universities, the less travel, but of course there are tons more people competing over the space.  Therefore, the best spots with limited people are the ones very far from everyone else and you spend hours traveling.  Yes, hours, not minutes.

I would suggest anyone wanting to play to visit their forums and figure out when the next server wipe / telling is going to be so you can hook up with a group of people and go to a planned location on day 1.

The problem with MMORPGs, at least for veterans, is that we are tired of the same old formula.  The only way to overcome burnout and the feelings of   "been there, done that"  is to have new playstyles,  interesting and different content, and polish.  These things cost millions of dollars and require extremely talented people. 

It's only a matter of time until the majority of MMORPG players become veterans and refuse to do the same things they have already been doing.  Future MMORPGs in my opinion will be mostly complete failures and companies will not continue to dump millions on them as a result.  While this is good news for the existing, high subscriber games because the future holds few competitors, it's bad news for the genre.

Though it's not 3D like EnB was, www.pardus.at is a fun browser based space game based on action points rather than playing for 24 hours a day.

I too had a lot of fun with EnB, but haven't found any 3D space game yet that I have liked.  I would think if someone did a space setting not like Eve or SWG, it would make for a great MMORPG.

I vote for "none of the above"

MMO boredom for me is having played them now for about 10 years, seeing some decent innovations, but nothing really new.  The developers these days just look for clever ways to create time sinks and money sinks so you'll keep playing.

They are the same old pattern, some polished, some not.  Adding one dungeon every 3 months isn't enough new content to keep me coming back, and real content is what takes tons of cash and lots of designers, artists, etc, which is why they just try to make you do the same content over and over and give you rewards to give you the illusion that it's fun.

Originally posted by Sawtooth

All of my friends who've quit and managed to stick to it have told me they develop a new habit to replace the smoking. What you do with gum is a perfect example. I remember reading some wierd psychological thing about it, transfering emotions and cravings from something harmful to something benign.

These are my thoughts also.  Find something to replace your addiction, but make sure it's something that won't cause other problems.  If you like any healthy foods like carrots, apples, bananas, etc. then just make sure your place has always got some stocked to keep you busy.  Gum is good but aspartame and splenda have their own medical issues for some people.

Best of luck to you.

I too found it to be well made and well polished after 2 years, but become easily and quickly bored.  I think anyone who has played lots of MMORPGs before will recognize EQ2's quality, but at the same time realize it is more of the same stuff.  I tried nearly every class and their skills are very similar, in terms of cooldowns and button mashing.

MMORPGs are getting more polished, but gameplay needs to be radically improved somehow to keep me playing.

Originally posted by Draenor

How to be good with Protoss:

...

6: create second gateway and continue to make zealots until you have around 20 zealots

I have never lost when doing this...my record stood at 210 wins and 20 losses...none of those 20 were incurred while using this strategy.

Yeah I lost a lot to mass zealots until I learned that firebats waste them.  First marine goes to scout, if massing zealots, then make firebats.  10 firebats kill 10 zealots with only 3-4 losses.  Not sure about 20 zealots, people usually attacked me with 10-12.

Originally posted by Fugnudz
You guys can mark your calendars all you want, but I have a feeling that on May 19th, Blizzard is not going to be announcing anything about Starcraft, but will tell the world they just purchased Vanguard from Sony.

As a Tinker, for Jewelcrafting, my stuff sells quick and for decent profit.  I focus on just the purple stuff and I set a very reasonable buyout price - people don't want to wait 2 days to wear something, they may outlevel it by then.  I bid on all the decently priced trophy stuff, and when I get 20 or so, I go make purples, and end up with about 10 of them.  My stuff is gone in an hour usually, so you can make decent cash doing that.

The crafting process itself is pretty simple for jewelcrafting.  I wish there was more talent required, or some mini-game or something, but not as much as EQ2 because that was a huge time-sink.

I think it gets a good rating because it had a nice launch, the game engine is solid and polished, the scenery is at worst adequate but at best, in some spots, is really nice.  Questplay is typical, but there are some new quests with cut-scenes and whatnot that are very nice.  The deed & trait system has kept me doing things I normally wouldn't bother doing, and I think this is helping to keep people addicted.

In short, it is "new and different" (but not really) with a solid game engine.  It is much more fun that starting yet another EQ2 character (I had several) or another WoW character (I had several), because it is "new".  I don't want to do the Barrens again or Ashenvale forest or whatever.  Everything in other games I have already done, so having a new game to play with, to start over from scratch, and to explore a new world with, is fun for many people like me.  It's not earth-shattering just fresh.

Originally posted by Hairysun

LOTRO has an absolutely fantastic foundation for the devs to work with. One of the best as of late, IMO.

After a week of playing, this is how I see it also.  There is nothing in the game mechanics, camera control, login, lag, graphics, sound, etc. that is frustrating or annoying.  All the windows, LFG, info screens, character, bags, etc. are nice and complete.  The UI can be completely customized but so far I'm happy with it without changing or moving anything.  The AH, bank, trainers, vendors, crafting, etc. seem to be just fine.  Of course they can be improved, but they work great.

The point is, instead of the programmers spending their time fixing crap that should already be in the game, they can instead work on improving gameplay and content/quests.

Good crafting I think is important for a successful MMORPG, because it keeps people paying the monthly fees.  The perfect system for me would be one where the items decay and/or are soulbound, and that the best items require master craftsmen.

For example, I was a 300 tailor in wow, and 16 slot bags took a ton of materials to make, but you could buy 16 slot bags 10 times easier because they dropped off of monsters.  The system should be: take the 16 slot bag that dropped, give it to a master tailor, and he can improve it to 18 slots.  The 18 slot bag would then be the very best bag in the game, and no 18 slot bags drop, ever.  WoW has since made changes, but not enough.