Profile: heartless
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• • Russia plans to deploy missiles near the Polish border

  • Originally posted by qazyman
    

    I'm not sure what Russia deploying missiles on it's own soil has to do with anything, but I do think Russia stands as a shining example of just how corrupt and non-representative a government can become. At this point, it's hard to tell the difference between government and organized crime.

     

    Yes, because US plans of putting an anti-nuclear missile defense platform in Poland to counter "Iran" has nothing to do with this, right?

    Before pointing fingers at Russia and their corrupt government, take a look at your own war mongering government which goes out of it's way to instigate another Cold War.

    Unlike Bush and Co. Putin and Medvedev are actually trying to raise Russia out of the rubble. While the US is heading there fast.

    I'm tired of this double standard. US plans to put missiles in Russia's backyard and it's all good. Russia retaliates by moving missiles on their land makes for a corrupt government.

  • Posted: 11/06/08 1:43 AM
    General Discussion
• • Accommodating Solo'ers is helping ruin MMO's

  • Originally posted by Aetherial
    

    Originally posted by heartless
    

    Going by your logic, all single player games are extremely easy because they are meant to be played solo.

    One doesn't cause the other. The easy game play is a design decision by the dev team, just like the ability to solo in the game.

    
     

    Single player games often (not always) have more complex combat nechanics. Therefore, you can "learn" over time how to beat a MOB as a single player.

    When there actually *is* combat complexity (doesn't seem to be there until the end-game), it is usually a product of strategy, rather than individuals "fighting better". This means that MMO's as they stand now, tend to have MOBs that you can defeat, or you can't. You can practice for the next 100 years, and you still won't be able to defeat them. Obviously *some* MOBS are close, so that you may take a few tries, and you may only beat it half the time, but that is unusual.

    I agree to some extent that easy game play is a decision separate from soloing. I do think though that the biggest reason for easy game play is to accommodate soloing.

     

    I think that it all comes down to developers inability to move away from the turn based combat of MMOs. If combat was dependent more on player skill rather than the character skill and hidden dice rolls, it would be much easier to design a game which would be equaly hard for both solo and group players.

    That's just my opinion. Otherwise, scaling instances depending on group size is the best way to go. This way you can keep it equally hard for solo and group players.

  • Posted: 11/04/08 12:43 PM
    General Discussion
• • Accommodating Solo'ers is helping ruin MMO's

  • Originally posted by Aetherial
    

    Originally posted by zaxxon23
    

    SWG, commonly known as a great in-depth mmo was a very solo friendly game.  I knew a guy who soloed kryats all day and had a blast every moment.  Yet you can't solo a damn thing worthwhile in wow.  It seems quite clear to me that your argument is not supported by the facts, because you cannot prove the correlation between soloing and "bad" mmos.  What is clear is that mmos are becoming much more shallow, with far less crafting, housing, and world size, things that I find important to a good mmo world.  Funny enough, all of those factors support a more solo-friendly type of game.  See, being forced to raid with a bunch of nincompoops is not what most people find fun.  As so many people here say, we LIKE TO GROUP, but at our own pace and not as a requirement to progress.  Perhaps if the op can think outside of the box he'll figure this part out.  We've only been saying it for years.

     

    
     

    I have figured out what you are saying already.

    You have failed to notice or consider the thought progression here.

    I believe that, creating a game to accommodate soloing to max level, makes the game too easy. It makes groups redundant. People choose the path of least resistance and therefore they solo, and the feel of being in a world fades away.

    I can log in to an MMO now, play for 8 hours, and never say a word to anyone. Hell, even if I DO group up, we might not say a word. There is no need, the game is too painfully easy. We just run around and kill everything in sight.

     

    Going by your logic, all single player games are extremely easy because they are meant to be played solo.

    One doesn't cause the other. The easy game play is a design decision by the dev team, just like the ability to solo in the game.

  • Posted: 11/04/08 10:17 AM
    General Discussion
• • You whine about the lack of new, but, beg for same old, same old...

  • Originally posted by FreddyNoNose
    

    Originally posted by Thoric485
    

    When people say they want UO and EQ days back they don't mean they want exact copies of those games now. They just want that feeling - the feeling that you are participating in the shaping of a virtual world, and not playing a online arcade game with added grind.

    
     

    But can they be sure those are the feelings and not feelings mixed in with being in your first mmorpg?  You can't recreate that first game feeling.

     

    That's a very good point and I honestly do not know the answer to that. What I do know is that 10 years ago, UO offered options unmatched by most modern MMOs. So maybe it's that first MMO feeling of that clouds my judgement or maybe it's the fact that most new MMOs just do not offer the depth and the freedom I've come to love.

  • Posted: 11/04/08 9:59 AM
    General Discussion
• • Accommodating Solo'ers is helping ruin MMO's

  • Originally posted by Aetherial
    

    (Title paraphrased from someone else in another thread)

    Bottom line...

    In order to make a game solo-friendly, you have to make it easy. (Please don't insult us by claiming your 1337 game play is what allows you to solo ALL recently released MMO's... they are easy, stupidly easy, period.)

    If it is easy, it is no challenge for a group. There is no need to play well, no need to coordinate, it gets very stale, very fast...

    which leads people to solo. Why bother grouping.

    In other words, if you *can* solo, you will. The social aspect of the MMO is severely diminished.

    Thus, IMO, soloing is killing MMO's.

    It should be *possible*, but only barely, with only limited options to do so.

     

    I order to make the game solo-friendly you need to create challenges for each class.

    As for the rest of your post, it's complete rubbish. UO was probably one of the most solo-friendly games out there and yet it had a very strong community. And it's still going now, 10 years after it was released.

    Developers erroneously use forced grouping as a way to get people to socialize. Interestingly enough, most of the people I ever grouped with in all the MMOs I've ever played, I would not want to group with ever again. So is forced grouping really bringing the community together? My opinion is that it tends to backfire and force people to actually seek viable solo options.

    A much better way to bring the community of an MMO together, is to offer community tools. Housing, player towns, player made quests and events. A way for players to interact with each other outside of fighting and combat.

    Forced grouping is a cheap tactic which made sense in a PnP Dungeons and Dragons game because the whole concept revolves around a group of individuals sitting around a table "adventuring" together, at the same time. In an MMO where people are constantly logging in and out, it's not a very good option. That is not to say that developers need to do away with grouping all together. It's a viable play style that needs to be supported but making it a be all end all of an MMO is definitly the wrong way to go.

  • Posted: 11/03/08 8:32 PM
    General Discussion