You Guys Should Be More Thankful
Nefilim
Join Date: 2003-08-09 Member: 19222Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2003-08-09 Member: 19222Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">Revelations after playing SWG</div> Sony Online Entertainment is a massive corporation capable of spewing millions of dollars into their games. My friend bought me Star Wars Galaxy the other day and asked me to try it out - and so I did.
This game costs $50, and an additional $15 every month. They make a huge revenue on it, and spent a couple million creating this game, but NS still blows it out of the water.
I suggest that everyone who bad-mouthes the NS devs for "making the game **** in 2.0" should go try one of these high-profit games out. I'm talking about games like Everquest, Planetside, and other games created to take your dollar. These games just lack the genuine innovation and support that most free games possess.
Here's a post I made on a gaming forum after playing SWG so you guys will understand what I'm talking about:
------------------------------------------------------------------
My friend bought Star Wars Galaxy for me... I told him that I didn't want to play that ****, as I scented "bad" all over it, but he insisted that I get it. We agreed that he would cover the charges if I didn't like it, and if I did like it - I would pay him the $40 back for buying me the game.
So here's the basis of the game - run around a lot. He claimed it didn't get redundant, and in some senses it isn't. There -is- a lot of **** you can do, but if you want to be good at anything, be prepared to do the same **** over and over and over again to gain experience. Typically, the point of the game is to do quests and gain credits while steadily repeating the commands over and over again to gain experience in your professions. If you're a fighter class, you fight a lot. If you're a healer, you heal a lot. If you're a dancer, you dance a lot.
One of the fine points of this game is character customization. It's true - you have a lot of customization. But, most of the tweakable customizations are just that - tweaks. You will find that most everyone is composed of the following formula:
If a male: Well muscled, lean, tall, and white or with a tan.
If a female: Small, large breasted, lean, and white or with a tan.
Rarely do you see people with freckles or other "nonattractive" things. Then you have options for how you look by hairstyle and clothes... but the choices are like playing The Sims with a few expansion packs. It may seem quite varied at first, but once you've seen all the haircuts, swords, articles of clothing, and the such - it really loses this quality. Everyone starts to look the same, only with different shades of it.
However, you DO have a whole lot of ways to customize what your character is. There's like 30 classes with a ton of abilities per each class, and you can learn several things from several classes. However, if you want to be advanced with anything, you're going to be greatly disappointed. Everything beyond the base classes require a tremendous amount of tedious levelling and skill spamming. You seriously have to put in at least a thousand hours of time to make a complete character, and a majority of those hours are going to be spent doing the same things a lot. At least you can work on several professions at the same time... when I tired of crafting items as an artisan, I would go out and wack things with my sword as a brawler, then go back to crafting.
Finally - terrible, terrible coding. I'm running one of the best machines money can buy right now, and I lag like totally crap when I walk into cities. The graphics aren't anything spectatular - they're on the same level as Tribes 2 or Unreal Tournament... all of the structures are low-poly, and the characters have a decent poly-count, but not enough to cause a severe drop in framerates when walking into a room with eight people. There's also an innumerous amount of bugs. These are HUGE bugs that obstruct gameplay like not being able to walk into your own god damned house after walking for ten real life minutes from the city. For three years of development, the game should at least be a) bug free, or B) have great framerates.
So, I was trying to give my opinion of the game to my friend... It takes way too much time (something I certainly don't have a lot of) to get anything done, there's almost no action, and it costs way too much money for not having anything to offer. This is $15 a month for a game where you kill time instead of thoroughly enjoying it.
So these are the arguements he brought up. I post this thread here because these arguements seem to be brought up by many MMORPG addicts:
Argument) The servers are down a lot because they're putting new stuff in the game!
Rebuttal) Those are bug fixes for bugs that shouldn't be there after years of development.
Argument) They have said they're putting cool things in like jetbikes, player-run cities, and spacecrafts.
Rebuttal) They also said that you need to pay $15/month for every month that you spend waiting for this **** to be implemented. You'll have to spend $220 on a game before it ever gets cool.
Argument) You have to understand that the game is running a million things at once while you're playing, so you should expect to have a bit of lag.
Rebuttal) This is no new concept. Some of the first online games were "MMORPGs," but they were called MUDs. DikuMUD has been around since the early 80's. Most MUDs with 30 players can be hosted on a 400Mhz machine running on a modem with a capped upload speed of 15k/sec. Being that we're paying $15 for a game, I expect the servers to be ridiculously fast - enough to load **** up without freezing because several players walked in front of my field of view at the same time.
Argument) The graphics are outstanding! Of course you can expect that you'll have bad framerates.
Rebuttal) The graphics are so-so. The reason they're so pretty is because of high-res textures. If you can count the polygons on structures in a game, then that means there was very little effort put into the graphics. The over-use of textures means you're going to have a terrible loss in speed, whereas this same graphical quality could have been achieved by several other means of design, like bump mapping. The creators were too lazy when it came to putting much detail into the game objects, so they slapped on high-res, CPU/RAM-**** textures in to appease the audience of ignorant players who're running $3k machines from Compaq will think "ooh pretty" and not really think about how much more the game could be optimized.
Argument) You have to expect problems with these games. They're new and untested, which means bugs. They need a lot of money to fix these bugs!
Rebuttal) See my original point. DikuMUD has been doing it forever with very few problems. All these guys are doing is adding a graphical interface to it so that people who lack imagination can enjoy a "MUD."
All in all, I think these MMORPG addicts are freaking brainwashed. They eat the crap up when they're promised a lot of cool things if they keep playing this boring ****, repetitive game. People eat this "interactive" crap up, too. This is the internet - just about every thing you do on it is interactive. Online gaming has been "interactive" since the 70's. Don't forget that you're typically going to be "interacting" with **** teenagers who hide behind the mask of anonymity that the internet offers them and just love to see you have a miserable time.
----------------------------------------------------
Now, compare a multi-million dollar game to a game that has more debt than revenue.
This game costs $50, and an additional $15 every month. They make a huge revenue on it, and spent a couple million creating this game, but NS still blows it out of the water.
I suggest that everyone who bad-mouthes the NS devs for "making the game **** in 2.0" should go try one of these high-profit games out. I'm talking about games like Everquest, Planetside, and other games created to take your dollar. These games just lack the genuine innovation and support that most free games possess.
Here's a post I made on a gaming forum after playing SWG so you guys will understand what I'm talking about:
------------------------------------------------------------------
My friend bought Star Wars Galaxy for me... I told him that I didn't want to play that ****, as I scented "bad" all over it, but he insisted that I get it. We agreed that he would cover the charges if I didn't like it, and if I did like it - I would pay him the $40 back for buying me the game.
So here's the basis of the game - run around a lot. He claimed it didn't get redundant, and in some senses it isn't. There -is- a lot of **** you can do, but if you want to be good at anything, be prepared to do the same **** over and over and over again to gain experience. Typically, the point of the game is to do quests and gain credits while steadily repeating the commands over and over again to gain experience in your professions. If you're a fighter class, you fight a lot. If you're a healer, you heal a lot. If you're a dancer, you dance a lot.
One of the fine points of this game is character customization. It's true - you have a lot of customization. But, most of the tweakable customizations are just that - tweaks. You will find that most everyone is composed of the following formula:
If a male: Well muscled, lean, tall, and white or with a tan.
If a female: Small, large breasted, lean, and white or with a tan.
Rarely do you see people with freckles or other "nonattractive" things. Then you have options for how you look by hairstyle and clothes... but the choices are like playing The Sims with a few expansion packs. It may seem quite varied at first, but once you've seen all the haircuts, swords, articles of clothing, and the such - it really loses this quality. Everyone starts to look the same, only with different shades of it.
However, you DO have a whole lot of ways to customize what your character is. There's like 30 classes with a ton of abilities per each class, and you can learn several things from several classes. However, if you want to be advanced with anything, you're going to be greatly disappointed. Everything beyond the base classes require a tremendous amount of tedious levelling and skill spamming. You seriously have to put in at least a thousand hours of time to make a complete character, and a majority of those hours are going to be spent doing the same things a lot. At least you can work on several professions at the same time... when I tired of crafting items as an artisan, I would go out and wack things with my sword as a brawler, then go back to crafting.
Finally - terrible, terrible coding. I'm running one of the best machines money can buy right now, and I lag like totally crap when I walk into cities. The graphics aren't anything spectatular - they're on the same level as Tribes 2 or Unreal Tournament... all of the structures are low-poly, and the characters have a decent poly-count, but not enough to cause a severe drop in framerates when walking into a room with eight people. There's also an innumerous amount of bugs. These are HUGE bugs that obstruct gameplay like not being able to walk into your own god damned house after walking for ten real life minutes from the city. For three years of development, the game should at least be a) bug free, or B) have great framerates.
So, I was trying to give my opinion of the game to my friend... It takes way too much time (something I certainly don't have a lot of) to get anything done, there's almost no action, and it costs way too much money for not having anything to offer. This is $15 a month for a game where you kill time instead of thoroughly enjoying it.
So these are the arguements he brought up. I post this thread here because these arguements seem to be brought up by many MMORPG addicts:
Argument) The servers are down a lot because they're putting new stuff in the game!
Rebuttal) Those are bug fixes for bugs that shouldn't be there after years of development.
Argument) They have said they're putting cool things in like jetbikes, player-run cities, and spacecrafts.
Rebuttal) They also said that you need to pay $15/month for every month that you spend waiting for this **** to be implemented. You'll have to spend $220 on a game before it ever gets cool.
Argument) You have to understand that the game is running a million things at once while you're playing, so you should expect to have a bit of lag.
Rebuttal) This is no new concept. Some of the first online games were "MMORPGs," but they were called MUDs. DikuMUD has been around since the early 80's. Most MUDs with 30 players can be hosted on a 400Mhz machine running on a modem with a capped upload speed of 15k/sec. Being that we're paying $15 for a game, I expect the servers to be ridiculously fast - enough to load **** up without freezing because several players walked in front of my field of view at the same time.
Argument) The graphics are outstanding! Of course you can expect that you'll have bad framerates.
Rebuttal) The graphics are so-so. The reason they're so pretty is because of high-res textures. If you can count the polygons on structures in a game, then that means there was very little effort put into the graphics. The over-use of textures means you're going to have a terrible loss in speed, whereas this same graphical quality could have been achieved by several other means of design, like bump mapping. The creators were too lazy when it came to putting much detail into the game objects, so they slapped on high-res, CPU/RAM-**** textures in to appease the audience of ignorant players who're running $3k machines from Compaq will think "ooh pretty" and not really think about how much more the game could be optimized.
Argument) You have to expect problems with these games. They're new and untested, which means bugs. They need a lot of money to fix these bugs!
Rebuttal) See my original point. DikuMUD has been doing it forever with very few problems. All these guys are doing is adding a graphical interface to it so that people who lack imagination can enjoy a "MUD."
All in all, I think these MMORPG addicts are freaking brainwashed. They eat the crap up when they're promised a lot of cool things if they keep playing this boring ****, repetitive game. People eat this "interactive" crap up, too. This is the internet - just about every thing you do on it is interactive. Online gaming has been "interactive" since the 70's. Don't forget that you're typically going to be "interacting" with **** teenagers who hide behind the mask of anonymity that the internet offers them and just love to see you have a miserable time.
----------------------------------------------------
Now, compare a multi-million dollar game to a game that has more debt than revenue.
Comments
i saw a review of this on X-play (techtv) and they said it sucks. you have to run for 20 minutes (RL) to get around, it is easier to put a weight on the keyboard and walk away. and there is a dancing wookie.
I am very grateful for halflife and thoes who mod it. I bought a used copy of HL ($20), played CS for about 1 1/2 so far, DOD for a month or 2, and have played NS for about a year I think. all of this for $20. I play ALOT of games fresh when they come out, and every so often I'll find one that can hold my intrest for maby a week. HL kicks their @$$. All due to the tremendous community and because of the dedicated modder's out there.
They are the icing on the cake..
Thankfully a company we all know and love, Blizzard, is working very hard to make sure World of Warcraft will be at its best by the time it releases, and will continue to work to keep the game as good as possible. And for those of you who didn't know, my avatar is from a render of an Undead character from WoW.
Something interesting I've noticed: Althoguh I own copies of Unreal Tournament 2003, Battlefiel 1942, and Warcraft 3 with Frozen Throne, I still play Halflife MODs more often than anything else, and NS is the MOD I play most often. So major thanx for the folks at Valve for being the beginning of countless hours of gaming fun.
SWG was just absolute crap.
Anything made by SoE will suck : ie. EQ, EQ2, various other eq games (eq rip off of wc3, d2, etc) PS, SWG
Hold your shorts on UT2003/4. <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo--> It hasn't been out that long, and with the increased capabilities of the engine, its taking developers longer and longer to build a quality mod.
That said, I guarantee you UT2k+ is gonna have some kick **** mods <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Nightblade looks awesome, Troopers has AMAZING atmosphere, Red Orchestra sounds killer, Dealthball is unique (and challanging), Face Off is mind blowing for a 1 man dev team, and don't forget that The Opera 2 has moved to UT2k3! <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
There are tons of amazing looking mods for UT2003. And you just know HL2 will be crawling with em too. But it'll take a year or two after HL2 before anything really kick @ss shows up. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
1) No piracy possible :
Since people can play it only in multiplayer, cdkeys get checked everytime they login. There is no way of playing unless you steal other people's accounts or people develop their own server software. There are enough playerrun UO servers out there.
2) Constant cashflow:
UO has been out for almost 5 years and still the makers get $$$ from it where other games just get ditched after a year or even a few months in some cases (heh).
3) Forcing people to play their game:
Since you have to pay a fee every month, you'd like to do as much as possible for your $15. Thats also the origin of most of those mmorpg addicts. If they stop playing, they basically lose their character where they put thousands of hours in.
I'm a GM myself on a playerrun UO server btw, dont get payed for the job but people dont have to pay for our services either. Its just out of fun, much like the makers of NS do.
I'd rather buy a mmorpg for x3 the price if its worth it and no monthly fee than being forced to pay a stupid fee every month. WoW seems worthwhile still but its based on the same principles.
And I'm sure, about a year from now, SWG will too. I hope.
That's why I like how NS keeps the updates coming every few months (regardless of whether they are balanced, at least it is fresh and new and not repetitive!).
Its for this reason that I refuse to play any MMORPG. I've seen some amazing concepts destroyed because of greed. Paying for regular ol crappy games is bad enough, but a game where i'm SUPPOSED to be wasting my time? F*ck that.
Oh sure, i've been tempted. Planetside sounded bloody amazing. A month in, everyone thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. I was juuuuust about to buy it, when suddenly the roof came crashing down, and people realized that it was.... wait for it.... <i>tedious</i>.
Jumpgate was a hella fun game that I had the chance to Beta test. Absolutely kick a$$ wonderful.
Except spending 20 minutes (seriously, no joke) navigating from one point to the other, with nothing to do inbetween.
A lot of people were hyped about SWG too (as mentioned), and I almost bought into that, but I bit my tounge and waited until people realized it was a waste of time too.
I also tested Earth and Beyond.... but that game just plain SUCKED, in addition to being tedious <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
WoW <i>might</i> be OK, just because its being developed by Blizzard.
Then again, it might just be a great opportunity for them to rake in loads of cash to pay for all the moola they blew on Battle.Net. Who knows.
But either way, im gonna stick to my regular games. Hopefully someone will put out a kick **** MMO-something, someday... but we're gonna have to cross our fingers and hope that some publisher manages to figure out that they can make MORE money if they actually made good @#(*& games in the first place.
Oh well.
Guess I didnt waste my cash on it !
My interest in playing these hours on end has waned. I love DAOC still, and still have both my DAOC and EQ accounts open. But I just don't have the interest anymore.
AO has that kick **** Mission system I adore. EQ is finally following suit with their version of "random missions/quests" with Lost Dungeons Of Norrath free addon next week.
Shadowbane... OMG, that was the worst POS I have ever put my hands on. All those years and years of development and the game still sucked. Only good thing I can say about it was the character development system was good.
My beef with EQ was Verant's incessant need to shove "The Vision" down the collective throats of their userbase, all while their CS department abused us, all while demanding our subscription every month.
But you know, it gets down to the fact I don't want to spend hours and hours on a game to accomplish something. 2 or 3 hours in NS or FA, and I walk away feeling like I accomplished something. The MMoRPGS are really starting to feel... pointless to me.
Halflife was the best 20 bucks I've spent. That's probably why I've replaced my CD twice <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Had to be said.
Don't know... Blizzard only released (at least) quality games with not to many bugs (like unplayable ones) and usually the games make fun a few months. I hope its the same way with WoW.
The only company that has something like battle.net is blizzard. All their (newer) games are in there. No other company has such a thing.
U ever noticed that Sierra and Blizzard are owned by vivendi?
So, yes, Blizzard "usually" makes good games like it "usually" makes RTS. Diablo didn't meet up to their big name, in my opinion - mainly because they were new to the multiplayer RPG scene. Although, from what I can tell, at least WoW will be computer-friendly, as opposed to the lag-fest that is SWG.
not one post about the first MMFPS?
<a href='http://www5.playnet.com/bv/wwiiol/index.jsp' target='_blank'>WWII Online</a>
forget RPGs, i would rather shoot stuff <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
When I started playing the Dungeon Siege demo, it was fun: new interface to learn, nice graphics. After an hour or so, the shiny new toy-effect was gone, and what was left was always clinking on the same monsters again and again, occasionally retreating to heal or to separate stupid enemies from the group.
At some point (usually rather early in the game) the fun stops and it starts looking like work. Time to uninstall the POS.
What MMORPGs offer appears to be something like that, combined with a fancy IRC variant.
What I like in games are
- the requirement of skills. Mostly tactical or strategical skills, but a bit of fighting skill is OK too.
- the ability to make *interesting* choices.
- a good story.
- good software quality (no crashes)
Now, not all of those are required in the same game, but I've seen some where none of those were present in sufficient quantity. Among them many o the so-called RPG games.
I like to fly through a valley at high speed, checking the datalink for AWACS data, trying to evade detection for a bombing run deep behind enemy lines. I like organizing my army to hit the enemy at a weak point, while my diversionalt attack draws the defenders away. I like trying to find an alternative way to get into a building without the guards seeing me, grab the loot or kill the target, and get out again (as long as there isn't a single sequence that has to be followed exactly).
Now, even in the absence of that, a sufficiently good story that evolves rapidly already helps, too. But if I have to click on 1000 generic rat-like creatures to get to the next interesting bit, no thanks. Perhaps if they'd pay me to play the game, instead of me paying them, I'd consider it.
How do you measure character progress in game? How do you keep players playing in the game? More importantly what is the unit of measurement for a players interest?
the answer is not phatlewt, not community, not industry awards and not even continuous challenges within the game.
the answer is time.
thats right, time is the only measurable method of a players involvement ingame.
Thus the tedium you described is actually simply another timesink to keep you in game.
yes Timesink, time sink is a concept more or less coined and ( tho not invented by Verant ) made popular by Verant and its dealings with its player base. You see they realised in a server of say 3-5 THOUSAND players it would be impossible to keep increasing the content in game to consistantly challenge and keep the players interested.
So they did the logical thing, they created timesinks and based its challenges on time units. IE normal challenge = fast spawn, moderate challenge moderate spawn, difficult challenge = long time based spawn. They knew that since players come and go as they pleased, the real trick to keep the majority of players interested was to make it difficult in terms of TIME to experiance all the challenges . An example, HL sold x number of copies right? Valve has released ermm 1 expansion plus a few mod based version plus the usual gold, platinum, game of the year edition etc. Now compare that to EQ who is at its ermm 5th expansion? and a new one is coming and has a subscrition of over 150-250 k players ( depending on which estimate report you believe ) all shelling out $12.95 a month . I mean would it be possible for HL and its mod to emulate that? of course not.
its a totally difference beast we are talking about. The servers EQ runs on require huge upkeep, in terms of Bandwidth, RAID etc etc and thus the subscription. HL otoh hasnt made quite the money EQ makes. You see Sony has realised something they now pretty much bank on, the majority of players who play CS, NS etc are all cheap skates. Now please do not take this the wrong way but really the vast majority of current CS players do not even own the copies of HL that their CS runs on . The profiliration of pirated copies has meant that Valve is actually losing out on alot of money. Otoh Sony isnt. every player that plays on EQ or SWG has probably bought his copy and will have to pay the subscription to continue playing after their 1st month. Think of it in another way, we all know aimbots , wall hacks, OGC etc all exist in HL but its relatively uncommon on the mmorpg servers even tho i am sure the hacks would love to get in consistantly. They do occur but compared to the cheats in HL, they are a tiny minority.
SWG is however a POS mmorpg, right now is a bad time to play it, in 6-12 months time however they will have gotten more bugs ironed out, and actually have most skill lists working. The problem is that mmorpg fanbois are stupid. This same players who probalby wouldnt let themselves get conned into buying a car with no tyres on ( but will be added on promises the car dealer in 6-12 months time ) consistantly let themselves get suckered into spending good money on a buggy piece of software. And they let software compaines like SOE or verant etc get away with it.
Lineage 2 - Should be fun for a month or so. Nice graphics.
Horizons - I'd like to try a dragon character.
World of Warcraft - I'll play this one longer than L2 and Horizons, even though Warcraft's 'cartoony' style and basic (read: dumbed-down) fantasy setting really don't appeal to me. Despite the style of the graphics, they still look great, and I think Blizzard can put together a fun game.
Middle Earth Online - I think this will be the clincher. The source material is solid, intelligent, high fantasy. That right there does it for me <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
Ive had people telling me that you get a *free* month of playtime once you buy the game.. but that means I already put my $$$ in it. Thats a very expensive demo if you ask me...
- All the people who paid feeling slightly *cheated*
- A proliferation of cheating, as they know should their WON ID be banned, they could easily use another
Let me point to Norton's and Window's atrocious, annoying, obnoxious 'Register' screens. There's even cracks for THOSE out.
EDIT: The piracy in an MMO game IS stopped simply because you need to register a credit card. And if you somehow managed to find a way to pirate a planetside CD key, they can just sick the RIAA on you.
is never worth it!
I can't agree with having to "Play to play" a game.
There are so many free games out there, why would I waste money every month on a game that most likely isnt going to be worth it.
This game was the pinnacle of badly released games, folks. It had so many issues, it wasn't even funny. The game wasn't done, not even close. Example? You could fly to London in your plane, and all it was was flat, green turf. There were huge differently colored squares in the ground, too. If you did a nose dive into one of those puppies, you were suddenly under the world. You could fly as far as you wanted, under ground.
There was no radar to aide you. You saw yourself, and that was it. No idea where anything was, and when you died, it was instant black screen, back to the character select screen, without explanation, or even a name. There was no kill count, no scoring.
The objective of the game was to capture towns. Towns had a building with radios that if you got to that, you won the town. This building is exactly alike in all the towns, from Berlin to Paris.
Don't get me started on graphical inadequacy, sheer RAM cost, and the imbalances between German and Allied forces.
What a piece of trash. Pay to Play? You have five seconds to run.
but now, its great, CRS has done so much to the game now,
it is now in opengl which makes it a lot more fluid