Also depends on what "gamer-type" you are. I'm the type that always needs new things to stimulate my mind. It doesn't matter what game it is, what genre or how many updates a month come.. I'll get bored... and quickly.
Throughout time, there have been maybe 3 games that have kept my interest.
Half-Life... because the modding community is great, and awesome things have come from this 1980's gaming engine.
NeverWinter Nights... The options for character classes, schools of magic, and special attributes leaves you countless ways to play the game successfully. Downloadable single-player campaigs keep fresh content coming, and the expansion pack(s) look promising. (Just got done with Shadows of the Unredtide).
Planetside... I do regret that I had to stop playing this game. I was in one of the better groups, and I thoroughly enjoyed all the time I spent with them online in all of the raids. In the end, my personal free-time had dropped to nil, because I was obsessed with this... now that I'm married, I don't see myself going back to this for some time to come.
Planetside was fun, but balance was atrocious, and there was no incentive to play long term, and it felt more like team deathmatch, not a war game.
Neverwinter Nights sucked. Everything sucked. I didn't even get 10% finished with that game when I broke the CD in half. Let's look at previous Black Isle RPGs:
Baldur's Gate 1: Foster father is mysteriously attacked by people looking for you. You get pulled right into the action, and are made part of it.
Baldur's Gate 2: Wake up in a dungeon, with some goon performing malicious experiments on you. You need to find out why, who he is, anything, and rescue your friend from jail. You escape from the dungeon and need to fight to survive to escape.
The beginning of these two directly affects your character, and you. You WANT to solve the mysterious, find you captor, anything.
NWN: Plague attacks city. You round up Scooby and the gang and go looking for monsters. WHY? HOW IS THIS **** PLAGUE MY PROBLEM?
Trust me, I managed to be a Journeyman Swordsman. That's 75% in swordsman. I spent my entire time walking around, killing things. About 40-60 hours. If it moved, it died. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Which is why GM/Admins are important, to stop botting and such, as well as to make random events to keep the game going. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> No no no. I macro my **** off. It isn't my fault that they made skills (some of them) a pain to gain. It's boring to train up. ESPECIALLY melee skills. I get tired of fighting skeletons from 50-60 and Lizardmen from 70-80 or whatever. I want to GM my melee skills as fast as I can so I can fight bigger and better beast and PVP!
On my murdered, I finally said forget GM'ing swords. I went red at 83 swordsmenship. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> I'm still a deadly mofo on pac-fel-yew/trinsic If you play UO on pac/siege. Pm me <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
I run a red house on Siege right at Luna. If you've seen it. It's a big house that has wooden walls all around it.
Live and learn, its what the gaming companies are doing. They see what the fans like and dislike, and how they can improve and satisfy their customers to keep the money flowing in.
I was against pay-to-play games until I actually learned about them, and learned about how immersive many worlds can be.
Now I'm looking forward to purchasing and playing an MMORPG, as anyone that reads enough of my posts or sees me in irc will know. World of Warcraft has really caught my attention, and I have been devouring any articles and reviews and previews about the game because I believe that if anyone can bring us a great RPG world thats woth paying for, its Blizzard.
Yes Blizzard can make a good RPG and charge monthly for it, but that being said, Diablo II 1.10 is free, it still stores charachter data, and yes, its not the most involving RPG in the world, but with the new ladder system (ladder now gets restarted every few months) the economy of the game, and the community is refreshed.
thing is parasite, they're not stats. They're tangible. A hookshot isn't like level 24. It's not another silly level in a series of levels. It does something. You got it for killing the boss and defeating the dungeon. These are all things people can understand, strive for and not talk about for 5 hours of fondling a calculator. Killing 2350 monsters to reach level 35 is dross... in the big scale of things it means little and after a while seeing an extra 2 damage float off monsters when you hit them wears thin. The hookshot lets you grab stuff from a long distance or even travel long distances by hooking onto stuff. That's cool!!! level 24 isn't.
I wasn't talking about Zelda as an MMORPG, just an RPG in general. If you want to talk about MMOs it's easy enough to do it differently but with the same ideals. Deronok's kinda saying my idea but a little different. People bot because things take hours to build up and the 'building' is boring. What's level 100 at the end of the day, huh? it's a big fat number and for what? commiting genocide on vast hoardes of mindless monsters? Congrats... you've hit the marker that any and all players will hit eventually given an infinite period of time and now you've got nothing to do. Nobody will remember you for your deeds because they're all set quests that everyone else did. That dragon seems to die a lot huh? Ever notice no matter how many times people find elmers diary the bandits still seem to have it?
You have no impact on the world, your numbers are meaningless... people bot because of this general lameness (at least that's my suspicion... along with the fact some people get off on the fact it annoys people). But what if the tasks to mold your character weren't looking at digits and doing generic things? your strength could go up merely by wearing heavy armour, sure your character would get tired fast a lot but it'd build up their strength and you can pretty much do that while doing something more enjoyable. (omg!!! notice you can wear the armour even though it's too heavy for you??? you just get exhausted using stuff that's too much for you instead of getting a magical message saying "str 23 needed" and shattering your fantastical illusion of an interesting world.) Swinging swords and whatnot build up your stamina... not 'kill monster thats only there to be killed' but realistic improvments from common sense actions. You run alot? you run faster!!! you cast magic a lot? you cast better! degradation would be the same... if you don't do something then your skills in it will rust over the long haul of time; just like in RL =o You'd never be stuck in a class or with certain stats. if you tired of being a magic user you can become a merchant or a swordsman or whatever just by doing the things you want to do. As your magic skills dull with age and lack of use the time you spend with your new activities will pump up whatever abilities you have in that realm and the best part is there's no need for visible numbers. They can be expressed by simple animation, modelling and even sucess rates/margin of sucess.
why would people bot in an environment like this where every action has a reaction and every choice is a new chapter for your character? Throw in environments that automatically adapt... if you kill all the herbivores on the grass plains the predators start wandering into town to find prey. If people keep blatting stuff with fire weapons/spells monsters slowly start developing a resistance to fire and a weakness to ice. Being constantly hunted with bows leads to monsters developing harder armour plates but becoming more vulnerable to spells. With simple self-reacting balance mechanisms like these the world would really evolve and change. They're such simple steps and merely the tip of the iceberg but no MMO will touch them because it's too different... too innovative... too much like common sense... too... fun? =3
<b>edit:</b> wheeee... I just realised I'm so off-topic it's not funny. Sorry for getting lost in a rant guys =s
<!--QuoteBegin--GreyPaws+Nov 12 2003, 06:36 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (GreyPaws @ Nov 12 2003, 06:36 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Yes Blizzard can make a good RPG and charge monthly for it, but that being said, Diablo II 1.10 is free, it still stores charachter data, and yes, its not the most involving RPG in the world, but with the new ladder system (ladder now gets restarted every few months) the economy of the game, and the community is refreshed. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> The prob with blizzard games for me wasn't as much of the game as it was the community, I mean you might as well host their servers with AOL with the people there.
Another thing most RPGs need besides less numbers showing how "Strong" you are is pbly combo'd attacks from successful timing. I'v heard FFXI has that but havn't been able to play it yet because I'm still waiting for the credit card to come in.
That's what I really want in ANY game. Smooth attacks. Mark of Kri (God rest it's soul) was fun because you could string together attacks as fast as you could press the keys. Same with Dynasty Warriors 3 & 4.
I want my light-sword fighter to be able to parry one attack, slide down the blade, impale the guy, turn, stab someone else and then block another attack, in one motion.
Comments
Throughout time, there have been maybe 3 games that have kept my interest.
Half-Life... because the modding community is great, and awesome things have come from this 1980's gaming engine.
NeverWinter Nights... The options for character classes, schools of magic, and special attributes leaves you countless ways to play the game successfully. Downloadable single-player campaigs keep fresh content coming, and the expansion pack(s) look promising. (Just got done with Shadows of the Unredtide).
Planetside... I do regret that I had to stop playing this game. I was in one of the better groups, and I thoroughly enjoyed all the time I spent with them online in all of the raids. In the end, my personal free-time had dropped to nil, because I was obsessed with this... now that I'm married, I don't see myself going back to this for some time to come.
Neverwinter Nights sucked. Everything sucked. I didn't even get 10% finished with that game when I broke the CD in half. Let's look at previous Black Isle RPGs:
Baldur's Gate 1: Foster father is mysteriously attacked by people looking for you. You get pulled right into the action, and are made part of it.
Baldur's Gate 2: Wake up in a dungeon, with some goon performing malicious experiments on you. You need to find out why, who he is, anything, and rescue your friend from jail. You escape from the dungeon and need to fight to survive to escape.
The beginning of these two directly affects your character, and you. You WANT to solve the mysterious, find you captor, anything.
NWN: Plague attacks city. You round up Scooby and the gang and go looking for monsters. WHY? HOW IS THIS **** PLAGUE MY PROBLEM?
That's what UO does Deronok. it's bloody boring.
Trust me, I managed to be a Journeyman Swordsman. That's 75% in swordsman. I spent my entire time walking around, killing things. About 40-60 hours. If it moved, it died. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Which is why GM/Admins are important, to stop botting and such, as well as to make random events to keep the game going. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
No no no. I macro my **** off. It isn't my fault that they made skills (some of them) a pain to gain. It's boring to train up. ESPECIALLY melee skills. I get tired of fighting skeletons from 50-60 and Lizardmen from 70-80 or whatever. I want to GM my melee skills as fast as I can so I can fight bigger and better beast and PVP!
On my murdered, I finally said forget GM'ing swords. I went red at 83 swordsmenship. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
I'm still a deadly mofo on pac-fel-yew/trinsic
If you play UO on pac/siege. Pm me <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
I run a red house on Siege right at Luna. If you've seen it. It's a big house that has wooden walls all around it.
I AM QBALL OF SIEGE PERIORLOUS! *sp*
I was against pay-to-play games until I actually learned about them, and learned about how immersive many worlds can be.
Now I'm looking forward to purchasing and playing an MMORPG, as anyone that reads enough of my posts or sees me in irc will know. World of Warcraft has really caught my attention, and I have been devouring any articles and reviews and previews about the game because I believe that if anyone can bring us a great RPG world thats woth paying for, its Blizzard.
1. If you don't mind paying a monthly fee, and you're having fun, great.
2. If you do mind paying a monthly fee, or the game isn't fun, great.
Notice that's all there is. There's no "now bicker about which is best" or "convince the other side" instructions. Now shush. :P
I wasn't talking about Zelda as an MMORPG, just an RPG in general. If you want to talk about MMOs it's easy enough to do it differently but with the same ideals. Deronok's kinda saying my idea but a little different. People bot because things take hours to build up and the 'building' is boring. What's level 100 at the end of the day, huh? it's a big fat number and for what? commiting genocide on vast hoardes of mindless monsters?
Congrats... you've hit the marker that any and all players will hit eventually given an infinite period of time and now you've got nothing to do. Nobody will remember you for your deeds because they're all set quests that everyone else did. That dragon seems to die a lot huh? Ever notice no matter how many times people find elmers diary the bandits still seem to have it?
You have no impact on the world, your numbers are meaningless... people bot because of this general lameness (at least that's my suspicion... along with the fact some people get off on the fact it annoys people). But what if the tasks to mold your character weren't looking at digits and doing generic things? your strength could go up merely by wearing heavy armour, sure your character would get tired fast a lot but it'd build up their strength and you can pretty much do that while doing something more enjoyable. (omg!!! notice you can wear the armour even though it's too heavy for you??? you just get exhausted using stuff that's too much for you instead of getting a magical message saying "str 23 needed" and shattering your fantastical illusion of an interesting world.) Swinging swords and whatnot build up your stamina... not 'kill monster thats only there to be killed' but realistic improvments from common sense actions. You run alot? you run faster!!! you cast magic a lot? you cast better! degradation would be the same... if you don't do something then your skills in it will rust over the long haul of time; just like in RL =o
You'd never be stuck in a class or with certain stats. if you tired of being a magic user you can become a merchant or a swordsman or whatever just by doing the things you want to do. As your magic skills dull with age and lack of use the time you spend with your new activities will pump up whatever abilities you have in that realm and the best part is there's no need for visible numbers. They can be expressed by simple animation, modelling and even sucess rates/margin of sucess.
why would people bot in an environment like this where every action has a reaction and every choice is a new chapter for your character? Throw in environments that automatically adapt... if you kill all the herbivores on the grass plains the predators start wandering into town to find prey. If people keep blatting stuff with fire weapons/spells monsters slowly start developing a resistance to fire and a weakness to ice. Being constantly hunted with bows leads to monsters developing harder armour plates but becoming more vulnerable to spells. With simple self-reacting balance mechanisms like these the world would really evolve and change. They're such simple steps and merely the tip of the iceberg but no MMO will touch them because it's too different... too innovative... too much like common sense... too... fun? =3
<b>edit:</b> wheeee... I just realised I'm so off-topic it's not funny. Sorry for getting lost in a rant guys =s
The prob with blizzard games for me wasn't as much of the game as it was the community, I mean you might as well host their servers with AOL with the people there.
Another thing most RPGs need besides less numbers showing how "Strong" you are is pbly combo'd attacks from successful timing. I'v heard FFXI has that but havn't been able to play it yet because I'm still waiting for the credit card to come in.
I want my light-sword fighter to be able to parry one attack, slide down the blade, impale the guy, turn, stab someone else and then block another attack, in one motion.