Hydaelyn Role-Players

My biggest problem with the trinity is that the support roles got shoved out. I friggin' love support roles. Red Mage in FFXI was one of my favorite MMO experiences of all time. I didn't strictly heal or DPS, I did it all and a bag o' chips! 

Putting up buffs, debuffing the mobs, spot healing while the primary healer regains resources, dropping a nuke or DoTs in here and there at the end of a skillchain for a Magic Burst...

I miss the crap out of support roles.

(04-01-2014, 05:22 PM)Ignacius Wrote: [ -> ]*words about an awesome concept*

Hey, that sounds totally awesome. I would honestly love something like that, a sort of evolution of TERA, GW2 and Wildstar, the "logical progression" of action-based, active combat MMOs. Though, to be honest, I'd prefer if it had servers with different game rules, like normal (generic MMO rules, instant heals, no large penalties for death, teleport/fast travel etc) and hardcore (heals are all slow HoTs, dying carries a harsh penalty, no teleports/fast travel)... and had a role system (tank/heal/support/damage). 

I legit enjoy having the role system. Lots of people do. Naunet has already mentioned that she doesn't like playing a damage-dealer role at all, which means that non-trinity games just completely lose her right from the starting gate.

When you make a "non-trinity" game, everybody is just a damage dealer. I like playing a damage dealer, but I also like playing a healer and a tank and a support class. There's a reason why class-based games are so popular--because you get lots of variety in gameplay. So-called "classless" games aren't really without roles, they just don't narrowly define them and you have a bit more freedom to play around (however, there will always be builds that are utterly terrible and those that are amazingly broken).

Also... not to put a damper on anyone's enthusiasm, but I don't think the tech is where it needs to be to create something like that, not to mention that something like that is so far outside the "norm" that publishers are really super unlikely to want to take a risk on it.

(04-01-2014, 06:49 PM)synaesthetic Wrote: [ -> ]My biggest problem with the trinity is that the support roles got shoved out. I friggin' love support roles. Red Mage in FFXI was one of my favorite MMO experiences of all time. I didn't strictly heal or DPS, I did it all and a bag o' chips! 

Putting up buffs, debuffing the mobs, spot healing while the primary healer regains resources, dropping a nuke or DoTs in here and there at the end of a skillchain for a Magic Burst...

I miss the crap out of support roles.

RDM was my jam. Loved the heck out of that class.

Quote:But sometimes Jow Schmoe really likes performing task X, a task that Mary Sue wouild hate to do and feels uncomfortable doing. If you take away the trinity, what you'll get is that Mary will have to perform task X, the task she hates and that Joe would prefer doing anyway.

I’ll come back to this in a bit when I get to my second example of MMOs.

Quote:I don't know how a game without the trinity would perform. Taking it away pretty much means leaving only one role in.

Not necessarily. To me, “trinity” basically means that you have people optimizing for highly specialized builds, resulting in A, someone to take the damage, B, someone to heal the damage, and C, someone to deal the damage.

It’s an extreme case of optimization where someone went, “hey, instead of all 16 of us taking these hits while trying to keep ourselves alive and also kill the boss, why don’t we get Leroy over there to force this big guy to hit him and only him. We can, like, dedicate a bunch of us to healing him, and the rest of you can just focus on dealing damage.”

Quote:You can't take away dealing damage, as most MMOs are based around the murdering of mobs.

This is a pervasive notion born of the majority of video game industry revolving around “kill or be killed”, but I’ll roll with it.

Quote:That leaves you taking away tanking (no ways to reliably alter the mob's aggro lists) and healing (maybe by giving the players unreliable healing skills, with long cooldowns or that don't heal much or that heal only when outside of combat or whatever). Which means Joe Schmoe, who really likes tanking, can't tank, and Mary Sue, who really likes healing, can't heal.

The trinity doesn't force people into roles. No game (that I know of, anyway) will force a player into being a tank class if he doesn't want to: he can always choose the rogue or the priest.

That wasn’t my point. My point was that the trinity more often than not forces you to choose between roles, at which point you are forced into performing certain tasks based on the role you selected. There are rare exceptions (SMN tanking with Titan-egi, for instance) but for the most part once you’ve chosen a role, you’ve dedicated yourself to specializing in that role.

This is less of an issue for XIV, where each toon gets access to every available class, but still an issue, as each class (again, save SMN) is irrefutably forced into a role that’s optimal for it. Yes, you can toggle off Defiance or toggle on Sword Oath and go DPS, but that doesn’t change the fact that you were taken as a tank; if they didn’t need you tanking, they would have brought you as a MNK, DRG, BRD, BLM, or SMN.

Quote:It gives distinct combat roles so that people may specialize in them and pick the one they like the most.
The only problem I see with it is that healers and tanks are always on higher demand, meaning getting parties is always on the "let's wait half an hour or more" side of things for damage dealers.

The problem is that the trinity model isn’t fresh. It’s tried and true but tired, like a cliché. What if most movies coming out of Hollywood were very cliché films? …oh, wait, that’s already the case.

I’ll give you two examples of MMOs which, if they don’t break from the trinity model completely, at least make an effort to move away from the standard born from Ultima, EQ, and WoW.



The first has already been brought up anumber of times: E.V.E.

E.V.E. breaks convention by saying, hey, this big ship here, it has a ton of health, and because it’s so big, it also carries a ton of firepower. It doesn’t matter that there’s no conventional means of forcing aggro, when something dozens of times your size jumps into the system, your fleet either deals with it, flees, or takes the blow. “Threat”, in this case, is actual threat. Smaller ships, on the other handed, are more utility-oriented. For instance, tackling is a unique concept in that the most fragile units in the area are given the task of being the CC machines. Since there are no guaranteed kills without a tackler, E.V.E. essentially has a fourth archetype.

Now mind you, the above is PvP related, and PvE mostly comes down to “duke it out ‘til the mobs are dead or you have to jump.” So let me turn to the next example: Puzzle Pirates.



"But Puzzle Pirates isn’t a real MMO,” people tell me. Bull. If your definition of a 'real' MMO is “you control a character in real time from the third-person perspective and you have your own health bar and you kill other things with health bars before they kill you”, then congratulations, you’ve fallen into the mindtrap that is the “MMOs are Ultima/EQ/WoW” mentality.

Puzzle Pirates is a massively multiplayer online game. Mind you, it’s pretty terrible given that it’s pay-to-win, but put that aside. You don’t have a health bar in PP. You have a toon, and you have some minor customization options, but the real meat of the game comes down to signing up to work on some other Player Character’s ship (unless you make enough in-game money, or purchase via cash-shop, your own ship). So a team of players, ranging anywhere from three to more than a dozen players in size, share the same “health pool” (despite a complete lack of a conventional health bar), and they’re all playing different mini-games (I’d love to see anyone call gunnery a minigame, gunnery is HARD) to contribute to the crew’s success. Some dude is playing a variation of Panel de Pon to keep the ship from taking on water, some other dude is playing with pentominoes to patch up the wooden hull, some other guy is navigating, and one dude is taking on all the tactical decisions by playing a real nifty real-time turn-based sea battle.

This is a MMO that, aside from a few similarities (bilge pumping is kinda like healing, gunnery is kiiiiinda like dps but not really, tactics is tanking by virtue of giving you control over the encounter) breaks the trinity model completely. Now, the really neat thing about this was that each role (barring navigation and the tactical sea battle) could have multiple people contributing at a time. Joe Schmoe and Mary Sue were both free to take on whichever role they wanted. And the best part? People could rotate roles mid-battle based on who was needed where (“Michael, go swap with John, we need him on gunnery and you’re a decent enough bilgerat”). And you'd want everyone to get experience on navigation and tactics anyway, as guilds were not limited to a single vessel, so you could build up a fleet and you'd need experienced sailors/officers for your newer boats.

It would have beeen more successful were it not for two facts: 1, it’s marketed and geared almost completely towards little kids and consequently is as obscure as all get-out, and 2, pay-to-win (buy bigger ship with more firepower) has more or less ruined PP given how difficult it is (or was, I haven’t played in years) to earn your own ship with in-game grinding.



These kinds of games don’t get made very often. Most groundbreakers tend to fail for a variety of reasons, many of which are often unrelated to the quality of the game itself, and most executives would rather churn out WoW clones rather than allow developers to break from the proven trinity model.



Disclaimer: My experience with E.V.E. amounts to several weeks' worth of trials and watching friends play. I spent the better part of a year and a half on PP.

P.S. I wrote this up in Word and formatting is killing me aaaaarghurghlafblegrgle.

P.P.S. I apologize for dragging this thread further off-topic.

(04-01-2014, 06:56 PM)synaesthetic Wrote: [ -> ]

(04-01-2014, 05:22 PM)Ignacius Wrote: [ -> ]*words about an awesome concept*

Hey, that sounds totally awesome. I would honestly love something like that, a sort of evolution of TERA, GW2 and Wildstar, the "logical progression" of action-based, active combat MMOs. Though, to be honest, I'd prefer if it had servers with different game rules, like normal (generic MMO rules, instant heals, no large penalties for death, teleport/fast travel etc) and hardcore (heals are all slow HoTs, dying carries a harsh penalty, no teleports/fast travel)... and had a role system (tank/heal/support/damage). 

I legit enjoy having the role system. Lots of people do. Naunet has already mentioned that she doesn't like playing a damage-dealer role at all, which means that non-trinity games just completely lose her right from the starting gate.

When you make a "non-trinity" game, everybody is just a damage dealer. I like playing a damage dealer, but I also like playing a healer and a tank and a support class. There's a reason why class-based games are so popular--because you get lots of variety in gameplay. So-called "classless" games aren't really without roles, they just don't narrowly define them and you have a bit more freedom to play around (however, there will always be builds that are utterly terrible and those that are amazingly broken).

Also... not to put a damper on anyone's enthusiasm, but I don't think the tech is where it needs to be to create something like that, not to mention that something like that is so far outside the "norm" that publishers are really super unlikely to want to take a risk on it.

Well, no, just because you don't have a trinity-class system doesn't mean you'll all end up doing the exact same thing.  Let's take your standard "assault the castle" scenario.  The average MMO splits you into tanks, DPS, and healers, then gives you small packs of enemies to fight at a time.  There are other ways to do this division.  Let's say that, instead, you split everyone between melee and ranged.  Ranged include your support classes and ranged DPS (archers, wizards, etc.).  Their only mitigation is space, so solo they will use crowd control, but in a group that leaves them vulnerable, but necessary.  Melee mitigate by whatever means (dodging, tanking with armor, maybe ranged control with a polearm keeping them at a distance).

Point being that everyone deals damage, but the melee form a battle line to keep the ranged from being swarmed.  That means sometimes huddling around one enemy to keep it contained, ranged to the outside staying out from in front maybe depending on mechanic?  Sometimes they have to circle the wagons and you'll surround the ranged with the melee in a ring.  Maybe it becomes important to keep the high ground or escape low ground because you can be fired on with impunity?

I think that was a sort of goal at the beginning of XIV's development, but it never panned out.  Kind of sad, though, I think it's really going somewhere.  It would involve the kind of tactical coordination you just don't get from a random group of people.

Or, let's imagine the "kill the dragon" scenario, returning to the theoretical example from before.  Let's say, instead of needing tank, DPS, healer, you need someone that can disable the dragon, so they know it won't escape.  That could be an entire job, or just a side job for someone dealing damage.  Someone might be your support character, like an alchemist who paints everyone up for battle and buffs them depending on what's coming.  Maybe you need a debuffer, some kind of crippler that mitigates the incoming damage with traps or other tools.  Hell, we'll even say you need a tracker just to be able to find one reliably or draw it into a trap with beast knowledge.

Now let's say that the dragon, once you've got it tracked, pinned, debuffed, and you're buffed, you need to dismantle it essentially.  It's too big to kill outright.  So you need someone with a long weapon to attack the wings and the bits that are hard to reach.  To eventually knock it over, you need someone taking potshots at the legs with blunt objects.  You want to cut off the dangerous bits to make it easier, like using a sword or an axe.  Maybe risky people would like smaller weapons, like swords and shields, to get right underneath and poke at the soft bits.  Maybe you even get archers or riflemen to do that.

In essence, you'd have created a role/damage variable class system that has nothing to do with tanking or healing, but still requires those things to perform what might be considered a raid or party task.

Another example I can think of off the top of my head would be a totally classless system, in fact might be completely without level or stats, but would instead be based around gear.  Let's say dragon-kill-scenario, you have certain people who have no fear of dragon abilities and sets up a set of heavy armor and a long spear to attack from the front.  Then you need people to every side to make sure it doesn't go anywhere.  Maybe instead you want lighter armor, but rely on being able to evade and jump out of the way of attacks faster.  Or you can equip different armor for different playstyles, tailoring it to the way you feel most comfortable.

Apply that mentality to the castle assault.  Let's say you go Bushido Blade style, one hit to the fleshy bits can kill you, but depending on what armor you wear, you might stand a better chance of surviving.  So do you sneak into the castle as a set of ninjas and assassins, avoiding the enemies?  Do you do it 47 Ronin style, sneaking in and then charging through with swords out?  Do you besiege it with arrow fire?  Do you assault the main gate like a boss?  That might rely on different kinds of armor, different weapons, even different learned skillsets.  It would be classless since your level of armor is arbitrary to your playstyle, how and if you deal damage would be likewise (and would be more about that one hit that disables/kills your enemy rather than racking up big numbers, so it would be more in the technique), and there would be no healer.  You would avoid damage or you would die.

That last example might be the only one we could have technical issues on.  Instant kills by lag would be a nightmare.  I wonder if it would be better to have the launch of the attack be the trigger in the game so that the lag would be in the beginning, not the end, of the attack, giving everyone a chance to react.  In a sense, those have been done in Bushido Blade and another great game, Tenchu (if you never heard of it, check it out).

These are just ideas off the top of my head.  I'm sure a developer could get something even more intuitive and interesting if they thought about this kind of stuff all day as a job.  That's why I'm disappointed.  They could make these kinds of things work, and the games they would have made would all be MMORPGs, would all be idiosyncratic and different from each other, and most of all they'd all be awesome as Hell if done correctly.

And that's just the two most common scenarios in a fantasy/medieval setting.  You could really go nuts with the sci-fi stuff or even crazier settings.  That's just classes and roles as it pertains to the most common PVE scenarios in RPGs.

(04-01-2014, 03:41 PM)Zhavi Wrote: [ -> ]Errr... I think you might need to define 'content' before making that claim. I think your definition might be different from mine!

(04-01-2014, 04:29 PM)Naunet Wrote: [ -> ]Wat. That's about as factually incorrect as one can get. xD

Incidentally, I've never played Lineage. My own perception of Korean MMOs is based entirely around my own experiences with... Korean MMOs. Don't tell me how to think, thanks. ^^ It's my decision to avoid Korean MMOs based on these experiences, and I'm not damning anyone who enjoys them. They are simply not something I am willing to touch anymore.

Okay, fine, I won't speak on that matter since I don't play WoW anyway.

I still think it's ridiculous to tar an entire region's games with the same brush, regardless.

(04-01-2014, 04:22 PM)synaesthetic Wrote: [ -> ]The idea that Korean MMOs are "grinders" is borne out by historical evidence. It's not just Lineage. It's Ragnarok Online. It's TERA. It's Aion. It's Bless Online. Pick any random Korean MMO and count how many layers of random dice rolling is involved in endgame gearing. We'll use TERA as an example because it's the most recent one I've played.

[...]

You say that Korean MMOs are not grinders, but by and large they are. It's possible that Blade & Soul isn't, as I haven't been able to play it yet. If that's true, then B&S is a freakish anomaly.

FFXIV may be made by Square-Enix, a Japanese company, but it is a Western MMO. Even FFXI was a Western MMO, as it was essentially an EverQuest clone with Final Fantasy flavor and lore on top. Western MMOs can be grinders, too--they aren't immune. However, since Blizzard instigated a sea change in the MMO industry with World of Warcraft, Western MMOs have focused on accessibility ever since, with a strong development focus on reducing, limiting or hiding the grind, or simply making the grind more fun. The Korean MMO industry was not affected by this; WoW was not quite so transformative in South Korea.

I admit, I stopped playing Tera a long time ago. I wasn't aware it got that bad. Still don't think Aion's that bad, however, especially if you never bother with eternals (I sure didn't). It's also kind of disingenuous to bring up Ragnarok Online considering its age.

I will simply have to fundamentally disagree with your assertion that western MMOs have experienced a sea change that Korean MMOs did not. Aion alone is proof against this (unless you really hate enchanting, I guess), since it is about a million times more bearable than the Lineage series. As a counterpoint, Guild Wars 2 becomes grindy as hell if you want to get ascended items or legendary weapons or even just try to keep up with the "Living Story". And if we're including Japanese games under the banner of "western", PSO2 has a weapon grinding and affixing system that's far worse than almost any other game I've ever played.

It's certainly true that the Korean market is by and large different from the Western one, but the whole thing is just blown out of proportion in insane ways. Not even taking chances with games coming from that region is just plain excessive. You should at least try, especially if you can try before you buy anything at all.

(04-01-2014, 04:51 PM)Ignacius Wrote: [ -> ]Actually, that's also how Diablo works.  It's just not harsh enough for me.  I mean, complete harshness.  Get hit too hard and you'll lose movement speed or attack power, as you'll be injured.  And when I say slowly coming back, I mean your health only will regenerate after a day, so you may have to think about whether you want to risk going somewhere while injured, knowing you are risking becoming more injured.  It just seems more realistic that way, to have armor actually mitigate damage normally and injury works how it does in real life (-ish).  So you can only have so much damage you can absorb without retreating from the danger of the game world to town (or whatever).

[...]

Just saying that it is a model that would work, but doesn't seem to be explored.  Most MMOs have you as a globetrotter rather than being at the mercy of a hostile world.

Well, that's certainly different. I don't know if we'll ever get games that work quite like that. Certainly nice to think about, though. It'd be a completely different kind of game than any contemporary MMO, to be sure.

(04-01-2014, 05:11 PM)Ignacius Wrote: [ -> ]A couple things about this, some that other people have touched on.  I don't play any Korean MMOs, but I wasn't actually aware that the games I wasn't playing were Korean.  I just haven't been impressed by them.  I wasn't aware it was a cultural thing.  However, having read through their endgame content guides, they do seem a lot "grindier" than I'm used to.  Hell, western MMOs are damn near throwing new gear at you these days.  WoW is literally giving you a roll on gear that works for your class and spec at this point instead of making you RNG completely for the entire party.  It's one of the things I like about WoW nowadays as compared to the vanilla days.  No ninja looting hunters.

[...]

I'd say WoW players aren't wont for content; after so long being the top dog via content drops, I'd say it's probably the most extensive MMO in the world.  If anything, I'd say their biggest problem is that they're too extensive.  Having to balance high end PVP and PVE, along with making all the deviations and distractions along the way relevant and interesting, means they're constantly having to fix things that cause problems elsewhere.  I guess that's a better problem to have than "no-content".

Probably shouldn't have brought up WoW at all really, because comparing anything to the juggernaut is pretty stupid in retrospect. We're talking about the one singular exceptional social phenomenon that has never, ever seen its success replicated in the history of gaming here. Pretty sure it's not a good example of anything, certainly not as a model to copy (as all the failed WoW clones can attest to).

At any rate, to your point, yes, obviously F2P models have to create some kind of incentive to get players to play if they're not charging access to the game itself. Some developers use almost entirely cosmetic items for this (Path of Exile and DotA 2 are the most prominent examples of this, followed closely by PSO2). Others choose to walk the tightrope between "unpassable brick wall" and "free lunch", to varying results. Many also sell account services and the like on the side (like cosmetic tickets and such).

I simply disagree with the assertion that F2P is automatically a negative thing, as many F2P games are very competently managed and do just fine, thank you very much. Of course there are also many that are just plain terrible... but as the list of P2P games continues to dwindle into nothingness, you can't really make the assertion that subscription-based games are automatically better, either. It's simply not a clear-cut proposition.

The fact is, the only contemporary games on the market that are still P2P (in the West, at least) are World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, and EVE Online. And that's it. Some assert that everything that went freemium or F2P did so because they were inferior games... which outright proves the rule that the business model guarantees you NOTHING. It is entirely up to the developer to bring value to the players, and if they fail to do that, their game is doomed to fade away no matter what business model they use.

(04-02-2014, 01:05 AM)Zyrusticae Wrote: [ -> ]Okay, fine, I won't speak on that matter since I don't play WoW anyway.

I still think it's ridiculous to tar an entire region's games with the same brush, regardless.

I'm not sure if you were being sarcastic, but I was curious. I mean, I know for me, primarily, content came in the new raids and occasionally some of the new features/aesthetic additions with each new patch. Or, you might have been referring to the sort-of desert that seems to be the common theme between the last patch and the new expansion (around a year). It doesn't bother me if someone doesn't like a game that I like (or did very much like) -- I find it interesting when someone forms a different opinion, and I like to know why. This one struck me in particular because I found it so different to my own thoughts on the matter. That's why I wanted to know what you meant by 'content'.

edit -- and you don't need to play something to form an opinion on it. It's the same way I can look at a book in a bookstore and know that I won't like it without reading the whole thing, or thing it's bland or overdone or nice but not quite good enough. Granted, people can then argue your qualifications on being right with your opinion/claims, but that's something else entirely.

(04-02-2014, 01:05 AM)Zyrusticae Wrote: [ -> ]The fact is, the only contemporary games on the market that are still P2P (in the West, at least) are World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, and EVE Online. And that's it. Some assert that everything that went freemium or F2P did so because they were inferior games... which outright proves the rule that the business model guarantees you NOTHING. It is entirely up to the developer to bring value to the players, and if they fail to do that, their game is doomed to fade away no matter what business model they use.

To be fair, I think the reason free-to-play games are more numerous isn't necessarily a badge of quality, it's that a free-to-play game that isn't very good can stick around for a long time simply by drawing people in and keeping them hooked for a few months.  Subscription games don't work that way.

The truth is, it isn't just any kind of company that can make a game fifteen-dollars-a-month good.  People will play big handfuls of F2P games because it doesn't cost anything to have the account.  You can't play more than one or two P2P games; it's just too expensive and at some point won't be worth the money you pay.  It isn't that there haven't been a wealth of subscription games that have tried, you just have to be a cut above to make it on that model.

Let's take XIV for example.  What did it cost them to get to stay subscription based?  They had to COMPLETELY REDESIGN THE GAME!  Seriously, I can't stress enough how Square managed to get my respect by doing that.  All these laughably bad Final Fantasy games later, and they still had the panache to say, "No, we ARE still big dogs in this industry, and we're not going to charge you less for it, we're going to make our game worth the money."  To their credit, they did.  I think FFXIV:ARR is worth the sub.  They could have just said, "We'll make if F2P and make it work as it is," but that wasn't good enough.

And for all my criticism of CCP (and my criticisms are many), I wouldn't necessarily say EVE Online is a terrible game.  Definitely, I think, a complete undermining of the strengths of an MMORPG, but my issues with it are philosophical more than technical; I get why people would pay monthly for it.  Blizzard is.... well, it's Blizzard.  Say what you want about the megalith, they scrapped an almost-finished game not because it wasn't reportedly good, but because it wasn't reportedly World Of Warcraft good.  Blizzard, for all that we tend to riff on them (me included), are very serious about their work.  I haven't played a Blizz game that hasn't been good, though I haven't played Hearthstone yet so someone can tell me if that's horrible.  I spent most of this weekend playing Diablo 3 and WoW.  Blizz makes sure they're worth the money.

But who else can develop on that level in the industry today?  You have to make a game not only great, but KEEP making it great month-in and month-out.  It takes some brass balls just to stay in the arena.  Who else can design that well for that long?  Even decent companies like Bioware couldn't maintain that level.  Who could that isn't in it now?  Capcom?  Nintendo?  Valve?  From?

Heh, From Software.  I'd like an Armored Core or Tenchu MMO.

F2P games are more numerous because the game industry, like any industry, exists to make money and F2P titles are better to that end: they require little content updates and you only need a handful of players willing to waste hundreds of dollars in your cash shop to sustain them. Contrary to subscription games that need to build up loyalty to keep the steady flow of money coming.

Zyrusticae Wrote:It's certainly true that the Korean market is by and large different from the Western one, but the whole thing is just blown out of proportion in insane ways. Not even taking chances with games coming from that region is just plain excessive. You should at least try, especially if you can try before you buy anything at all.

The problem with this statement is that some of us have taken chances with games from those regions and always found the same issues in each one of them. Do we have to give a change to every single game that the korean market spits out in case one of them is the golden goose? I don't think so. Their design philosophy permeates their industry and because of that we can safely conclude that games from that region are not going to appeal to us. This does not mean they can't change, it just means we have given them the opportunity and it didn't work. Maybe in some point of the future we'll have enough reasons to try again, but for now we have enough experience with them to say that they are not a thing we like.

It's like going to various korean restaurants, try their menu, find them unappealing and concluding that korean cuisine is just not for you because they all have 'X' and 'Y' in common, and you just happen to not like 'X' and 'Y'. It's a reasonable inductive conclusion.

(04-02-2014, 01:05 AM)Zyrusticae Wrote: [ -> ]It's certainly true that the Korean market is by and large different from the Western one, but the whole thing is just blown out of proportion in insane ways. Not even taking chances with games coming from that region is just plain excessive. You should at least try, especially if you can try before you buy anything at all.

No, we aren't actually obligated to try anything at all. I gave Korean MMOs plenty of chance, and I've simply chosen to take my time and money elsewhere - especially as I've found games much more appealing to me in the scope of that elsewhere. On the topic of Blade & Soul, I have also seen what happens to specifically NCSoft-run MMOs, have experienced first-hand their horrible customer service, and I want no part in it. I gave GW2 a chance and am going to be giving WildStar a chance simply because ArenaNet and Carbine are capable of working largely independently from NCSoft. If it was "WildStar, created by NCSoft"... I wouldn't even spare it a single look.

F2P is another, just as frequently terrible beast. The only F2P MMO I actually enjoy is Rift, and that's mostly because I have played the game since the early betas and Trion managed to preserve the game experience almost perfectly in their transition to F2P. I have neither seen nor experienced such a good F2P model in any other MMO out there. I was extremely miffed when the transition happened, especially as it occurred very shortly after I purchased a 1 year subscription, and actually "quit" the game for some time out of anger. But I gave it another chance late last year, mostly because I needed something to assuage the anger SE has been causing me, and am glad I did.

Regarding Aion - I actually found it incredibly grindy while leveling. The XP loss on death combined with the dearth of quests that forced you to just grind mobs endlessly made me quit not long after arriving in that space zone. I miss its character creation tools, but I do not regret quitting that game.

I always thought LOTRO had a decent F2P model, unless it's changed significantly in the last couple of years since the last time I played. I was one of those early "lifetime" subscribers, which burned me a little when the F2P transition came along, and now I never play anymore! I wonder how many Turbine points I've got built up at this point. :S

(04-02-2014, 08:44 AM)Ignacius Wrote: [ -> ]And for all my criticism of CCP (and my criticisms are many), I wouldn't necessarily say EVE Online is a terrible game.  

I;d love to hear your crits of CCP if you ever want to post about them in this thread

(04-06-2014, 03:01 AM)ArmachiA Wrote: [ -> ]

(04-02-2014, 08:44 AM)Ignacius Wrote: [ -> ]And for all my criticism of CCP (and my criticisms are many), I wouldn't necessarily say EVE Online is a terrible game.  

I;d love to hear your crits of CCP if you ever want to post about them in this thread

In addition to the thread that was split off from this one specifically about EVE?  Maybe it would be better for PMs.  Suffice it to say, I played EVE for a while, I liked it as a game, I thought it was terrible as an MMO, and I blame CCP for their development strategy.  And for a lot of other things.  I'm not their biggest fan.  I think that if you gave the game to another, better developer, they could vastly improve it in a short amount of time.

But like I said, I liked the game, just not as an MMORPG.  And even though I think someone else could have definitely done EVE Online better, no one did.  So I will give CCP props for being original, at the very least.  I can certainly see why some people might want to pay a subscription to play it.

Screw you all, Free Realms is the best game evar made.

...Just going to leave this here.