You enjoy the game at your pace, and they will enjoy or not enjoy the game at their pace. Who is to say which pace is right? Why must the game be balanced around those that take forever and may or may not ever see the end game. Both are a waste of time and that's the point.
I think Chaos has a point with it being damaging to you to really powergame like that. Enjoying alcohol responsibly is fine, but seeing who can drain a keg by themselves, faster than anyone else at the party (which is hundreds of thousands of people in size due to teh interwebz), is not something that should be promoted. It's not really impressive as much as it is shocking.
Maybe I am using the wrong similie and this is like a hotdog eating contest where contestants train their stomaches carefully in preparation for concentrated sprints of endurance. Mind over body and whatnot. My view is probably heavily skewed from my previous problems having boundaries with video games, but I agree with Chaos that we should have a few drinks at a time with a hotdog or two. Let's not heap praise on the guy who just barfed up all those 'dogs and suds now that he just stopped handstanding on that keg
The skill required to play a sport, versus the "skill" to play a video game is the more terrible analogy. It requires a lifetime to get good at a sport. To get good at most MMOs requires only a monolithic amount of free time, a completely sedentary lifestyle and a lot of repetition of simple, basic patterns.
So how many WoW PvP tournaments did you win recently? Only time investment - apart from, you know, learning the game - is the actual tournament, and that shit pays money rather than cost it. If you win. But, that shouldn't be a problem, because hey, anyone can figure out how do that shit, amirite?
*shrug*
This genre is positively crawling with people who'd totally be awesome, if they just had the time, to play this really easy game that they'd completely master all aspects of, if they just had the time. It's like those surveys about people and their driving skills; There isn't a man out there (humorously, it is the men who do this) who doesn't drive above average, and you don't need to be a statistician to realize that it's complete bullshit.
And more generally, I'm not sure everyone gets how the really hardcore guilds work; They don't neccesarily play more, they just schedule things differently and maintain a more continous rooster of people who, you know, actually know how the play the game. Putting in a 48 hour play-session with sleep breaks everytime there's a major patch - or a new game - doesn't neccesarily average to playing more on, say, a monthly basis.
I've known plenty of people who manage, simultaneously, to bitch about how much hardcore players play and how they have no life, then waste two hours of their life getting nothing done in game because they can't focus, follow a schedule, or heaven forbid, read up on the part of the game they're trying. And then they decry the people who do it in 30 minutes because they're paying attention as 'no-lifers'. Who's got 90 minutes more they can do whatever they want with, because they didn't fuck around. To reuse the drinking analogy - because it is oh-so-easy - frequent moderate use is more connected to alcoholism than rare binges.
(And the only reason Lionel Messi gets anything useful out of his skills - which he spends considerably more time and focused effort practicing than any gamer I'd bet - is because he has a larger paycheck, which, in turn he has only because it's a more popular sport. He's good at what he does, but his fame and paycheck comes from the popularity of the sport - not the difficulty.)
And more SWTOR related; Where did you guys pull the leveling estimates from anyway? Last I heard - which was quite literally years ago at this point - each class story was estimated to 200h at launch, which is a pretty standard leveling experience, but have they said anything about, say, expected preparations for raiding*? I feel there's room for some pretty hefty error margins in these estimates depending on their design, but I havn't kept up with the news during the past few months so maybe I've just missed an announcement or five?
And whatever happened to leveling via PvP? Did I dream that up?
*Yeah, I'm not calling it 'opsing' or 'doing an op'. Ever.
1-60 wow wasn't too bad, when I didn't have a job or school...
Now though, I really don't think any games should take that long for max level but if what they say is true and it is actually fun to level then I am all for it.
It could take months to reach the highest level, as long as there is enough content in those levels. Age of Conan at release is a perfect example, where the quests just cut out all of a sudden after a certain point.
I don't see time to max-level as an important distinction if the game is designed properly. If the content during leveling is actually engaging (as it likely will be with the story, etc) then levels will be an incidental part of the experience, as in single-player RPGs. I have always felt that MMOs which make leveling a goal (aka most of them) are poorly designed.
More important is probably the time to finish the main storyline. Once that is over with we will end up with whatever dungeon/raid grind they can cook up, I suppose.
I don't see time to max-level as an important distinction if the game is designed properly. If the content during leveling is actually engaging (as it likely will be with the story, etc) then levels will be an incidental part of the experience, as in single-player RPGs. I have always felt that MMOs which make leveling a goal (aka most of them) are poorly designed.
*applause*
If the journey is fun, the destination isn't important.
Hey, kinda like life in a way.
I was leaning heavily towards Smuggler for my first toon, but lately, I've been drawn to Bounty Hunter. And with the RP group, I'll put a bounty on my own head. It will be fun to a bounty hunter who is now the hunted, rather than the hunter.
I hope you can duel in instances, as a RPer that's always been a lament that in several games you can't.
But the game doesn't END at max level. Look at wow. The real journey, for me, began at max level. The leveling process can be fun in the beginning but just finishing that content let's you enjoy other content.
I mean, I've yet to see an mmo have quests that DON'T boil down to fetch, fedex, gather, or kill x amount of things. My sincerest hope is that there's a balance between the journey to get to end level and the content waiting for when you get there.
It's okay to have differing opinions. It just makes me sad that the people in this thread that aren't "hardcore raiders," whatever that means, are shitting all over people who happen to enjoy that type of content, while the reverse is hardly true at all.
I don't see time to max-level as an important distinction if the game is designed properly. If the content during leveling is actually engaging (as it likely will be with the story, etc) then levels will be an incidental part of the experience, as in single-player RPGs. I have always felt that MMOs which make leveling a goal (aka most of them) are poorly designed.
More important is probably the time to finish the main storyline. Once that is over with we will end up with whatever dungeon/raid grind they can cook up, I suppose.
Time to max-level tells you how much content there is (which is important no matter how touchy-feely you wanna get) and also an idea of how that content plays.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
But the game doesn't END at max level. Look at wow. The real journey, for me, began at max level. The leveling process can be fun in the beginning but just finishing that content let's you enjoy other content.
I mean, I've yet to see an mmo have quests that DON'T boil down to fetch, fedex, gather, or kill x amount of things. My sincerest hope is that there's a balance between the journey to get to end level and the content waiting for when you get there.
It's okay to have differing opinions. It just makes me sad that the people in this thread that aren't "hardcore raiders," whatever that means, are shitting all over people who happen to enjoy that type of content, while the reverse is hardly true at all.
Maybe instead of exaggerating everything to the level of ridiculous hyperbole - "shitting all over" you? really? really? really? - you can look at what people are actually saying. This game is being marketed as something that's supposed to be fun and story-driven from 1 to max level, and I think people are excited at that prospect because it's something a bit new and different, and would rather the attitudes from other games stayed in those other games.
I concede there are elements to a game's design that are positive, but the positive elements of a game can be acquired without having to "race to be first" or brag about accomplishments. Indeed, both of these things counter the very things you suggest are positive. Like anything in life, it is best enjoyed in moderation. That's just common sense, there's no reason to be argumentative about it. Even the gaming companies admit this now and encourage you to PUT THE TOY DOWN - and experience life itself.
Look, you can have a few beers with an old friend and enjoy yourself and benefit from the experience, but if you binge on 22, don't delude yourself the positive aspects outweighed the damage you did to yourself.
Gaming obsessively is NOT healthy. I think this is pretty hard to dispute. There's a reason why people seek counseling about it. That's because it goes too far and hurts their health and their lives. And if we're all honest, we all know gamers who take a game too far, and those are the people I am talking about. And one way to help those people is to puncture this myth that "gaming skills" are this mythic thing, worthy of envy, instead of just a flimsy extension of over-indulgence.
And lets face it, to pwn an MMO completely, is to damage others in your life in the process. They are designed to take a lot of time so that you keep subscribing to them. In fact, they are designed to NEVER end, to NEVER be completed. And you can't continually spend 80 hours a week in a video game and deem that investment of time, "skill" or "healthy". It is neither. If you game at this level, every week for a long period of time, you stopped reaping the positive aspects long ago and you've just become obsessed, likely at the expense of marriage, a job or real friends in the process.
I agree video games are an underrated medium for the purposes of teaching. I'll even say, that on aggregate, video games are a far healthier activity than television. And TV can be educational too, but watching TV 80 hours a week is a waste of time. Bragging you watched all episodes of "Arrested Development" without sleep or rest, is also a pretty stupid thing. And I happen to love that show.
Admit it, power gaming to be "first" on a server isn't about "building skill through the medium of video games". It's about bragging you were first, or acquiring some item that you've deluded yourself into thinking it has value. And you'll waste a lot of your time to accomplish it. And when you do, you'll realize nobody cares. And indeed a few years later, you'll even struggle to remember the details of it. And certainly EVERYONE will have forgotten you did it.
I love video games. I have since the days of the TelStar Ranger (and that reference should open your eyes to how ancient I am). I take pride in my hobby and I am advocate of it. But I also know these games are addictive, dangerously addictive and can be very unhealthy once you obsess over them so utterly that you squander diet, sleep, rest, friendship and income to play them. And so many people who race to be "first" do exactly that.
Epic post, I agree completely bro. Maybe its my age and from learning the hard way (I was once a powergamer to the core), but this is so true. It's not worth it in the end.
In my limited experience in MMOs, I played WoW during TBC. I was first in a PA guild (Annarchy) where I got my feet wet in raiding. I started then feeling the dissonance between my enjoyment of the game and its tendency to suck my time up. Later, a good RL friend roped me into helping him get a raid going in a small guild he had started. I had a blast doing so where I was a main tank and raid leader. We weren't hardcore by any means, and we were behind the times, doing SSC and TK when the good guilds on the server were farming BT. But I was having a hell of a time, and felt some proud moments like downing Void Reaver for the first time. Special memories with people who I considered friends, yet had never met face to face. Those are all real, and were hardly a waste of time. I was proud of the things I achieved with those guys, and the skill we had working together as a team. We didn't have the best gear on the server, but we were a solid second tier raiding guild.
But... at the time my wife and I were doing pretty poorly for a lot of reasons, and gaming became my escape from dealing with our problems. And then it became a problem between us-- as often can happen with things people use to escape from the pain of life. I could go into detail, but suffice it to say, my wife hated WoW.
So one night the guild was having a hard time downing Hydross. A few people didn't show, and so we had to get pugs, and after wiping twice they started disappearing. As that night's raid fell apart with no gear to speak of, I remember staring at the screen, and I said out loud, "What the fuck am I doing? I'm letting my marriage slip away while I dump hours into acquiring pixels." That night I quit WoW and haven't been back since. I can report that I am still married, and happily at that. Though quitting WoW wasn't the thing that turned things around, it didn't hurt matters.
Now, I may be stupid for planning to play a MMO again, but I think my personal life is in a better place to handle the enjoyment of the game. Because the game itself isn't the problem. The fun and the pride in achievement certainly isn't the problem. Those are good things, and video games can give a positive psychological return for the money and time invested. There's real value in that, Chaos, and I think you belittle that. The problem is me when I let anything get in the way of what is important in my life-- my family. When I do that, I make the game an accomplice to my crimes, and there I think your point is well taken.
But what the hell am I going on about this shit to a bunch of 24 year olds?
Most of these types of argument can be mitigated by remembering that all video games are a waste of time.
As long as they are fun, don't sweat the details.
Trouble is most people don't. I'm concerned for the young kids that have grown up thinking video games are the be all and end of of life. They'll have to learn the hard way I guess.
I was talking to a guy just yesterday who told me he was a (get this) "professional farmville player" whatever the heck that means. I just couldn't help but laugh and pity the guy.
Most of these types of argument can be mitigated by remembering that all video games are a waste of time.
As long as they are fun, don't sweat the details.
Trouble is most people don't. I'm concerned for the young kids that have grown up thinking video games are the be all and end of of life. They'll have to learn the hard way I guess.
I was talking to a guy just yesterday who told me he was a (get this) "professional farmville player" whatever the heck that means. I just couldn't help but laugh and pity the guy.
Maybe (hopefully?) that was just his way of saying that he owns 50 acres of real cabbages and potatoes. I hope.
Most of these types of argument can be mitigated by remembering that all video games are a waste of time.
As long as they are fun, don't sweat the details.
Trouble is most people don't. I'm concerned for the young kids that have grown up thinking video games are the be all and end of of life. They'll have to learn the hard way I guess.
I was talking to a guy just yesterday who told me he was a (get this) "professional farmville player" whatever the heck that means. I just couldn't help but laugh and pity the guy.
Maybe (hopefully?) that was just his way of saying that he owns 50 acres of real cabbages and potatoes. I hope.
Lol I hope so too. It's always a bit disconcerting when you ask a guy, "So, what do you do for a living?"
and they say, "Oh, I'm a professional farmville player."
Anyways, I disgress. Regardless, powergamers will undoubtedly play 25 hours a day and burn through content faster than my brother to the dinner table, it's just that their gonna have a heck of a lot of content to burn through if you take into account all 8 classes. It really is going to take a long time to experience everything this game is going to offer.
Basically you are just chaining one attack after another mixed in with your other abilities/heals/buffs/etc.
But in auto-attack games you are still using abilities most of the time, so it is not hugely different. It feels slightly more active. I just like that every attack my character makes is an input from me.
I don't see time to max-level as an important distinction if the game is designed properly. If the content during leveling is actually engaging (as it likely will be with the story, etc) then levels will be an incidental part of the experience, as in single-player RPGs. I have always felt that MMOs which make leveling a goal (aka most of them) are poorly designed.
More important is probably the time to finish the main storyline. Once that is over with we will end up with whatever dungeon/raid grind they can cook up, I suppose.
The stickler is the whole "designed properly", with emphasis on single-player RPG. Two examples of things that rarely function well with a level differential* are;
Group activities. Raiding tends to be completely absent, but even the smaller group things tends to be harder to get going; Whether because not everyone in your circle of friends can get to the planet where the group activity is, or because the actual activity just isn't tuned for the guy with the highest level, or group quests that your mates already completed (or worse; Did not do the prereq's for it yet, ugh).
PvP. The whole extended tutorial feel of feeding people skills piece-meal, coupled with the fact that game balance is an evolving process means PvP balance during leveling is mostly, well, crap. You can do a lot to make it better, but the windows of opportunity where it is actually a fun, engaging balanced experience tends to be small, and tends to come about mostly by luck rather than design.
In theory, you could design around pretty much all of the above. In practice, it'd be difficult as hell and essentially a waste of time - no matter how you slice it, things will behave differently depending on the server and how old the game is, so there's no real one-size-fits-all solution. There's just no way design it in a cost-efficient manner, so these segments of the game tends to be ignored/underdeveloped/horribly bad/annoying.
Which means people with no interest in paying 15 bucks a month for a single-player game - because I feel the shitting on other people's playstyles was a bit too onesided earlier; 'cause it's like drinking alone - gets that shit out of way the same way you pull a bandaid.
*Where 'level' is the traditional kind of character progression signified by there being a "fairly large" increase in power, as opposed to, say, character progression via gear where you - again, traditionally rather then neccesarily - have a much smaller differential.
And given that all casters in WoW play without an autoattack, I have a hard time seeing that it would really make the game feel all that more special.
I don't think people realize that these "world first" folks have sponsorships and such. I don't know how well it pays compared to competitive gaming, but it does pay out to some degree.
Comparing a world first to watching a lot of TV isn't accurate, really. While, unfortunately, it requires a lot of free time, you can say that about developing any skill. I'm a little dumbstruck at how someone says sports requires a lifetime to become good at, and in the follow-up paragraph dismisses gaming as just requiring a lot of freetime. Uh...you don't say?
Having said that, the chances of you becoming Mr. eSportsman are about as good as you becoming Mr. World Cup. You have to ask yourself if the time you are investing in a game really has a decent chance to pay off in any positive way. And, like sports, the answer is probably no. Likely it'll just take away time from learning skills that will have a more realistic chance at applying in real life.
This assumes that TOR even takes off in such a way as to attract sponsors and big money event. There's a good chance it won't!
I wasn't really implying that there should be no end-game or that it should take an overly long period of time to get there.
I just meant that the story should last at least as long as it takes to reach max level (my definition of "properly designed", in this context), and if it does so then most players won't worry about their levels so much (and presumably enjoy themselves more as a result). Therefore, I consider the length of the storyline "more important" than just the simple time to max-level.
As for casters playing without auto-attack; they are casters. It is a slowly paced kind of thing, and there is a lag between input and result. In CoH you press a button and your character punches/blasts something right then. It seems to mostly be the same idea in TOR from what I've seen. It doesn't make a huge difference, but it is still nicer than auto-attack in my opinion.
In regards to no auto attack, I've never played an MMO without it, but I am really looking forward to not having it. All auto attack means is that part of your damage is just this passive white damage flying around without you having to put any work into it. I'd rather have my only damage be the buttons I press. It's more visceral, and it allows them to make the abilities hit harder individually than they would if there was also auto attack in the mix.
I feel like the only reason auto attack is still around now is that back in the day in like vanilla Everquest, it was almost the only thing melee characters had, so as the genre developed, it just kind of stuck around for no real reason.
In regards to no auto attack, I've never played an MMO without it, but I am really looking forward to not having it. All auto attack means is that part of your damage is just this passive white damage flying around without you having to put any work into it. I'd rather have my only damage be the buttons I press. It's more visceral, and it allows them to make the abilities hit harder individually than they would if there was also auto attack in the mix.
I feel like the only reason auto attack is still around now is that back in the day in like vanilla Everquest, it was almost the only thing melee characters had, so as the genre developed, it just kind of stuck around for no real reason.
I think game balance is part of it too. In WoW, melee abilities are almost entirely instant cast which is very beneficial for PvP, where bursting someone's health down with those abilities gives a healer far less time to react. Having some percentage of melee damage offloaded to a continuous stream of autoattacks mitigates that.
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Blasters are for noobs.
I think Chaos has a point with it being damaging to you to really powergame like that. Enjoying alcohol responsibly is fine, but seeing who can drain a keg by themselves, faster than anyone else at the party (which is hundreds of thousands of people in size due to teh interwebz), is not something that should be promoted. It's not really impressive as much as it is shocking.
Maybe I am using the wrong similie and this is like a hotdog eating contest where contestants train their stomaches carefully in preparation for concentrated sprints of endurance. Mind over body and whatnot. My view is probably heavily skewed from my previous problems having boundaries with video games, but I agree with Chaos that we should have a few drinks at a time with a hotdog or two. Let's not heap praise on the guy who just barfed up all those 'dogs and suds now that he just stopped handstanding on that keg
*shrug*
This genre is positively crawling with people who'd totally be awesome, if they just had the time, to play this really easy game that they'd completely master all aspects of, if they just had the time. It's like those surveys about people and their driving skills; There isn't a man out there (humorously, it is the men who do this) who doesn't drive above average, and you don't need to be a statistician to realize that it's complete bullshit.
And more generally, I'm not sure everyone gets how the really hardcore guilds work; They don't neccesarily play more, they just schedule things differently and maintain a more continous rooster of people who, you know, actually know how the play the game. Putting in a 48 hour play-session with sleep breaks everytime there's a major patch - or a new game - doesn't neccesarily average to playing more on, say, a monthly basis.
I've known plenty of people who manage, simultaneously, to bitch about how much hardcore players play and how they have no life, then waste two hours of their life getting nothing done in game because they can't focus, follow a schedule, or heaven forbid, read up on the part of the game they're trying. And then they decry the people who do it in 30 minutes because they're paying attention as 'no-lifers'. Who's got 90 minutes more they can do whatever they want with, because they didn't fuck around. To reuse the drinking analogy - because it is oh-so-easy - frequent moderate use is more connected to alcoholism than rare binges.
(And the only reason Lionel Messi gets anything useful out of his skills - which he spends considerably more time and focused effort practicing than any gamer I'd bet - is because he has a larger paycheck, which, in turn he has only because it's a more popular sport. He's good at what he does, but his fame and paycheck comes from the popularity of the sport - not the difficulty.)
And more SWTOR related; Where did you guys pull the leveling estimates from anyway? Last I heard - which was quite literally years ago at this point - each class story was estimated to 200h at launch, which is a pretty standard leveling experience, but have they said anything about, say, expected preparations for raiding*? I feel there's room for some pretty hefty error margins in these estimates depending on their design, but I havn't kept up with the news during the past few months so maybe I've just missed an announcement or five?
And whatever happened to leveling via PvP? Did I dream that up?
*Yeah, I'm not calling it 'opsing' or 'doing an op'. Ever.
That's it.
Now though, I really don't think any games should take that long for max level but if what they say is true and it is actually fun to level then I am all for it.
It could take months to reach the highest level, as long as there is enough content in those levels. Age of Conan at release is a perfect example, where the quests just cut out all of a sudden after a certain point.
More important is probably the time to finish the main storyline. Once that is over with we will end up with whatever dungeon/raid grind they can cook up, I suppose.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
*applause*
If the journey is fun, the destination isn't important.
Hey, kinda like life in a way.
I was leaning heavily towards Smuggler for my first toon, but lately, I've been drawn to Bounty Hunter. And with the RP group, I'll put a bounty on my own head. It will be fun to a bounty hunter who is now the hunted, rather than the hunter.
I hope you can duel in instances, as a RPer that's always been a lament that in several games you can't.
I mean, I've yet to see an mmo have quests that DON'T boil down to fetch, fedex, gather, or kill x amount of things. My sincerest hope is that there's a balance between the journey to get to end level and the content waiting for when you get there.
It's okay to have differing opinions. It just makes me sad that the people in this thread that aren't "hardcore raiders," whatever that means, are shitting all over people who happen to enjoy that type of content, while the reverse is hardly true at all.
Time to max-level tells you how much content there is (which is important no matter how touchy-feely you wanna get) and also an idea of how that content plays.
Maybe instead of exaggerating everything to the level of ridiculous hyperbole - "shitting all over" you? really? really? really? - you can look at what people are actually saying. This game is being marketed as something that's supposed to be fun and story-driven from 1 to max level, and I think people are excited at that prospect because it's something a bit new and different, and would rather the attitudes from other games stayed in those other games.
Epic post, I agree completely bro. Maybe its my age and from learning the hard way (I was once a powergamer to the core), but this is so true. It's not worth it in the end.
I see how it is.
In my limited experience in MMOs, I played WoW during TBC. I was first in a PA guild (Annarchy) where I got my feet wet in raiding. I started then feeling the dissonance between my enjoyment of the game and its tendency to suck my time up. Later, a good RL friend roped me into helping him get a raid going in a small guild he had started. I had a blast doing so where I was a main tank and raid leader. We weren't hardcore by any means, and we were behind the times, doing SSC and TK when the good guilds on the server were farming BT. But I was having a hell of a time, and felt some proud moments like downing Void Reaver for the first time. Special memories with people who I considered friends, yet had never met face to face. Those are all real, and were hardly a waste of time. I was proud of the things I achieved with those guys, and the skill we had working together as a team. We didn't have the best gear on the server, but we were a solid second tier raiding guild.
But... at the time my wife and I were doing pretty poorly for a lot of reasons, and gaming became my escape from dealing with our problems. And then it became a problem between us-- as often can happen with things people use to escape from the pain of life. I could go into detail, but suffice it to say, my wife hated WoW.
So one night the guild was having a hard time downing Hydross. A few people didn't show, and so we had to get pugs, and after wiping twice they started disappearing. As that night's raid fell apart with no gear to speak of, I remember staring at the screen, and I said out loud, "What the fuck am I doing? I'm letting my marriage slip away while I dump hours into acquiring pixels." That night I quit WoW and haven't been back since. I can report that I am still married, and happily at that. Though quitting WoW wasn't the thing that turned things around, it didn't hurt matters.
Now, I may be stupid for planning to play a MMO again, but I think my personal life is in a better place to handle the enjoyment of the game. Because the game itself isn't the problem. The fun and the pride in achievement certainly isn't the problem. Those are good things, and video games can give a positive psychological return for the money and time invested. There's real value in that, Chaos, and I think you belittle that. The problem is me when I let anything get in the way of what is important in my life-- my family. When I do that, I make the game an accomplice to my crimes, and there I think your point is well taken.
But what the hell am I going on about this shit to a bunch of 24 year olds?
I'm the king of overshare.
edit: that and she might be reading this.
<.<
>.>
As long as they are fun, don't sweat the details.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
Trouble is most people don't. I'm concerned for the young kids that have grown up thinking video games are the be all and end of of life. They'll have to learn the hard way I guess.
I was talking to a guy just yesterday who told me he was a (get this) "professional farmville player" whatever the heck that means. I just couldn't help but laugh and pity the guy.
Maybe (hopefully?) that was just his way of saying that he owns 50 acres of real cabbages and potatoes. I hope.
That would be okay.
fuck you casual scrubs, i've got monsanto engineered crops
Lol I hope so too. It's always a bit disconcerting when you ask a guy, "So, what do you do for a living?"
and they say, "Oh, I'm a professional farmville player."
Anyways, I disgress. Regardless, powergamers will undoubtedly play 25 hours a day and burn through content faster than my brother to the dinner table, it's just that their gonna have a heck of a lot of content to burn through if you take into account all 8 classes. It really is going to take a long time to experience everything this game is going to offer.
Edit: Thought better of it.
PS4:MrZoompants
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
But in auto-attack games you are still using abilities most of the time, so it is not hugely different. It feels slightly more active. I just like that every attack my character makes is an input from me.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
Group activities. Raiding tends to be completely absent, but even the smaller group things tends to be harder to get going; Whether because not everyone in your circle of friends can get to the planet where the group activity is, or because the actual activity just isn't tuned for the guy with the highest level, or group quests that your mates already completed (or worse; Did not do the prereq's for it yet, ugh).
PvP. The whole extended tutorial feel of feeding people skills piece-meal, coupled with the fact that game balance is an evolving process means PvP balance during leveling is mostly, well, crap. You can do a lot to make it better, but the windows of opportunity where it is actually a fun, engaging balanced experience tends to be small, and tends to come about mostly by luck rather than design.
In theory, you could design around pretty much all of the above. In practice, it'd be difficult as hell and essentially a waste of time - no matter how you slice it, things will behave differently depending on the server and how old the game is, so there's no real one-size-fits-all solution. There's just no way design it in a cost-efficient manner, so these segments of the game tends to be ignored/underdeveloped/horribly bad/annoying.
Which means people with no interest in paying 15 bucks a month for a single-player game - because I feel the shitting on other people's playstyles was a bit too onesided earlier; 'cause it's like drinking alone - gets that shit out of way the same way you pull a bandaid.
*Where 'level' is the traditional kind of character progression signified by there being a "fairly large" increase in power, as opposed to, say, character progression via gear where you - again, traditionally rather then neccesarily - have a much smaller differential.
And given that all casters in WoW play without an autoattack, I have a hard time seeing that it would really make the game feel all that more special.
Comparing a world first to watching a lot of TV isn't accurate, really. While, unfortunately, it requires a lot of free time, you can say that about developing any skill. I'm a little dumbstruck at how someone says sports requires a lifetime to become good at, and in the follow-up paragraph dismisses gaming as just requiring a lot of freetime. Uh...you don't say?
Having said that, the chances of you becoming Mr. eSportsman are about as good as you becoming Mr. World Cup. You have to ask yourself if the time you are investing in a game really has a decent chance to pay off in any positive way. And, like sports, the answer is probably no. Likely it'll just take away time from learning skills that will have a more realistic chance at applying in real life.
This assumes that TOR even takes off in such a way as to attract sponsors and big money event. There's a good chance it won't!
I just meant that the story should last at least as long as it takes to reach max level (my definition of "properly designed", in this context), and if it does so then most players won't worry about their levels so much (and presumably enjoy themselves more as a result). Therefore, I consider the length of the storyline "more important" than just the simple time to max-level.
As for casters playing without auto-attack; they are casters. It is a slowly paced kind of thing, and there is a lag between input and result. In CoH you press a button and your character punches/blasts something right then. It seems to mostly be the same idea in TOR from what I've seen. It doesn't make a huge difference, but it is still nicer than auto-attack in my opinion.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
I feel like the only reason auto attack is still around now is that back in the day in like vanilla Everquest, it was almost the only thing melee characters had, so as the genre developed, it just kind of stuck around for no real reason.
I think game balance is part of it too. In WoW, melee abilities are almost entirely instant cast which is very beneficial for PvP, where bursting someone's health down with those abilities gives a healer far less time to react. Having some percentage of melee damage offloaded to a continuous stream of autoattacks mitigates that.