I would take issue with the idea that good design is whatever sells your product.
That's good design from the perspective of increasing value for shareholders, but it isn't good design from either the customer perspective or the designer's perspective, unless they specifically got into game design only to figure out how to design a best-seller.
Plenty of products sell well, but are terrible in terms of actual usefulness. Homeopathic medicine has a pretty amazing profit margin, but that doesn't make it good medicine.
Although it's true that the competition in the MMO market is so fierce I imagine people can't get away with really phoning it in.
hanskey, just because somebody disagrees with you doesn't mean that they're "butt-hurt" or "hate" you. Maybe you should take disagreements a little bit more in stride.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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ElldrenIs a woman dammitceterum censeoRegistered Userregular
I personally think it would be fucking hilarious for an MMO tutorial to literally say, "Okay, I need you to go get the Fire Plot Ticket, the Water Plot Ticket, the Air Plot Ticket, and the Earth Plot Ticket. Why? Because you're the hero and I'm the NPC. Get those, and I'll give you the Sword of Unobtanium so you can smite the Big Bad. I'll be waiting right here for you!"
Kingdom of Loathing basically does this.
Elldren on
fuck gendered marketing
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ElldrenIs a woman dammitceterum censeoRegistered Userregular
Well I'm hoping one day that I'll find an MMORPG I really like. I love RPGs, but many of the things I love about RPGs in general are not to be found in MMORPGs, so far.
hanskey, just because somebody disagrees with you doesn't mean that they're "butt-hurt" or "hate" you. Maybe you should take disagreements a little bit more in stride.
Apparently not, considering there's like 6 practically simultaneous posts bitching about me but not actually responding to anything I wrote.
hanskey:
Firstly, it's debate and discourse, yes. That means your points will be debated. You will have to get used to that. Stop continually bitching in this thread about people refuting or disagreeing with your points.
Furthermore, I've been mentioning WoW because it's a HUGE FUCKING SUCCESS and thus directly relevant to what MMO players want and what attracts them. Namely, they want storytelling and good gameplay. These things are important to success in the industry and WoW and people trying to compete with it have been pushing ahead majorly on both these fronts. Talking about MMOs, you'd damn well better fucking mention WoW. It's the game everyone is trying to beat and trying to learn from and trying to be.
Story telling, despite your posts, is both important and improving and a key point of success in the market, which is why it's improving.
Finally, again, we return to your apples vs oranges problem. MMOs and RPGs are not the same thing. It is not "bad design", it's a different genre. It's ok to not like oranges, no one cares. When you say Apples are badly designed because they aren't citrusy enough, people will point out the problem in your argument.
Everyone knows WoW is about getting phat loot and fantasy dress up, the story is pointless. Most people I know that play WoW just started skipping the reasons for the quests after around level 20.
JebusUD on
and I wonder about my neighbors even though I don't have them
but they're listening to every word I say
Everyone knows WoW is about getting phat loot and fantasy dress up, the story is pointless. Most people I know that play WoW just started skipping the reasons for the quests after around level 20.
You'd think so, but there's a reason questing is now practically ubiquitous in MMOs. Shit, questing became a focus of WoW because the users clamored for it.
Hanskey, when someone conflates opinion with fact in D&D they're going to get called on it. D&D being what it is that will usually involve some degree of snark which will get worse if that position is clung to.
Calling WoW/Eve/etc. poorly designed is not something I've seen you argue successfully. And I don't mean this snarkily but seeing as they do exactly what they're designed to do with great success I'm not really sure how one could argue that.
The issue I'm getting you have with them is that what they're designed to do isn't something you care for which is totally ok. You're in no way obligated to enjoy them and unless I missed something no one has said or even implied you are. What keeps getting pointed out (with various levels of snark) is that disliking them does not mean they are poorly designed and that rather their intended design is one that not everybody enjoys.
There's nothing wrong with disliking something that's well designed nor a requirment to justify that dislike. For example I'm not a fan of the Gran Turismo series. This doesn't mean they're poorly designed games though, just that I don't particularily care for them.
Everyone knows WoW is about getting phat loot and fantasy dress up, the story is pointless. Most people I know that play WoW just started skipping the reasons for the quests after around level 20.
You'd think so, but there's a reason questing is now practically ubiquitous in MMOs. Shit, questing became a focus of WoW because the users clamored for it.
Hanskey seems to have decided to delete all of his posts.
I'm apparently having a very lively discussion with myself. I swear I was taking medication for this.
I would say a focus on questing in the sense that cooler stuff happens in the quests now. Ride this dragon and fireball things! Catapult some stuff! that sort of thing. But not in the sense that the story in the quests has improved any. Or so I have heard.
JebusUD on
and I wonder about my neighbors even though I don't have them
but they're listening to every word I say
Bad and good are subjective qualities unless you have a measurement criteria, so I chose to measure whether or not MMORPGs are good RPGs, and by that test MMORPGs have all failed.
Except that your measurement criteria are still highly subjective, as much as you pretend otherwise.
In other news, this thread makes me wish I had the time and money to play City Of Heroes again.
I might have unintentionally pretended they were not subjective measurement criteria in the posts I deleted, but honestly, I fully recognize that it was a subjective choice on my part as to which measurement criteria I used. I just didn't go out of my way to make that clear to anyone else.
What would you suggest as an objective measurement criteria?
BTW: Sorry, I already edited out that line, because I didn't want to get dragged back into the fray.
I'd just like to say that I've been casually following this thread with the intention of maybe posting my own perspective in it if the discussion happens to touch on something specific that interests me, and man, the last couple of pages are confusing as fuck to read.
Don't delete posts, dude. It fucks up the entire flow of the conversation for anyone else who might be reading the thread, and if you said stupid or regrettable shit, man, it's already been said, people have already seen it and responded to it. The best thing you can do in a situation like that is just leave it alone.
There was a thread on bullying here a few weeks ago, in which I took what turned out to be a highly unpopular position. I spent some time arguing my side, but in the end, I decided that my worthy opponents and I just had fundamentally different opinions on what constituted bullying. I wasn't going to change their mind, they weren't going to change mine, so I just walked away from the thread. On a somewhat similar note, I've gotten into arguments about inane details like an author's use of grammar in the D&D book thread, that eventually resulted in a mod stepping in and telling me and the other guy to both just shut up already, god.
People are always welcome in D&D. Reasoned arguments are always welcome. The only things that aren't welcome are rule violations and fruitless, unproductive discourse - like for instance arguing based purely on an opinion that contradicts the visible facts, or getting caught up in some tiny nitpicky detail of a debate. And even if you do get your hand slapped, eh, just take your lumps and move on. Just about everybody here has drawn a red card or two at some point. Sometimes, we all take the wrong tone, or say the wrong thing, or we're just flat-out wrong - it happens. But when it does, don't ruin the conversation for others by deleting posts.
In unrelated news, I miss the shit out of World of Warcraft. Quit cold turkey almost three months ago, and not a day goes by that I don't want to log on my bare durid and romp through one of the new heroics. I was just about geared enough to be able to faceroll them like Wrath, and while I enjoyed the change of pace and the increased challenge of CCing trash again, goddamn it felt good to just charge into a pack of mobs and swipe/maul/thrash.
Sorry Kate of Lokys, but like I said I had made some other posts that might lead to additional infractions or being banned, neither of which I want. I empathize because I 've been in your shoes, but I have no way to change the deletion. I imagine that if the mods really wanted my posts back they could override the deletion.
Oh, I know they can't be un-deleted - no way back through the waters of Lethe, and all that. It's more some advice for next time. You're a relatively new poster here (welcome, et cetera), so I wanted to kind of fill you in on one of the unwritten cultural norms of D&D.
I will add, though, that mods around here are generally a highly reasonable, responsible bunch. If you get an infraction in a thread, it's basically a warning that says "hey, knock this kind of thing off." If you had other existing posts saying similarly warning-worthy things, they're usually ignored, because mods don't punish people twice for the same mistake. The only way to get a double-infraction in a thread is to say something bad, get an infraction, then *continue* saying similar stupid shit in spite of being warned. Like, you need to deliberately try to piss off the mods to pull a double red card. (And you need to try even harder to get banned as a result of infractions).
I might have unintentionally pretended they were not subjective measurement criteria in the posts I deleted, but honestly, I fully recognize that it was a subjective choice on my part as to which measurement criteria I used. I just didn't go out of my way to make that clear to anyone else.
What would you suggest as an objective measurement criteria?
BTW: Sorry, I already edited out that line, because I didn't want to get dragged back into the fray.
Honestly, I don't think there can be a truly objective measurement criteria when it comes to something as inherently subjective as enjoyment.
Also, attempting to nail down a definition for "RPG" either arbitrarily excludes a whole mess of games that are commonly considered "role playing games" or includes a whole mess of games that only qualify as such due to a technicality.
That said, there's nothing wrong with disliking MMO gameplay or game design because it's not the type of RPG gameplay or game design you enjoy. What's problematic is claiming that MMOs aren't "real" RPGs or have inherently bad design.
Fake edit: Oh, if you mean an objective measurement of game design, then that might be easier to accomplish by looking at ease of use and the gulf between design goals and actual game, etc.
I personally think it would be fucking hilarious for an MMO tutorial to literally say, "Okay, I need you to go get the Fire Plot Ticket, the Water Plot Ticket, the Air Plot Ticket, and the Earth Plot Ticket. Why? Because you're the hero and I'm the NPC. Get those, and I'll give you the Sword of Unobtanium so you can smite the Big Bad. I'll be waiting right here for you!"
There's a quest in WoW that goes "You also need to kill Dude X. You know this because you are psychic." :P
God damn it Kate stop making me want to play my druid
Druids are the best goddamned class ever and you know it, give in to the temptation!
Incidentally, have you ever noticed how strong the correlation is between druid spec and personality type? In my experience playing for two plus years across like three different servers, resto druids are *always* either level-headed women or total stoner dudes. Like, always. I have raided with like fifteen different resto druids in various raiding guilds, and twelve of them were complete potheads.
Bear druids tend to be pretty easygoing guys; I don't think I ever encountered a fellow lady beartank, but the GM of my first raiding guild was a bear, and I don't think I ever heard him raise his voice in Vent. Cat druids are cool, highly focused, relatively low-drama folks who theorycraft like hell, do awesome dps, and only get their fur ruffled when polearms go to hunters.
Boomkins... well, they're the ones who couldn't handle the JOHN FUCKING MADDEN feral rotation, so they gave up and pretended to be mages instead <_<
That's kind of what happened though. I insulted Shryke, and did so in several subsequent posts as he mentioned, and the infraction was earned only on the first of those. So I was pretty sure the mods would take that as me deliberately ignoring his or her warning. Probably things would have been fine, but I didn't know how sensitive they are to this kind of thing and frankly I just wanted to forget I even joined this discussion to begin with. Thanks Kate!
Well Lawndart, that's what I was struggling with. I can readily assess good or bad design based on standard programming practices, but based on previous posts I didn't think that was the thrust of the discussion. I tried and failed to come up with another criteria for myself to use in framing my opinion on the design of MMORPGs. It happens.
I'm sorry that I gave you the impression that I was saying that MMORPGs are not real RPGs, I just happen to prefer other RPG flavors.
I grew up on single player RPGs, and table-top RPGs so that's where my love is.
I personally think it would be fucking hilarious for an MMO tutorial to literally say, "Okay, I need you to go get the Fire Plot Ticket, the Water Plot Ticket, the Air Plot Ticket, and the Earth Plot Ticket. Why? Because you're the hero and I'm the NPC. Get those, and I'll give you the Sword of Unobtanium so you can smite the Big Bad. I'll be waiting right here for you!"
There's a quest in WoW that goes "You also need to kill Dude X. You know this because you are psychic." :P
This is the best quest ever. Basically, you turn into an NPC for a few minutes, and you give out quests to three (NPC) "player characters" who come up to you.
I personally think it would be fucking hilarious for an MMO tutorial to literally say, "Okay, I need you to go get the Fire Plot Ticket, the Water Plot Ticket, the Air Plot Ticket, and the Earth Plot Ticket. Why? Because you're the hero and I'm the NPC. Get those, and I'll give you the Sword of Unobtanium so you can smite the Big Bad. I'll be waiting right here for you!"
There's a quest in WoW that goes "You also need to kill Dude X. You know this because you are psychic." :P
This is the best quest ever. Basically, you turn into an NPC for a few minutes, and you give out quests to three (NPC) "player characters" who come up to you.
Everyone knows WoW is about getting phat loot and fantasy dress up, the story is pointless. Most people I know that play WoW just started skipping the reasons for the quests after around level 20.
You'd think so, but there's a reason questing is now practically ubiquitous in MMOs. Shit, questing became a focus of WoW because the users clamored for it.
Hanskey seems to have decided to delete all of his posts.
I'm apparently having a very lively discussion with myself. I swear I was taking medication for this.
I would say a focus on questing in the sense that cooler stuff happens in the quests now. Ride this dragon and fireball things! Catapult some stuff! that sort of thing. But not in the sense that the story in the quests has improved any. Or so I have heard.
The stories have sorta gotten better. I mean, there's more humor, they've gotten better at conveying the (they've actually mentioned there's a character limit on quest text because they know, past X point, 90% of people's eyes glaze over and stop paying attention) and they have gotten better, more involving stories, even if they still aren't that good story wise. Frankly, it's about the same thing you see in normal RPGs. RPG stories have improved, but they are still fairly generic and not that well written (from anything I've seen anyway). Although obviously this is compared to, say, a good book which is kind of an unfair comparison.
But I was also more talking about the focus on that questing and thus on a story progression. I mean, the questing system came about in the first place because in vanilla alpha testing people bitched when they got out of the starting zones and couldn't find anymore. It's progressed along that line to the point where every quest in newer zones has some purpose within the overall arc. And people do talk about and respond to that. The users like it. So somebody (and I'd say alot of somebodies) are paying attention.
I personally think it would be fucking hilarious for an MMO tutorial to literally say, "Okay, I need you to go get the Fire Plot Ticket, the Water Plot Ticket, the Air Plot Ticket, and the Earth Plot Ticket. Why? Because you're the hero and I'm the NPC. Get those, and I'll give you the Sword of Unobtanium so you can smite the Big Bad. I'll be waiting right here for you!"
There's a quest in WoW that goes "You also need to kill Dude X. You know this because you are psychic." :P
This is the best quest ever. Basically, you turn into an NPC for a few minutes, and you give out quests to three (NPC) "player characters" who come up to you.
Look at me, peasant. Heirlooms cover my body from head to toe, gifted to me by the greatest heroes Azeroth has ever known.
Now look at yourself.
Quickly, look back at me.
Yes, this IS horse made of STARS.
What pointless series of tasks befitting a mentally deficient orc have you prepared for me?
:O
It's also the origin of the new ubiquitous use of the term "bear ass" for any random item you need to collect for whatever reason:
That's all? One quest? Surely you jest. Are there not bear asses to collect? Perhaps a rare flower that I could pick from which you will make some mildly hallucinogenic tonic which you will then drink, resulting in visions of a great apocalypse? Perhaps the local populace of mildly annoying, ill-tempered gophers are acting up and need to be brought to justice? No? Nothing?
And yeah I have noticed that Kate and it actually kinda fits me aside from the theorycrafting as a primarily kitty druid... but really only because I didn't really play long enough to get into that. I theorycrafted like a whoa in WAR though
Anyone remember the article about that Chinese MMORPG that automatically logs everyone who has ever killed you so that after months of gameplay and hundreds of dollars spent you can know whom to get revenge against?
Anyone remember the article about that Chinese MMORPG that automatically logs everyone who has ever killed you so that after months of gameplay and hundreds of dollars spent you can know whom to get revenge against?
Now that was good game design.
Shit, I thought everyone just used a little black moleskine notebook for that.
Dec. 27
- Jeezushealz (?? Horde priest) ganked Alisdair twice while questing in Hillsbrad [Dragonmaw server]
- Stabzulol (85 Alliance rogue) killed Gaurai while doing Tol Barad dailies; also has a stupid name [Shattered Halls server]
- fucking bank alt Kilte (70 Horde DK) fucking undercut me on glyphs again, asshole [Shattered Halls server]
Fake edit: I actually used "Dec. 25" as the example date originally, then realized how pathetic it would be to imply that I spent all day on Christmas playing WoW. Which I totally didn't.
But anyways yeah there was a way to track who you had killed, who had killed you and how many times it'd happened. I never really paid attention to it but some of the dudes in my guild were almost obsessive about it. It did create some hilarious times where someone would see a nemesis of theirs and the entire warband would shift focus to hunting that one poor soul down for awhile. You'd have this one poor guy running across entire zones with 24 rabid people chasing after him.
God damn it Kate stop making me want to play my druid
Druids are the best goddamned class ever and you know it, give in to the temptation!
Incidentally, have you ever noticed how strong the correlation is between druid spec and personality type? In my experience playing for two plus years across like three different servers, resto druids are *always* either level-headed women or total stoner dudes. Like, always. I have raided with like fifteen different resto druids in various raiding guilds, and twelve of them were complete potheads.
Bear druids tend to be pretty easygoing guys; I don't think I ever encountered a fellow lady beartank, but the GM of my first raiding guild was a bear, and I don't think I ever heard him raise his voice in Vent. Cat druids are cool, highly focused, relatively low-drama folks who theorycraft like hell, do awesome dps, and only get their fur ruffled when polearms go to hunters.
Boomkins... well, they're the ones who couldn't handle the JOHN FUCKING MADDEN feral rotation, so they gave up and pretended to be mages instead <_<
Heh. Well, former feral dps druid here and my gf was a resto druid, so I think your stereotypes work pretty well in my experience.
I quit because I didn't like the "make everyone the same" thing they were going for. I hear they've since made some changes, but there was a point where they just really screwed feral druids of all stripes badly for no reason, and that was enough for me. Reusing old raids, stripping mechanics, less content per expac than any before... it was just time to move on.
I liked the game, and I thought the overall design of WoW is pretty good. There just isn't enough of it to continue to be interesting. That's a problem that all MMOs will face. Content needs to be flowing for all the cash they're receiving, and I just don't feel Blizzard has been holding up their end of the bargain recently.
It's also the origin of the new ubiquitous use of the term "bear ass" for any random item you need to collect for whatever reason:
That's all? One quest? Surely you jest. Are there not bear asses to collect? Perhaps a rare flower that I could pick from which you will make some mildly hallucinogenic tonic which you will then drink, resulting in visions of a great apocalypse? Perhaps the local populace of mildly annoying, ill-tempered gophers are acting up and need to be brought to justice? No? Nothing?
I'm pretty sure that's just a reference to an already existing term. Twenty Bear Asses has been on tvtropes for a while.
Posts
That's good design from the perspective of increasing value for shareholders, but it isn't good design from either the customer perspective or the designer's perspective, unless they specifically got into game design only to figure out how to design a best-seller.
Plenty of products sell well, but are terrible in terms of actual usefulness. Homeopathic medicine has a pretty amazing profit margin, but that doesn't make it good medicine.
Although it's true that the competition in the MMO market is so fierce I imagine people can't get away with really phoning it in.
You don't have to like oranges. You not liking oranges is fine.
This is a fundamentally different claim from saying you prefer apples to oranges.
Also, your posts have displayed some serious ignorance with respect to the MMO markets history and current state.
EDIT: Oh look, the "fanboi" argument rears it's head.
Moreover, may I suggest that you may simply not like the genre? That perhaps MMOs aren't for you?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Kingdom of Loathing basically does this.
This is like how I am with RTS games.
Apparently not, considering there's like 6 practically simultaneous posts bitching about me but not actually responding to anything I wrote.
hanskey:
Firstly, it's debate and discourse, yes. That means your points will be debated. You will have to get used to that. Stop continually bitching in this thread about people refuting or disagreeing with your points.
Furthermore, I've been mentioning WoW because it's a HUGE FUCKING SUCCESS and thus directly relevant to what MMO players want and what attracts them. Namely, they want storytelling and good gameplay. These things are important to success in the industry and WoW and people trying to compete with it have been pushing ahead majorly on both these fronts. Talking about MMOs, you'd damn well better fucking mention WoW. It's the game everyone is trying to beat and trying to learn from and trying to be.
Story telling, despite your posts, is both important and improving and a key point of success in the market, which is why it's improving.
Finally, again, we return to your apples vs oranges problem. MMOs and RPGs are not the same thing. It is not "bad design", it's a different genre. It's ok to not like oranges, no one cares. When you say Apples are badly designed because they aren't citrusy enough, people will point out the problem in your argument.
but they're listening to every word I say
that's... certainly something
You'd think so, but there's a reason questing is now practically ubiquitous in MMOs. Shit, questing became a focus of WoW because the users clamored for it.
I'm apparently having a very lively discussion with myself. I swear I was taking medication for this.
Calling WoW/Eve/etc. poorly designed is not something I've seen you argue successfully. And I don't mean this snarkily but seeing as they do exactly what they're designed to do with great success I'm not really sure how one could argue that.
The issue I'm getting you have with them is that what they're designed to do isn't something you care for which is totally ok. You're in no way obligated to enjoy them and unless I missed something no one has said or even implied you are. What keeps getting pointed out (with various levels of snark) is that disliking them does not mean they are poorly designed and that rather their intended design is one that not everybody enjoys.
There's nothing wrong with disliking something that's well designed nor a requirment to justify that dislike. For example I'm not a fan of the Gran Turismo series. This doesn't mean they're poorly designed games though, just that I don't particularily care for them.
I would say a focus on questing in the sense that cooler stuff happens in the quests now. Ride this dragon and fireball things! Catapult some stuff! that sort of thing. But not in the sense that the story in the quests has improved any. Or so I have heard.
but they're listening to every word I say
Except that your measurement criteria are still highly subjective, as much as you pretend otherwise.
In other news, this thread makes me wish I had the time and money to play City Of Heroes again.
What would you suggest as an objective measurement criteria?
BTW: Sorry, I already edited out that line, because I didn't want to get dragged back into the fray.
Don't delete posts, dude. It fucks up the entire flow of the conversation for anyone else who might be reading the thread, and if you said stupid or regrettable shit, man, it's already been said, people have already seen it and responded to it. The best thing you can do in a situation like that is just leave it alone.
There was a thread on bullying here a few weeks ago, in which I took what turned out to be a highly unpopular position. I spent some time arguing my side, but in the end, I decided that my worthy opponents and I just had fundamentally different opinions on what constituted bullying. I wasn't going to change their mind, they weren't going to change mine, so I just walked away from the thread. On a somewhat similar note, I've gotten into arguments about inane details like an author's use of grammar in the D&D book thread, that eventually resulted in a mod stepping in and telling me and the other guy to both just shut up already, god.
People are always welcome in D&D. Reasoned arguments are always welcome. The only things that aren't welcome are rule violations and fruitless, unproductive discourse - like for instance arguing based purely on an opinion that contradicts the visible facts, or getting caught up in some tiny nitpicky detail of a debate. And even if you do get your hand slapped, eh, just take your lumps and move on. Just about everybody here has drawn a red card or two at some point. Sometimes, we all take the wrong tone, or say the wrong thing, or we're just flat-out wrong - it happens. But when it does, don't ruin the conversation for others by deleting posts.
In unrelated news, I miss the shit out of World of Warcraft. Quit cold turkey almost three months ago, and not a day goes by that I don't want to log on my bare durid and romp through one of the new heroics. I was just about geared enough to be able to faceroll them like Wrath, and while I enjoyed the change of pace and the increased challenge of CCing trash again, goddamn it felt good to just charge into a pack of mobs and swipe/maul/thrash.
Oh, I know they can't be un-deleted - no way back through the waters of Lethe, and all that. It's more some advice for next time. You're a relatively new poster here (welcome, et cetera), so I wanted to kind of fill you in on one of the unwritten cultural norms of D&D.
I will add, though, that mods around here are generally a highly reasonable, responsible bunch. If you get an infraction in a thread, it's basically a warning that says "hey, knock this kind of thing off." If you had other existing posts saying similarly warning-worthy things, they're usually ignored, because mods don't punish people twice for the same mistake. The only way to get a double-infraction in a thread is to say something bad, get an infraction, then *continue* saying similar stupid shit in spite of being warned. Like, you need to deliberately try to piss off the mods to pull a double red card. (And you need to try even harder to get banned as a result of infractions).
Honestly, I don't think there can be a truly objective measurement criteria when it comes to something as inherently subjective as enjoyment.
Also, attempting to nail down a definition for "RPG" either arbitrarily excludes a whole mess of games that are commonly considered "role playing games" or includes a whole mess of games that only qualify as such due to a technicality.
That said, there's nothing wrong with disliking MMO gameplay or game design because it's not the type of RPG gameplay or game design you enjoy. What's problematic is claiming that MMOs aren't "real" RPGs or have inherently bad design.
Fake edit: Oh, if you mean an objective measurement of game design, then that might be easier to accomplish by looking at ease of use and the gulf between design goals and actual game, etc.
There's a quest in WoW that goes "You also need to kill Dude X. You know this because you are psychic." :P
Druids are the best goddamned class ever and you know it, give in to the temptation!
Incidentally, have you ever noticed how strong the correlation is between druid spec and personality type? In my experience playing for two plus years across like three different servers, resto druids are *always* either level-headed women or total stoner dudes. Like, always. I have raided with like fifteen different resto druids in various raiding guilds, and twelve of them were complete potheads.
Bear druids tend to be pretty easygoing guys; I don't think I ever encountered a fellow lady beartank, but the GM of my first raiding guild was a bear, and I don't think I ever heard him raise his voice in Vent. Cat druids are cool, highly focused, relatively low-drama folks who theorycraft like hell, do awesome dps, and only get their fur ruffled when polearms go to hunters.
Boomkins... well, they're the ones who couldn't handle the JOHN FUCKING MADDEN feral rotation, so they gave up and pretended to be mages instead <_<
Well Lawndart, that's what I was struggling with. I can readily assess good or bad design based on standard programming practices, but based on previous posts I didn't think that was the thrust of the discussion. I tried and failed to come up with another criteria for myself to use in framing my opinion on the design of MMORPGs. It happens.
I'm sorry that I gave you the impression that I was saying that MMORPGs are not real RPGs, I just happen to prefer other RPG flavors.
I grew up on single player RPGs, and table-top RPGs so that's where my love is.
This is the best quest ever. Basically, you turn into an NPC for a few minutes, and you give out quests to three (NPC) "player characters" who come up to you.
:O
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Go on, guess.
You'll never guess!
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The stories have sorta gotten better. I mean, there's more humor, they've gotten better at conveying the (they've actually mentioned there's a character limit on quest text because they know, past X point, 90% of people's eyes glaze over and stop paying attention) and they have gotten better, more involving stories, even if they still aren't that good story wise. Frankly, it's about the same thing you see in normal RPGs. RPG stories have improved, but they are still fairly generic and not that well written (from anything I've seen anyway). Although obviously this is compared to, say, a good book which is kind of an unfair comparison.
But I was also more talking about the focus on that questing and thus on a story progression. I mean, the questing system came about in the first place because in vanilla alpha testing people bitched when they got out of the starting zones and couldn't find anymore. It's progressed along that line to the point where every quest in newer zones has some purpose within the overall arc. And people do talk about and respond to that. The users like it. So somebody (and I'd say alot of somebodies) are paying attention.
It's also the origin of the new ubiquitous use of the term "bear ass" for any random item you need to collect for whatever reason:
Boomkin, duh
And yeah I have noticed that Kate and it actually kinda fits me aside from the theorycrafting as a primarily kitty druid... but really only because I didn't really play long enough to get into that. I theorycrafted like a whoa in WAR though
are you calling me fat?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Now that was good game design.
Now his thread's completely off-topic anyway, but I'm sure he's totally cool with that. Later kids.
Bah, I've used "troll ass" since 2005. Damn kids today.
Shit, I thought everyone just used a little black moleskine notebook for that.
- Jeezushealz (?? Horde priest) ganked Alisdair twice while questing in Hillsbrad [Dragonmaw server]
- Stabzulol (85 Alliance rogue) killed Gaurai while doing Tol Barad dailies; also has a stupid name [Shattered Halls server]
- fucking bank alt Kilte (70 Horde DK) fucking undercut me on glyphs again, asshole [Shattered Halls server]
Fake edit: I actually used "Dec. 25" as the example date originally, then realized how pathetic it would be to imply that I spent all day on Christmas playing WoW. Which I totally didn't.
Wait... it might have been an addon. I forget :P
But anyways yeah there was a way to track who you had killed, who had killed you and how many times it'd happened. I never really paid attention to it but some of the dudes in my guild were almost obsessive about it. It did create some hilarious times where someone would see a nemesis of theirs and the entire warband would shift focus to hunting that one poor soul down for awhile. You'd have this one poor guy running across entire zones with 24 rabid people chasing after him.
*edit* @Feral: Just more of you to love, baby
fact.
Heh. Well, former feral dps druid here and my gf was a resto druid, so I think your stereotypes work pretty well in my experience.
I quit because I didn't like the "make everyone the same" thing they were going for. I hear they've since made some changes, but there was a point where they just really screwed feral druids of all stripes badly for no reason, and that was enough for me. Reusing old raids, stripping mechanics, less content per expac than any before... it was just time to move on.
I liked the game, and I thought the overall design of WoW is pretty good. There just isn't enough of it to continue to be interesting. That's a problem that all MMOs will face. Content needs to be flowing for all the cash they're receiving, and I just don't feel Blizzard has been holding up their end of the bargain recently.
I'm pretty sure that's just a reference to an already existing term. Twenty Bear Asses has been on tvtropes for a while.