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MisterBibs posted:Like I said, the same people that think the story in Blizzard's games are immaterial are the same ones that'll, earnestly, tell you that stuff like PS:T has good writing. I believe the former but not the latter, and my experience with people (who I know in person) is that this isn't unusual. You appear to have a weird group of friends, which, you know, makes a certain amount of sense.
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Apr 29, 2016 05:14
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Nah, my friends are just regular, normal people whose spheres of interest don't generally reach into the online component of things. If anything, I'm the geeky one, which usually translates into me being the one to explain to them things like this. I have to explain why people play Diablo 3 in Adventure Mode, or raid in WoW, or play a game that is a otorhinolaryngologist's wet dream due to how many noses have been crushed as people fall asleep after the 35,354th updatedmyjournal, or play the Fallout game set in Nevada over the one that's set in Washington DC. But to try and keep this more in line with the actual Warcraft movie, even they aren't interested in the Warcraft movie. Not even to see how bad it'll be. MisterBibs fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Apr 29, 2016 |
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Apr 29, 2016 05:41
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MisterBibs posted:If anything, I'm the geeky one, which usually translates into me being the one to explain to them things like this. That's probably why they don't understand those things.
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Apr 29, 2016 05:46
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This is an interesting diversion into the mind of a person who confuses anecdotes with data.
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Apr 29, 2016 06:01
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The only data point we have in this discussion is that, according to Blizzard, most people stop playing Starcraft 2 when they are done with the campaign, and even that's a half-remembered data point.Wheeee posted:That's probably why they don't understand those things. No, I tell them honestly. I usually have to end it with "it doesn't make much sense to me, either". Explaining the brief internet kvetching about ME3's ending was a doozy. MisterBibs fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Apr 29, 2016 |
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Apr 29, 2016 06:17
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MisterBibs posted:No, I tell them honestly. I believe you, but we shouldn't confuse honesty with telling the truth.
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Apr 29, 2016 06:26
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MisterBibs posted:I usually have to end it with "it doesn't make much sense to me, either". The blind leading the blind.
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Apr 29, 2016 06:39
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MisterBibs posted:Do you personally (in real life) know more than, say, five people who have touched the bounty-giving/plot-less (whose name I can't recall) version of Diablo 3 for any significant stretch of time? what the hell is this bullshit? no one who plays diablo 3 for more than one run-through does it in the disgusting lovely story mode, everyone goes straight to bounties, where the game is actually good. you must seriously be living in an echo chamber.
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Apr 29, 2016 06:43
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MisterBibs posted:No, I tell them honestly. I usually have to end it with "it doesn't make much sense to me, either". Explaining the brief internet kvetching about ME3's ending was a doozy. So you have to explain that people play games for reasons other than the story and these people also have to have it explained to them that people cared about Mass Effect's story? MisterBibs posted:or play a game that is a otorhinolaryngologist's wet dream due to how many noses have been crushed as people fall asleep after the 35,354th updatedmyjournal You've repeatedly claimed that "people have broken noses playing Torment because of how boring it is" as fact, and even if that were true it would be a sign of severe sleep deprivation or narcolepsy or the like - people don't just fall asleep from fully awake if they're uninterested in something. MisterBibs posted:And yet folks'll tell you, without giggling, that Torment has better writing. I brought Torment up specifically because it shouldn't be possible to say that about Torment without sniggering. Why do you think Torment has a bad story? "Some people found it boring" is not an answer, because you can find people who find just about anything boring. I was bored by the new Star Wars, I know someone who was bored by Fury Road, and an awful lot of people nowadays find reading .for pleasure boring which by your argument would imply that there aren't any well written books.
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Apr 29, 2016 09:15
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I agree with MisterBibs. All of it.
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Apr 29, 2016 10:44
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Ratios and Tendency posted:I agree with MisterBibs. All of it. *said in Han Solo voice*
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Apr 29, 2016 13:14
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Groovelord Neato posted:it is by far my most regretted video game purchase. I take it you managed to never buy the new sim city? poor mrbibbs. I too have a friend that likes WoW lore more or less. I don't care enough about the lore to debate him on it since goons say it's bad so it must be bad. Holyshoot fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Apr 29, 2016 |
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Apr 29, 2016 14:54
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From minute one you knew better than to buy SimCity, when it didn't even have features from the very stripped down Societies.
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Apr 29, 2016 15:01
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MisterBibs posted:The only data point we have in this discussion is that, according to Blizzard, most people stop playing Starcraft 2 when they are done with the campaign, and even that's a half-remembered data point. i wonder if people stop playing after the campaign because the campaign story is that loving bad kerrigan turns into an angel for some reason and the jimmy finds her in a bar? yeah, sure, i'll spend even more time on this game after that.
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Apr 29, 2016 15:15
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:From minute one you knew better than to buy SimCity, when it didn't even have features from the very stripped down Societies. I got it as a gift for my birthday so I thankfully dodged a bullet on that one.
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Apr 29, 2016 15:45
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Holyshoot posted:I got it as a gift for my birthday so I thankfully dodged a bullet on that one. I hope you got your money back.
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Apr 29, 2016 15:46
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Milky Moor posted:i wonder if people stop playing after the campaign because the campaign story is that loving bad
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Apr 29, 2016 15:50
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temple posted:That's exactly the ending players want and would never admit. People hate that Blizzard nakedly panders to them instead of like Chris Nolan who classes up people's shameful fantasies. I don't think it's quite the right combination of tone and overtness of sentimentality for what people want from Starcraft.
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Apr 29, 2016 16:13
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MisterBibs posted:I asked you if you know people (not online, as we've already confirmed, Online People have really odd opinions on games and writing) that actually play the dry, plot-less version of the game consistently or exclusively. Yes dude, like I said that is the only mode people play. It saved the game because it lets you jump into a variety of different challenges consisting of different settings, layouts, and enemy types, broken into bite sized chunks, rather than trudging through the same stuff in the same order over and over while having to watch the bad story. And WoW before the level cap is not about story. The majority of story in WoW, especially when it was popular, was a few lines of text and a poorly animated setpiece sprinkled among a few hours of questing, to tell a little side vignette that had nothing to do with the overarching story or the main characters. People played it to explore the setting, to go to nice looking and exciting locations, to get cool weapons and armor for their character, and to succeed at doing challenges, usually with their friends. Unless you consider all those things to be "story", and honestly you wouldn't be wrong to do so, but I don't think that's what you're saying.
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Apr 29, 2016 16:21
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When I played it (vanilla and BC), WoW did a decent job of conveying a story through gameplay and occasional spoken text in the game world. Quest text was generally short or skippable. It was more that each zone or instance dungeon more or less effectively told a story about the area and your characters' interaction with it. Albeit much of this, in practice, involve extensive and systematic harvesting and/or extermination of local animal, spirit, and humanoid populations.
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Apr 29, 2016 16:36
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Hodgepodge posted:Quest text was generally short or skippable A lot of it was neither originally  (one of the Must Have early mods was the ability to accept quests instantly, rather than after the whole text was slowly written out)
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Apr 29, 2016 16:39
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MrL_JaKiri posted:So you have to explain that people play games for reasons other than the story and these people also have to have it explained to them that people cared about Mass Effect's story? Pretty much, yeah. That's not what I said about ME3, though, because they cared about that game's story and (shock and awe) were not at all upset by its resolution. I don't understand how this is, at all, surprising. MrL_JaKiri posted:You've repeatedly claimed that "people have broken noses playing Torment because of how boring it is" as fact... people don't just fall asleep from fully awake if they're uninterested in something. It's a joke, because the game is slow and boring. MrL_JaKiri posted:Why do you think Torment has a bad story? It's a bad, boring story whose boringness saturates every character in it, from the player character to the background NPCs, in a game whose intense desire is to spew  at you about anything and everything, that don't properly justify the slog of gameplay in any noticeable way.
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Apr 29, 2016 16:50
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MrL_JaKiri posted:A lot of it was neither originally I played at launch, and it wasn't generally a concern up until level 40. I then stopped playing for like 9 months until I had a friend who had moved away who my roomate and I wanted to play it with. I seem to remember there being a way to set the game to allow you to skip it pretty early on. Or maybe I just got the mod pretty quick and essentially took for granted.
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Apr 29, 2016 16:51
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Hodgepodge posted:I don't think it's quite the right combination of tone and overtness of sentimentality for what people want from Starcraft.
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Apr 29, 2016 16:54
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temple posted:That's exactly the ending players want and would never admit. People hate that Blizzard nakedly panders to them instead of like Chris Nolan who classes up people's shameful fantasies. i hate the fact that blizzard openly panders to what could be considered the 'gamer ideal'. it's part of the reason i dislike a lot of overwatch - look, it's le funny british meme girl XD
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Apr 29, 2016 16:58
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MisterBibs posted:It's a bad, boring story whose boringness saturates every character in it, from the player character to the background NPCs, in a game whose intense desire is to spew So you've replied to a request asking to explain why the story is bad (without merely stating "it's boring") by saying that it's bad and boring? St Anselm has nothing on you
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Apr 29, 2016 16:58
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Hodgepodge posted:When I played it (vanilla and BC), WoW did a decent job of conveying a story through gameplay and occasional spoken text in the game world. Quest text was generally short or skippable. It was more that each zone or instance dungeon more or less effectively told a story about the area and your characters' interaction with it. Oh for sure, and that kind of thing is something I really value in games. But I feel like those kinds of contextual stories are different than "the plot of the game" as they're almost more about the individual settings than the narrative thrust. Like, Dire Maul was a really cool place with a lot going on but it would be barely a footnote in a summary of "the plot of WoW".
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Apr 29, 2016 17:17
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temple posted:The assassin/psychic girlfriend turned zerg alien queen crossed the line when she became a space angel. gently caress Blizzard, what kind of hack poo poo is that? I was bad before the angel transformation but it's an easy specific thing to point to. It's like people blaming the boat for Berserk having intolerable delays. There were attrocious delays before that, but it symbolizes the full unmoving nature of the update pace.
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Apr 29, 2016 17:22
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MisterBibs posted:
I'm not familiar enough with Diablo 3 to know what you're talking about and I'm honestly not sure I know anyone who has played Diablo 3 at all. The last time I played a Blizzard game was probably more than ten years ago. The games I have experience with are the online / competitive aspects of spergy MilSims like the War Game and Arma series, and I couldn't tell you anything about the "plots" of these games' single player modes other than that they are loose frame narratives for justifying the game play. Thinking back to my experience of playing early versions of Diablo and Warcraft, I'm not convinced it makes a lot of sense to separate game plan from storyline in a lot of these games. The "story" of the early games was very thin and mostly was about providing some mise en scène for the game levels. I can't imagine someone playing Diablo I because of the story, but I also can't imagine Diablo I being very engaging if you removed all the Gothic fantasy and occult elements. However, these elements are conveyed mostly through level design, character and enemy design, music, etc. and not through traditional narrative devices like dialogue and expository prose. The "plot", in the cinematic or novelistic sense of the term that you seem to be using, was still essentially window dressing for the game play. It's completely contrary to my experience to suggest that: "Diablo was a story injected into an otherwise-dry game, and was compelling enough to slog through the boring parts to find out what happened next." That's insane. Diablo barely had a story, it was more about giving an occult tinge to your hack and slash activity. The idea that large numbers of people would find the actual levelling or combat of Diablo boring and keep playing it just because they wanted to know how the plot is just silly.
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Apr 29, 2016 17:26
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Hodgepodge posted:This is an interesting diversion into the mind of a person who confuses anecdotes with data.
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Apr 29, 2016 17:31
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Terrible Opinions posted:I was bad before the angel transformation but it's an easy specific thing to point to. It's like people blaming the boat for Berserk having intolerable delays. There were attrocious delays before that, but it symbolizes the full unmoving nature of the update pace. Psychic assassin Alien queen Space angel Space angel isn't much of stretch for the quality of writing up to that point. I think people are angry the story is over more than Blizzard suddenly became hack writers. Or that Kerrigan's story is anti-climatic. temple fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Apr 29, 2016 |
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Apr 29, 2016 17:54
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Helsing posted:The "story" of the early games was very thin and mostly was about providing some mise en scène for the game levels. I can't imagine someone playing Diablo I because of the story, but I also can't imagine Diablo I being very engaging if you removed all the Gothic fantasy and occult elements. However, these elements are conveyed mostly through level design, character and enemy design, music, etc. and not through traditional narrative devices like dialogue and expository prose.
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Apr 29, 2016 18:12
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all video game "stories" should be mostly setting. though diablo 2's is interesting because the story isn't even about you (as in the player character) and it was the only time blizzard was able to pull off a twist.
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Apr 29, 2016 22:31
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My memories around WoW have nothing to do with the story and everything to do with how it changed MMORPG design to this very day.
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Apr 29, 2016 22:40
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it's just eq but easier. too bad it didn't rip off uo instead.
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Apr 29, 2016 23:02
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Freakazoid_ posted:My memories around WoW have nothing to do with the story and everything to do with how it changed MMORPG design to this very day. Even that I don't have reference to since I didn't play MMOs before 2006.
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Apr 29, 2016 23:04
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Groovelord Neato posted:it's just eq but easier. too bad it didn't rip off uo instead. WoW is actually much more mechanically complex and difficult than EQ ever was. What WoW was, and is, is less punishing in general gameplay.
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Apr 30, 2016 00:33
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while that second part is true the first part definitely isn't considering wow has nothing close to bard or enchanter. i don't mean difficult = better either because some parts of eq were stupidly hard. wow is objectively casual eq (it's why they hired some raiding dude as a main game designer which is bizarre) and it's why it became much more popular even tho eq was the most popular mmo ever until blizzard entered the market. where's the eq movie starring firiona vie. Groovelord Neato fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Apr 30, 2016 |
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Apr 30, 2016 03:41
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Groovelord Neato posted:wow is objectively casual eq (it's why they hired some raiding dude as a main game designer which is bizarre) The game became infinitely more "casual" when they listened to raiders more, because for most raiders levelling is a chore to be gotten out of the way.
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Apr 30, 2016 03:52
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computer parts posted:Even that I don't have reference to since I didn't play MMOs before 2006. Beaten to the punch, but I'm posting this anyway because MMOs are my favorite genre and I can't shut up about them: MMOs before WoW were very grindy and punishing, to varying extents. Everquest was arguably the worst. Experience loss on death, de-leveling if you lost too much. Several deaths after reaching the level cap could set you back hours of grinding to reach it again. All of your stuff is left on your corpse when you die. Everyone needed to work in teams after about level 10 or so all the time. There was no such thing as instanced content. Quests were available but they were few and were worth little exp. The main way to progress was pure mob grinding. Even then, some days you'd be lucky to find a group, or lucky there was an open spot to camp at, depending on the server pop. End-game content was shared in an open world, so guilds had to abide by a community approved calendar just to avoid conflict. In one particular case, whole servers would get up in arms if you attempted to kill a certain dragon, because it would forever change a zone's mob and item drop content when you failed. WoW made it possible to solo to the level cap with relatively light punishment, made end-game accessible to casual players, and used instances liberally, all while still being challenging and looking really good for its time. It was revolutionary, but also began the decline of MMORPGs being a mysterious open world.
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Apr 30, 2016 04:00
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