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Ragequit posted:Yeah, because his track record of doing this a very - very - long time is stellar. Say what you will about him, but I trust Derek Smart's output more than I do that of my childhood idols like Lord British or Chris Roberts. He's at least kept abreast of development and the cutting edge of what really can't be done.
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Oct 30, 2014 14:48
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al-azad posted:But the state of the game at launch was wildly different a year later and it was in beta for 6 months prior to launch. "Beta" has completely lost its meaning, it's a marketing term at this point. And MMO's change so drastically over the course of months that it's hard to call any kind of launch a "complete" launch. As far as I can tell you're describing two different things. WoW launched feature complete and mostly functional (mechanically, the servers were dead for upwards of two weeks), and of course an MMO is going to change over its lifetime. Otherwise its lifetime would be a few months. The relatively recent (last 3-4 years) phenomenon of beta being a marketing term is absolutely a thing, but it definitely wasn't back in 2004. WoW's beta was absolutely a thing they used to test their systems and make some final changes, and it was in beta that long because they made some pretty serious changes once people got their hands on it.
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Oct 30, 2014 14:53
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Orv posted:As far as I can tell you're describing two different things. WoW launched feature complete and mostly functional (mechanically, the servers were dead for upwards of two weeks), and of course an MMO is going to change over its lifetime. Otherwise its lifetime would be a few months. The relatively recent (last 3-4 years) phenomenon of beta being a marketing term is absolutely a thing, but it definitely wasn't back in 2004. WoW's beta was absolutely a thing they used to test their systems and make some final changes, and it was in beta that long because they made some pretty serious changes once people got their hands on it. Feature complete can mean anything when you're constantly adding features. What I'm trying to say in way too many words is that MMO's have a blurred line of quantifying their content and I don't find this a new phenomena, I saw the same things going down in Asheron's Call and Dark Age of Camelot.
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Oct 30, 2014 14:57
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Xander77 posted:Wait, contracts is on steam now? Since when? I purchased the Steam version and just thought I'd warn anyone - unless they've made an update to the game, save games do not work, making it unplayable. Adding to that, there are no resolution settings which allow it to look decent on a 1080p display.
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Oct 30, 2014 15:04
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al-azad posted:Feature complete can mean anything when you're constantly adding features. What I'm trying to say in way too many words is that MMO's have a blurred line of quantifying their content and I don't find this a new phenomena, I saw the same things going down in Asheron's Call and Dark Age of Camelot. By their nature, MMOs have to be constantly updated with new content over time or they'd lose all their players.
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Oct 30, 2014 15:06
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al-azad posted:Feature complete can mean anything when you're constantly adding features. What I'm trying to say in way too many words is that MMO's have a blurred line of quantifying their content and I don't find this a new phenomena, I saw the same things going down in Asheron's Call and Dark Age of Camelot. I guess I don't see what you're getting at. All three of the MMOs you've mentioned so far could be played to level cap and then after without butting up against an artificial wall of "Hey this doesn't exist yet, woops, see you in six months." Compared to say, Neverwinter, Rift, TESO or The Secret World which all launched basically without endgames. E: I guess DAoC is an odd case because of its actual engame being intentionally infinite.
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Oct 30, 2014 15:08
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Orv posted:As far as I can tell you're describing two different things. WoW launched feature complete and mostly functional (mechanically, the servers were dead for upwards of two weeks) They quickly realized how bad this was, shut down the affected realms for a week plus, and credited us game time for it.
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Oct 30, 2014 15:09
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Navaash posted:Literally. On certain servers (notably Mal'ganis), there was a hard drive controller blowout very early on. You could play normally, and everything was fine UNTIL you attempted to pick up an item that you 1) didn't have in your inventory already or 2) you had it but it was non-stackable. You then proceeded to get stuck in the loot animation for 5+ minutes unable to act or react to anything around you. 10 years ago, companies like Blizzard and CCP were still figuring out what kind of infrastructure you really needed for an MMO. Interesting times. Honestly, the whole 'extended beta' phenomenon is probably to partially alleviate launch day rushes collapsing your servers since there's no good way to deal with that (beyond buying/leasing a bunch of hardware that won't be utilized two weeks later).
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Oct 30, 2014 15:11
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Orv posted:I guess I don't see what you're getting at. All three of the MMOs you've mentioned so far could be played to level cap and then after without butting up against an artificial wall of "Hey this doesn't exist yet, woops, see you in six months." Compared to say, Neverwinter, Rift, TESO or The Secret World which all launched basically without endgames. Was there no level cap in Neverwinter, Rift, Elder Scrolls, or Secret World? Were there actual areas that said "available in the full game"? I ask because I legitimately don't know but I have a hard time believing these were games that were sold as a commercial product where you intentionally can't reach a point that the developers deemed was the upper limit. Like if the game gave you an item that required level 40 or something but oops the cap is level 20. I'm not talking about a game like Wild Star or ArcheAge which had closed betas you could buy your way into because Blizzard has done this before. I'm talking about a game you can pay money for and is open to the public. I can't recall an MMO that's Early Access levels of incomplete at the time of its launch.
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Oct 30, 2014 15:19
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bonds0097 posted:10 years ago, companies like Blizzard and CCP were still figuring out what kind of infrastructure you really needed for an MMO. Interesting times. In the case of CCP, substitute “for 10 years" for “10 years ago". Up until a year ago when key people started getting siphoned off to Riot, they were still doing some pretty interesting things to try to alleviate their ever-growing infrastructure problems, or perhaps more accurately, the increasing problems with their legacy code.
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Oct 30, 2014 15:22
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Tippis posted:In the case of CCP, substitute “for 10 years" for “10 years ago". Up until a year ago when key people started getting siphoned off to Riot, they were still doing some pretty interesting things to try to alleviate their ever-growing infrastructure problems, or perhaps more accurately, the increasing problems with their legacy code. And people generally don't want to splash out on infiniband and/or massive SAN memory arrays until they need them/money starts to flow in. Archeage's launch was rocky because they didn't over-provision for the launch wave, but they'll save/make money in the longer run. Also, computing at scale is an entirely different animal than just floating around a couple of hundred hosts. Note: Eve is also single-sharded, which is highly unusual in the MMO game. Edit: al-azad posted:I'm talking about a game you can pay money for and is open to the public. I can't recall an MMO that's Early Access levels of incomplete at the time of its launch. Nether. Entropy. Pretty much every MMO that doesn't have huge amounts of marketing and/or backing. Perpetuum has launched a few times over the years, relaunching again when it hit Steam. Entropy is still being developed. I haven't logged into Nether for the longest time, but the patch notes are fun. Destiny launched with 'missing content', but they were actually staggering the release, so it doesn't match what you were saying, but you're going to see more attempts to slow the race to the level cap. Hav fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Oct 30, 2014 |
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Oct 30, 2014 15:37
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al-azad posted:Was there no level cap in Neverwinter, Rift, Elder Scrolls, or Secret World? Were there actual areas that said "available in the full game"? I ask because I legitimately don't know but I have a hard time believing these were games that were sold as a commercial product where you intentionally can't reach a point that the developers deemed was the upper limit. Like if the game gave you an item that required level 40 or something but oops the cap is level 20. Corin Tucker's Stalker already answered your second question; Age of Conan basically had no leveling content from I think it was around 40 to the launch level cap of 80. You had to grind mobs to get there, there were no quests of note, no storyline, and while gear dropped from the mobs, it was often above your current level (most efficient way to level then was grinding +5 mobs). As to Neverwinter, Rift, TESO and TSW, when I say that they have no endgame, I mean that there were no meaningful progression systems past leveling in those games. There were no epics from raids, no purples from heroics, no Conquerer's gear from PvP. It's a really weird thing to define meaningful progression in an MMO after leveling. To some people leveling is the entire point, having an entire stable of level capped characters that they'll never play again is meaningful. To some people it's beating the boss at the end of a raid that you've been working on for months. Also note it's entirely possible that I am wrong about one or more of those four MMOs I am namedropping. I'm not sure if you're intentionally moving the goalposts or one of us is poorly expressing themselves to a critical degree. You asked if WoW started the trend of MMOs launching in a beta state, and for me a feature complete MMO is one with meaningful post-leveling progression, which WoW absolutely did have. gently caress Ony. E: Please note, currency collection does not count as meaningful progression. I'm looking at you GW2 and Neverwinter. Orv fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Oct 30, 2014 |
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Oct 30, 2014 15:39
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Hav posted:And people generally don't want to splash out on infiniband and/or massive SAN memory arrays until they need them/money starts to flow in. Archeage's launch was rocky because they didn't over-provision for the launch wave, but they'll save/make money in the longer run. Initially, the entire game was designed with an anticipation of ever-faster processor frequencies. Not many years later, that path was abandoned in favour of multi-core processing, and they've had to invent new solutions ever since to cope with that initial unlucky guess. In truth, the whole thing would need an almost complete rewrite to work properly on modern hardware, but they've really done a great job of dodging that particular bullet over and over again.
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Oct 30, 2014 15:45
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Of course now that they're bleeding their already strained talent like an exsanguinated anime character, that could all come down in a heap pretty soon.
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Oct 30, 2014 15:46
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Orv posted:Corin Tucker's Stalker already answered your second question; Age of Conan basically had no leveling content from I think it was around 40 to the launch level cap of 80. You had to grind mobs to get there, there were no quests of note, no storyline, and while gear dropped from the mobs, it was often above your current level (most efficient way to level then was grinding +5 mobs). There were a couple of dungeons at the time, Killiki's springs to mind, because I was a shatter spec necromancer, but you needed to be 80 to hit the correct specification (shatter one of the three groups of spawning ghouls, which needed four necromancers - one for each group, then a backup). There were various missions and quests right up to 80, but there was a shortfall in the gained experience that meant an unfun grind from 77 thru 80. Once you got to 80, there was little else to do. The complaints I recall from the time (apart from them not pushing out the DX10 client when they said) was that the endgame was utterly lacking and three repeatable dungeons wasn't going to fly. Bearing in mind that they were pushing the concept of siege warfare on the player owned fortresses, but it didn't really pan out.
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Oct 30, 2014 15:47
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Fair enough, I don't know enough about MMO's to continue this conversation.
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Oct 30, 2014 15:48
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Hav posted:Bearing in mind that they were pushing the concept of siege warfare on the player owned fortresses, but it didn't really pan out. And the Award for Dramatic Understatement goes to... al-azad posted:Fair enough, I don't know enough about MMO's to continue this conversation. All you need to know is they're dumb and we're all dumb for playing them.
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Oct 30, 2014 15:49
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I'm pretty sure Rift had heroics and raids when it launched, all of which had unique loot. It's been quite a while since I played it though...
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Oct 30, 2014 15:51
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Tippis posted:Definitely. The fact that they got it going at all a decade ago is nothing short of amazing. But it has also been a fun ride to see how they've had to adjust those initial solutions as the industry changed. Yeah, they originally scaled each system to a VM, then needed a blade, then shifted heavier systems to greater hardware, then removed a lot of drones (all system updates occurred all the time, rather than in the 'bubble' of space that the ships were in), removed missiles as an entity, rolled out infiniband, then the huge SAN array for the MSSQL DB. Biggest problem was the moving of ships between the servers, mainly due to bandwidth and that stupid slow speed of light. I'm waiting for CCP to fold and we get the full details of the migration from 2003 right through to time dilation. Most MMO scaling is really boring, but CCPs is fascinating from a scaling PoV. Edit: al-azad posted:Fair enough, I don't know enough about MMO's to continue this conversation. You're dodging a time-wasting bullet there. MMOs are like cotton candy to me now. I like them occasionally, but all the time is going to leave me fat and diseased. Broken Cog posted:I'm pretty sure Rift had heroics and raids when it launched, all of which had unique loot. Yeah, there's a bunch of events which do give mostly cosmetic items, and it's one of the things that they've excelled in. There are also a bunch of static dungeons that give loot, but the emphasis is more on the character than the equipment. I rate rift very highly. Defiance is very similar. Hav fucked around with this message at 15:56 on Oct 30, 2014 |
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Oct 30, 2014 15:52
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Broken Cog posted:I'm pretty sure Rift had heroics and raids when it launched, all of which had unique loot. Sources more informed tell me it wasn't that the raids weren't there it's that until recently all of the raids in Rift were astronomically awful.
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Oct 30, 2014 15:53
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For anyone who's interested, Valkyria Chronicles was confirmed for PC a day or two ago. https://twitter.com/SEGA/status/526884918677471232 Not a lot of detail is known at this point, but it's pretty surprising since Sega isn't usually receptive to porting previous console exclusives. Dunno if this truly has anything to do with that Sega PC port petition that's been going on but they're happily taking credit for it anyway. The game itself is a pretty fun SRPG made by a lot of the folks originally responsible for Skies of Arcadia. Worth keeping an eye on if you're at all interested in this kinda thing.
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Oct 30, 2014 15:54
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If nothing else I'm sure we can all agree MMOs are poo poo. I've always wondered though, has an MMO ever had a good endgame aside from PVP for folks who don't like raiding? I guess EVE and UO did it reasonably well, but as much as I enjoy running heroics/experts/hardmodes I have never enjoyed the futility of banging my head against the wall in progression raiding, not to mention the toxicity of raid culture, just for a meaningless incremental gear upgrade. I always tanked and healed because big numbers didn't interest me at goddamn all, and it was a more interesting and meaningful passtime to redo dungeons and see what stupid handicaps and challenges we could dream up. vvv: Not at all. I'm well aware that's the case, and it's just fine if that's what someone likes. I was just curious if any game ever had a decent alternative endgame. Meldonox fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Oct 30, 2014 |
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Oct 30, 2014 16:05
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Meldonox posted:If nothing else I'm sure we can all agree MMOs are poo poo. It sounds like you're the exact opposite of what MMO's are made for, so I don't think anyone could ever convince you that raiding is what most people that play MMOs want out of the endgame.
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Oct 30, 2014 16:15
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Orv posted:As to Neverwinter, Rift, TESO and TSW, when I say that they have no endgame, I mean that there were no meaningful progression systems past leveling in those games. There were no epics from raids, no purples from heroics, no Conquerer's gear from PvP Um, what? Rift most definitely had heroics and raids at release. Greenscale's Blight was most definitely A Thing and not many people even had it cleared by the time the next raid was dropped in 1.1.
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Oct 30, 2014 16:21
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Meldonox posted:If nothing else I'm sure we can all agree MMOs are poo poo. They're so transparent. If you could put on They Live glasses the screen would say "CONSUME." Meldonox posted:I guess EVE and UO did it reasonably well, but as much as I enjoy running heroics/experts/hardmodes I have never enjoyed the futility of banging my head against the wall in progression raiding, not to mention the toxicity of raid culture, just for a meaningless incremental gear upgrade. Care to explain how Eve isn't exactly what you just said?
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Oct 30, 2014 16:24
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Meldonox posted:If nothing else I'm sure we can all agree MMOs are poo poo. People play MMOs for endgame? I view raids like bonus challenge dungeons from those old school JRPGs. They're fun to do for the prestige and glory but stop becoming fun once you're forced to do it. Mists of Pandaria tried to solve endgame with the legendary questline and max level questing/daily hubs. The Dominance Offensive quests were cool as heck storywise and the Timeless Isle was a neat idea. I thought it was a pretty decent post-leveling experience. Tezzeract fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Oct 30, 2014 |
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Oct 30, 2014 16:26
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Tezzeract posted:People play MMOs for endgame? ...Yeah? Anything else you could conceivably play them for is done way better in other genres.
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Oct 30, 2014 16:30
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There's supposed to be a Warhammer MMO, isn't there? What happened to it, no one seems to talk about it anymore.
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Oct 30, 2014 16:31
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revdrkevind posted:Care to explain how Eve isn't exactly what you just said? He never said that Eve isn't poo poo?  Just because it did something reasonably well doesn't mean it isn't poo poo.
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Oct 30, 2014 16:32
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Seventh Arrow posted:There's supposed to be a Warhammer MMO, isn't there? What happened to it, no one seems to talk about it anymore. It was mishandled quite badly in the eleventh hour and ended up poo poo. Still loved it though.
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Oct 30, 2014 16:33
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revdrkevind posted:They're so transparent. If you could put on They Live glasses the screen would say "CONSUME." That transparency really is it, cripes. Just to clarify, I'm not saying it isn't poo poo, but if you're asking me to explain how it's different from the average endgame grind, I'm happy to oblige. EVE is the same old poo poo day after day mechanically, but assuming nullsec warfare is the equivalent to raiding (never mind that you can get in on it on day one), the metagame still provides a dramatic narrative that changes over time. To use my last regular raiding experience, if you raided Ulduar you showed up three or four nights a week and did the exact same fights ad nauseam. EVE is boring as piss to log in and play, but if you're part of that endgame there's a motivation other than farming gear with a few more stat points. Things actually change hands and you can engage in a conflict that has more or less tangible results for winning or losing. (IRC was still the best thing about Goonfleet)
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Oct 30, 2014 16:37
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Kyrosiris posted:...Yeah? Anything else you could conceivably play them for is done way better in other genres. I think MMOs do the social open world thing pretty well. The only other game I can think of that does something similar which isn't an MMO is Borderlands. In my experience, the 'raid' 20 man dungeons are actually worse gameplay-wise than 4 person dungeons. The bosses have more health and the experience is more chaotic, but not necessarily more fun. As a person who heard how endgame raiding is the greatest thing ever, its actually a pretty big disappointment.
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Oct 30, 2014 16:53
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Dont most people not reach top level in MMOs anyway? Raiders are the vast minority of subscription payments, is my understanding
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Oct 30, 2014 16:56
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I'm the kind of guy that usually drops games after level maxing + a bit of loving around. When I do something for exp and level ups then it holds my attention. The moment I have to do the same only for better items I lose interest.
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Oct 30, 2014 17:00
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Tezzeract posted:People play MMOs for endgame? Oh definitely. I'd go so far as to say the majority of people who play them do. Using WoW as an example, up until the Cataclysm expansion they'd see a jump in subscribers every time they brought out a big content patch (which with rare exceptions are additions to endgame). Even with their subscriber count sliding in recent years, these content patches seem to coincide with the hemorrhaging slowing or briefly reversing. Palpek posted:I'm the kind of guy that usually drops games after level maxing + a bit of loving around. When I do something for exp and level ups then it holds my attention. The moment I have to do the same only for better items I lose interest. Me too. I spent TONS of time playing FFXIV until I ran a ten man extreme and thought, "poo poo, I don't want to get too involved in this" and pretty much quit the next day. Hearing about the Atma grind only cemented that. Meldonox fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Oct 30, 2014 |
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Oct 30, 2014 17:00
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If you want a case study in addiction regression, just watch WoW subscription numbers before the launch of a new expansion.
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Oct 30, 2014 17:02
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An MMO subscription is like paying for the privilege to run in a digital hamster wheel.
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Oct 30, 2014 17:06
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Ekster posted:An MMO subscription is like paying for the privilege to run in a digital hamster wheel. The 12xp bonus in SWTOR means you can run through the game playing only the story missons and not have to spend 5-10 hours every planet completing bs sidequests and doing raids/operations to level up and keep your gear at an appropiate level. I'm on my fourth max level character since Oct 1st and I've been playing pretty casually. Once that runs out I'll probably not play anymore, aside from taking 1 character through the new content just to see it.
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Oct 30, 2014 17:10
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This thread is going to explode in two hours so I'll take the time to recommend Revolver 360 RE:ACTOR. Yeah, that's the name. Of course it's Japanese. It's a really slick shmup with the main revolving shtick. The trailer explains it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtcd0GQ2jdE Game's fast and fun as hell and as with shmups, it looks like the dumbest poo poo ever but in reality it hides a really well thought out and challenging scoring system. I'm poo poo at these games but love well crafted gameplay and Rev360 has it in spades. There's a tutorial in form of challenge mode (first 15 or so teach basic gameplay mechanics). It's a really good port, too, as expected with stuff published by Playism. It's got all the necessary display options (12:10 ratio is hidden under F10 key) along with an external config if it doesn't start properly. Even the achievements are well-made. Oh, and it's $7 at the moment. Get it. Terminally Bored fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Oct 30, 2014 |
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Oct 30, 2014 17:24
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Terminally Bored posted:This thread is going to explode in two hours
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