|
|
Post by Membrane_on_Vacation on Dec 23, 2015 9:18:42 GMT
|
|
Caliya
Strong in the Force
People fight to gain things they can't take with them in the end
Posts: 2,121 
|
Post by Caliya on Dec 23, 2015 13:40:55 GMT
That thread was so awesome to read. I have tears in my eyes from laughing.
"It's no knee shall bend you fools."
lmao
Now I know what you mean by Envy's army of alts.
|
|
titsup
Strong in the Force
Posts: 819 
|
Post by titsup on Dec 24, 2015 20:46:30 GMT
I've seen it stated both ways in translations of the bible, both bow and bend are used for the same passages, so there is some precedent.
Unless they are specifically referring to something I'm unfamiliar with.
|
|
|
|
Post by dewderonomy on Dec 24, 2015 21:05:19 GMT
I think this illustrates something else: the community is only "nice" since the game isn't out.
Let me clarify. Awhile back I posted about how MMOs are inherently competitive games. Whether you feel like you're competing or not is irrelevant; you're competing for something. PvP glory, loot, house placement, "first on server" statuses, getting the best gear from dungeon drops against rolls from other players, and so on. Either way, alpha has been lax because, so far, everyone's just playing with their shitty toys they bought on the add-on store and not really playing the game.
However, as more and more people fall off the grid, and the remaining whales are taking this skeleton of a game as "the actual game", guilds and players are starting to form identities. People are getting to know one another. The "we're working together to make a great game" is becoming more "my guild is the best PvP guild" or "my guild is the best trading/PvM guild" and so on. Drama is becoming more and more noticeable, not that it wasn't already (hence these forums) but actual game drama is coming out.
This happens in every single game, and quite honestly, it's all well and good. Most games deal with it just fine: block that person and move on. Or in many sandboxes, kill the other guild or war. But this game is designed from the ground up to allow people to just not play the game with those people. Not see them, not hear them, not even have their actions affect you. This goes the other way, too; if your guild is talking shit about mine, I can't do anything to really shut you up.
However, when you can't do anything either way about this competition, about this rivalry, you go to the next place: forums, blogs, and other public internet spaces to take your revenge. These can be third party forums, like ours, or the official ones, like SotA. While it might be on outside forums, that's just another area you can't fight back on, but at least it's relatively out of the mind's eye; unless you go looking for it, you probably won't see it. But when it's on the official forums?
That's when moderation has to take place, and as we've seen, it's something Port simply cannot do. So where am I going with this? The actual "players" are starting to "play". We're getting rivalries coming out and attacking one another, just like in any old game, and drama is ensuing. Problem is, the game doesn't have any means to vent that drama or rivalry nor does it support a reason to. The combat/PvP is atrocious, the game lends itself to interior decorators who prefer forum warrioring, and most people will just turn off the online settings and play by themselves (or with a few friends) anyway. Ultimately, any and all community-driven mechanics that the game requires aren't functioning because the community is fractured repeatedly by rival lines drawn in the sand, people who leave or go offline to avoid the nastiness, and all the while the forums become the new battleground because the game doesn't allow for competition.
Caliya mentioned this in another post (which I'll probably post in later) about "what is it we want from a game". Well, as she said so herself, you gotta' know what kind of a fuckin' game you're making first, but if it's a "living, breathing sandbox" (like so many MMOs try to pass off), then that means fluid, organic interactions - and not just the happy-go-lucky bank-sitting kinds. I'm talking brutal PvP (warring, PKing, stealing, undercutting rival traders, controlling dungeons from other rival guilds) that, quite honestly, will see customers quit over, but is a lot better than seeing 30-60% of your customers leave for in 3-6 months post-launch when the game becomes so routine and boring that no one wants to play it.
Because that's the other half of all of this: we as players don't know what we want. We know what we enjoy, though, so we know when to leave, but don't know how to tell people what we really want.
|
|
|
|
Post by Membrane_on_Vacation on Jan 4, 2016 1:32:58 GMT
Because that's the other half of all of this: we as players don't know what we want. We know what we enjoy, though, so we know when to leave, but don't know how to tell people what we really want. For me the majority of this is easy. I want sandbox. Right now even with the limited development in the actual game systems like combat and the woeful list of mobs, if I could just do what I want with the rest of the game it would really make it easier to play. Let me take the useless rusty pleb swords shit I take from skelles and write "Insane Membrane Wuz Here" on Sir Frank's castle yard, and I will play your shitty game. Give me a chance to be creative and have fun by doing so. There is nothing I can do in Shroud of the Avatar that is creative. I can fight. I can craft. I can harvest crops, but, nothing can be done short of making items at a loss. Where is the fun in that. |
|
|
|
Post by dewderonomy on Jan 4, 2016 3:37:54 GMT
Give me a chance to be creative and have fun by doing so. There is nothing I can do in Shroud of the Avatar that is creative. I can fight. I can craft. I can harvest crops, but, nothing can be done short of making items at a loss. Where is the fun in that. This is a good point. Much of what made rares and decorative items in UO great was the creativity behind them. Taking bails of wool and making furniture or bubbles in a bathtub was fun. Granted, many would have rather had a well-designed bathtub (which they have in SotA), but have it something made rather than purchased in the store. Buckets and barrels were rares in UO, but if you could make them for decorations, people would have, too; kegs are a prime example of this. Additionally, common items didn't need to be rare; you could still have interesting artifacts to discover and decorate your house with, you didn't need a right-facing keg tap to show the depth of your rare collecting. Of course, neither of these items would be found in SotA; whether it's a wheel of cheese with the wedge cut out or the still-beating heart of Dracula, you're gonna' have to buy it from the add-on store anyway. |
|
