[VG] Producer's Letter

[Draegan]

Originally Posted by gurgi

lol, now you've done it

I've asked before but I've only gotten hippy responses about sunshine, mountain tops and John Denver.

[Kaxmax]

Originally Posted by Dumar

because people like normal types of games i mentioned, but they hate change. the majority of people who play wow probably never even heard of ultima online, much less played it. give them what i'm talking about (but done CORRECTLY; ie NOT EVE), and it would be successful.

I think it would be a niche game at best.

You continue to treat WoW's systems as a bad thing, when in reality it hits the mark in most areas for a very large amount of people. It may not be what you specifically want, but to pretend that people are clamoring for this open-ended utopia you envision is ludicrous.

[Draegan]

I'd like to rehash the WOW has no community argument. Would anyone like to start off?

[Sunder]

Originally Posted by Draegan

I'd like to rehash the WOW has no community argument. Would anyone like to start off?

WoW community is shit and anyone who disagrees is a 12-year-old B.net kiddie who never played a REAL mmo.


(that do it for ya?)

[EmiliaEQ]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

Yeah, you have never played WoW. It may have its flaws but none of this shit is it.

I played 6 fucking months, i'll never forget having to stance dance to taunt or having a private server (oops i mean instance).

And no 5 mobs in the entire fucking game isnt Guk/Sebilis/Karnor/Droga/Befallen where you had 2 3 groups trying to claim King.

[Zehn - Vhex]

There's so much goddamn stupid going on in the last two pages of this thread I may just have a hernia. Dumar, you've been fucking told that the game you want exists, in it's entirety. The problem is you want an open sandbox game...but one that will hold your hand. The minute you have to put forth any fucking effort you cop out and shit all over yourself.

Here, let me put it this way. I've stated repeatedly how much I fucking hate real life analogies but in your case I'm going to make a fucking exception.

What you're saying to us is, "Well...I want a game, where you throw a ball through a hoop." and when we say, "Uh...go play Basketball?" you come back and say, "No no no...not basketball. Well, like basketball, but done CORRECTLY."

So first off, fuck you and everyone else with that lame pussy bullshit, "I WANT THIS...DONE CORRECTLY!" Anything can be great....if DONE CORRECTLY! Done correctly, I"m sure you could shit in a bucket and sell it to millions of people. It's a stupid goddamn catch all phrase that means absolutely fucking nothing.

You might as well say you want something innovative. Or something that redefines the genre, a next-gen mmo!

Second, if you actually fucking played WoW, and I mean played it ,not sat back and let someone else hold your hand, you'd realize WoW is basically the fucking definition MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE. Face fucking facts asshole, MMO is a very goddamn broad term. Persistant world? Check. Video game? Check. Online? Check.

BAM, fucking mmo asshole. Keep your dreamy utopia bullshit to youself.

Third, go fucking play Eve and shut the fuck up. Unexpected happens every goddamn time I log into that game. You konw what, the unexpected happens to me everytime I log into WoW too. We had one of our warriors quit about a year ago because he was traumatized when his cat died and had to go re-evaluate his life.

Don't give me this, "Well...that's not really game related, that's more people then game..." because you just did the same thing with your retarded monopoly example. You roll the dice, you move ahead, you get a card. You're not going to roll the dice and then suddenly out of fucking nowhere the board turns into a black hole and sucks your soul in the nether regions of hades. I can predict with 100% accuracy what will happen in every monopoly game ever. The only wild card is human interaction.

And there's fucking boatloads of human interaction, even in a game as modular and linear as DDO had fucking people in it playing.

What you seem to want is the game to simulate the people experience because you lack the ability to find people on your own to give you that dynamic experience.

Here's 5 examples of unexpected shit I've dealt with this month so far out of hundreds:

1) Last week saturday I ran shattered halls about 5 times trying to get a specific item. At around the 3rd run I find out the healer in the group is actually an old friend from a server I used to play on and neither of us hand any idea both of us were now on the same server.

2) A 70 hunter dropped off his flying mount and brought my rogue twink down to about 10% health. Then instead of finishing ganking me like every goddamn huntard out there, he waved, and then flew off.

3) I needed the level 70 mage water/food spells. Tried to sucker people in my guild out of them but nobody had and the ones up in the AH were 500 gold each. Same day while I was doing my normal farming of shit, dropped out of the fucking blue.

4) We wiped to fucking Najentus. Nobody was able to click on a spine prior to the first bubble due to a string of bad luck and from that point on it was G fucking G, we couldn't dps him enough to keep ahead of his regen. The thought of that happening hadn't even occured to me at any point, ever.

5) One of our members discovered what a vagina feels like and beat the game. Was one of those people I thought would never quit, would outlast even me. Life goes on I suppose.

I mean, this is daily kind of shit. Someone invited me to join their Arena group. I -never- get invited to join arena groups because most people know how much of a joke I consider the whole system. A normal day in Nagrand turned into a fucking 2 hour brawl a few weeks back.

But that's not what you want. You want a dynamic gaming experience. And I understand that idea, that dream. I really do. I just have enough programming/dba experience to know that it's largely a pipe dream right now. These are giant, complicated math problems, but it's still math.

No matter how many variables you throw into the mix, they're all accounted for. It would be cool if Illidan would realize he's fucked and fly away at low health and you have to chase him down across half of Azeroth in a huge game of hide and seek. Maybe Khadgar would assist you by scrying and opening portals near wherever he's hiding. Maiev might fall in love with one of your raiders and suddenly you'd have an NPC helping you on every fight from then on.

The thing is, this kind of dynamic experience -can't- exist. Everything has to be accounted for, everything has to be programmed in. If you say A, B or C can happen to D, E or F, you'll get all sorts of combinations of AD or CE or etc....but you won't get "X3" out of the fucking blue. You just simply can't. Maybe in the future when code evolves on it's own and programmers are more like code wranglers, guiding and directly it rather then having absolute control.

This seems to be something you simply cannot, or will not, grasp. The only randomness to video games is either in the RNG (Getting a rare epic drop on your first kill) which is, again, mathematically accounted for, or...

The human element. Which you seem to abjectly refuse to be involved with. Eve is a game that 100% revolves around human interaction. Many MUD's are the same. WoW/EQ/EQ2/UO/VG/WW2O/DAoC/FFxi/etc...etc...all these games, yes I included your much vaunted UO in the list as well...rely exclusively on humans to provide the 'unexpected' element you desire.

You may not know what the next card will be in that card game, but you know it will be an Ace through King, and it will be hearts/spades/clubs/diamonds. That's what video games are, you know it can be a combination of variables.

What you want is for the person to pick up that next card, and for it to be a 27 of marbles. All we can hope for is that the person you're playing with takes the card and rather then playing it like the rules of the game dictate, takes it and shoves it into your fucking eye so you stop posting your retarded shit here.

Oh, and Emelia, I'd respond to you, but you're even more goddamn stupid.

[Hatorade]

After reading that long ass post...I have come to one conclusion. Do not fuck with the lord of the dance.

[Darph]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

stuff

Go 2 box me in EOTS.

[Darph]

Originally Posted by Darph

Go 2 box me in EOTS.

Update: 3box Fung as well.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Don't think I have a computer shitty enough to simulate you playing. Maybe if threw golf balls at my keyboard while it's taped to the ceiling fan. Would pretty much match your playstyle.

[Dumar]

Originally Posted by Draegan

What was so good about UO in definitive terms? I mean spell it out. Not just say, "Holy fuck anything could happen!" Because after a year or so of the same argument I still have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.

in definitive terms? the options available to you. you could go to any dungeon any time you wanted (no 'attunement' or 'special key'), sit at a local shop selling, go around looking at people's wares, buy and decorate a house, dye your hair, chop wood, herd an animal, make a chair, steal an item, draw a map, treasure hunt, sail a boat. a bazillion different ways to MASSIVELY interact with the world and the people around you. that is what mmo is all about.

i used to MAKE my own quests. i would tinker a chest, and lay in road. if someone could open, there would be a note inside telling them how to find x (usually my house). if they found their way, i would hide gold or an item somewhere and see if they found. this is one example. i have plenty more.

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

The thing is, this kind of dynamic experience -can't- exist. Everything has to be accounted for, everything has to be programmed in.

maybe you should think a little more before you post.. maybe a lot more. i'm not gonna reply to your huge throw up full of nonsense, especially this part, which i highlight because it's so dumb.

[Darph]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Don't think I have a computer shitty enough to simulate you playing. Maybe if threw golf balls at my keyboard while it's taped to the ceiling fan. Would pretty much match your playstyle.

Put one of these in front of your keyboard and just say something that sounds like your VERY excited in guildchat every 10 minutes.
I.e. If this guild was any more awesome, it would have to be renamed "Corey Hart's Reunion Tour." Or make an unsubstantial brag such as "Whew.. I just got my new teleport spell. Teleport: GRAVEYARD. Oh yeah bitches, THE PAIN TRAINS COMING" and then play "Thunderstuck" on Ventrilo while linking your Hammer in guildchat.

[Sunder]

sit at a local shop selling, go around looking at people's wares, buy and decorate a house(SOLO), dye your hair(SOLO), chop wood(SOLO), herd an animal(SOLO), make a chair(SOLO), steal an item, draw a map(SOLO), treasure hunt(SOLO), sail a boat(SOLO).

Of all those things you mentioned as "massively interacting with the world and people" only 3 of them actually require other people to do. The tree grows back, the animal respawns, the rest is solo dick stroking shit that is boring after the first 5min. You don't have the first fucking clue what real interaction is do you?

[Ogun Nagoura]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

So first off, fuck you and everyone else with that lame pussy bullshit, "I WANT THIS...DONE CORRECTLY!" Anything can be great....if DONE CORRECTLY! Done correctly, I"m sure you could shit in a bucket and sell it to millions of people. It's a stupid goddamn catch all phrase that means absolutely fucking nothing..other stuff...

Pay attention lads. This retort was done correctly.

gg Zehn, now maybe this thread will die people will just stop posting inane shit like....


....ahh damnit

[Dumar]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

But that's not what you want. You want a dynamic gaming experience. And I understand that idea, that dream. I really do. I just have enough programming/dba experience to know that it's largely a pipe dream right now. These are giant, complicated math problems, but it's still math.

No matter how many variables you throw into the mix, they're all accounted for. It would be cool if Illidan would realize he's fucked and fly away at low health and you have to chase him down across half of Azeroth in a huge game of hide and seek. Maybe Khadgar would assist you by scrying and opening portals near wherever he's hiding. Maiev might fall in love with one of your raiders and suddenly you'd have an NPC helping you on every fight from then on.

The thing is, this kind of dynamic experience -can't- exist. Everything has to be accounted for, everything has to be programmed in. If you say A, B or C can happen to D, E or F, you'll get all sorts of combinations of AD or CE or etc....but you won't get "X3" out of the fucking blue. You just simply can't. Maybe in the future when code evolves on it's own and programmers are more like code wranglers, guiding and directly it rather then having absolute control.

This seems to be something you simply cannot, or will not, grasp. The only randomness to video games is either in the RNG (Getting a rare epic drop on your first kill) which is, again, mathematically accounted for, or...

The human element. Which you seem to abjectly refuse to be involved with. Eve is a game that 100% revolves around human interaction. Many MUD's are the same. WoW/EQ/EQ2/UO/VG/WW2O/DAoC/FFxi/etc...etc...all these games, yes I included your much vaunted UO in the list as well...rely exclusively on humans to provide the 'unexpected' element you desire.

okay, i read through your post and there is substance past the junk that doesn't make sense. i trimmed the fat.

your view of soft engineering to be frank, is very limited in scope. i don't mean to insult you, but you really dunno what you're talking about here. you have the correct goal in mind. the goal is to make the unexpected element up the players. and this has be done (uo). what needs to happen now is the correct design and implementation of mmo SYSTEMS that accommodate this. this isn't hard. all it is is systems design. the problem, like i said before, is that this industry is filled with such extremely unprofessional and stupid people, that it hardly ever gets done correctly. this might have to do with the low pay, long hours, et al. i dunno, i'm saying the technology and design patterns are there to make it happen, but for whatever reason, it never gets done.