How I Feel About Games

Recovered from guild forum topic What's In A Game

For as much as I hated trying to level in EQ, to a certain level, it challenged the player to learn and adapt to a lot of hazards. I hated in WoW when they would simply throw multiple mobs at you to make it hard to get to an area. I want to feel like I'm discovering new areas of land when I'm in a new zone.

I like PvP for the most part, but the honor system killed my love of that in WoW. It is a neat idea initially, that you can earn bragging points and new gear and titles.
But, before implementation, it seemed to be that the people who did participate in PvP were the ones doing it for the pure fun and roleplay or whatever they could get out of it. I'm mostly positive that the honor system introduced people solely interested in getting material gain only out of it were choking the fun out of it for other people.

Depite the problems of people wth different gear, levels, and classes, that wasn't what made the combat frustrating. It was the way the style of combat went from strategic melee ala Braveheart to line up in columns and rows to pull forward and pull back... like stupid colonial warfare.

I almost hate crafting now. Most of the stuff a crafter can make is not of any importance or lasting use to a player. Things that are useful are at the extreme top levels and have rediculous component requirements. I'm not just talking about WoW either.

I love being able to customize my character to the extremes of CoH. I hate how the instances in certain areas would randomly rotate the same maps and same mobs. The outdoor zones were always more fun. For all I bitched about it, I loved the Brickyard.

The only thing I really liked out of Horizons was their gathering and creating craft system. I hated the recipes and the pathing and lots to do with the game mechanics.. but the act of reaping flax, spinning it into thread, and carding it onto the loom to be weaved. Then cut into clothing. For some reason, crafting in WoW and EQ were really dull. Gather components. Insert into X container. Presto, Easy Bake Oven. With Time. Ick.

My favorite RPGs were Zelda: Ocarina, and Neverwinter Nights...they had lots of mini subplots and games, NPCs that have their own routines and speeches. You had choice to deviate from the main plots just for fun, not extra items or XP. I'd like to see more of that in MMOs. More creativity, less emphasis on time sinks and throwing harder/bigger mobs at players. It makes the game dumb.

Community is the thing that makes the multiplayer, otherwise you'd just be playing an rpg with a fee. So It's probably about half and half- the other part of the pie being the game design.

Crap is crap is crap. Hell, we all loved Horizons until we got to play it. Great community, but they f--d up the game in the end.
I'd try to balance out some great game that just had a sucky community... but I can't honestly list one since they all have their own gaping design flaws.

With that in mind- I hate how devs try to pat themselves on the back with the classification of "blah blah x power generation MMO". Not that many games are improving as far as mechanics and coding. Hell, it's an effort for anything original to happen in a game anymore. The only difference in games anymore is the upward climb to have better graphics, the latest shader technology, buying the biggest baddest game physics and rendering engiene. And only results in more hd/server/bandwidth space used, and the player paying more for the end product because he needs more RAM, a video card, and processor.

The collective game community needs to pull their heads out of their a--s and quit posting on fanboi forums how the farts smell good.