View Full Version : Rumor: Death Penalty in SWTOR
Telurinon
07-15-11, 05:36 AM
Apparently, if your avatar is defeated in SWTOR, your PC's controls are locked out and the client begins streaming The Phantom Menace.
I think I'd rather have xp/level loss!
Apparently, if your avatar is defeated in SWTOR, your PC's controls are locked out and the client begins streaming The Phantom Menace.
I think I'd rather have xp/level loss!
Why do people hate that one so much? I mean 5 minutes of it (pod race) were completely awesome. Granted the rest of the movie was largely ignorable, but hey 5 minutes were pure win. :ontome
Lenilya
07-15-11, 05:43 AM
5 minutes does not a movie redeem, yes.
Morvran
07-15-11, 06:32 AM
If you remove Jar Jar and recast Padme the movie is almost redeemed.
If you remove Jar Jar and recast Padme the movie is almost redeemed.
Jar jar was pretty horrible I agree, I honestly didn't mind Padme. Honestly to me the guy they chose as anakin in 2/3 was far worse then anything else. His acting is literally painful to watch. This coming from someone who is able to usually ignore anything outside the pretty explosions if need be.
DarthEnderX
07-15-11, 07:05 AM
Why do people hate that one so much? I mean 5 minutes of it (pod race) were completely awesome. Granted the rest of the movie was largely ignorable, but hey 5 minutes were pure win. :ontomeThe battle with Maul is also completely awesome until the last 30 seconds.
The battle with Maul is also completely awesome until the last 30 seconds.
Yea that sort of annoyed me. It was like this fantastic battle then all of a sudden they realized "Oh **** this is taking way too long" insert lame death.
DarthEnderX
07-15-11, 08:19 AM
http://www.cracked.com/article_18838_the-5-most-easily-avoidable-movie-deaths.html
korthuran
07-15-11, 08:37 AM
If you remove Jar Jar and recast Padme the movie is 5 minutes long.
Fixed.
PsiKoTicK
07-15-11, 08:59 AM
Yea that sort of annoyed me. It was like this fantastic battle then all of a sudden they realized "Oh **** this is taking way too long" insert lame death.
"But ObiWan, I have the high ground!" was never uttered. Apparently, you have to say it for it to matter. And turn around when the Jedi jumps over you.
Why do people hate that one so much? I mean 5 minutes of it (pod race) were completely awesome. Granted the rest of the movie was largely ignorable, but hey 5 minutes were pure win. :ontome
Lightsaber fight was awesome too.
Honestly people just need to pull their heads out of their asses, Jedi is just as bad as Phantom Menace, along with Temple of Doom, for the same reasons, stupid kiddie ********. Then there's the whole problem of people being all derpy and disliking episodes II and III simply because of Phantom Menace.
Andurian
07-16-11, 01:38 AM
I enjoyed Menace more than II and III to be honest. Liam and Ewan were good together.. and the Maul fight was the best LS battle of the prequels.
Matheren
07-16-11, 11:09 AM
Lightsaber fight was awesome too.
Then there's the whole problem of people being all derpy and disliking episodes II and III simply because of Phantom Menace.
I always thought people disliked them because of the worst romance scenes ever made, cardboard acting all around, and boring fight scenes.
I always thought people disliked them because of the worst romance scenes ever made, cardboard acting all around, and boring fight scenes.
So it was just like the original three movies?
Obligatory:
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Part 1 of 7)
(NSFW language)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI
If you have the time, I highly recommend watching all his reviews.
http://www.youtube.com/user/RedLetterMedia
That was great, seriously.
DarthEnderX
07-17-11, 03:07 AM
So it was just like the original three movies?First of all, if you think the romance scenes between Han and Leia are bad, you can eat ****. Second of all, they take up about 3 minutes of the movie. The ones in Attack of the Clones take up half of the movie.
Phantom Menace suffers the sin of being really stupid. Attack of the Clones suffers the arguable worse sin of being really...****ing...boring. The last 20 minutes are awesome but that does NOT redeem the rest of the movie.
I happen to like Revenge of the Sith.
Drole Defiantdagger
07-17-11, 09:41 AM
Apparently, if your avatar is defeated in SWTOR, your PC's controls are locked out and the client begins streaming The Phantom Menace.
I think I'd rather have xp/level loss!
It could be worse... every time your character dies you could be forced to suffer through Anakin's angsty "NOOOoOOooooOOOoOOO!"
DoonBackfighter
07-17-11, 01:08 PM
It could be worse... every time your character dies you could be forced to suffer through Anakin's angsty "NOOOoOOooooOOOoOOO!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s&feature=related
It would be nice to have some type of death penalty other than having to repair and run back; there's really no consequences to dying in MMOs now which to me lessens any sense of danger in a fight.
Solanar
07-17-11, 07:35 PM
The lack of death penalty in modern games is a large part of why most of them cannot hold my attention. It's like playing computer solitaire - what happens if you lose? You just play again. It isn't anything to think about or worry about.
Also a big piece of why I play EVE.
Yes well, we can thank the wow community for the lack of meaningful death penalties.
Yes well, we can thank the wow community for the lack of meaningful death penalties.
You would be wrong.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-crucial-lessons-learned-by-watching-kids-play-video-games/
My point is, is that it's not just MMOs that have eliminated death penalties practically every game I have played in the last few years has very little in the way of death penalties.
Telurinon
07-18-11, 05:50 AM
Video Games have become Little League. Everyone gets the 'participation prize' -- by way of defeat being meaningless.
You would be wrong.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-crucial-lessons-learned-by-watching-kids-play-video-games/
My point is, is that it's not just MMOs that have eliminated death penalties practically every game I have played in the last few years has very little in the way of death penalties.
So because the "current" generation of gamers are whining pussies I am supposed to accept it? Oh and since we are talking about MMO's here even that article states right at the end that WoW essentially started that crap. So how am I wrong when your own example backs my claim? As for other genre, note that author gives zero examples of any game that eliminated death penalties before wow.
Modern games are why my 5 year old is currently playing (And loving) the original Legend of Zelda, Loves SMB and other games just like them. Sure she gets her fill of silly things like nintendogs and pokemon, but she doesn't shy away from the tough stuff either. She is currently on dungeon 5 in LoZ with zero help from me other then teaching her how to play at the start. She is a real gamer. Not some wannabe whiner who happens to play a few easy mode games and suddenly thinks they are a gamer.
edit: Oh and that was a complete trash article that boiled down to "Because my kids don't give a damn, I think this applies to everyone".
Qtip4urMamma
07-18-11, 11:11 AM
So because the "current" generation of gamers are whining pussies I am supposed to accept it? Oh and since we are talking about MMO's here even that article states right at the end that WoW essentially started that crap. So how am I wrong when your own example backs my claim? As for other genre, note that author gives zero examples of any game that eliminated death penalties before wow.
Modern games are why my 5 year old is currently playing (And loving) the original Legend of Zelda, Loves SMB and other games just like them. Sure she gets her fill of silly things like nintendogs and pokemon, but she doesn't shy away from the tough stuff either. She is currently on dungeon 5 in LoZ with zero help from me other then teaching her how to play at the start. She is a real gamer. Not some wannabe whiner who happens to play a few easy mode games and suddenly thinks they are a gamer.
edit: Oh and that was a complete trash article that boiled down to "Because my kids don't give a damn, I think this applies to everyone".
You can't blame WoW, or the WoW community. A lot of games way before WoW came along or even without acknowledgement of WoW were made with the same basic idea of just let the player win. I don't see where in that article, he blames WoW or says they started it, but I could just be missing it.
Most of our major mmo experience came from EQ, so in a way we expect there to be penalties for death. Just like any generation, when they get older, they expect certain things to be the same as when we were younger and first were introduced to it. Having your daughter play those games allows her to appreciate games as you have, but if you kept all that away and just introduced the newer games of her generation, you'd have the same problem.
BTW, I SOOOOO agree with you on douche's calling themselves gamers just because they play a few games. I have a cousin who made this same claim at the age of 12. So I popped in a few older games that required skill to play, not just constant restarting from a save point. he didn't do so well. Not to mention the fact that he knew very little about the games he played other than the gameplay itself. But yeah, those are not gamers. IMO: those that play, learn, understand, and appreciate the games of all genres are gamers. Not those that just play Halo and CoD.
You are correct, completely blaming wow is a bit much. How about wow was the major player in popularizing this model and due to its massive success everyone else has followed suit.
While I am at it I want to contest one very big point he makes in that article. He goes out of his way to state that the current generation of gamers do not care and will ignore text and just "smash and grab" their way though until the objective it met. At first on gut reaction I agreed with this as I tend to do much the same with most modern games. I find the philosophy of "kill and burn it all to the ground" works usually faster then reading. At first I was a little uneasy thinking I was falling into the same traps, then I remembered something rather important. Anytime I play older games, even ones I am familiar with I find myself reading and reacting. Why? Because you cannot simply smash and burn your way through most of them. You will eventually run into a wall that if you don't know what is going on, will stop you dead in your tracks. Modern games don't do this. So really, is it that the current generation of gamers are terrible and lazy? Or is it a case of the games don't encourage one to problem solve?
Andurian
07-18-11, 11:52 AM
Might as well blame coin op games while were at it. They were designed to be hard as hell so you'd have to sink tones of money into them.. this difficulty and limited lives carried over to home consoles for many years. Why NES games were harder than anything you'll find today.
Really brutal death penalties is a easy out, I'd much rather have minor penalties like in WoW/Swtor/rift and content that is challenging.. rather than make the challenge having to run a long ways after dying.
EQ boss fights were pushing things into walls and dps'ing for very long periods of time. WoW is move here, avoid this, do that, click that, DANCE!, Don't move in flame wreath! Take off the rose tinted glasses.
Qtip4urMamma
07-18-11, 12:09 PM
So really, is it that the current generation of gamers are terrible and lazy? Or is it a case of the games don't encourage one to problem solve?
I think it's a little bit of both. I actually had this conversation while playing the new MK a few weeks back. I remember having to buy EGM or GamePro just so i could get a moves list, and I actually memorized all of them. Recently playing the new one, I didn't have to do any of that. If I forgot a move, I just had to quickly pause and look it up right on screen. It's way too easy now.
And speaking of coin op games, that may have something to do with it too. I'm not sure how it is in other cities and such, but arcades are kind of dead now. I remember having to wait in line to play games, and now I'll be lucky to have maybe a half dozen people in the arcade at once. And those arcades that are busy have primarily racing or ticket winning type games that really don't require knowledge of the game to play. It's a sad sad day when you realize the arcade just isn't the same anymore
Might as well blame coin op games while were at it. They were designed to be hard as hell so you'd have to sink tones of money into them.. this difficulty and limited lives carried over to home consoles for many years. Why NES games were harder than anything you'll find today.
Really brutal death penalties is a easy out, I'd much rather have minor penalties like in WoW/Swtor/rift and content that is challenging.. rather than make the challenge having to run a long ways after dying.
EQ boss fights were pushing things into walls and dps'ing for very long periods of time. WoW is move here, avoid this, do that, click that, DANCE!, Don't move in flame wreath! Take off the rose tinted glasses.
Fair enough on death penalties. However I would like to contend a point in mmo's at least. One of the primary objective of death penalties is to teach a player how to play their class by punishing mistakes. Remove that penalty and you find the number of players who get to the max level and have zero clue how to really play increases. That does not infer that death penalties eliminate those players, it just slows them down significantly and cuts down the bulk of them. So to avoid picking on wow for a moment, let me use another example.
In rift there is effectively no grind and no death penalty. At level 50 there are loads of outright TERRIBLE players. Oh sure I sometimes enjoy the free kills when they are so bad that I can take them on 3 vs 1 and still face roll them. However it comes more irritating when I want to run a t2 and get stuck with a group full of tards who don't understand the basics of their class beyond smashing their keyboard into their face over and over.
In Aion by contrast, there was a pretty stiff grind and a moderate death penalty. At level 50 there were still quite a few terrible players, but the percentage was far lower. I could regularly count on my random pugs knowing what they were doing and for pvp I rarely tried to get into 3v1 encounters. Obviously these two don't completely compare, but it gives you the idea. FFXI is likely a better example as level 30 is about where the grind and death penalty gets harsh and there is a metric ton of retards, however once you hit 70+ they are virtually non existent.
So if not a death penalty or a grind, then what tools can the Devs use to weed out the terrible players? The reality is that if no death penalty exists and the grind doesn't exist, then challenging content or not the tards are going to get max level and you are going to be stuck in groups with them. As someone who tries to be the best I can in a given game, I would rather not be forced to carry the weight of these people.
I think it's a little bit of both. I actually had this conversation while playing the new MK a few weeks back. I remember having to buy EGM or GamePro just so i could get a moves list, and I actually memorized all of them. Recently playing the new one, I didn't have to do any of that. If I forgot a move, I just had to quickly pause and look it up right on screen. It's way too easy now.
And speaking of coin op games, that may have something to do with it too. I'm not sure how it is in other cities and such, but arcades are kind of dead now. I remember having to wait in line to play games, and now I'll be lucky to have maybe a half dozen people in the arcade at once. And those arcades that are busy have primarily racing or ticket winning type games that really don't require knowledge of the game to play. It's a sad sad day when you realize the arcade just isn't the same anymore
I don't even think we have any real arcades around here anymore.
I think what a good compromise should be(and at times is) is when the difficulty settings add in penalties in non-MMOs. So yeah, casual/easy lets you zerg stuff just to have fun and see the content. Normal/Medium maybe takes ammo or weapons or something away, or half of it. Then when you get to hard/nightmare, youre stripped naked and left in the woods.
For MMOs, I think we need something in between WoW and EQ. I who doesnt remember at least one person who quit when they lost their level to a death(or multiple deaths) and couldnt get back into PoF to get their corpse? When I think of how many times Ill die learning a new fight sometimes....I would NEVER want an exp penalty even with a 96% rez. But then I also get pugs who routinely stand in fire. My guild has a healer who will not stand for idiot tanks. We've gone through instances and kicked 3 different tanks because they have been terrible.
But Ive got no idea what kind of penalty should be implemented...Does anyone have a list of death penalties for various games?
So if not a death penalty or a grind, then what tools can the Devs use to weed out the terrible players? The reality is that if no death penalty exists and the grind doesn't exist, then challenging content or not the tards are going to get max level and you are going to be stuck in groups with them. As someone who tries to be the best I can in a given game, I would rather not be forced to carry the weight of these people.
.
Why would they want to weed out players? Players = subscriptions = money. Am I missing something, that would make a developer actually want to reduce the number of people playing their game?
I think what a good compromise should be(and at times is) is when the difficulty settings add in penalties in non-MMOs. So yeah, casual/easy lets you zerg stuff just to have fun and see the content. Normal/Medium maybe takes ammo or weapons or something away, or half of it. Then when you get to hard/nightmare, youre stripped naked and left in the woods.
For MMOs, I think we need something in between WoW and EQ. I who doesnt remember at least one person who quit when they lost their level to a death(or multiple deaths) and couldnt get back into PoF to get their corpse? When I think of how many times Ill die learning a new fight sometimes....I would NEVER want an exp penalty even with a 96% rez. But then I also get pugs who routinely stand in fire. My guild has a healer who will not stand for idiot tanks. We've gone through instances and kicked 3 different tanks because they have been terrible.
But Ive got no idea what kind of penalty should be implemented...Does anyone have a list of death penalties for various games?
Right, I am not necessarily advocating old school lose your corpse EQ. I think the penalty really depends on the game and how it was designed. For example, in UO you lost everything and while it could be frustrating and set you back, it wasn't game ending. Where as losing everything in EQ for example would be nearly character delete worthy and way over the top.
A well designed death penalty/grind would be one that a good player would be annoyed at, but in general otherwise ignore because it isn't a frequent thing. It would however be enough that it would make players not want to do stupid things that get them killed over and over as the effects would be very negative.
As an example, in FFXI the death penalty is a flat 10% experience. Now in the lower (die alot) levels, its a few kills. As you gain levels it becomes harsher and harsher to the point where a single death can ruin the better part of a day. However that also depends entirely on the people you group with. For example a really excellent party can grind exp at a rate that a death here and there is nothing more then 15-20 minutes lost. However a really awful party will have the exact opposite experience where a single death can easily wipe out that entire days exp earnings and more. So one also has to argue that player skill needs to factor in and allow really skilled players to really take advantage of experience earnings as well. There is a reason why people in FFXI have zero tolerance for bad players. A single bad player in that game can be the difference in a party earning 10k exp/hr or 1k exp/hr. Now I am not indicating that their system can apply to all games, it works well in that particular one. This is just food for thought on how it works.
Why would they want to weed out players? Players = subscriptions = money. Am I missing something, that would make a developer actually want to reduce the number of people playing their game?
Weeding out doesn't mean making them quit. If you haven't figured that out by now I am not going to dignify the rest by bothering to respond to the obvious bait.
Again not quite sure what you're getting at.
Verb 1. weed outweed out - remove unwanted elements
That would seem to imply by definition that you want the people removed. People are not going to continue to play if they aren't having fun.
To quote Senor Montoya, I do not think this word means what you think it means.
Now if you what you mean to say is that stiffer death penalties make it so that people learn to play their characters better so as to avoid death. I disagree, and would say they in fact do weed people out. Making people quit the game, there by removing subscriptions from the game, and profits from the developer.
I'm also sorry that everyone can't be as uber as you apparently are.
You would be wrong.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-crucial-lessons-learned-by-watching-kids-play-video-games/
My point is, is that it's not just MMOs that have eliminated death penalties practically every game I have played in the last few years has very little in the way of death penalties.
What he said. Seriously, whats the last game you guys played where death had "meaning?" What's the last game you played that had a limited number of lives and continues?
The article is damn right about grinding, its ******** thats there just to lengthen the "gameplay." It makes me laugh and want to punch people through the internet when they complain about how "easy" WoW is simply because you level up fast compared to how "hard" EQ was. Grinding in EQ wasn't hard, it was just time consuming and retarded. Time sinks aren't difficulty, period. If you've killed 500 goblins at level 25, chances are you can kill 2000 of them without much problem, so there's no real need in having you kill 1500 more of them just go get to level 26.
wo, Nathan Drake is the Space Core.
I agree about the reading, there's no excuse for having players to read stuff in games. I wholeheartedly agree with Dead Rising 2, hell Dead Rising 1 for that matter, I shouldn't have to read speech bubbles for survivors when cut scenes have voice acting in them. Its one of the reasons I couldn't play Morrowind after having played Oblivion first, stuff wasn't being read to me so I just quit that ****.
However, if stuff is read to me Ill sit through it unless Ive done it a million times before and don't care or did it recently, like the Mages guild quest in Oblivion right now I am just spam clicking through all the dialogue because I recently did it, but Ive listened to all of the Fighters guild stuff.
As for WoW and quest texts, I dunno why they didn't just tell you what to do from the get go, in all the years I had spent in EQ before WoW even came out I don't know of people who actually read all the quest text BS unless it was for stuff like epics, I sure as **** only responded to [Stuff like this].
I never skip cutscenes unless its something Ive seen before and dont want to see again, and Ill reload a save to see the scene again if I accidentally skip it. That being said, any game that relies on autosaves or doesnt allow you to save EXACTLY where you are, making autosaves right before a cut scene, especially a long one, is a crime worth of death if you cant skip it. Skipping cut scenes that you havent seen as he mentions in the article is just... bizarre to me.
As for cheating, it is fairly disappointing to see cheats fallen by the wayside in console games anymore. Hell, even PC games lack cheats a lot anymore, which sucks in some cases like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. when it was new, unpatched, an no mods were out there to change how ****ed up its difficulty was. But the guy really screws up his fifth point when he gets to the part on cheating:
So, yeah, I don't want to **** around with being killed by the same pack of wild dogs 10 times in a row. I don't want to replay the whole level because I didn't realize the enemy lodged a grenade in my *******. "****, is that a sniper up there in th- yes, it was."
Then why complain about how death has no meaning anymore if you dont want to deal with that stuff and see the end of the game or if you just want to cheat?
So because the "current" generation of gamers are whining pussies I am supposed to accept it? Oh and since we are talking about MMO's here even that article states right at the end that WoW essentially started that crap. So how am I wrong when your own example backs my claim? As for other genre, note that author gives zero examples of any game that eliminated death penalties before wow.
Modern games are why my 5 year old is currently playing (And loving) the original Legend of Zelda, Loves SMB and other games just like them. Sure she gets her fill of silly things like nintendogs and pokemon, but she doesn't shy away from the tough stuff either. She is currently on dungeon 5 in LoZ with zero help from me other then teaching her how to play at the start. She is a real gamer. Not some wannabe whiner who happens to play a few easy mode games and suddenly thinks they are a gamer.
edit: Oh and that was a complete trash article that boiled down to "Because my kids don't give a damn, I think this applies to everyone".
Current my ass, as a kid growing up on NES and SNES that I hated that I couldn't continue as much as I wanted and thus usually couldn't beat stuff without resorting to cheating. Like I said up top, what's the last game that you played where you couldn't just start over at a recent save point? Stuff that intentionally has ridiculously hardcore settings like Dead Space 2 or The Witcher 2 don't count. I can't recall anything out of this current generation of games where death really set you back a huge amount unless you just plain forgot to save the game, nor can I remember anything from the last one off hand. So its not just WoW that started it for games in general, it probably is for MMORPGs.
Im really baffled as to why anyone wants to hang onto the retarded idea of death penalties, ESPECIALLY in MMORPGS. It seems that a bunch of tards on the EQ forums aren't going to like any kind of new MMORPG unless when you die a prison inmate is shipped to your house to rape you in the ass. Dying in itself is a penalty, you lose out on the time you spent doing whatever, it's (afaik) not like you just pop up right where you left off unless you get a res.
Why do people want to have even more of their time wasted because they died? It boggles my mind how people want games to be so shitty, like old EQ where you could die because some ******* trained you, or because someone else in the group ****ed up. What do you get out of dying to stuff when its not your fault and having to put up with some stiff death penalty? You don't learn how to be a better player because you died while zoning because the game handles it shittily or from dying because someone else screwed up (other than to not group with them).
I know there's not one person in here that could say that dying hasn't pissed them off at one point, so why do you want to get mad at vidya games?
You can't blame WoW, or the WoW community. A lot of games way before WoW came along or even without acknowledgement of WoW were made with the same basic idea of just let the player win. I don't see where in that article, he blames WoW or says they started it, but I could just be missing it.
Most of our major mmo experience came from EQ, so in a way we expect there to be penalties for death. Just like any generation, when they get older, they expect certain things to be the same as when we were younger and first were introduced to it. Having your daughter play those games allows her to appreciate games as you have, but if you kept all that away and just introduced the newer games of her generation, you'd have the same problem.
BTW, I SOOOOO agree with you on douche's calling themselves gamers just because they play a few games. I have a cousin who made this same claim at the age of 12. So I popped in a few older games that required skill to play, not just constant restarting from a save point. he didn't do so well. Not to mention the fact that he knew very little about the games he played other than the gameplay itself. But yeah, those are not gamers. IMO: those that play, learn, understand, and appreciate the games of all genres are gamers. Not those that just play Halo and CoD.
That goes for any MMORPG, people who played MMORPG X when they start playing MMORPG Y are likely to bitch and moan because its not like X and they want terrible features from X in Y.
But to say that newer games don't require skill to play simply because you can start over on a save is dumb. It still takes skill to be good at any game without leaving a mountain of corpses in your wake*
*Super Meat Boy withstanding, because pretty much anyone short of a god-like player is leaving a mountain of corpses.
Might as well blame coin op games while were at it. They were designed to be hard as hell so you'd have to sink tones of money into them.. this difficulty and limited lives carried over to home consoles for many years. Why NES games were harder than anything you'll find today.
Really brutal death penalties is a easy out, I'd much rather have minor penalties like in WoW/Swtor/rift and content that is challenging.. rather than make the challenge having to run a long ways after dying.
EQ boss fights were pushing things into walls and dps'ing for very long periods of time. WoW is move here, avoid this, do that, click that, DANCE!, Don't move in flame wreath! Take off the rose tinted glasses.
Thats what Ive always assumed, for home consoles it never really made any sense to have a limited number of lives and even less sense with continues. However, Super Meat Boy is easily harder than anything ever on an old system, the only upside is that you don't have a limited number of lives or continues, the game would be unbeatable if you had to deal with that kind of stuff.
EQ bosses were like that, but post PoP stuff started being more like real events. the cornering stuff still holds true, because EQ is all retarded and thinks that push should still be in the game when it was clear back in PoP how retarded it was.
I think it's a little bit of both. I actually had this conversation while playing the new MK a few weeks back. I remember having to buy EGM or GamePro just so i could get a moves list, and I actually memorized all of them. Recently playing the new one, I didn't have to do any of that. If I forgot a move, I just had to quickly pause and look it up right on screen. It's way too easy now.
And speaking of coin op games, that may have something to do with it too. I'm not sure how it is in other cities and such, but arcades are kind of dead now. I remember having to wait in line to play games, and now I'll be lucky to have maybe a half dozen people in the arcade at once. And those arcades that are busy have primarily racing or ticket winning type games that really don't require knowledge of the game to play. It's a sad sad day when you realize the arcade just isn't the same anymore
It might be easy, but its a hell of a lot less retarded. Why should you have had to pay money to get basic information like that (this is really for the home versions)? Hell, Street Fighter and other Capcom games had the moves, at least some of them, printed on the cabinets.
And yes, I remember playing MK at the arcade with a printed out move list or a magazine up on the other controller area.
I really wish arcades hadn't pretty much died in America, the only places around here with games anymore are the theatre near me (and I assume the one owned by the same chain thats one town over, never been in it) and a theatre that has an IMAX screen in it. However, **** is just so expensive to play anymore, one dollar to play something? Go **** yourself arcades. I noticed when I went to the comic shop near me the other night that the bar next to it now has a DDR machine in it... I really don't see how that is a good combination unless you are looking for hilarity / broken limbs.
Making another post because that other one was long and it was started before I left the house to go do some stuff.
Fair enough on death penalties. However I would like to contend a point in mmo's at least. One of the primary objective of death penalties is to teach a player how to play their class by punishing mistakes. Remove that penalty and you find the number of players who get to the max level and have zero clue how to really play increases. That does not infer that death penalties eliminate those players, it just slows them down significantly and cuts down the bulk of them. So to avoid picking on wow for a moment, let me use another example.
In rift there is effectively no grind and no death penalty. At level 50 there are loads of outright TERRIBLE players. Oh sure I sometimes enjoy the free kills when they are so bad that I can take them on 3 vs 1 and still face roll them. However it comes more irritating when I want to run a t2 and get stuck with a group full of tards who don't understand the basics of their class beyond smashing their keyboard into their face over and over.
In Aion by contrast, there was a pretty stiff grind and a moderate death penalty. At level 50 there were still quite a few terrible players, but the percentage was far lower. I could regularly count on my random pugs knowing what they were doing and for pvp I rarely tried to get into 3v1 encounters. Obviously these two don't completely compare, but it gives you the idea. FFXI is likely a better example as level 30 is about where the grind and death penalty gets harsh and there is a metric ton of retards, however once you hit 70+ they are virtually non existent.
So if not a death penalty or a grind, then what tools can the Devs use to weed out the terrible players? The reality is that if no death penalty exists and the grind doesn't exist, then challenging content or not the tards are going to get max level and you are going to be stuck in groups with them. As someone who tries to be the best I can in a given game, I would rather not be forced to carry the weight of these people.
I don't even think we have any real arcades around here anymore.
Like you said though, death penalties don't really weed those players out and people at some point are still going to be stuck playing with them. Besides, what is a player going to learn when they die to random stuff they had no control over? As I mentioned in the other post, there's not much to learn when you get screwed over by some jerkoff or the game itself is just plain buggy, a player shouldn't be punished for stuff like that when they have no control over it.
Besides, its clear that the majority of people don't want steep death penalties and easier/less time consuming/masked time consumption in their games. That much is kinda clear when EQ lost practically half its playerbase in a few months after the whole GoD/WoW/EQ2 deal, most people don't want to pay money to get kicked in the ****.
Why would they want to weed out players? Players = subscriptions = money. Am I missing something, that would make a developer actually want to reduce the number of people playing their game?
This too. Can you people imagine how many people EQ could have gotten back in the day if it hadn't been as recockulously time consuming? Hell, GoD wouldn't have probably been a problem since something like GoD would have never happened.
Weeding out doesn't mean making them quit. If you haven't figured that out by now I am not going to dignify the rest by bothering to respond to the obvious bait.
It kinds does. If you weed those people out, where exactly did they go? Did they roll another toon to play lower level crap content again? I really wouldn't think they would put up with that a whole lot, not the average player anyway.
I forgot what forum I was posting on for a moment, allow me to put this into clearer terms.
Other then massive grinds and death penalties, please suggest a system that does a better job of keeping the retards out of high level groups making it easier for skilled players to group with other skilled players. Right now the status quo of having to deal with untold numbers of players who are too stupid to play their class and or just don't care because there is no penalty for being a dumbass is not acceptable. As your current answers stand your case makes way for just eliminating the leveling process completely and just handing everyone a max level character. After all even though it is almost laughable, it is still technically a grind and grinds are stupid and serve no purpose according to the two of you.
So, what then is your brilliant idea? Or are the two of you just raging because I have struck a nerve?
I was under the impression that the WoW system was working for the majority of players since it still has the largest player base. We get it you don't like that system since it doesn't make you "|337" to be a high level raider.
Personally I play games to have fun. If a game is so frustrating I end up punching my keyboard, I'm not having fun. I also don't have as much free time as I used to so even the idea of a massive death penalty that sets me back to the beginning of my brief play time is enough to turn me off of a game.
I'm not raging. I'm pointing out that your idea of driving paying customers away through difficulty is a retarded business model.
I can think of a few suggestions:
1) How about... Give the player feedback so they know what they're doing wrong? Thereby, you help someone play better, and whoever they group up with next benefits as well. Otherwise, leave the group or get them kicked from group. I don't see the issue, but I also don't see the draw in difficult MMOs now that I have less free time. That Final Fantasy MMO sounds awful.
2) Join a guild or forum/community where people are obviously more dedicated to learning how best to play/group.
There's no reason why game developers should weed out players of any kind. If someone is "bad" to group with, that may actually point to the developers needing better tutorials/tooltips/information within their game.
Only algorithmic solution/processes I can think of:
1) Rating/Scoring system. Client side maybe detects when you make bad choices, like purposefully pulling a higher level mob when you're already close to death. Players can choose to publish or hide their ratings, LFG system can have option to filter on ratings, or to ignore altogether, etc.
Could also be based on what other humans think of you, like XBox Live's Reputation system. But then that'd be obnoxious, too, if people are like "please rate me!", or whenever you leave a group, it asks you to rate your group members. Both methods have potential downsides.
2) Preferred Play Style profile system. You can set your playstyle setting to "just having fun", "casual", "social","grind-focused","maximizing EXP rate", etc, then the LFG system can set you up with someone with the same playstyle as you. Some games already have this implemented in some form IIRC.
Best method is to just have fun, and if you only care about maxing your exp flow, play with others with that same goal in mind. That's a social element developers can't ever have full control over, and I'm not even sure that your premise that "more grinding/harsher deaths" = "better players" is even true to begin with. I remember seeing some dumb high level people even in EQ days.
I was under the impression that the WoW system was working for the majority of players since it still has the largest player base. We get it you don't like that system since it doesn't make you "|337" to be a high level raider.
Personally I play games to have fun. If a game is so frustrating I end up punching my keyboard, I'm not having fun. I also don't have as much free time as I used to so even the idea of a massive death penalty that sets me back to the beginning of my brief play time is enough to turn me off of a game.
I'm not raging. I'm pointing out that your idea of driving paying customers away through difficulty is a retarded business model.
The bolded is not the point. I don't raid anymore nor do I even play much more then a couple hours a night at most. That said, you still don't get the point and clearly aren't. I would figure most intelligent people who have shorter play time would want to maximize their time and not have it wasted. Evidently in your case I am wrong and you don't mind having your time wasted by 1 retard in the group.
I can think of a few suggestions:
1) How about... Give the player feedback so they know what they're doing wrong? Thereby, you help someone play better, and whoever they group up with next benefits as well. Otherwise, leave the group or get them kicked from group. I don't see the issue, but I also don't see the draw in difficult MMOs now that I have less free time. That Final Fantasy MMO sounds awful.
2) Join a guild or forum/community where people are obviously more dedicated to learning how best to play/group.
There's no reason why game developers should weed out players of any kind. If someone is "bad" to group with, that may actually point to the developers needing better tutorials/tooltips/information within their game.
Only algorithmic solution/processes I can think of:
1) Rating/Scoring system. Client side maybe detects when you make bad choices, like purposefully pulling a higher level mob when you're already close to death. Players can choose to publish or hide their ratings, LFG system can have option to filter on ratings, or to ignore altogether, etc.
Could also be based on what other humans think of you, like XBox Live's Reputation system. But then that'd be obnoxious, too, if people are like "please rate me!", or whenever you leave a group, it asks you to rate your group members. Both methods have potential downsides.
2) Preferred Play Style profile system. You can set your playstyle setting to "just having fun", "casual", "social","grind-focused","maximizing EXP rate", etc, then the LFG system can set you up with someone with the same playstyle as you. Some games already have this implemented in some form IIRC.
Best method is to just have fun, and if you only care about maxing your exp flow, play with others with that same goal in mind. That's a social element developers can't ever have full control over, and I'm not even sure that your premise that "more grinding/harsher deaths" = "better players" is even true to begin with. I remember seeing some dumb high level people even in EQ days.
Ignoring the social options as those are a given.
Option 2 is a good starting point, at least someone is spending time actually thinking instead of raging. I would suggest something of a back end system that ranks you based on your performance in certain situations and assigns you an invisible rank based on that criteria. Something similar to SC2's ranking system where people don't know how the formula is derived, they just know the system pits them against players of similar skills. A system like that could potentially be adapted into an MMO environment. This would allow players of all skills to enjoy appropriate content.
As for more grinding/harsher deaths = better players. It doesn't always and even the dumbest will eventually make their way to the top. It merely represents the best system we currently have. The one thing a grind does is have the potential to put you into more situations where you are forced to react. A few examples; pulls gone bad, unexpected repops, trains, fleeing mobs etc. These are situations that force a player to dynamically react and the longer a grind the more of these types a situations a player has a chance to be subjected too. Naturally that isn't always the case, but odds are. Clearly there is a line where a grind goes over the top and ceases being much more then a time sink. Where that line is, is entirely subjective. Once again, I am not saying a grind is the end all be all, there is the potential for alternatives. The ranking system being one such alternative. Heck give me something like that and people can play as stupidly as they want and I won't care so long as I am not forced to group with them.
I forgot what forum I was posting on for a moment, allow me to put this into clearer terms.
Other then massive grinds and death penalties, please suggest a system that does a better job of keeping the retards out of high level groups making it easier for skilled players to group with other skilled players. Right now the status quo of having to deal with untold numbers of players who are too stupid to play their class and or just don't care because there is no penalty for being a dumbass is not acceptable. As your current answers stand your case makes way for just eliminating the leveling process completely and just handing everyone a max level character. After all even though it is almost laughable, it is still technically a grind and grinds are stupid and serve no purpose according to the two of you.
So, what then is your brilliant idea? Or are the two of you just raging because I have struck a nerve?
Nothing does a better job, but like Lilum said, thats essentially boiling down to we don't want these people playing our game and companies usually aren't in that kind of a business. Its not really acceptable to good players to have to deal with **** tier ones, but it isn't exactly acceptable for a company to run players off either.
Ridiculous grinds don't serve a purpose other than to pad gameplay out like the article mentioned. Why does someone need to kill those 1500 more snakes when they've proven they've got what it takes to kill the first 500? Grinds aren't fun, that was mentioned in the article, I've never really liked the idea of grinding, especially once I got older and realized this **** sucks. Seriously, pretty much the only people that enjoy hellish grinds are Asians, because thats the entire purpose of all those F2P Asian MMORPGs
I can think of a few suggestions:
1) How about... Give the player feedback so they know what they're doing wrong? Thereby, you help someone play better, and whoever they group up with next benefits as well. Otherwise, leave the group or get them kicked from group. I don't see the issue, but I also don't see the draw in difficult MMOs now that I have less free time. That Final Fantasy MMO sounds awful.
2) Join a guild or forum/community where people are obviously more dedicated to learning how best to play/group.
There's no reason why game developers should weed out players of any kind. If someone is "bad" to group with, that may actually point to the developers needing better tutorials/tooltips/information within their game.
Only algorithmic solution/processes I can think of:
1) Rating/Scoring system. Client side maybe detects when you make bad choices, like purposefully pulling a higher level mob when you're already close to death. Players can choose to publish or hide their ratings, LFG system can have option to filter on ratings, or to ignore altogether, etc.
Could also be based on what other humans think of you, like XBox Live's Reputation system. But then that'd be obnoxious, too, if people are like "please rate me!", or whenever you leave a group, it asks you to rate your group members. Both methods have potential downsides.
2) Preferred Play Style profile system. You can set your playstyle setting to "just having fun", "casual", "social","grind-focused","maximizing EXP rate", etc, then the LFG system can set you up with someone with the same playstyle as you. Some games already have this implemented in some form IIRC.
Best method is to just have fun, and if you only care about maxing your exp flow, play with others with that same goal in mind. That's a social element developers can't ever have full control over, and I'm not even sure that your premise that "more grinding/harsher deaths" = "better players" is even true to begin with. I remember seeing some dumb high level people even in EQ days.
And Im almost certain there's retards on the EQL forums that would say doing stuff like that is dumbing down the game. Just read a thread last night from some guy who quit four years ago and was back with the free time due to all the hacking and some retarded bastard said this:
Not just in the sense that teens now play WoW,Aion,Rift and don't even think of EQ because it requires alot more work(which is a good thing) but also that older folks who want to try games will try games that are easy to understand and play which EQ isn't(also a good thing).
This dumb son of a bitch actually thinks its a good thing that EQ isn't easy to understand. Now lets be clear here, EQ isn't hard to understand because its complex, because its not unless you are raiding and even then its not super complex, it just does such a terrible job of teaching players... well, just about anything. It has a much better tutorial than back in the day, but its still nothing great. It also has the problem of its UI being about six or more years behind the curve on other MMORPGs, which at least they are trying to fix lately and with the new expansion, but its still too little too late.
As for point one, they shouldn't be able to hide it. Ever. Being able to hide if you are a shitty player defeats the whole idea of the system. There does need to be some kind of system to prevent you from getting trolled by people though.
The bolded is not the point. I don't raid anymore nor do I even play much more then a couple hours a night at most. That said, you still don't get the point and clearly aren't. I would figure most intelligent people who have shorter play time would want to maximize their time and not have it wasted. Evidently in your case I am wrong and you don't mind having your time wasted by 1 retard in the group.
Ignoring the social options as those are a given.
Option 2 is a good starting point, at least someone is spending time actually thinking instead of raging. I would suggest something of a back end system that ranks you based on your performance in certain situations and assigns you an invisible rank based on that criteria. Something similar to SC2's ranking system where people don't know how the formula is derived, they just know the system pits them against players of similar skills. A system like that could potentially be adapted into an MMO environment. This would allow players of all skills to enjoy appropriate content.
As for more grinding/harsher deaths = better players. It doesn't always and even the dumbest will eventually make their way to the top. It merely represents the best system we currently have. The one thing a grind does is have the potential to put you into more situations where you are forced to react. A few examples; pulls gone bad, unexpected repops, trains, fleeing mobs etc. These are situations that force a player to dynamically react and the longer a grind the more of these types a situations a player has a chance to be subjected too. Naturally that isn't always the case, but odds are. Clearly there is a line where a grind goes over the top and ceases being much more then a time sink. Where that line is, is entirely subjective. Once again, I am not saying a grind is the end all be all, there is the potential for alternatives. The ranking system being one such alternative. Heck give me something like that and people can play as stupidly as they want and I won't care so long as I am not forced to group with them.
And you aren't getting the point either, having little to no death penalty means you aren't pissing away your time because you died or being set further back than when you began. Having a death penalty, and harsh ones at that, means you are going to be pissing away your supposed little play time. Thats one of the reasons why WoW is successful, you can do stuff in a short amount of time, you don't need to sit on your ass for a ungodly amount of time just to get something done like you did in the old days with EQ.
And using SC2 as an example for a ranking system is bad, I got placed in the platinum tier or whatever simply because I won like 4/5 of the games I played when it was figuring out my rank. I then proceeded to get raped in like 70% of the games I played. I eventually got kicked down to bronze after a while of not playing because I was raging so much at the game.
A longer grind isn't going to make you a better player, as I mentioned with the snakes, if you were able to kill 500 of them easily, then its a sure bet you can kill the other 1500 and it serves no real purpose other than to make the game seem longer or harder (to idiots because time sinks aren't difficulty).
Ok Top, you have done a good job shooting down everything, what is your idea then?
Giving players feedback isn't an option. First off there are thousands of players on a server and outside the world of EQ, the chances of me grouping regularly with someone are slim. We also have a thing called auto queuing now which auto forms groups and drops you into an instance (Frankly one of the best things ever brought into mmos and I think it started in wow). As such if you are just general queuing, you get no choice on who is in your group and if you get stuck with retards and leave, you get punished by being banished from queuing up for another 30 minutes. The problem comes in these environment when you get stuck over and over in groups of completely retarded people. There needs to be a method to put players in the proper pool.
While EQ could use more tooltips, most modern mmos have plenty. I mean honestly if you can't figure out how to play Wow, Rift, Aion or one of a hundred others then no amount of hand holding is going to help you at this point. MMO's are largely like FPS at this point with the same basic controls and same basic mechanics. Plus factor in the simple fact that players don't read a damn thing and tooltips are rendered useless. Make it hard enough as per my argument that reading is required and they go elsewhere. Make it too easy as per you and lilum's argument and you end up with a gaggle of ****tards that you are stuck grouping with. There Needs To Be a Middle Ground.
There needs to be a system in game that puts players of roughly equal skill together. This satisfies ALL players. The Good ones get regularly placed with good players. The middling players get the same and the ones who want to be stupid get placed with others who enjoy being stupid. Everyone wins, well everyone except those whose personal mission it is to ruin the rest of the parties night and do you really want to defend that group? Lastly the devs win as they get to keep the casual players and the core players because neither group is trampling on the other.
PsiKoTicK
07-19-11, 06:54 AM
With no penalty, there's no risk, and therefore no reason to remember the situation.
Let's list the games I remember owning, playing, etc:
EQ (years)
WoW (less than 6 months)
EQ2 (off and on for months at a time for years)
Guild Wars (It's still randomly fun to play)
City of Heroes (like 3 months)
Vanguard (over a year)
Aion (first free month only - paid 50 bucks, played 1 month, woo)
Rift (counting alpha/beta 4-5 months)
I'm sure there were a couple other betas or month long subs somewhere too that I am not remembering.
Alright, so, let's see... none of them except EQ had a major death penalty. Rift had a minor coin penalty, and it sucked a bit when raiding and dying 20 times a night, but otherwise it didn't impede anything.
Out of all that, 2 games come to mind when I remember my MMO time. EQ and Vanguard. Vanguard is because I moved with those players to Rift, and I have since left Rift and still talk to a few of them. I played EQ2 with a few of them as well, but I never did high end stuff in EQ2.
What I DO remember about VG, Rift, etc, isn't always a good thing. I don't remember leveling, I remember doing things with my friends at max level (sitting in Rahz Inkur for 24+ hours camping something for a friend in VG... who had fallen asleep... thank god for the /give command, eh?) or raiding - dying to Fengrot a zillion times because of a broken mechanic... so awesome (PS: It wasn't). In Rift, I remember raiding, I could go back and do all the raids again because I enjoyed it - but I hated dealing with half the people on the raid who just didn't "get it." I left because I ran out of time, I bought a house, have roommates and friends here all the time, I don't have time for an MMO anymore.
I can still you exactly where I leveled to 60 (the cap at the time) in EQ. I can tell you who was there with me in Plane of Fear when I died and died and died, and had to wear mage armor/daggers to kill specters outside to level up and go back in. Hell, I can tell you about the guys I leveled to 15 with in Everfrost. I can tell you about losing my corpse in the basement of Thurgadin (who puts monsters in a city anyway?). Sneaking through Old Sebilis, before Shroud of Shadows made it a joke, dragging corpses out from under Trakanon. I remember every guild I was ever in, and half the people from each of them.
Is EQ a viable business model anymore? Nope. Like someone said, making people quit isn't what developers want. They don't care if the better players get stuck with crap players. I didn't do Pickup Groups in Rift, I played with my guild. I'd rather sit around and jerk off than do a PuG, at least I'd accomplish something. The average player in Rift was horrible. Weeding through them to fill in spots in a raid lineup was even worse. But, everybody gets to level to cap, and everybody gets to do everything. It's what makes money, people don't quit the game out of frustration, etc.
So as much as people like me want death penalties and challenging content (not stupid grinds, actual challenge), the best we can do is play a game that makes us happy with what it offers. WoW, Rift, etc, with high end raiding content that is a challenge is all we have. I think sometimes it's more of a challenge to deal with all the crap players than the actual content, but such is life, apparently.
I'm pretty much an ex-MMO player now, I think. I play my consoles, I play my PC single player games... I play D&D on a tabletop.
Solanar
07-19-11, 07:57 AM
I don't really have the time to dedicate to an MMO anymore, but that doesn't change the fact that too easy is useless to me. If a game is too easy, if content doesn't require skill, if death penalties are too soft, then I feel no need to play. There is no feeling of accomplishment. When I got through a hell level in EQ, I had guildmates that I would call, on the phone, because I was so happy about it. I'd go and meet people in real life, because we spent so much time together in game I wanted to know them out of it too.
I've not got rose colored glasses here. I remember times when I spent 5 hours LFG and ended up logging off at the end of the night accomplishing nothing. Sometimes it would happen several days in a row, before I was raiding. I remember starting dozens of alts because some post or article or friend told me XXX class could solo and I was angry about lack of groups. I remember the anger from losing levels, and while I always managed to get my own corpse back, my wife lost hers (and thus all her gear) twice.
Maybe a harsh death penalty is just as much of a timesink/grind as having to kill 2000 snakes. But in the easier games, I never felt like my skill mattered. If I could do something, I could do it every time. If I could not do something, I could never do it. In EQ there were things I could do that not everyone could, and in those situations it felt like my skill mattered. There were times when I was able to kite and kill mob_01, and times when I got adds and died. Games now seem to allow (expect) everyone to solo to max level and then suddenly learn to group to do high end content....tbh, the content alone is not enough to hold me. Without the forced groups, without having to get to know people, there was no one who I was staying for. It was *easy* to walk away from those games. It was never easy to walk away from EQ, where I had friends and reputation, and had put thousands of hours into being the best I could be.
I would venture to say the MMO market is probably too saturated now for this to work in new games. You need a certain number of more average players for the skill of a good one to shine against, and now the average players have other options where they can feel as good as anyone else, and better than some.
A lot of the reason you got competent with your character in EQ was the amount of time spent playing them, and the fact that you couldn't solo to max level (a couple classes notwithstanding). You had to group to get exp and grouping meant sitting around with pull after pull after pull after pull to hone your skills and tactics. There was cooldown to heal and med up so you had time between each pull. Practice makes perfect. I love that an above average portion of EQ players were good with their class. However, in newer games it doesn't take ungodly amounts of time (which i don't have anymore) to level. Not too mention the leveling of these new games is interesting and well done, you aren't grinding on the same MOB ad nauseum (unless that last "ITEM X" you need to complete the quest will never drop). Plus you can do all of this solo, there's no need to group up until late game. It's a lot more of a player-friendly game style and there's nothing wrong with that, i enjoy it actually. They could add some challenge to the gameplay though, make the low level instances feel like raids/heroics, give them new and interesting mechanics not just tank and spanks, force areas where you need CC or something to get around it. That forces people to learn their classes skills. As an aside, i think another reason that people don't exactly need to know their class anymore is the move away from requiring certain classes to get access to or get by content. As a change, this is a good thing, I don't want to sit around for hours waiting on the only class that can accomplish something so we can do this dungeon. However, the specific roles that certain classes held are now nearly universal. An evolution to gameplay that allows people to play rather than wait around, but now you don't need to know how to freeze-trap kite or picklocks, etc.
I don't know how you fix it so players are good at their class, but just wanted to throw in some of my thoughts. Maybe you do class based quests/dungeons that you complete at various tiers of your experience where you learn how to use the skills given to you. I think the WoW rogue quest in the Westfall tower (right around level 20) where you learn poisons is a perfect example. You need to know how to stealth skillfully, pick pocket, sap, pick locks, assassinate a target, it's a very well done quest and one that encourages you to complete it solo and using your rogue skills.
Does anyone have a list of death penalties for various games?
I used to play The Realm Online where death was harsh.
When killed, you would drop equipped and inventory items on the ground which would get picked up by NPC's or players on the screen while you were unconscious. A lot of the gear was generic but you could be crippled if you happened to drop something like your sword or mana crystals. This was really evil if you had become attached to a particular piece of gear (Engraved items or your character's own baldrics from leveling up for example)
You also lost something like 5% of your total exp earned which meant several levels (sometimes dozens) lost every time you die.
The bolded is not the point. I don't raid anymore nor do I even play much more then a couple hours a night at most. That said, you still don't get the point and clearly aren't. I would figure most intelligent people who have shorter play time would want to maximize their time and not have it wasted. Evidently in your case I am wrong and you don't mind having your time wasted by 1 retard in the group.
Actually what I mind is having to redo two days worth of "work" because of an idiot in m group. which evidently you don't mind. Even with EQ's tougher death penalty I still ended up with a fair share of idiots in groups. The difference is with WoW's lack of death penalty I don't have to spend a crap load of time trying to regain what some moron lost. I haven't played Wow in months, but also getting a group is about 1,000,000,000 times easier in WoW than it ever was in EQ. I get a crappy group, I drop go into LFG, and usually within 20 minutes I'm in another group. Hell don't even have to do that, just enter a queue and depending on the role I'm playing can be a pretty much instant group.
So I'm thinking a lot of your complaining is, well, moot. You're bitching to bitch because "today's young whipper snappers don't know what it's like to play a hard game". /shake fist "and get off my lawn too!"
Actually what I mind is having to redo two days worth of "work" because of an idiot in m group. which evidently you don't mind. Even with EQ's tougher death penalty I still ended up with a fair share of idiots in groups. The difference is with WoW's lack of death penalty I don't have to spend a crap load of time trying to regain what some moron lost. I haven't played Wow in months, but also getting a group is about 1,000,000,000 times easier in WoW than it ever was in EQ. I get a crappy group, I drop go into LFG, and usually within 20 minutes I'm in another group. Hell don't even have to do that, just enter a queue and depending on the role I'm playing can be a pretty much instant group.
So I'm thinking a lot of your complaining is, well, moot. You're bitching to bitch because "today's young whipper snappers don't know what it's like to play a hard game". /shake fist "and get off my lawn too!"
The difference between you and I is pretty clear. You don't care about the idiots while i don't want to put up with them. You won't be so cavalier about dropping groups as more and more mmo's move to a model of locking you out of the lfg queue for abandoning your group. Oh wait, even wow does that so your instant group from the queue comment is pure bs as it is a 30 minute cooldown before you can queue up again.
So then with that out of the way, how about you read the most recent part of the discussion and see if some of those ideas have potential to improve everyones experience.
Ok Top, you have done a good job shooting down everything, what is your idea then?
Giving players feedback isn't an option. First off there are thousands of players on a server and outside the world of EQ, the chances of me grouping regularly with someone are slim. We also have a thing called auto queuing now which auto forms groups and drops you into an instance (Frankly one of the best things ever brought into mmos and I think it started in wow). As such if you are just general queuing, you get no choice on who is in your group and if you get stuck with retards and leave, you get punished by being banished from queuing up for another 30 minutes. The problem comes in these environment when you get stuck over and over in groups of completely retarded people. There needs to be a method to put players in the proper pool.
While EQ could use more tooltips, most modern mmos have plenty. I mean honestly if you can't figure out how to play Wow, Rift, Aion or one of a hundred others then no amount of hand holding is going to help you at this point. MMO's are largely like FPS at this point with the same basic controls and same basic mechanics. Plus factor in the simple fact that players don't read a damn thing and tooltips are rendered useless. Make it hard enough as per my argument that reading is required and they go elsewhere. Make it too easy as per you and lilum's argument and you end up with a gaggle of ****tards that you are stuck grouping with. There Needs To Be a Middle Ground.
There needs to be a system in game that puts players of roughly equal skill together. This satisfies ALL players. The Good ones get regularly placed with good players. The middling players get the same and the ones who want to be stupid get placed with others who enjoy being stupid. Everyone wins, well everyone except those whose personal mission it is to ruin the rest of the parties night and do you really want to defend that group? Lastly the devs win as they get to keep the casual players and the core players because neither group is trampling on the other.
I don't know what a good answer would be, but making it so people might end up not liking it because of harsh penalties doesn't make sense from a business standpoint or from the standpoint that it's a game and the purpose of games is to have fun.
I agree that there needs to be a way to put people in the proper pool, but how is getting stuck with idiots automatically any different than random PUGs with people you didn't know in the past where you had to manually make the group?
Everyone doesn't win, the shitty players just end up being placed with other shitty players with no real room to get better, those people do have to be group with the middle or the good players if there's to be any reasonable expectation for them to improve themselves. If shitty players only get to play with other shitty players, chances are some of them are going to realize whats going on and just end up quitting.
With no penalty, there's no risk, and therefore no reason to remember the situation.
Let's list the games I remember owning, playing, etc:
EQ (years)
WoW (less than 6 months)
EQ2 (off and on for months at a time for years)
Guild Wars (It's still randomly fun to play)
City of Heroes (like 3 months)
Vanguard (over a year)
Aion (first free month only - paid 50 bucks, played 1 month, woo)
Rift (counting alpha/beta 4-5 months)
I'm sure there were a couple other betas or month long subs somewhere too that I am not remembering.
Alright, so, let's see... none of them except EQ had a major death penalty. Rift had a minor coin penalty, and it sucked a bit when raiding and dying 20 times a night, but otherwise it didn't impede anything.
Out of all that, 2 games come to mind when I remember my MMO time. EQ and Vanguard. Vanguard is because I moved with those players to Rift, and I have since left Rift and still talk to a few of them. I played EQ2 with a few of them as well, but I never did high end stuff in EQ2.
What I DO remember about VG, Rift, etc, isn't always a good thing. I don't remember leveling, I remember doing things with my friends at max level (sitting in Rahz Inkur for 24+ hours camping something for a friend in VG... who had fallen asleep... thank god for the /give command, eh?) or raiding - dying to Fengrot a zillion times because of a broken mechanic... so awesome (PS: It wasn't). In Rift, I remember raiding, I could go back and do all the raids again because I enjoyed it - but I hated dealing with half the people on the raid who just didn't "get it." I left because I ran out of time, I bought a house, have roommates and friends here all the time, I don't have time for an MMO anymore.
I can still you exactly where I leveled to 60 (the cap at the time) in EQ. I can tell you who was there with me in Plane of Fear when I died and died and died, and had to wear mage armor/daggers to kill specters outside to level up and go back in. Hell, I can tell you about the guys I leveled to 15 with in Everfrost. I can tell you about losing my corpse in the basement of Thurgadin (who puts monsters in a city anyway?). Sneaking through Old Sebilis, before Shroud of Shadows made it a joke, dragging corpses out from under Trakanon. I remember every guild I was ever in, and half the people from each of them.
Is EQ a viable business model anymore? Nope. Like someone said, making people quit isn't what developers want. They don't care if the better players get stuck with crap players. I didn't do Pickup Groups in Rift, I played with my guild. I'd rather sit around and jerk off than do a PuG, at least I'd accomplish something. The average player in Rift was horrible. Weeding through them to fill in spots in a raid lineup was even worse. But, everybody gets to level to cap, and everybody gets to do everything. It's what makes money, people don't quit the game out of frustration, etc.
So as much as people like me want death penalties and challenging content (not stupid grinds, actual challenge), the best we can do is play a game that makes us happy with what it offers. WoW, Rift, etc, with high end raiding content that is a challenge is all we have. I think sometimes it's more of a challenge to deal with all the crap players than the actual content, but such is life, apparently.
I'm pretty much an ex-MMO player now, I think. I play my consoles, I play my PC single player games... I play D&D on a tabletop.
Now thats just ********, there being risk or not shouldn't mean you don't have to remember stuff. People say stuff like this all the time about how they remember all the stuff they did in EQ but don't remember stuff from other MMORPGs they played, part of that has to do with what you said, you played EQ for years, while only playing other MMORPGs for a few months. I think the guy who started that thread I pulled that quote from a few posts up said essentially the same thing. Idon't remember **** from what little Ive played in other MMORPGs either, because I didn't play them nearly as long as I did EQ.
There being little risk shouldn't just give you a free pass to say you don't need to remember stuff, if you play like that you are just being a terrible player. There's no real risk of time lost in modern games (not MMORPGs since I really havent played any besides EQ for any length of time), but I don't just piss my way through them without remembering stuff. What you are saying is pretty much equating remembering stuff to remember not to touch a hot stove, being punished through pain for doing something and then trying to not ever do it again. That might be good and all if it always comes down to you not touching the stove, but it kinda goes out the window when someone throws the stove at you or the stove just plain explodes (being trained & other people sucking / the game being buggy).
And I remember playing with shitty people in EQ too, back when it was kind of an accomplishment to be a higher level. The game being harsh didn't stop players like some infamous ones from existing (If anyone in here was on Terris Thule, does the name Pona ring any bells?). Besides, its not just that other people are terrible players, it might just be because you aren't used to grouping with people of a different skill level.
Yes, there are going to be outright terrible players, but there are going to be others out there that aren't exactly bad, just less skilled that what you are accustomed to. I know I've quit shitty groups in the past simply because stuff was going to slow for me, but I can't always say that everyone in the group was just plain bad since I was a raider and all I had to really compare it to were other raiders or friends. Also part of the problem is that people have no incentive to do PUGs, if good players aren't actually going to be part of the community to help other players get better, there's no real hope for lower skilled players unless they join up in guilds with better players.
At least you seem to be better than the average high end raider in EQ who thinks the only raiding game out there with challenge in it is EQ because throwing more bodies at a raid automatically makes it a better game.
I don't really have the time to dedicate to an MMO anymore, but that doesn't change the fact that too easy is useless to me. If a game is too easy, if content doesn't require skill, if death penalties are too soft, then I feel no need to play. There is no feeling of accomplishment. When I got through a hell level in EQ, I had guildmates that I would call, on the phone, because I was so happy about it. I'd go and meet people in real life, because we spent so much time together in game I wanted to know them out of it too.
I've not got rose colored glasses here. I remember times when I spent 5 hours LFG and ended up logging off at the end of the night accomplishing nothing. Sometimes it would happen several days in a row, before I was raiding. I remember starting dozens of alts because some post or article or friend told me XXX class could solo and I was angry about lack of groups. I remember the anger from losing levels, and while I always managed to get my own corpse back, my wife lost hers (and thus all her gear) twice.
Maybe a harsh death penalty is just as much of a timesink/grind as having to kill 2000 snakes. But in the easier games, I never felt like my skill mattered. If I could do something, I could do it every time. If I could not do something, I could never do it. In EQ there were things I could do that not everyone could, and in those situations it felt like my skill mattered. There were times when I was able to kite and kill mob_01, and times when I got adds and died. Games now seem to allow (expect) everyone to solo to max level and then suddenly learn to group to do high end content....tbh, the content alone is not enough to hold me. Without the forced groups, without having to get to know people, there was no one who I was staying for. It was *easy* to walk away from those games. It was never easy to walk away from EQ, where I had friends and reputation, and had put thousands of hours into being the best I could be.
I would venture to say the MMO market is probably too saturated now for this to work in new games. You need a certain number of more average players for the skill of a good one to shine against, and now the average players have other options where they can feel as good as anyone else, and better than some.
What content from EQ was challenging back in the day besides raiding and content meant for raiders? There was nothing hard about EQ's group content, it just took an unholy amount of time to do stuff and the death penalties were just a kick in the ****. No one should have gotten excited because they got through a hell level, you shouldn't be happy because you got through some bugged out issue the game through at you instead of them fixing it to not suck dicks. Was I happy when I got through them, yeah, but I was still pissed that I had to put up with that **** in the first place.
The difference between you and I is pretty clear. You don't care about the idiots while i don't want to put up with them. You won't be so cavalier about dropping groups as more and more mmo's move to a model of locking you out of the lfg queue for abandoning your group. Oh wait, even wow does that so your instant group from the queue comment is pure bs as it is a 30 minute cooldown before you can queue up again.
So then with that out of the way, how about you read the most recent part of the discussion and see if some of those ideas have potential to improve everyones experience.
But thats the problem, at some point in time you ARE going to have to put up with idiots, no matter what. When you do have to put up with the, you have to also put up with any harsh death penalties you seem to want, but you don't like having your time wasted. That's a Catch 22, you can't have death penalties and also not have your time wasted at some point in time due to one reason or another.
Ok toprem.
Are we ever going to end up with a system that 100% eliminates idiots? No. Nor am I or anyone else looking for said system because we are realistic.
However, using the SC2 system as an example to talk about your point of how to players improve themselves. Quite simply the system constantly assesses their performance and regularly places them against higher level opponents a step or two above them. When they start having a reasonable amount of success against then they get promoted. If they don't then they stay where they are. If they are underperforming where they are then they get demoted. Now in an mmo this promotion/demotion thing doesn't need to be visible. I am just using it as a means of explaining.
Let me spec out a rough draft of a system here and see if you understand. Now MMO's have an inherit advantage in that you will nearly always spend some time soloing before you start seeing random parties. Sc2 doesn't have that which is why you have the 5 placement matches and sometimes it places you too high if you got lucky in your placements and it eventually brings you down. MMO's however would have more data to work off and could be a smoother experience.
So lets break it down into metrics for a moment. Lets say that the lfg queue doesn't open up to player until level 10 for example. That is not to say they cannot form a party of their own choosing, this is just the auto queue. So in those 10 level they do some solo play, intro quests, perhaps even some class specific quests. They grind a little, they die some and in general do the typical MMO first 10 levels of bs type stuff. Now during that time the game is monitoring your metrics. If you are a dps it is scoring you based on how much dps you are doing in relation to how much you could be for your level and gear. If you are another class you are getting rated on metrics important to that class. Now at this level of course it is going to be quite a bit of subjectivity, but it starts the foundation and that is the important part.
So you hit level 10 and behind the scenes the game has assigned you a rank or grade. Now you aren't aware of this, you just hit /lfg and hope to get a party. So while there would likely be quite a few more, lets say 3 grades of player for now, A, B and C. Lets also assume for a moment that the highest you can initially start in is B. So most players would end up in B and be paired with other B players. Now of that ranking there would be those who were clearly stronger then others and the system would adjust accordingly. So if you had a group of 6 and 1 player was clearly ahead of the curve, then the next time that player enters the queue he is assigned to an A group. If he keeps up with that A group then he stays A, otherwise the next group is a B group and that lasts for a period of time until the system feels like attempting to promote him again. Same applies to under performers only in reverse. Now clearly the system would need more then 3 ranks, but it gives you the idea.
As you continue to level up, the game continues to assess your performance and adjust who it groups you with accordingly. Now this is only applicable to the auto group queue. You can choose to group manually with whomever you please.
As an addition to that system there can be another added benefit for dungeon crawls. It can likewise scale the difficulty of the encounter. So lets say that we have an A group. This A group wants a moderate difficulty with decent loot drops. When they enter the queue they enter one of three choices 1) Challenging, 2) Normal, 3) Casual. this tunes the difficulty of the dungeon and the drops. So if a group wants to just breeze through for the experience and ignore drops they choose casual. If they want to challenge themselves they choose Challenging. The same can be done for a C group, they don't know they are a C group they simply choose the same options. The difference is their version of Challenging would be challenging for their level. Now for argument sake Lets add a 4th level of Heroic. Now we obviously wouldn't want C group getting the same loot at A group for a heroic type at a lowered difficulty level. So Heroic would be the same on all levels no matter your ranking. As the loot in the primary difficulties would be largely the same with the differences being experience yielded and coin.
What does this do? This allows players to be challenged on their level while experiencing the same content. It gives them the ability to make choices as to if they want an easy experience or if they want to challenge themselves.
That is just a high level synopsis, but I believe you should get the point. When I actually started this whole debate something like this hadn't actually crossed my mind. It just started to form the more I thought about it. I think however something like this has the ability to bring something that MMO's have been striving to obtain but falling short in appealing to all players without dumbing it down for everyone. More importantly this thins out the idiots at the top, without losing subs. This satisfies players like myself knowing that I won't have to deal with the bulk of the idiots. It also satisfies the requirements of players like you and Lilum by not leveling any harsh penalties for bad play. While I still feel penalties for poor play should be in place, the reality is the majority disagree. So the compromise is offer me a method to distance myself from these players as my experience is just as important.
Solanar
07-19-11, 08:14 PM
But some of you are saying that grinding just to slow the game down is stupid and gay. If you're able to solo from 1 to max, then I agree. However, if you're forced to group to maximize progression, then grinding becomes an opportunity to make friends, to learn your class (in games where not every bloody class can do everything), and relax. Y'know what, when I got done with a 5 hour xp grind in wall of slaughter or somewhere in EQ, I felt good. I felt relaxed, I felt like I had accomplished something, I felt like I had escaped to Norrath. When I got done playing 5 hours of WoW or Rift, I felt like I had been wasting my time, whatever I managed to accomplish.
The likelyhood of there ever being a game that is super successful and requires you to group to get to max level is some where between slim and none. Developers learned a lot of lessons from EQ, another one of those lessons is that people don't want to spend five hours LFG just so they can gain levels.
Matheren
07-20-11, 05:23 AM
If a game has even half WoW's numbers, there's no reason anyone should have to spend five hours LFG when grouping's required.
Telurinon
07-20-11, 05:50 AM
If a game has even half WoW's numbers, there's no reason anyone should have to spend five hours LFG when grouping's required.
You're wrong...unless there is also some motivation for max level players to either re-roll as an alt or to group with lower level players to work with them. After the initial rush to level on a given server, grouping at lower levels becomes harder and harder the longer the game goes. In WoW, I've sat in a DPS queue for 3-4 hours waiting for a level 40ish group.
long post
That sounds decent enough, might be hard to pull off but if it could be done I could see it working. There still needs to be some way for lower tier players to group with at least the tier above them so they might learn how to improve themselves. Maybe there needs to be some kind of incentive for higher tier people to help lower tier ones.
If a game has even half WoW's numbers, there's no reason anyone should have to spend five hours LFG when grouping's required.
That's not true because of what someone already said, most people are going to get out of the lower levels and once they do unless there's more people constantly coming in there's not going to be many lower level players to play with. That is why stuff needs to be feasibly soloable so they can level up, and that's something EQ never did well in the past and honestly still doesn't do well.
That sounds decent enough, might be hard to pull off but if it could be done I could see it working. There still needs to be some way for lower tier players to group with at least the tier above them so they might learn how to improve themselves. Maybe there needs to be some kind of incentive for higher tier people to help lower tier ones.
Well again it was a rough draft, but you clearly get the general idea. However I did mention that the system should regularly place the player in tier above them groups when they get certain milestones. So the point is the system should always be evaluating a players performance based on certain metrics to see if they need to be moved up or down.
That's not true because of what someone already said, most people are going to get out of the lower levels and once they do unless there's more people constantly coming in there's not going to be many lower level players to play with. That is why stuff needs to be feasibly soloable so they can level up, and that's something EQ never did well in the past and honestly still doesn't do well.
This is where the beauty of a system like FFXI's level sync system comes into play. FFXI went from one of those games where low to mid levels could literally spend days lfg. To a system where if anything the mid levels are the thriving spot to be as high levels prefer to sync down for "exp grinding". It completely eliminates the problem of friends out leveling each other, or not having certain classes of a specific level range. If you aren't familiar with it, you should take a look at the system, it really is hands down one of the best implementations in MMO's to date.
Matheren
07-20-11, 05:47 PM
You've also got systems like sidekick/mentor/whatever, where a max level person can still get perks from grouping up with mid level people. Or like what SWTOR's toting, where people are supposedly going to want to level alts because it's a very different experience.
Or DAOC where people wanted to stay in certain level ranges just for a certain battleground, for those who want a PVP focused game.
You've also got systems like sidekick/mentor/whatever, where a max level person can still get perks from grouping up with mid level people. Or like what SWTOR's toting, where people are supposedly going to want to level alts because it's a very different experience.
Or DAOC where people wanted to stay in certain level ranges just for a certain battleground, for those who want a PVP focused game.
Honestly most of those systems are bandaids compared to what FFXI did. There is a world of difference in getting perks for helping lower levels and being able to grind side by side with anyone lower level then you. Heck being the lowest level person is most of the time the best position because you have decked out high level players fighting to get you to keep the level so you get crazy plvl groups.The biggest advantage? If a high level player was trying to grind exp, they would literally never turn down a mid level group because they got the same or better exp then they would in a group of their level range.
Alts are great for those who like alts. I personally despise leveling more then 1 character, I don't care how different the experience is. I think in over 10 years of EQ, I managed to get 2 alts above 65 and that was only during the time when shroud grinding was good and I needed filler in the group.
Honestly most of those systems are bandaids compared to what FFXI did. There is a world of difference in getting perks for helping lower levels and being able to grind side by side with anyone lower level then you. Heck being the lowest level person is most of the time the best position because you have decked out high level players fighting to get you to keep the level so you get crazy plvl groups.The biggest advantage? If a high level player was trying to grind exp, they would literally never turn down a mid level group because they got the same or better exp then they would in a group of their level range.
Alts are great for those who like alts. I personally despise leveling more then 1 character, I don't care how different the experience is. I think in over 10 years of EQ, I managed to get 2 alts above 65 and that was only during the time when shroud grinding was good and I needed filler in the group.
And thats one of the reasons Shrouds sucked **** in EQ, sure, you got experience being shrouded down, but when you unshrouded the amount of exp you gained was negligible to your real level. That and because there was no gear for them and other reasons. Shrouds were only good for the person getting power leveled and doing things of an exploity nature, usually both of those at the same time. God shrouds were such a poorly thought out system, but thats par for the course in EQ.
http://i.imgur.com/O6KhZ.jpg
******** like that makes me not want to even try it.
Limited quantities of Physical CE boxes..sure ok I can accept that. Limited editions of Digital downloads? Complete and utter ********. More like intentional limiting to drive the ebay market for all the copies that will appear there.
Qtip4urMamma
07-21-11, 04:11 PM
******** like that makes me not want to even try it.
Limited quantities of Physical CE boxes..sure ok I can accept that. Limited editions of Digital downloads? Complete and utter ********. More like intentional limiting to drive the ebay market for all the copies that will appear there.
Wait... the ebay copies won't make them money. And with all this bitching about used games taking money away from these companies, wouldn't they do EVERYTHING they possibly could?
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a ploy just to increase ebay and second hand sales just so they can bitch about how much money they "lost"
Wait... the ebay copies won't make them money. And with all this bitching about used games taking money away from these companies, wouldn't they do EVERYTHING they possibly could?
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a ploy just to increase ebay and second hand sales just so they can bitch about how much money they "lost"
Who says ebay won't make them money? they can post "pre ordered" copies under a guise of being a reseller just as easily as anyone.
Yeah, some people saying they've seen ebay copies already pop up for like $250-300. ****, someone said they sold their beta access for $200. I wish I had gotten into the beta.
Qtip4urMamma
07-21-11, 04:42 PM
Who says ebay won't make them money? they can post "pre ordered" copies under a guise of being a reseller just as easily as anyone.
Not legally. And it would leave way too much of a paper trail
I believe that "extra charge" for pre-order is just like a GS pre-order. Its $5 down, but the money goes towards the game... I dunno though. Still not smart
Matheren
07-21-11, 08:03 PM
Right. Anyone who actually bothers to read the FAQ (but who wants to do that when they can waste time making an unjustified rage pic?) would see the $5 is the money immediately paid for pre-order, prior to the actual charge being paid at release. Not exactly news, most brick & mortar stores do it.
The limited release applies to everything, digital and physical. They're not releasing any more copies until post launch, as they've apparently decided to stagger the join dates of players and avoid Day 1 (or 2, 3, 4, 5) shenanigans that we've seen in other games like WoW and Rift.
Right. Anyone who actually bothers to read the FAQ (but who wants to do that when they can waste time making an unjustified rage pic?) would see the $5 is the money immediately paid for pre-order, prior to the actual charge being paid at release. Not exactly news, most brick & mortar stores do it.
The limited release applies to everything, digital and physical. They're not releasing any more copies until post launch, as they've apparently decided to stagger the join dates of players and avoid Day 1 (or 2, 3, 4, 5) shenanigans that we've seen in other games like WoW and Rift.
Except that when paying for it it shows up as Cost of the Game + the $5 down, as if it was being charged for it all now. B&M stores make you put the $5 down or let you pay for the whole thing when you preorder it, thats not how it looks when you go to preorder this.
Yes, but looks and reality arent the same. Do you have to pay extra? No. Should they make that far far more obvious? Yes.
Matheren
07-21-11, 10:51 PM
Except that when paying for it it shows up as Cost of the Game + the $5 down, as if it was being charged for it all now. B&M stores make you put the $5 down or let you pay for the whole thing when you preorder it, thats not how it looks when you go to preorder this.
Right, but again, this is addressed in the FAQ. I'm just saying, it takes about as long to read that as it does to make a random rage pic over the subject..
If I purchased my pre-order from Origin.com and created a profile for that purchase, will I need to create a new profile and re-enter my payment method information when I purchase the full version of Star Wars: The Old Republic?
No. When you pre-order Star Wars: The Old Republic from Origin.com, you agree to the automatic purchase of your selected edition of the Game when it launches. When you pre-order the Game you will be charged an advance payment for the pre-order (cost varies by country and edition). This is the standard pre-order cost. When Star Wars: The Old Republic launches, your credit card will be charged for the full retail cost amount of your chosen edition, minus the initial pre-order advance payment.
Andurian
07-22-11, 05:51 AM
Got mine from Amazon, no silly preorder down payments. That said they could have did a much better job explaining this and the limited launch concept. It makes a lot of sense when you see what they mean.. but the way it was put out there caused a lot of rage.
SWTOR's marketing team is pretty incompetent.. leak sites like Betacake have done a better job promoting the game in the last month or so.
Matheren
07-22-11, 06:00 AM
It is a bit shocking, what with the whole limited release deal, that they also decided to go with the ninja release. Definitely not the best combination of decisions.
I'm just hoping they the rumors/speculation of a release date announcement at PAX are true - I *really* need to know whether I should be planning to use my vacation for this game or not ;)
Wait, they plan on ninja releasing this? Do they not like money? Cause ill take it off their hands! Its Star Wars, they should be hyping the crap out of it.
Matheren
07-22-11, 05:42 PM
I meant the ninja release of the preorders - there was really nothing leading up to it other than a couple unofficial rumors/leaks. Normally it's not a big deal, but when you're also limiting copies of your preorder (and I know some numbers, they're way less than I expected) then it's kind of a double-whammy of suck.
It'll be interesting to see if they do announce release date at PAX, and if it ends up being late in the year or a month from announcement. I prefer the latter, of course, because I can't take vacation after Nov 21st ;(