OT: What other games are people playing??

Arryn said:
That's one of my big gripes against them. Do any of them have any sort of real persistent universe in which a player's (or guild's) actions actually matter? Where there's a real, threaded storyline whose flow you can actually affect, instead of the typical scripted "events" developers occasionally throw in, which the game companies have confused with the concept of "content"?

EVE-Online?

It's early days with EVE for me, and I can't devote as much time to it as the fanatics, but I have a clear impression that the game has a player-driven politics and a player-driven economy. For example, there seems to be a major war (or series of wars) between player-run alliances going on at the moment. The result is that ship and equipment prices have been rising for everyone over the Last month because demand is increasing (all those players needing to replace blown-up ships), while supply of raw materials for ship-building is decreasing (because miners are finding it too unsafe to get much mining done in the war zones).

Or, as another example, I've just been reading a series of Posts amongst arguing factions within a particular alliance, complaining that they're close to civil war. The military are saying that they're unable to fund their operations properly unless the miners pay some kind of tax on all their workings; the extremists amongst them are demanding that all the miners be kicked out of alliance space. The miners are complaining that the military aren't providing decent protection against pirates (player pirates, that is) or opposing alliances; and that it's not worth their while paying more tax until the military service improves.

The only problem really is that a lot of this isn't very well documented, so you mostly don't get to read about it in nicely packaged, polished story form. But there are attempts at both a player-run news service, and player produced propoganda videos, which are often a lot of fun.

The game developers also drop in a lot of their own story content, but it just feels artificial when overlaid on top of the rest of it.

Mark

[bleach168]

Arryn said:
That's one of my big gripes against them. Do any of them have any sort of real persistent universe in which a player's (or guild's) actions actually matter? Where there's a real, threaded storyline whose flow you can actually affect, instead of the typical scripted "events" developers occasionally throw in, which the game companies have confused with the concept of "content"?

That's how mmorpgs work. Unless it's a game where there is heavy pvp and politics like AC:1 Darktide, Shadowbane, or Eve Online, you're not going to be a factor in the storyline. Remember, you're one of hundreds of thousands of players so it's not likely any one single person will affect the storyline. There are reasons why the content makers don't even want you to affect the storyline.

[Arryn]

Bleach,

There were millions of people in the Rebellion (Star Wars) and while few individuals made a difference, collectively they did. In MMORPGs, even the sum total of all the members on a shard don't matter. It's not important to me that my own actions matter, but it's a pointless game if nothing that anyone does, even collectively in the thousands, matters.


Aku,

Having been in SWG from beta onwards, I can agree 100%. SWG is (IMO) the best MMORPG I've seen yet and it sucks. What that says about other MMOs I'll leave to your imagination.

[Aku]

My friend and I tried out SWG a few months ago and he played throughout the beta and said the beta was more fun than it is now lol and during the whole time of the beta he was telling me how horrible it was lol.

I am really disappointed in all the mmorpgs that are out. They are all about level grinding and so many are completely unbalanced.

[Lex]

Eve Online looks pretty cool! I'm almost interested in getting it now. Except for the time commitment which I don't have, it sounds like it would be alot of fun to be part of.

[Arryn]

Yes, Aku, the beta of SWG was actually fun. The released game wasn't/isn't. In beta, a couple of highly-skilled Teras Kasi martial artists (or a single one with the help of some marksmen) could actually take down some huge lizard things (I forget what they're called, they're about the size of Krayt Dragons but found on an out-of-the-way volcanic planet). In release, you can't even make it to their stomping grounds without being torn apart, much less actually face the beasts with anything short of a stormtrooper legion. This isn't so much a matter of the devs upping the toughness of the game's critters, which they did (and I don't have a problem with), but of their nerfing the hell out of the combat classes to the point where starting characters get their asses kicked by rabbits (I kid you not). I won't even get into what they did to artisans.

[KroolDeath]

I just went and checked the Eve Online website and it does look pretty cool. I thought it was a busy but I guess not (Maybe that was Earth & Beyond that I was thinking of).

hmmm...

Krool

[Arryn]

Wasn't E&B supposed to go poof this month?

[Aikamun]

Since the subject changed to Eve Online (my Last MMOG ever), I will tell you why I quit:

1. Bugs. I played a little over a month and encountered a huge quantity of bugs personally. Also, monitored the help channel and heard of tons of other bugs. I do not believe Eve has enough paid Subscribers to adequately support the game.

2. Lag. Like all these games, lag kills. Eve has it in over-abundance.

3. Experience System. You gain skill points per each unit of time. At the end of one month playing you will have a little under one million skillpoints. Some players already have 20 million skillpoints. You can NEVER catch up, no matter how long you play each day. This puts you at a severe disadvantage in any player vs player fights. I estimate you are at a 5% to 25% handicap at the minimum.

5. Mining. Mining is the key to Eve's economy. If you have the minerals, you can make most of the gear and ships in Eve. Mining became the most boring grind I have experienced in an MMOG, which made running missions my only source of income. Some people don't get bored from mining and power to them.

6. Uber Guilds. Like all MMOs, Eve has its uber guilds. These are the largest and most established corporations. They do not recruit newbies. Personally, I am not interested in leaving friends and the corporation behind who had helped me to that point.

7. War can be declared by one corp against any other corp to avoid retaliation by the police. This mechanism is used by larger corporations and player killers to take you out wherever and whenever they please. Another advantage of being in an uber corporation.

8. Etc., etc. The list could continue indefinitely.

One of my characters had developed a persistent display bug at the end. CCP was telling me my screen should be showing various things which was not the case. This was the final nail in the coffin for Eve.

But, this is just my opinion. You might love Eve.

Aikamun

[Lex]

Hmmm.. I've been reading alot of reviews on Eve, as well as their site, and the more I read, the more I'm interested. The "problem" with Corps is also the main attraction of Eve. It means there's alot of activity that's player driven. As for the Skills system, I was under the impression that they did it that way to level the playing field for people who couldn't spend every minute of the day killing monsters. This way, reguardless of how much time you can commit to being Online, you'll still level up at the same pace as everyone else. Sure it means if you joined the game a year after others, you'll be pretty far behind, but since the real power is with Guilds, it's seems less important to have an insanely high level character, and more practical to be friends with the right people (kinda reminding me of real life a bit). On their site, they say there's over 2000 player Guilds/Corporations (compared to 140 NPC Corps). Sure it might be lonely at first, but the community is definitly there! (their site posted that Last monday they had 11,200 people Online.. that might not be the 100,000+ Ultima Online would get, but isn't that pretty good anyways?)

But then, that's my impression from the basic reading I've done. I still haven't played the game yet.