Schild
I’m fairly sure we’d throw shit at your face if it wasn’t already covered with the shit that comes out of your mouth. How now, brown cow?

Hmm. I guess that method of speaking makes you look pretty good where you live. From here, it just sort of reinforces your reputation of being a douche.

But then, in my mind from our dealings in the past, you’re probably pretty comfortable with that by now. You wake up every morning and think, “okay, I’ve got a cool website where I write edgy things by coming off as a douche. How can I be more douche-like today?” You appoint moderators primarily on the understanding that they, too, are douches, and this helps to reinforce the factor that keeps your site interesting amongst all the other ones out there.

And who I am to judge? I’m not judging at all. I’m just saying that, considering where I’m sitting in perspective to what little I know about you, why should I care about anything you have to say? You’re, like, working towards being a professional douche. You’re just pursuing the dream.

Owain
He’s not only a pompous asshole, he’s an intolerant asshole.
He’s a game bigot.
He’s a self appointed expert who knows far less than he thinks he does, but lacks the self awareness to know that he’s a dimwit.
He’s a bully who tries to shut down discussion with personal attacks when the argument fails to go his way.
He’s intellectually dishonest. Don’t waste your time with him.

As an open-minded, conscientious, individual, I would normally take a lot of this personally and maybe do a bit of soul-searching to understand whether or not there may in fact be some gravity to what you’re saying here.

But the thing is, anyone who has seen you defending Darkfall Online knows that you’re hardly the open-minded, honest, non-bullying individual you’re making yourself out to be. You largely took everything we were saying to you about why we found the game to flawed, waved them off as non-problems, and called us lairs an fools to believe otherwise. Apparently, you’re still doing that.

Thus, if you’ve seen in me any of these characteristics of this incredible combo-attack you’ve written to me in the block quote above, I’m betting a good deal of it was reflecting off of me from your own conduct. Meditate on that possibility a bit, if you can.

Granted, my behavior towards Amaranthar was fairly unforgivable. I respect my elders. If he’s 56, perhaps he possesses wisdom I do not that makes him understand why it is that Ultima Online is, indeed, the answer. I was just cheesed off because (a) I was full of caffeine and (b) my synapses are so raw ground from the grind that they were a hair trigger.

I said what he wrote was like going into a burn victim ward and applying a napalm face mask… but it’s really more like going into a burn victim ward and saying, “you don’t get it, do you” and then describing the sensation of burning. I don’t think he intended to do this, but it did set me off…

Which was wrong. No matter how irritated I was, I’m 32 years old and should have more of a brain in my head than to let my little pet peeves to cause me to condemn anyone. I’m sorry about that, Amaranthar.

So, basically, my detractors are idiots in their own little way, and so I am I.

Like the folks in UO who set up catering services for in game weddings. All sorts of things like that that had nothing to do with story line, skill building, or anything, but was indirectly supported in the game by things like cooking skills. This being the ‘Sims Online/Second Life’ approach to MMOs that was possible in UO, and to a lesser extent in SWG, but not to any great degree in any other MMO I’ve played.

Which is what made the ad homonim attacks from folks like @geldonyetich repellent, particularly his statement, “Were it not for the fact you did this out of complete ignorance of not knowing exactly who you were talking to, I would ask you to kindly die in a car fire.”

Who you were talking to? Give me a fucking break, geld, you pompous asshole!

Let me tell you a bit about geld, in case you haven’t figured it out for yourself.

He’s not only a pompous asshole, he’s an intolerant asshole.
He’s a game bigot.
He’s a self appointed expert who knows far less than he thinks he does, but lacks the self awareness to know that he’s a dimwit.
He’s a bully who tries to shut down discussion with personal attacks when the argument fails to go his way.
He’s intellectually dishonest. Don’t waste your time with him.

Those are his good points.

I’ve gone around with him a couple of times myself over another game that shall remain nameless, at Scott’s request. He gives this forum a bad name, in my opinion. If he was banned from another forum, it was probably for cause. If I were Scott, I wouldn’t put up with him, but sometimes it’s good to keep some losers around, if only to serve as a bad example. If Geld thinks something is true, put your money on the opposite argument.

That doesn’t cover the subject, but it’s suffucient.

But generally speaking, it’s the massive social possibilities that could be built into a game. All the things involved in that…and the unspoken expectation avoiding our mental grasp that a massive online game would have this.

It’s missing because these games have been built like single player games, with small groups of friends and the rewards are the level and item “dings”. This is something that EVE got right, in the framework of their own game*. And if you look at EVE, this is why it’s a successful game.

*Speaking of EVE, and I don’t know if I’m right because I’ve never played it nor spent a lot of time following it, but I wonder about something.
If in EVE players played an Avatar, instead of one of their ships, would PKing matter more? And reversed, if in these fantasy/sci-fi games, if you played a castle, and what you lost in PKing was merely one of your inhabitants, would it matter less? Does an Avatar that’s a being, does it represent “us” so much better that we form a stronger bond in game play?

I don’t think @geldonyetich and others get it either, but I don’t thing that what @Amaranthar means by ‘it’ and what geld means by ‘it’ are even the same thing.

To test my theory, I’d be interested to have geldonyetich explain what ‘it’ is so that I can understand the kneejerk hostility. Once I know gelds interpretation of what ‘it’ is, I can determine if he and Amaranthar are even on the same page, because if I understand him correctly, Amaranthar’s ‘it’ isn’t particularly controversial as a game development idea.

Gx1080 :@AmarantharThats a cute thought, but even in a game when the skills are designed for working that way (EVE Online), thers still a gap between new players and older players : player skill. Lets face it: Players want the most skilled players for beating the hard content and other players instead of grinding the easy content.
You can eliminate the power difference between the newbie and the old timer, but the old timer its going to be more skilled. How you are goint to make that player skill dont care, huh? Making your game content easy? A game when player skill its meaningless its boring.

This is true in online FPS games, particularly the older ones like BF1942 that didn’t have the rank systems and weapon unlocks that newer FPS games have. Everyone goes into that game with the same characters, and the players who have played longer and know the ins and outs of the all the maps will dominate newer players at first. But it doesn’t take long for a newer player to get the necessary experience and familiarity with each map and the experience advantage evens out, and ping becomes more important than experience. In that way, even relatively new players can interact with more experienced players.

The difference between a level 20 player (reasonable experienced) and a level 80 player in WoW on the other hand, is enormous, both in terms of gear and skills. They may as well be on different planets. A game can still provide content that gives easy challenges for beginners, harder content for groups or very skilled solo players without making the differences between beginners and veterans so extreme. That prevents the common syndrome on many modern MMOs where the vast majority of the game world is unusable to players at either end of the spectrum. Beginners can go most places because they would be annihilated, and the players with the highest skills don’t want to visit most of the world because the content is trivially easy. A little flattening of the skill curve would go a long way towards keeping players entertained in larger areas of the game world. For that to work, however, you need more of a sand box type game where the players make their own game rather than a quest centric game where you are always limited by supplying a never ending series of new quests and expansions.

I @Amaranthar has done a pretty good job of suggesting a variety of way to implement that, and in a cooperative PvE rather than in a free for all PvP environment as used in other current games that shall remain nameless (at Scott’s request since this isn’t a *mumble* related thread).

JuJutsu :
“Having solo play is nice, but if you play MMOs for the solo experience you are a broken individual.”
Not bad for someone not trying to condescend. It must come naturally.

That word doesn’t mean what you think it does. I would direct you to a fine online dictionary, but that would be condescending to assume that you could not find your way there yourself.

Incidentally, I’d like to see more online sandbox-y games.

Oh well, keep em’ coming. I’ll address these tomorrow. Or maybe not – bickering with belligerent monkeys demeans myself while making the monkies look more important than they are.

Owain :The way I view this pissing contest, it looks once more like the sand-box let me make my own game school vs. the quest-centric run you on rails, here have another cookie school of game development.
Give me the sand box, any day. Keep your damn cookies.

You’ve nailed it.

Give me the sand box, any day. Keep your damn cookies.