Loading... Risk and Reward

Ethec · 07-03-2009, 12:56 PM

Good games reward initiative and punish complacency. Some MMORPGs get this formula backwards, punishing initiative and rewarding boring activities, which is why these MMORPGs are typically not good games.

Today's Loading... looks at how one game community is tearing into one of the most hotly criticized aspects of EVE Online and why this is one jihadist offensive we can support. It's all in Loading... Risk and Reward.

blehack33 · 07-04-2009, 10:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ethec

Good games reward initiative and punish complacency. Some MMORPGs get this formula backwards, punishing initiative and rewarding boring activities, which is why these MMORPGs are typically not good games.

Today's Loading... looks at how one game community is tearing into one of the most hotly criticized aspects of EVE Online and why this is one jihadist offensive we can support. It's all in Loading... Risk and Reward.

Instead, from one perspective, GoonSwarm is doing the game a great service by making intensely boring large-scale mining operations in "safe" space less safe, encouraging more miners to get into more lucrative and much more interesting corporate low-sec and null-sec mining. It's a beautiful thing when a game or a game's community actively discourages boredom.

sort of like how lvl 5 missions have caused mission runners to start hanging out in lo sec running lvl 5s?

if anything, it'll just make folks start mining in higher sec with their hulks; thereby robbing the "new player miners" of .8-1.0 mining.

make no mistake by trying to put a positive spin on goon griefing -- all goons are doing is griefing hulks in high sec. they're not doing it to prove any points (other than they can blow up a hulk before they get concorded). they're not doing it with the ulterior motive of "fixing" any perceived broken areas.

they're doing it only for the sake of griefing.

LexStriker · 07-06-2009, 02:00 PM

This weekend, I was in the Aion Close Beta #3. When I logged off on Sunday Night, all I could do was shake my head... I was disappointed. All I saw ahead of me was the typical 50 level grind through boring quests... moving from one leveling area to the next... and running the same crafting time sink I did in Dark Ages of Camelot in 2002. Sheesh!!!... give me a break... Ok?

I have been playing EVE Online for just over a year now. Though I do not see EVE Online as the perfect game for me, it is something that other game designers can learn from. The first is not to reward Players for playing extended periods of time, especially in the beginning. EVE Online kind of throttles the Career Players by linking the training of skills to real time. Thus, one trains all the time, on or offline. Now, of course, the Career Players want this time online advantage over the Casual Players... so they will not like this type of system. However, I have also seen the Career Players ruin a game to the point where most of the Casual Players just left... and that is not good for the gaming company, is it? So I think the EVE Online's training system, as well as their crafting system, is something that may be a thing of the future. I believe personally any way to get rid of the grind and time sinks in these Online Games would be a God-sent... just get me to the damn end game, Ok? Guild Wars did that by allowing instant characters at max level with good equipment for PvP only. Now there was the limitation that those characters could only play in PvP matches, but at least they did not have to grind levels before getting into the action.

Another thing to say about EVE Online is that it is not hard to get into the mix of PvP combat very early. This is mostly due to the fact that there are no level considerations. A Player may have better skills and equipment, but they are not invulnerable to being destroyed by a bunch of new people in small ships. In Dark Ages of Camelot, I watched as a single magic user type character downed over 16 other characters before finally going down himself. That kind of disproportional character leveling is not fun, in my opinion.

My only word to the game designers is stop wasting my time!!! My time is valuable to me, and doing mindless grinds and time sinks is not something I enjoy. So now I am waiting for Guild Wars 2 and All Points Bulletin to see if they will answer the call. But based on what I have seen lately, I am very cautious with my expectations.

Addition: In Tabula Rasa, I really liked the fortress/compound raids. They were so exciting... having wave after wave of enemy NPC's pouring into the fort or having to force one's way through the gates was great. There was no waiting two hours to get up a group to go attack... the attacks were always going on somewhere. This type of action was continuous and heart thumping... in my opinion. Even though I was not a steady player of TR, I did like it in that way. Unlike where, in other online games, one completes a mission of taking an area back from the bad guys... but the bad guys are still standing there. Just does not have the feel of really accomplishing anything or any sense of reality.