So, online gaming. Typically a lot of us older games and hardcore purists despise any online components in games, because it detracts from the singleplayer experience. This is a fact; it cannot be argued. Any resources used to add a multiplayer experience could have been used to enhance the singleplayer in some way. However, you cannot argue the fact that playing games with your buddies is fun.
Enter the ORPG
ORPG’s (Online Role-Playing Games) are typically your singleplayer experience, with an online component — someone joins your game, your world, and two do play the game together. It’s usually seen as a co-op, but what about when it’s NOT? Ala Phantasy Star Online. Contrary to popular belief, PSO was infact an ORPG. The entire game was playable offline, singleplayer. If you chose to play the game online, you could, and you’d have the same content, the same drops, the same everything (for the most part) as the offline version; you could just do all that fun item hunting with buddies. PSO is still renown as one of the greatest ORPG’s of all time, and it’s successor (PSO2) is quickly becoming just as renown.
Isn’t that a MMO?
No, it isn’t. An ORPG is instanced, with only you and your group of friends (Guild Wars 1 has been debated against being a ORPG for this very reason) or people you met up with; there may be a central lobby, but for the most part, when you start your “game”, you are completely separated from the rest of the world, and the rest of the gamers. The main hub will be instanced, and it will be similar to the offline game in every way, minus the additonal players.
Why are MMO’s bad?
It’s not that they’re bad, it’s that when people say “BOY, I’D LOVE IF I COULD PLAY SKYRIM WITH MY BUDDIES!” publishers immediately assume you want a MMORPG. Greed help, with WoW monstrous success causing everyone who can throw together a simple fetch quest chasing that dream. The fact is, WoW’s success can’t be replicated in the current market by doing what they did; it’s arguable if you can even replicate that success at all, given the change of the market. That doesn’t stop publishers from trying (and failing) however. Look at SWTOR; it was following the successful game series, and a very successful franchise (star wars), yet it was obvious the game was set for failure, because it was chasing the MMO layout. People don’t realize that when you turn a game into a MMO, you’re completely changing it. There are things in place that must be done so that the game is accessible to EVERYONE, much different from a ORPG. In a MMO, you need to make sure people are constantly playing your game. You need set goals, an endgame, and a hook to keep people playing and subscribing as long as possible. This involves including a lot of grinding, fetch quests (because they’re easy to make incredibly time consuming) and keeping people away from the endgame for as long as possible. Then when they finally do reach the endgame, you need to give them something to keep them entertained; you need something to give them a goal to achieve, otherwise they’ll get bored and leave your game. This isn’t how RPG’s work. RPG’s are about the travel, not the destination, whereas MMOs largely become about hitting the endgame as soon as possible so you can start working for that uber raid gear or to PVP.
It’s a massive turn off for people who enjoy RPG’s and ORPG’s.
As it stands, the current subscription method doesn’t work anymore anyways; people don’t want to keep paying to play your product, especially not with the market saturation. They can find a better product that offers more of what they’re looking for, for free. This gets into the whole argument of microtransactions and “pay to win”, but that’s a rant for another day.
Essentially, people who play rpg’s don’t want your damn MMO shoved down their throat, and if you take your classic RPG (looking at you Elder Scrolls) and try to turn it into a MMO, it’s going to bomb. This is a fact, and it has been proven time and time again.
TESO will fail, in the same way that SWTOR is tanking miserably and hemorrhaging users. I’d hope this would be a valuable lesson to future developers, but they’re always going to be chasing that golden goose, trying for the easy money. SPOILERS: There’s no such thing as easy money, and there never will be.
If my jokes offend you:
- I’m sorry
- It won’t happen again
- 1 & 2 are lies
- You’re a pussy
(Source: 69shadesofgray, via slugbox)
(via yumyumpiefilling)
Comment on one of the FE:A support videos someone posted.
This is pretty much it, yeah.
You’re going to read that title and think “what the fuck? Are you stupid? I WANT TO PLAY MY OLD GAMES GODDAMNIT!!”
Thing is, unless you’re strapped for cash, you shouldn’t need to get rid of your old console to buy the new one. Not yet, atleast. There are still games coming out for the PS3, and there will be titles coming for the PS3/PS4 at the same time. A lack of backwards compatability means that you have less of a reason to pick up a console at launch.
That’s good, for you, as a gamer. Picking up a console at launch means you have a very limited selection of launch titles, you have to pay “launch price”, and all features/the OS isn’t fully baked yet, so there will be a lot of issues. I know, that, as a gamer, there’s an intense desire to suddenly pick up the latest and greatest tech, but launch buyers ALWAYS get burned. It’s just the nature of our rapidly advancing tech, and it’s the nature of the “mo money mo faster” mindset that current tech companies have. Due to the prevalence of the internet, they can release buggy hardware and then patch and fine tune it along the way.
When the PS3 titles coming out finally start drying up, it’ll probably be roughly a year into the consoles life; by then there’ll be a handful of titles out, several updates to the system’s OS, and probably a bundle or two on the horizon. We’ll also see how well that system is doing in terms of support, and what kind of games it’s getting to see if we even want it to begin with.
I ultimately agree that having BC is very very convenient, and it’s almost inexecusable to neglect it, but if Sony wants to give us the finger while trying to get us to buy their new hardware, then we only have more of a reason to play the “wait and see” game.
How do you get shot by arrows in the kitchen?
(Source: lychnis, via shugarskull)
Anonymous asked: P.S. Go check out SCP-001, if you think you can handle it.
001 is really interesting, actually :p
I’ve been busy with work so I’m just now getting around to it, but yeah I’m like it a lot.
[video]
Trying being poor as hell.
When you’re poor as hell it doesn’t matter who you are or what you are, you’re just fucking broke.
Anonymous asked: Well.. they tend to be much more storylike, and quite some silly, but there are still some gems in it, Two particular ones that have gotten a lot of public attention would be SCP-173 and SCP-087. Two I would suggest are SCP-610 "The Flesh that Hates"[read the field logs, they are marvellous] And SCP-106 "The Old Man". and there was this house type one that was pretty interesting.. but I can't find it atm..
(decided to publish this one since it has amazing recommendations) but Wow, thank you!
I can’t believe I’ve never heard of this site before.