Maybe a few years ago MJ had the rep to kickstarter something like this, but he was given a huge chance to influence WAR and the development of many other games. I don't trust him with fundamental enough to KS.
Some interesting things in that summary. That is a very unusual justification for having a class based system. We really need more information on what he means here. Especially when MMO subscriptions seem to be on the way out. Any specifics ? Isn't killing often the fun part ? I've seen this argument made by many people before in GW1 any time someone suggested improving the ingame trading system. I've also seen people use it to try and get ANET to add a trade window into GW2. It won't cause any personal associations to form, it will just cause lots of trade spam and players having to stop doing what they enjoy about the game to trade stuff. Responding to a trade spammer with a pm of "I'll buy", them giving you a location for the trade, nobody saying anything till the trade is done, then finishing up with both players saying thx is not meaningful interaction. Reputations will only matter if the trade window allows players to lie. If the trade window doesn't allow lying, why should you care how trustworthy the other player is ? Why will you care who crafted the item you're buying if it has the stats (and maybe appearance) you want ? This really sounds like someone who has decided that an auction house will be too much work, but he knows he can't afford to give that reason to players. 5 million seems very low for an MMO. Especially for an MMO that needs to justify players paying a subscription.
Most of the cost sink in games is engine/graphics, people have done far more in gaming with less than 5 million.
Well fuck me, that's what I really, really liked about DAoC RvR.. :< I R DISAPPOINT! Also, I'm curious if there'll multiple tiers of RvR, such as low-level RvR zones, like in DAoC, where you don't necessarily have all your abilities yet. Thidranki was fucking amazing, and Caledonia was when things got interesting! Also, when they finally added level 1-4 battlegrounds back then, it was hilarious. Starter classes running around bashing at each other was quite amusing.
Lets hope we get to 4 pages so you can tell us AGAIN on how you have contacts within the company. I'm not really worried that the game has classes. A lot of great games have had classes and lately all of the bad ones have tried non class systems. Class systems promote teamwork. Teamwork = people actually grouping. All the mmos lately have been successful if you count numbers against old school mmos. WoW is the only one that had super high numbers after that everyone is looking for the "wow killer" that requires 5 billion subs to be successful. 200k+ is fine if the game is good. If YOU like the game what does it matter how many people are playing, as long as your server has a pop I guess.
@Sokar: me thinks you have become the old muppets in the balcony when it comes to games. When all of us were kids, we had great imagination and lived to play. We carried this imagination into the gaming world and started gaming as wide eyed, wonder struck kids who had FUN playing. As we've gotten older, our imaginations have faded, the reality of a hard world has set in, and we've become jaded. We demand perfection in our eyes and take to the forums to rail against anything and everything that is not tailored specifically to us. Games have become like chores. We liken daily quests to unloading the dish washer, yet we easily forget how we used to play Contra every day for hours on end without the slightest complaint. Watch kids play video games and remember what it was like. I watch my boys on the WiiU play for hours or on Minecraft for the 360. Their imagination is awesome. They play their own game within the game. They assume the roles of the characters, talk to each other in different voices, create their own objectives, and have a blast doing it. When they play Halo 4 multiplayer, it's about helicopter rides, bank robberies, and building a base not about winning TDM. We've lost this somewhere along the way and I contend it's why we can't find games to spark our imaginations as they did when we were kids. Sucks! Yes, some games leave a lot to be desired, but I also believe we are the ones who have changed. We've stopped having fun...
I... I... Well said. One other thing is that games became so dumbed down, that we can't even use our imagination. This image pretty much sums it up.
While I do remember endlessly repeating some games as a kid, two big things have changed for me: - I have less time available to play games. - I have a much larger variety of games available to play. I have more money, games are cheaper and I'm not limited to what's in stock at retail stores. So I have less tolerance for games that force me to repeat content that I succeeded at the first time just to unlock the content I want to play. Then again, I don't think I ever had much tolerance for that. The reason I kept replaying certain games was because I enjoyed replaying them, not because the developers decided that I'd have to repeat one section to unlock another section just to inflate how long the game takes to complete.
This may sound funny, but it is really easy to get bogged down in "Games Suck" if you only play games that double as time sinks. I was disappointing with gaming in general last year because I focused a great deal of time into soul sucking machines compared to playing a number of high quality releases that are really easy to miss if you spend your time in skinner's box(both console and PC). D3, League of Legends, Dota, Starcraft 1/2, Path of Exile, Planetside, Any MMO These are all interesting games in some way, shape or form, but it is really easy to throw away all of your game time into them and never experience tons of the other/different game designs from both triple A and indie games. As someone who has sunk well over 1000 hours into Dota 2 alone, I enjoyed my time but reflecting on it again I don't really think it was worth it in the end. The best thing I did was step away and play single player games for awhile. Suddenly I had so much time on my hands for gaming and life due to not having to care about that +1 upgrade, or getting another point on matchmaking. And then got to enjoy some of the gems I missed before such as Deus Ex: HR. I could draw a similar comparison to how I feel about Planetside 2 right now. I don't think it is that much worst that the original game(other than a few key points) and even improves on gameplay in a number of aspects. But after the first 20...40...100 hours, what are you really getting out of the game? Some people love chasing that extra +1 upgrade, or that best in slot gear, or even that number 1 spot on a leaderboard but I say leave those minor incremental success and achievements to real life activities, and keep on gaming for whatever got you into it in the first place. *shrug*
I know what you mean. I think it even gets worse when the game comes with a daily reward that people care about. GW2 is the first game I've played with daily rewards I care about which means that, even though I've played far grindier games, GW2 stands out because I found myself making time to play it when I didn't feel like it because if I didn't play one day, I miss out on that days tokens. The grindier games I could sit out for a few days without feeling like I lost out, unless the developers had some special event or my friends in-game had something planned. But only GW2 had me logging in when I didn't really feel like just for selfish reasons. GW2 got two really bad firsts for me: - The first time I've been burned out by a game that I enjoy playing. - The first game that's eaten up so much of my time that I've built up a backlog of unplayed games on Steam. Games I expect to enjoy when I play them.