(GW2) Taking a Moment
Since tashiro keeps asking me what I think everytime he references a new bit of released information about Guild Wars 2, let me just take a little time to get this off my chest.
- I do watch MMO news, mostly via Massively and Kotaku. I don't read every article in full and watch every video, but I am at least moderately aware of most developments.
- I am skeptical of all pre-release information. I try not to get excited about what might be, especially based on promotional (and therefore biased) information.
I've long held that there are two extremes to MMORPGs. On this particular scale, one extreme has ultimate player influence on the world, while the other has ultimate interaction with your fellow gamers. The former is, at its pinnacle, the realm of the single-player game, where one player's actions affect everything and are reflected everwhere. The latter is, in my opinion, the heart of a MMO.
But all my experience and observation leads me to maintain that you cannot excel at both without a purely hypothetical situation (like an active GM for every active player). The more interactive you make something, the less other people matter, and vice versa. In the current paradigm, if you push the "player makes a difference" aspect, you get instanced/phased zones - but they limit who sees it with you. And if you make an event accessible to all, it can't reflect everyone's contribution (unless each person only contributes a tiny fraction or the state constantly changes, either way you're missing the point).
So when games like Star Wars: The Old Republic and Guild Wars 2 start promising massively multipler environments that will respond to the individual, you're damn right I'm skeptical. The way I see it, they might adjust the balance on this scale. They might even find a more popular "sweet spot" than we see in current games. But I'm in no way convinced they can actually do both extremes as well as they seem to think they can.
If I'm proven wrong, some game development company will have earned a ton of respect from me. But until that day, I take it all with a grain of salt, thanks.
Talk is cheap. Hype is even paid for.
- I do watch MMO news, mostly via Massively and Kotaku. I don't read every article in full and watch every video, but I am at least moderately aware of most developments.
- I am skeptical of all pre-release information. I try not to get excited about what might be, especially based on promotional (and therefore biased) information.
I've long held that there are two extremes to MMORPGs. On this particular scale, one extreme has ultimate player influence on the world, while the other has ultimate interaction with your fellow gamers. The former is, at its pinnacle, the realm of the single-player game, where one player's actions affect everything and are reflected everwhere. The latter is, in my opinion, the heart of a MMO.
But all my experience and observation leads me to maintain that you cannot excel at both without a purely hypothetical situation (like an active GM for every active player). The more interactive you make something, the less other people matter, and vice versa. In the current paradigm, if you push the "player makes a difference" aspect, you get instanced/phased zones - but they limit who sees it with you. And if you make an event accessible to all, it can't reflect everyone's contribution (unless each person only contributes a tiny fraction or the state constantly changes, either way you're missing the point).
So when games like Star Wars: The Old Republic and Guild Wars 2 start promising massively multipler environments that will respond to the individual, you're damn right I'm skeptical. The way I see it, they might adjust the balance on this scale. They might even find a more popular "sweet spot" than we see in current games. But I'm in no way convinced they can actually do both extremes as well as they seem to think they can.
If I'm proven wrong, some game development company will have earned a ton of respect from me. But until that day, I take it all with a grain of salt, thanks.
Talk is cheap. Hype is even paid for.
"So when games start promising, I'm skeptical." Fixed. ;)
ReplyDeleteThat too. :p
ReplyDelete