Not really interested in MMORPGs without PvP - I admit to crying a little when I heard they had the sweet DnD license, and decided against PvP - what a missed opportunity
The last game from Turbine - AC2 - was horrible, so I guess Turbine has a lot to prove.
This is the way DDO should be and what Turbine says it will be so anyone upset over that go play stupid games like WoW and the such. Personally I love the idea that idiots cannot interrupt another player's quest like kill stealing and such.
Why the hell people are upset that you cannot PvP? Are you kidding, must be complete morons whining about that. If you want PvP go play other games. Better yet if you think you are so good at PvPing go play a real freakin game like FPS games. But you probably suck at them anyway as that takes a person's real skill on the keyboard not a bunch of scripts to run to do all the fighting for you, damn losers.
Originally posted by Foxly DDO will be GW with a fee.
If you really believe that, you are either too clueless or too uninformed to be drawing any conclusions at all.
Naturally, since I disagree with you of course. I think you'll notice I'm not the only one expressing the sentiment. And I play GW, so I think it's fairly informed.
"...the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem and hardly ever what we dream."
Originally posted by DeathWolf2u This is the way DDO should be and what Turbine says it will be so anyone upset over that go play stupid games like WoW and the such. Personally I love the idea that idiots cannot interrupt another player's quest like kill stealing and such. Why the hell people are upset that you cannot PvP? Are you kidding, must be complete morons whining about that. If you want PvP go play other games. Better yet if you think you are so good at PvPing go play a real freakin game like FPS games. But you probably suck at them anyway as that takes a person's real skill on the keyboard not a bunch of scripts to run to do all the fighting for you, damn losers.
Bovine Excrement! The old P&P D&D wasn't about quests. It was about the fact that you were playing in someone elses universe. Literally anything could happen. You want to argue about weather instancing is a good thing or bad thing, fine, but DDO is NOT Dungeons and Dragons. It's NWN 2, but NWN is better because they have a Mac version (which broadens the player base) and the Windows version allowed people to make their own quests. DDO doesn't look any more ONLINE than NWN is.
Give me a game where you can be a beggar or a king and everything in between, where you can look for the jewel of lord high Pinki or whatever or lead armies against (or for) the forces of darkness, where NPCs and monsters act instead of react, where the gods come for coffee and stay for dinner and the monsters don't sit tight and wait to be attacked. Give me a game where the creators wander around IN GAME doing stuff (not just fixing problems). Then you might have something that is CLOSE to the old D&D.
but even if I'm wrong and this turns out to be a pretty good game. It's NOT D&D.
Originally posted by Rattrap I feel the same way. DDO is a mistery for me right now. Turbine seems to be making some horrible choices that can only be either a completely revolutionary steps in making excelent MMO - or utter mistake ? One of the biggest issues on everybodys mind is instancing. We all grown to hate it... can DDO change this?
New guy here (never posted) but this game is very interesting to me and I had to comment on this.
"We all grown to hate it..." I do not think it is fair to encompass the entire MMOG community in here.
1) I've been playing PnP D&D since about 1980... yes, I am that old. I'll let you do the math. I'm a Dungeon Master by preference. I have ran campaigns with as little as 2 people (me and one player) and as many as 27 people (3 DMs and 3 parties of 8 all in competition). So I've seen the solo play and I've seen the PVP all along with the more classic "instanced" party in standard D&D.
2) I've played MMOGs for 5 years now. I won't go over my pedigree here, but I've seen quite a few of them of all genres.
I, for one, greatly prefer the Instanced adventures. I get tired of the competition with other players. In PVP I get tired of having to watch my back. There is a time and a place for this type of play, but I do not necessarily think Dungeons & Dragons MUST have it. If it is optional (battlegrounds) that would be fantastic.
I support Instancing, and I know many of the people whom I game with online now in a MMOG would agree with me. Let me Instance and keep the PVPers and the Pharmers off my back.
As long as they include social interaction on more than just the party level, I don't feel like they can go wrong.
Can we get a non-D&D PnP player to give us a preview? Most of what he said revolved simply around the perspective of someone coming into DDO from playing D&D PnP. I have never played the PnP games, so...
Originally posted by Rattrap I feel the same way. DDO is a mistery for me right now. Turbine seems to be making some horrible choices that can only be either a completely revolutionary steps in making excelent MMO - or utter mistake ? One of the biggest issues on everybodys mind is instancing. We all grown to hate it... can DDO change this?
New guy here (never posted) but this game is very interesting to me and I had to comment on this.
"We all grown to hate it..." I do not think it is fair to encompass the entire MMOG community in here.
1) I've been playing PnP D&D since about 1980... yes, I am that old. I'll let you do the math. I'm a Dungeon Master by preference. I have ran campaigns with as little as 2 people (me and one player) and as many as 27 people (3 DMs and 3 parties of 8 all in competition). So I've seen the solo play and I've seen the PVP all along with the more classic "instanced" party in standard D&D.
2) I've played MMOGs for 5 years now. I won't go over my pedigree here, but I've seen quite a few of them of all genres.
I, for one, greatly prefer the Instanced adventures. I get tired of the competition with other players. In PVP I get tired of having to watch my back. There is a time and a place for this type of play, but I do not necessarily think Dungeons & Dragons MUST have it. If it is optional (battlegrounds) that would be fantastic.
I support Instancing, and I know many of the people whom I game with online now in a MMOG would agree with me. Let me Instance and keep the PVPers and the Pharmers off my back.
As long as they include social interaction on more than just the party level, I don't feel like they can go wrong.
Got you beat.. My first D&D game was in 1977 and I've DMed 30 people in the same campaign on a time-share basis and through email and chat (my hats off to you for 1/3rd of 27 at the same time though )
I am very much against instancing, because where the P&P game has logistical limits artificially imposed on it, a computer has physical limits based on bandwidth and server power. The worst thing they could have done to D&D was to carry the good AND the bad over to computer games. One of the BAD things is instancing. The argument is that you can provide a better gaming environment to a smaller group of people if you isolate them from the rest, but that is exactly what being an online game is set up to avoid, and in any case there is a LOT more than can be done to a PvP online game to make it more role-player friendly than anyone is doing now, so obviously instancing LOOKs better, but it inherently limits the game and by consequence shortens it's play life on our hard-drives. Its the wrong fix for a problem that shouldn't need to exist in the first place.
People behave themselves in the real world because there is a structure surrounding everyone that creates consequences for people when they misbehave. Your standard PvP game is either on or off. You're either in a place where you can do what you want with no consequences except coming from your victims or you're in a "safe zone" which prohibits you from attacking anyone but allows you to do all sorts of mean things to people with no consequences even from your victims. Naturally, you're going to get chaos and a generally poor role-playing environment. Why anyone thought that was a good idea in the first place is beyond me, but that seems to be the standard now.
So now you have this argument about instancing. If the problem with PvP didn't exist, there would be no debate about instancing. Everyone would think it was a bad idea, but since no one has tried to solve PvP any other way (although some games in development look promising) we decide PvP is a bad thing instead of the way it is implemented. That's a cop out if I ever heard one.
A good role-playing game has to be inclusive, not exclusive. Everyone who is playing has to be free to interact with everyone else who is playing. That's what an online game is all about and that's how you start groups of players who like to adventure together. You must also allow the solo players and those who want to organize large groups, even armies for the purpose of building their own world inside yours. If you're not going to do that, then you don't need to have a persistent world. You don't even need a server to run the game. A game that has only three to six players in it isn't an online game. I agree DDO isn't an mmorpg, but the D&D I used to play was. It just didn't have the internet to allow it to do it very well.
> Its the wrong fix for a problem that shouldn't need to exist in the first place.
You are truly an idealist. Problems do not go away by wishing that they did not exist, and the problems instancing was designed to solve exist entirely because of the players. So unless you can change human nature itself, instancing remains an absolutely vital feature of every online game.
> If the problem with PvP didn't exist, there would be no debate about instancing.
Wrong. Instancing solves a whole plethora of problems, from competing for loot and quest kills to preventing other groups from messing up a story type adventure. And besides, the problem with PvP DOES exist, and won't go away by just wishful thinking.
If you have a better alternative, now is the time to hear it.
In case you are referring to a system that allows player kills but penalises the offender, you are totally missing the point. No amount of retribution will ever be enough to compensate for a ruined evening, especially when it's SO easy to prevent it entirely. The whole idea, assuming I understood correctly that this is what you are proposing, is based on the idea that we all enjoy hurting others, so that the pain of the offender would be enough to compensate for our hardships. And that's just plain wrong, playing out of anger and frustration just makes things worse. I for one have never gained satisfaction from revenge. Besides, those who are _really_ guilty of allowing it to happen, the developers, are safe from retribution.
> Everyone who is playing has to be free to interact with everyone else who is playing.
I would be willing to pay extra just so I wouldn't HAVE to interact with the scum I meet on a daily basis in all the online games I play. I want to choose the people I play with, and totally shut out the rest. Where does your right to declare that everyone HAS to be able to interact with everyone else come from anyway?
> That's what an online game is all about
An online game is what its designers intended it to be; nothing more. Your views on what an online game should be do not in any way reflect any sort of absolute truth. If the game company wants my money, they'd better take my needs into consideration or I will take my business elsewhere. Online gaming is not a religion, there are more than one way to do things. You have no right to force others to accept your hideously narrow view of what online gaming "should be", especially when it would make it more akin to torture to some of us.
Sorry about the tone of this reply, but that degree of idealistic arrogance just drives me mad.
Originally posted by Jade6 > Its the wrong fix for a problem that shouldn't need to exist in the first place. You are truly an idealist. Problems do not go away by wishing that they did not exist, and the problems instancing was designed to solve exist entirely because of human nature, namely that of players. So, unless you can change human nature itself, instancing remains an absolutely vital feature of every online game. > If the problem with PvP didn't exist, there would be no debate about instancing. Wrong. Instancing solves a whole plethora of problems, from competing for loot and quest kills to preventing other groups from messing up a story type adventure. And besides, the problem with PvP DOES exist, and won't go away by just wishful thinking. If you have a better alternative, now is the time to hear it. In case you are referring to a system that allows player kills but penalises the offender, you are totally missing the point. No amount of retribution will ever be enough to compensate for a ruined evening, especially when it's SO easy to prevent it entirely. The whole idea, assuming I understood correctly that this is what you are proposing, is based on the idea that we are all sadistic, vengeful psychos who enjoy hurting others, so the pain of the offender would be enough to compensate for our hardships. And that's just plain absurd, playing out of anger and frustration just makes things worse. I for one have never gained satisfaction from revenge. Besides, those who are _really_ guilty of allowing it to happen, the developers, are safe from retribution. > Everyone who is playing has to be free to interact with everyone else who is playing. I would be willing to pay extra just so I wouldn't HAVE to interact with the scum I meet on a daily basis in all the online games I play. I want to choose the people I play with, and totally shut out the rest. Where does your right to declare that everyone HAS to be able to interact with everyone else come from anyway? > That's what an online game is all about An online game is what its designers intended it to be; nothing more. Your views on what an online game should be do not in any way reflect any sort of absolute truth. If the game company wants my money, they'd better take my needs into consideration or I will take my business elsewhere. Online gaming is not a religion, there are more than one way to do things. You have no right to force others to accept your hideously narrow view of what online gaming "should be", especially when it would make it more akin to torture to some of us. Sorry about the tone of this reply, but that degree of idealistic arrogance just drives me mad.
I don't consider being an idealist a bad thing. That's like saying "You're right, but that's not possible" Tough! If I'm right, deal with it. I'd rather be right than contributing to the problem. The point is that when something is wrong, you say so, period.
Arrogance is just a confidence that you are right.
And since you asked to provide a solution...
The problem with PvP is that there is no community other than the players to enforce civilized behavior, and the players, being one step removed from being children a lot of the time don't want the responsibility to provide the enforcement, so it has to come from somewhere else. Usually it comes from the game mechanics itself (ie safe zones) and that only compounds the problem. As with any crime, the difficulty lies in identification and apprehension. As far as identification, most (if not all) of the games mmorpgs have a guild structure and a lore that proports to explain the background of the game (the storyline) First and foremost; you must have that background meaninful in the game. If orcs are supposed to hate elved, then players should be penalized for associating with an elf if they are an orc, for instance. I've seen some games that do this, but it's not enough. The NPCs have to react to you based on your conduct in the game. Being in a civilized (albeit barely) world, indiscriminate killing should be punished by being ostricized by the "common" (NPCs) folk in the game. If you keep it up, you will be banned from all vendors, healers, etc. You have to fend for yourself. Obviously players will band together to form hideouts where they can continue such things close enough to civilization to continue to prey on them but far enough to not be found easily. I have seen exactly ONE game that does this and it's not out yet, and no one else has tried it.
The problem is not that muggers exist in these games, but that the games are often ruled by them because they are everywhere. Playing such a character should not be just a play style, but like the class or profession you choose it has benefits and consequences. No one who wants to play a tailor is going to want to or expect to be leading armies to conquer their neighbors, and someone who plays like a bandit shouldn't expect to get a welcome in the towns where other players who behave themselves enjoy. Make them conform to the kind of life such a person would have to conform to in real life. It explains why most people don't do that and it would cut down tremendously on people doing the same thing in a game.
But now that you've made a certain kind of gaming difficult to play, you better give people other things to do besides mugging and serial killing. This is another place where many games fall down. Shadowbane blew it by being JUST about PvP and not just PvP but large scale battles and guild vs guild combat. Now, as they are finding out, it's not enough. There's no infrastructure to support the guilds. There isn't anything else to do in the game but PvP. MORE CONTENT! It cannot be stressed enough, and if you have five or six times the content in any game currently released, it's still not enough. Make the game about PvP, about building the castles they march from, about making the swords and armor they use, about making the stuff to make the stuff to make the stuff they use. Make it about quests, about armies, about crafting, about politics, about caravans, the details are as important as the big picture. It's what computers are good at. You miss one of those things and all the others suffer. Sure it's an effort, which is why they feel it's easier to side-step.
No shards. I know it get's around technical problems, but it also promotes fragmentation. You end up with one RP shard, one griefing shard, one ... blah blah blah and what might start out as a rp shard might turn into a griefing shard and then everyone wants to move from one shard to another and the frustration level goes up. One world, one set of rules.
And if you're going to do that MAKE IT BIG! UO blew it on that by letting everyone and their mother put up a building. And everyone and their mother did, and then every square inch of flat ground was taken up by a house. Raise your hand if you didn't see THAT coming. Every game I play in feels so tiny. There's no place to go if you don't like any of the places that are already there. In shadowbane, less than a month after the launch of their most recent (and possibly infamous) "lore server" every place where you could set up a new city was already taken. That's way beyond too small.
Devs are so interested in giving us the next cool thing that they forget to fix the things they already gave us. Instancing is one of those things. Instead of critically looking at PvP and finding ways to fix it, they dodge the issue entirely, and instancing will last about as long as the last cool side-stepping feature they gave us.
And we the players have to shoulder some of the responsibility. Everyone is so concerned with what THEY want that they forget other people are playing the game too. You have to police the game, not just complain in a forum when things don't go your way. To hear people talk on some forums, you're either for random killing or you're an anti-PvPer, or you're a fanatical role-player or you're anti-rp, and on this thread... you're either for instancing or you just don't understand D&D. Crap! I understand D&D. I also think that everyone can play in the same game without getting on each others nerves all the time, and it will be more enjoyable than anything else out there.
instancing does not make you feel attached to the game in a unique way
as in WOW you return from your instanced quest to get your reward and find that another person/party is going on the exact same quest/instance
so, what did you accomplish - you had absolutely no effect on the game - none
won't be buying this game as it has no solo content - period
fine for purists of dnd and online game nerds who think everything needs to be done in a lemming group
for many others online gaming is a very dynamic universe compared to single player games - other people make it so but it is not necessary to constantly be bunched into a group
Try to define what you are supposed to be right about before declaring that you are right. If you believe that the things you are rooting for would somehow turn PvP into an enjoyable experience for those who hate it, you are just flat out wrong. If not, your point is moot anyway.
> Arrogance is just a confidence that you are right.
Arrogance is the belief that you are right and everyone else is wrong, even if they are right. Your complete ignorance of what I said above about exactly the sort of system you are describing demonstrates that.
> If orcs are supposed to hate elved, then players should be penalized > for associating with an elf if they are an orc, for instance.
Fine, lets make up a background story where everyone loves each other and penalise them for not doing so. D&D is based on cooperative play.
> indiscriminate killing should be punished by being ostricized by the > "common" (NPCs) folk in the game.
Your whole system (which has already been implemented in Ultima Online I believe) collapses precisely on the point I made: I do not want to be ganked even once, regardless of the consequences to the offender. Thus I would never buy a game where the system you propose is implemented. Controls or not, someone who really doesn't like me would still get to gank me without much overall effect. We have laws and prisons in real life, and still thousands of people commit the most heinous crimes every year. Why do you think they would do any less when all they stand to lose is some marginal benefits to their virtual character?
You know what, all I really have to say is that DDO will not be the sort of game you are looking for, no matter what you write here, and I am very happy about that. For every MMORPG that drops PvP elements, there are 10-20 that are all about PvP. Go play them.
> Which is all besides the point I was making that that DDO in NOT D&D.
I think it is. All that really matters is the philosophy behind D&D, cooperative group play. You could replicate the D&D ruleset and world down to the smallest detail, but if you drop this basic philosophy behind it, it will not be D&D. On the other hand, you could change everything about the mechanics of the game, but if you remain true to its philosophy, it's still most certainly D&D.
Originally posted by riggsville so, what did you accomplish - you had absolutely no effect on the game - none
Well, as far as I can see, that applies to every online game ever made. Even in RvR games nothing ever really changes, cities and fortresses just change hands back and forth forever. The only exception might be games that have live storyline content, but who says that couldn't be done in DDO too in some way. And even live storylines rarely cause any significant changes to the world. Big changes mean lots of work for developers.
Consider this: would YOU like to play in a world that is the result of the actions of a million l33t kiddies?
What I fail to see addressed is why DDO in its current approach is any different than say a Neverwinter Nights style multiplayer. It sounds more like DDO is a big matching server for people to run quests on. That's not really a true MMOG at all.
If they expect people to pay subscription model prices, then they'll need to churn out a lot of new content to do so. I can play Guild Wars and get what DDO is describing without paying a montly fee to do so. Brand name may carry them along, but it won't generate an amazing game.
Originally posted by Jade6 Originally posted by riggsville Well, as far as I can see, that applies to every online game ever made. Even in RvR games nothing ever really changes, cities and fortresses just change hands back and forth forever.
Not so. In Shadowbane you actually made cities, equipment, trainers, etc. Things you could not get with out player made cities. You could also destroy your enemies cities.
Originally posted by Leppard Originally posted by Jade6 Originally posted by riggsville Well, as far as I can see, that applies to every online game ever made. Even in RvR games nothing ever really changes, cities and fortresses just change hands back and forth forever.
Not so. In Shadowbane you actually made cities, equipment, trainers, etc. Things you could not get with out player made cities. You could also destroy your enemies cities.
So you're wrong about that.
While I am sure you are correct about Shadowbane having those features, I still think his point is valid. The overwhelming majority of online games, and all of the top-selling ones, don't have such features. That's not to say that such features are not desirable. I believe they are very hard to accomplish and still have a game that is fun to play for new players and that is the primary reason you don't see them in most games.
Originally posted by Jade6 > Everyone who is playing has to be free to interact with everyone else who is playing. I would be willing to pay extra just so I wouldn't HAVE to interact with the scum I meet on a daily basis in all the online games I play. I want to choose the people I play with, and totally shut out the rest. Where does your right to declare that everyone HAS to be able to interact with everyone else come from anyway?
/em agree
But in most games you don't have to pay extra for that feature. One of the best features in any online game is a little thing called /ignore. You should see some of my ignore lists!! In most games I manage to hit the ignore list size limit on at least one or two of my characters:)
Of course, /ignore is not nearly as useful in a forced (as opposed to voluntary) PvP game. But I rarely play games with forced PvP so it works great for me.
Originally posted by Foxly Trust me, pen and paper D&D fans will not be playing this.
You are absolutely right. This is not D&D Online. This is instanced Everquest with a D&D skin. Any true pen and paper D&D player worth his dicebag that has done even a cursory examination of this piece of cybernetic flotsam in the ocean of MMORPG's will stay as far away from it as he can, and either wait for NWN2, or go back to NWN. They bowed to pressure from the always-vocal (read:whiny) l33t powergaming crowd, and decimated the D&D ruleset to give them the 'instant gratifcation' of more advancement points. THAT is why there aren't 20 levels like there are supposed to be, folks. There are only 10 levels because every level has 4 "sub-levels" where you get more feats, and skills, and "OOOOoo! Look at me!!" points, and they likely used up all the feats and other advancement goodies giving characters 40 artificial levels. The kiddies couldn't deal with only being able to say, "I'm level 8", so they made them able to say "I'm lvl 8-3."
Go do some research. This game will draw the Everquest crowd, and likely some people from Guild Wars that truly like full-instancing. Me? I'll stick to WoW, and CoH/CoV (and even I play Guild Wars once in a while... It's free), and wait with baited breath for NWN2. I've been waiting for a computer representation of D&D ever since I rolled my first 4-sider 25 years ago, and DDO ain't it. The Neverwinter Nights series was and is the closest thing at the moment. Perhaps someday, someone will aquire the rights to another TSR/WotC campaign world such as The Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk, and create a game with only the D&D player in mind, and do it RIGHT, but that someday isn't any time soon.
Originally posted by Leppard Originally posted by Jade6 Originally posted by riggsville Well, as far as I can see, that applies to every online game ever made. Even in RvR games nothing ever really changes, cities and fortresses just change hands back and forth forever.
Not so. In Shadowbane you actually made cities, equipment, trainers, etc. Things you could not get with out player made cities. You could also destroy your enemies cities.
So you're wrong about that.
So cities get destroyed and created. What is it about Shadowbane that really changes? The Lore changes based on what the devs do, not what the players do. Of course I have yet to see a game where the Lore really matters anyway. People mostly see the lore as an impediment to what they want to do in the game
What I find ironic about Shadowbane is that people get upset when one guild begins to dominate a server. If that possibility isn't there, then what the hell is all this fighting for? Are you fighting just to fight or are you fighting for something? It's the only way that the game really changes based on what players do and the players themselves are against it. I don't get it.
>You know what, all I really have to say is that DDO will not be the sort of game you are looking for, no matter what you write here, and I am very happy about that. For every MMORPG that drops PvP elements, there are 10-20 that are all about PvP. Go play them.
What I said was that as a fix for the problems of a PvP game, instancing is not the answer, and if what you don't like about a PvP game is the griefing, then instancing is taking more away from the game than it adds. I never said that PvP is the best kind of game or that YOU should play that way. I said that DDO is not D&D and if you're heading there for that reason you will be dissapointed.
quote]>> Which is all besides the point I was making that that DDO in NOT D&D. I think it is. All that really matters is the philosophy behind D&D, cooperative group play. You could replicate the D&D ruleset and world down to the smallest detail, but if you drop this basic philosophy behind it, it will not be D&D. On the other hand, you could change everything about the mechanics of the game, but if you remain true to its philosophy, it's still most certainly D&D.[/b][/quote]
So you think you know the philosophy behind D&D eh? Well that's your choice. I prefer to judge a good game by the options it presents to the palayers. The P&P D&D game offered virtually unlimited options to a DM and his players. DDO takes away the DM and gives you a computer that number-crunches for you and nothing else. Cooperative group play includes the game master. Tell me that DDO offers you more options than the old D&D.
[quote]Originally posted by swordsbane [b]Originally posted by Jade6
>You know what, all I really have to say is that DDO will not be the sort of game you are looking for, no matter what you write here, and I am very happy about that. For every MMORPG that drops PvP elements, there are 10-20 that are all about PvP. Go play them.
What I said was that as a fix for the problems of a PvP game, instancing is not the answer, and if what you don't like about a PvP game is the griefing, then instancing is taking more away from the game than it adds. I never said that PvP is the best kind of game or that YOU should play that way. I said that DDO is not D&D and if you're heading there for that reason you will be dissapointed.
[quote]>> Which is all besides the point I was making that that DDO in NOT D&D. I think it is. All that really matters is the philosophy behind D&D, cooperative group play. You could replicate the D&D ruleset and world down to the smallest detail, but if you drop this basic philosophy behind it, it will not be D&D. On the other hand, you could change everything about the mechanics of the game, but if you remain true to its philosophy, it's still most certainly D&D.[/b][/quote]
So you think you know the philosophy behind D&D eh? Well that's your choice. I prefer to judge a good game by the options it presents to the palayers. The P&P D&D game offered virtually unlimited options to a DM and his players. DDO takes away the DM and gives you a computer that number-crunches for you and nothing else. Cooperative group play includes the game master. Tell me that DDO offers you more options than the old D&D.[/b][/quote]
I see a lot of talk in this forum on the philosophy and/or essence of D&D, but in truth I don't think it really exists. I have found that the only essence in the game is to enjoy your imagination and the company of your friends that share your romance with the fantastic.
I have played the game for 27 years through several changes to the base rule sets. I have played and DM'd the premade worlds chosen by the manufacturers for distribution, Ravenloft, Dragonlance, etc.., as well as, worlds created by myself and my friends both past and present. When 2nd edition came out everyone I played with hated it. We all thought that defining skills would take away from the ability of players to define themselves through their imagined actions, but we played it and eventually found we were wrong. (This of course required a great deal of modification to make it work for us.). When third edition came out, the group I was playing with hated it. We thought that the changes to the class system blurred the lines to much so that formula PC's would become standard practice and noone would be interesting (Unique with flaws and weaknesses is interesting and fun, in my opinion, at lest.), but after modifying several aspects of the system it became fun. The underlying point I am making is that since the beginning, every group with which I have enjoyed playing held to the original rule sets first sentence, "These rules are only guidelines and you are encouraged to change any of them..." As such, I do not think any computer game that requires fixed rules to function can ever be D&D, but it might be a fun video game.
NWN was preety damn closest thing to pen and paper. Especially the DM sessions or some high quality persistant servers. But the best thing about NWN was that you had ability to choose between so many servers and styles of play. From hard core roleplay or pure hack and slash pvp , to perma death rule fanatic. Also since the servers were small you had the chance to know everyone playing. And the DM's could change the world on the fly , create memorable events easily.
And now NWN2 is comming. With trully excelent graphic and nothing but improvements in every way.
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
Comments
Not really interested in MMORPGs without PvP - I admit to crying a little when I heard they had the sweet DnD license, and decided against PvP - what a missed opportunity
The last game from Turbine - AC2 - was horrible, so I guess Turbine has a lot to prove.
Lots of luck.
This is the way DDO should be and what Turbine says it will be so anyone upset over that go play stupid games like WoW and the such. Personally I love the idea that idiots cannot interrupt another player's quest like kill stealing and such.
Why the hell people are upset that you cannot PvP? Are you kidding, must be complete morons whining about that. If you want PvP go play other games. Better yet if you think you are so good at PvPing go play a real freakin game like FPS games. But you probably suck at them anyway as that takes a person's real skill on the keyboard not a bunch of scripts to run to do all the fighting for you, damn losers.
If you really believe that, you are either too clueless or too uninformed to be drawing any conclusions at all.
Naturally, since I disagree with you of course. I think you'll notice I'm not the only one expressing the sentiment. And I play GW, so I think it's fairly informed.
"...the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem and hardly ever what we dream."
Bovine Excrement! The old P&P D&D wasn't about quests. It was about the fact that you were playing in someone elses universe. Literally anything could happen. You want to argue about weather instancing is a good thing or bad thing, fine, but DDO is NOT Dungeons and Dragons. It's NWN 2, but NWN is better because they have a Mac version (which broadens the player base) and the Windows version allowed people to make their own quests. DDO doesn't look any more ONLINE than NWN is.
Give me a game where you can be a beggar or a king and everything in between, where you can look for the jewel of lord high Pinki or whatever or lead armies against (or for) the forces of darkness, where NPCs and monsters act instead of react, where the gods come for coffee and stay for dinner and the monsters don't sit tight and wait to be attacked. Give me a game where the creators wander around IN GAME doing stuff (not just fixing problems). Then you might have something that is CLOSE to the old D&D.
but even if I'm wrong and this turns out to be a pretty good game. It's NOT D&D.
New guy here (never posted) but this game is very interesting to me and I had to comment on this.
"We all grown to hate it..." I do not think it is fair to encompass the entire MMOG community in here.
1) I've been playing PnP D&D since about 1980... yes, I am that old. I'll let you do the math. I'm a Dungeon Master by preference. I have ran campaigns with as little as 2 people (me and one player) and as many as 27 people (3 DMs and 3 parties of 8 all in competition). So I've seen the solo play and I've seen the PVP all along with the more classic "instanced" party in standard D&D.
2) I've played MMOGs for 5 years now. I won't go over my pedigree here, but I've seen quite a few of them of all genres.
I, for one, greatly prefer the Instanced adventures. I get tired of the competition with other players. In PVP I get tired of having to watch my back. There is a time and a place for this type of play, but I do not necessarily think Dungeons & Dragons MUST have it. If it is optional (battlegrounds) that would be fantastic.
I support Instancing, and I know many of the people whom I game with online now in a MMOG would agree with me. Let me Instance and keep the PVPers and the Pharmers off my back.
As long as they include social interaction on more than just the party level, I don't feel like they can go wrong.
New guy here (never posted) but this game is very interesting to me and I had to comment on this.
"We all grown to hate it..." I do not think it is fair to encompass the entire MMOG community in here.
1) I've been playing PnP D&D since about 1980... yes, I am that old. I'll let you do the math. I'm a Dungeon Master by preference. I have ran campaigns with as little as 2 people (me and one player) and as many as 27 people (3 DMs and 3 parties of 8 all in competition). So I've seen the solo play and I've seen the PVP all along with the more classic "instanced" party in standard D&D.
2) I've played MMOGs for 5 years now. I won't go over my pedigree here, but I've seen quite a few of them of all genres.
I, for one, greatly prefer the Instanced adventures. I get tired of the competition with other players. In PVP I get tired of having to watch my back. There is a time and a place for this type of play, but I do not necessarily think Dungeons & Dragons MUST have it. If it is optional (battlegrounds) that would be fantastic.
I support Instancing, and I know many of the people whom I game with online now in a MMOG would agree with me. Let me Instance and keep the PVPers and the Pharmers off my back.
As long as they include social interaction on more than just the party level, I don't feel like they can go wrong.
Got you beat.. My first D&D game was in 1977 and I've DMed 30 people in the same campaign on a time-share basis and through email and chat (my hats off to you for 1/3rd of 27 at the same time though
I am very much against instancing, because where the P&P game has logistical limits artificially imposed on it, a computer has physical limits based on bandwidth and server power. The worst thing they could have done to D&D was to carry the good AND the bad over to computer games. One of the BAD things is instancing. The argument is that you can provide a better gaming environment to a smaller group of people if you isolate them from the rest, but that is exactly what being an online game is set up to avoid, and in any case there is a LOT more than can be done to a PvP online game to make it more role-player friendly than anyone is doing now, so obviously instancing LOOKs better, but it inherently limits the game and by consequence shortens it's play life on our hard-drives. Its the wrong fix for a problem that shouldn't need to exist in the first place.
People behave themselves in the real world because there is a structure surrounding everyone that creates consequences for people when they misbehave. Your standard PvP game is either on or off. You're either in a place where you can do what you want with no consequences except coming from your victims or you're in a "safe zone" which prohibits you from attacking anyone but allows you to do all sorts of mean things to people with no consequences even from your victims. Naturally, you're going to get chaos and a generally poor role-playing environment. Why anyone thought that was a good idea in the first place is beyond me, but that seems to be the standard now.
So now you have this argument about instancing. If the problem with PvP didn't exist, there would be no debate about instancing. Everyone would think it was a bad idea, but since no one has tried to solve PvP any other way (although some games in development look promising) we decide PvP is a bad thing instead of the way it is implemented. That's a cop out if I ever heard one.
A good role-playing game has to be inclusive, not exclusive. Everyone who is playing has to be free to interact with everyone else who is playing. That's what an online game is all about and that's how you start groups of players who like to adventure together. You must also allow the solo players and those who want to organize large groups, even armies for the purpose of building their own world inside yours. If you're not going to do that, then you don't need to have a persistent world. You don't even need a server to run the game. A game that has only three to six players in it isn't an online game. I agree DDO isn't an mmorpg, but the D&D I used to play was. It just didn't have the internet to allow it to do it very well.
> Its the wrong fix for a problem that shouldn't need to exist in the first place.
You are truly an idealist. Problems do not go away by wishing that they did not exist, and the problems instancing was designed to solve exist entirely because of the players. So unless you can change human nature itself, instancing remains an absolutely vital feature of every online game.
> If the problem with PvP didn't exist, there would be no debate about instancing.
Wrong. Instancing solves a whole plethora of problems, from competing for loot and quest kills to preventing other groups from messing up a story type adventure. And besides, the problem with PvP DOES exist, and won't go away by just wishful thinking.
If you have a better alternative, now is the time to hear it.
In case you are referring to a system that allows player kills but penalises the offender, you are totally missing the point. No amount of retribution will ever be enough to compensate for a ruined evening, especially when it's SO easy to prevent it entirely. The whole idea, assuming I understood correctly that this is what you are proposing, is based on the idea that we all enjoy hurting others, so that the pain of the offender would be enough to compensate for our hardships. And that's just plain wrong, playing out of anger and frustration just makes things worse. I for one have never gained satisfaction from revenge. Besides, those who are _really_ guilty of allowing it to happen, the developers, are safe from retribution.
> Everyone who is playing has to be free to interact with everyone else who is playing.
I would be willing to pay extra just so I wouldn't HAVE to interact with the scum I meet on a daily basis in all the online games I play. I want to choose the people I play with, and totally shut out the rest. Where does your right to declare that everyone HAS to be able to interact with everyone else come from anyway?
> That's what an online game is all about
An online game is what its designers intended it to be; nothing more. Your views on what an online game should be do not in any way reflect any sort of absolute truth. If the game company wants my money, they'd better take my needs into consideration or I will take my business elsewhere. Online gaming is not a religion, there are more than one way to do things. You have no right to force others to accept your hideously narrow view of what online gaming "should be", especially when it would make it more akin to torture to some of us.
Sorry about the tone of this reply, but that degree of idealistic arrogance just drives me mad.
I don't consider being an idealist a bad thing. That's like saying "You're right, but that's not possible" Tough! If I'm right, deal with it. I'd rather be right than contributing to the problem. The point is that when something is wrong, you say so, period.
Arrogance is just a confidence that you are right.
And since you asked to provide a solution...
The problem with PvP is that there is no community other than the players to enforce civilized behavior, and the players, being one step removed from being children a lot of the time don't want the responsibility to provide the enforcement, so it has to come from somewhere else. Usually it comes from the game mechanics itself (ie safe zones) and that only compounds the problem. As with any crime, the difficulty lies in identification and apprehension. As far as identification, most (if not all) of the games mmorpgs have a guild structure and a lore that proports to explain the background of the game (the storyline) First and foremost; you must have that background meaninful in the game. If orcs are supposed to hate elved, then players should be penalized for associating with an elf if they are an orc, for instance. I've seen some games that do this, but it's not enough. The NPCs have to react to you based on your conduct in the game. Being in a civilized (albeit barely) world, indiscriminate killing should be punished by being ostricized by the "common" (NPCs) folk in the game. If you keep it up, you will be banned from all vendors, healers, etc. You have to fend for yourself. Obviously players will band together to form hideouts where they can continue such things close enough to civilization to continue to prey on them but far enough to not be found easily. I have seen exactly ONE game that does this and it's not out yet, and no one else has tried it.
The problem is not that muggers exist in these games, but that the games are often ruled by them because they are everywhere. Playing such a character should not be just a play style, but like the class or profession you choose it has benefits and consequences. No one who wants to play a tailor is going to want to or expect to be leading armies to conquer their neighbors, and someone who plays like a bandit shouldn't expect to get a welcome in the towns where other players who behave themselves enjoy. Make them conform to the kind of life such a person would have to conform to in real life. It explains why most people don't do that and it would cut down tremendously on people doing the same thing in a game.
But now that you've made a certain kind of gaming difficult to play, you better give people other things to do besides mugging and serial killing. This is another place where many games fall down. Shadowbane blew it by being JUST about PvP and not just PvP but large scale battles and guild vs guild combat. Now, as they are finding out, it's not enough. There's no infrastructure to support the guilds. There isn't anything else to do in the game but PvP. MORE CONTENT! It cannot be stressed enough, and if you have five or six times the content in any game currently released, it's still not enough. Make the game about PvP, about building the castles they march from, about making the swords and armor they use, about making the stuff to make the stuff to make the stuff they use. Make it about quests, about armies, about crafting, about politics, about caravans, the details are as important as the big picture. It's what computers are good at. You miss one of those things and all the others suffer. Sure it's an effort, which is why they feel it's easier to side-step.
No shards. I know it get's around technical problems, but it also promotes fragmentation. You end up with one RP shard, one griefing shard, one ... blah blah blah and what might start out as a rp shard might turn into a griefing shard and then everyone wants to move from one shard to another and the frustration level goes up. One world, one set of rules.
And if you're going to do that MAKE IT BIG! UO blew it on that by letting everyone and their mother put up a building. And everyone and their mother did, and then every square inch of flat ground was taken up by a house. Raise your hand if you didn't see THAT coming. Every game I play in feels so tiny. There's no place to go if you don't like any of the places that are already there. In shadowbane, less than a month after the launch of their most recent (and possibly infamous) "lore server" every place where you could set up a new city was already taken. That's way beyond too small.
Devs are so interested in giving us the next cool thing that they forget to fix the things they already gave us. Instancing is one of those things. Instead of critically looking at PvP and finding ways to fix it, they dodge the issue entirely, and instancing will last about as long as the last cool side-stepping feature they gave us.
And we the players have to shoulder some of the responsibility. Everyone is so concerned with what THEY want that they forget other people are playing the game too. You have to police the game, not just complain in a forum when things don't go your way. To hear people talk on some forums, you're either for random killing or you're an anti-PvPer, or you're a fanatical role-player or you're anti-rp, and on this thread... you're either for instancing or you just don't understand D&D. Crap! I understand D&D. I also think that everyone can play in the same game without getting on each others nerves all the time, and it will be more enjoyable than anything else out there.
two things
instancing does not make you feel attached to the game in a unique way
as in WOW you return from your instanced quest to get your reward and find that another person/party is going on the exact same quest/instance
so, what did you accomplish - you had absolutely no effect on the game - none
won't be buying this game as it has no solo content - period
fine for purists of dnd and online game nerds who think everything needs to be done in a lemming group
for many others online gaming is a very dynamic universe compared to single player games - other people make it so but it is not necessary to constantly be bunched into a group
> If I'm right, deal with it.
Try to define what you are supposed to be right about before declaring that you are right. If you believe that the things you are rooting for would somehow turn PvP into an enjoyable experience for those who hate it, you are just flat out wrong. If not, your point is moot anyway.
> Arrogance is just a confidence that you are right.
Arrogance is the belief that you are right and everyone else is wrong, even if they are right. Your complete ignorance of what I said above about exactly the sort of system you are describing demonstrates that.
> If orcs are supposed to hate elved, then players should be penalized
> for associating with an elf if they are an orc, for instance.
Fine, lets make up a background story where everyone loves each other and penalise them for not doing so. D&D is based on cooperative play.
> indiscriminate killing should be punished by being ostricized by the
> "common" (NPCs) folk in the game.
Your whole system (which has already been implemented in Ultima Online I believe) collapses precisely on the point I made: I do not want to be ganked even once, regardless of the consequences to the offender. Thus I would never buy a game where the system you propose is implemented. Controls or not, someone who really doesn't like me would still get to gank me without much overall effect. We have laws and prisons in real life, and still thousands of people commit the most heinous crimes every year. Why do you think they would do any less when all they stand to lose is some marginal benefits to their virtual character?
You know what, all I really have to say is that DDO will not be the sort of game you are looking for, no matter what you write here, and I am very happy about that. For every MMORPG that drops PvP elements, there are 10-20 that are all about PvP. Go play them.
> Which is all besides the point I was making that that DDO in NOT D&D.
I think it is. All that really matters is the philosophy behind D&D, cooperative group play. You could replicate the D&D ruleset and world down to the smallest detail, but if you drop this basic philosophy behind it, it will not be D&D. On the other hand, you could change everything about the mechanics of the game, but if you remain true to its philosophy, it's still most certainly D&D.
Well, as far as I can see, that applies to every online game ever made. Even in RvR games nothing ever really changes, cities and fortresses just change hands back and forth forever. The only exception might be games that have live storyline content, but who says that couldn't be done in DDO too in some way. And even live storylines rarely cause any significant changes to the world. Big changes mean lots of work for developers.
Consider this: would YOU like to play in a world that is the result of the actions of a million l33t kiddies?
What I fail to see addressed is why DDO in its current approach is any different than say a Neverwinter Nights style multiplayer. It sounds more like DDO is a big matching server for people to run quests on. That's not really a true MMOG at all.
If they expect people to pay subscription model prices, then they'll need to churn out a lot of new content to do so. I can play Guild Wars and get what DDO is describing without paying a montly fee to do so. Brand name may carry them along, but it won't generate an amazing game.
Not so. In Shadowbane you actually made cities, equipment, trainers, etc. Things you could not get with out player made cities. You could also destroy your enemies cities.
So you're wrong about that.
It's always something...
Not so. In Shadowbane you actually made cities, equipment, trainers, etc. Things you could not get with out player made cities. You could also destroy your enemies cities.
So you're wrong about that.
While I am sure you are correct about Shadowbane having those features, I still think his point is valid. The overwhelming majority of online games, and all of the top-selling ones, don't have such features. That's not to say that such features are not desirable. I believe they are very hard to accomplish and still have a game that is fun to play for new players and that is the primary reason you don't see them in most games.
/em agree
But in most games you don't have to pay extra for that feature. One of the best features in any online game is a little thing called /ignore. You should see some of my ignore lists!! In most games I manage to hit the ignore list size limit on at least one or two of my characters:)
Of course, /ignore is not nearly as useful in a forced (as opposed to voluntary) PvP game. But I rarely play games with forced PvP so it works great for me.
You are absolutely right. This is not D&D Online. This is instanced Everquest with a D&D skin. Any true pen and paper D&D player worth his dicebag that has done even a cursory examination of this piece of cybernetic flotsam in the ocean of MMORPG's will stay as far away from it as he can, and either wait for NWN2, or go back to NWN. They bowed to pressure from the always-vocal (read:whiny) l33t powergaming crowd, and decimated the D&D ruleset to give them the 'instant gratifcation' of more advancement points. THAT is why there aren't 20 levels like there are supposed to be, folks. There are only 10 levels because every level has 4 "sub-levels" where you get more feats, and skills, and "OOOOoo! Look at me!!" points, and they likely used up all the feats and other advancement goodies giving characters 40 artificial levels. The kiddies couldn't deal with only being able to say, "I'm level 8", so they made them able to say "I'm lvl 8-3."
Go do some research. This game will draw the Everquest crowd, and likely some people from Guild Wars that truly like full-instancing. Me? I'll stick to WoW, and CoH/CoV (and even I play Guild Wars once in a while... It's free), and wait with baited breath for NWN2. I've been waiting for a computer representation of D&D ever since I rolled my first 4-sider 25 years ago, and DDO ain't it. The Neverwinter Nights series was and is the closest thing at the moment. Perhaps someday, someone will aquire the rights to another TSR/WotC campaign world such as The Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk, and create a game with only the D&D player in mind, and do it RIGHT, but that someday isn't any time soon.
Not so. In Shadowbane you actually made cities, equipment, trainers, etc. Things you could not get with out player made cities. You could also destroy your enemies cities.
So you're wrong about that.
So cities get destroyed and created. What is it about Shadowbane that really changes? The Lore changes based on what the devs do, not what the players do. Of course I have yet to see a game where the Lore really matters anyway. People mostly see the lore as an impediment to what they want to do in the game
What I find ironic about Shadowbane is that people get upset when one guild begins to dominate a server. If that possibility isn't there, then what the hell is all this fighting for? Are you fighting just to fight or are you fighting for something? It's the only way that the game really changes based on what players do and the players themselves are against it. I don't get it.
Originally posted by Jade6
What I said was that as a fix for the problems of a PvP game, instancing is not the answer, and if what you don't like about a PvP game is the griefing, then instancing is taking more away from the game than it adds. I never said that PvP is the best kind of game or that YOU should play that way. I said that DDO is not D&D and if you're heading there for that reason you will be dissapointed.quote]>> Which is all besides the point I was making that that DDO in NOT D&D.
I think it is. All that really matters is the philosophy behind D&D, cooperative group play. You could replicate the D&D ruleset and world down to the smallest detail, but if you drop this basic philosophy behind it, it will not be D&D. On the other hand, you could change everything about the mechanics of the game, but if you remain true to its philosophy, it's still most certainly D&D.[/b][/quote]
So you think you know the philosophy behind D&D eh? Well that's your choice. I prefer to judge a good game by the options it presents to the palayers. The P&P D&D game offered virtually unlimited options to a DM and his players. DDO takes away the DM and gives you a computer that number-crunches for you and nothing else. Cooperative group play includes the game master. Tell me that DDO offers you more options than the old D&D.
[quote]Originally posted by swordsbane
What I said was that as a fix for the problems of a PvP game, instancing is not the answer, and if what you don't like about a PvP game is the griefing, then instancing is taking more away from the game than it adds. I never said that PvP is the best kind of game or that YOU should play that way. I said that DDO is not D&D and if you're heading there for that reason you will be dissapointed.[b]Originally posted by Jade6
[quote]>> Which is all besides the point I was making that that DDO in NOT D&D.
I think it is. All that really matters is the philosophy behind D&D, cooperative group play. You could replicate the D&D ruleset and world down to the smallest detail, but if you drop this basic philosophy behind it, it will not be D&D. On the other hand, you could change everything about the mechanics of the game, but if you remain true to its philosophy, it's still most certainly D&D.[/b][/quote]
So you think you know the philosophy behind D&D eh? Well that's your choice. I prefer to judge a good game by the options it presents to the palayers. The P&P D&D game offered virtually unlimited options to a DM and his players. DDO takes away the DM and gives you a computer that number-crunches for you and nothing else. Cooperative group play includes the game master. Tell me that DDO offers you more options than the old D&D.[/b][/quote]
The editing tools on this forum really suck
always-vocal (read:whiny) l33t powergaming crowd, ... 'instant gratifcation' ... The kiddies ...
This game will draw the Everquest crowd... Me? I'll stick to WoW,
Stick with WoW? You are describing it perfectly.
I see a lot of talk in this forum on the philosophy and/or essence of D&D, but in truth I don't think it really exists. I have found that the only essence in the game is to enjoy your imagination and the company of your friends that share your romance with the fantastic.
I have played the game for 27 years through several changes to the base rule sets. I have played and DM'd the premade worlds chosen by the manufacturers for distribution, Ravenloft, Dragonlance, etc.., as well as, worlds created by myself and my friends both past and present. When 2nd edition came out everyone I played with hated it. We all thought that defining skills would take away from the ability of players to define themselves through their imagined actions, but we played it and eventually found we were wrong. (This of course required a great deal of modification to make it work for us.). When third edition came out, the group I was playing with hated it. We thought that the changes to the class system blurred the lines to much so that formula PC's would become standard practice and noone would be interesting (Unique with flaws and weaknesses is interesting and fun, in my opinion, at lest.), but after modifying several aspects of the system it became fun. The underlying point I am making is that since the beginning, every group with which I have enjoyed playing held to the original rule sets first sentence, "These rules are only guidelines and you are encouraged to change any of them..." As such, I do not think any computer game that requires fixed rules to function can ever be D&D, but it might be a fun video game.
True D&D fans will play NWN 2
NWN was preety damn closest thing to pen and paper. Especially the DM sessions or some high quality persistant servers.
But the best thing about NWN was that you had ability to choose between so many servers and styles of play. From hard core roleplay or pure hack and slash pvp , to perma death rule fanatic. Also since the servers were small you had the chance to know everyone playing. And the DM's could change the world on the fly , create memorable events easily.
And now NWN2 is comming. With trully excelent graphic and nothing but improvements in every way.
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas