Quote:
Originally Posted by Rithrin
All I can do with most of the stuff in that article is say "O RLY?", because its the same thing a lot of people have been saying for years. But that's not the point, I don't see why you people are so against it.
Games need to make sure there are challenges to be met - challenges that are not solved by making sure you picked up a sword that's +1 better than your old one, but rather solved by the player reacting to it. Also that "grinds" should be taken out from games, which is tied into the whole solving challenges thing... if every mob is a new and different challenge, its not a grind! But, eh, I'll stop since all I'd be doing is restating the article. I'll just say the biggest thing I agree with in that article is making sure the game isn't about numbers.
I don't think the article is an argument for turning things towards NGE, because NGE was nothing like he's advocating.
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What I was thinking about when referring to NGE is what Lucas Arts had in mind when they forced SWG down the NGE path: moving the game away from the staid MMO model into something faster paced, based more on player skill than on the numbers (what I hoped to indicate, was that the attempt was a failure in execution, as well as a bad idea in the first place).
I don't think that the ideas in the article are out in left field somewhere. There is a huge market for on-line games and many game models that can be financially successful (meaning that they attract a sufficiently large portion of the market to justify the development and maintenance costs). I am very much in favor of developers taking new approaches to serve various, currently under-served segments of the market.
What I object to is the notion that the current MMO model is broken because it doesn't serve the needs and interests of the portion of the market the article's author represents. While some of his points were aimed at fixing the very real problems with many MMOs; others were aimed at changing the types of challenges that the player faces in game (which, to my way of thinking is actually describing alternative genres: twitch games, puzzle solving, etc.).