Jeromai

Dichotomy not necessary. Why not both? More options the merrier, including the option to opt out as desired.

I just finally got around to playing Portal 2 coop with a friend the other day. The robot protagonists have a gestural emote system and ping tools to communicate quickly where to place portals, etc. By using this sort of communication in-game, it is more immersive and almost "roleplayer-ish". For really hard puzzles, the two of us used the Steam Friends chat interface to type out full sentences because the shortcuts lacked the necessary vocabulary. Presumably others use voice chat for the same sort of function (both of us prefer typing though.)

A Tale in the Desert has a volunteer moderated global chat channel. It also has unmoderated channels. Both types have their uses.

@Space Cobra

Me too. Commitment is not a word I can use to describe my relationship to games and MMOs now.

Back in the time of MUDs, it was a -habit- to keep logging into the same game and do the equivalent of raiding with the people who were also hanging around, but a commitment? Only when we had prearranged times for group activities, in which one played some kind of critical role, then it became a committment, and shortly after that, an obligation, and then a burnout.

Since then, I avoid both prearranged times for anything game-related, or things where only my character can fulfill a critical role, and ta da, MMOs last as long as they last. Normally 1-3 months before I move on to something else, fully intending to be back or check it out again "someday."

Longest term flame is still City of Heroes, minus a gap where I canceled the sub to wait for solo Incarnate content to be developed. I'm fond of RIFT and my heart was lost to GW long ago, and lots and lots of minor flings with pretty much everything else, many of which I like and wouldn't mind carrying a flame for - if there was ever enough time to play them.

Different strokes for different folks. I'm one of those who got sucked into ROTMG pretty heavily and can marathon for 4-5 hours. The level/loot cycle is quick and Diablo-like in terms of addictive reward hits, the mechanics are basically an arcade ship shooter/bullet hell transplanted into the MMORPG genre.

And it's an atypical MMO which doesn't follow standard MMO tropes - which is one of my favorite things, to see how open the possibility space is. XP is shared, so no staring at a group wondering "is it rude to jump in?" Seriously, just jump in. If they don't want you around, they will wander off to solo, or teleport off. Enjoy the natural group formation of the sort MMOs will public quests dabble with.

Permadeath is treated in a rogue-like fashion. Yes, it hurts a bit when your character with nice loot and hours of attention lavished on it dies, it's nice to have them and their history recorded in a hall of fame for dead characters, but ultimately, they are all throwaways, the account and the continuance of characters and the knowledge/skill built up from the many many deaths is what counts. Getting to level 20 gets shorter and shorter the more times you play and know what to do (and have equipment stocked up.)

The typical MMO part comes in with the achievement and good loot drops, which are on a 1-3% drop sort of lottery, and you sit there grinding happily for incremental progress (until the grind becomes boring grind, then you stop.)

PS3. Heavy Rain.

Or rather, was going to, then the ISP had a "sign up for two years of broadband, get a free PS3" deal, so that was a no-brainer.

So worth it. Then once the PS3 was in the house, Dark Souls, Shadow of the Colossus/Ico, and a couple Guitar Hero series were an easy sell.

It really depends on the type of expansion. If it's lateral expansions, don't need each and every one just to be on a level playing field, then charging individually for choice is fine. If it's the WoW/Everquest type model, then yes, prior expansions should be bundled in, otherwise how is a player going to catch up?

And for the record, I was one of those who could never stomach WoW's buy-each-expansion policy. I did think they had a good promotion going when Cataclysm launched - something like buy Cataclysm, and you can get the base game free and the prior expansions at 5 bucks each. I already had the WoW+BC bundled box set, but I did finally pick up Lich King from that.

Required, none. 'Forced' to group, none. Encouraged to group by constructive design, plenty.

For the latter, I'm thinking of things like City of Heroes' original grouping philosophy where teams had natural function overlap - some guys take or manage the alpha, other guys crowd control, other people support, and the others damage away, as well as the sidekicking that brought people at disparate levels together. Not CoH as now where everyone is IO'ed and Incarnated to the gills and go off soloing in teams because they can, and want to show off.

Guild Wars 2 is my next hope.

In smaller games, Realm of the Mad God is an interesting study in encouraged to group design. Everyone gets the same xp alone or together. People tend to kill at faster rates together. Suddenly big happy 'trains' of players form on their own without anyone feeling 'forced' to group. Spiral Knights ditto, no one needs to fight for loot or coin, group or not as you prefer. RIFT's 'join public group' button functioned fairly well when servers were at critical population mass and people weren't bored of the dynamic events yet.

'Forced' to group would be things where content or loot or character progression is blocked because you prefer not to group.

I'm firmly in the "yes" camp. It's good to have quantifiable feedback as to what your players want or are looking forward to. Obviously, devs still need to exercise judgement and not just blindly follow what the players say they want at the time - but it's valuable information to know what various groups of players would rather have prioritized first.

And it fosters community interaction and customer loyalty to have players feel like they have some input or ability to affect direction of the game. A good long term game is a two-way relationship.

(Coming from the sociological experiment that is A Tale in the Desert, they take it a step further with player created laws that are able to regulate other players' behavior. As long as you get enough other players in the game to support the law, the dev himself will code it in - though with a big grain of salt and caveat of the singular dev's time and attention being limited, and the dev occasionally liking to mess with the wording similar to GMs and player-made wishes in D&D.

In the latest Tale, players recently expanded the power of a voted-in player rank known as the Demipharoah, with an "Anti-Griefer Act" so that such players are able to put up player names for a server-wide vote for banning. Talk about ultimate player vote power. Works for the small community size, at any rate.)

I find I'm more willing to give the niche, quirky games a chance, especially if they are F2P or small in scale. I read less reviews and try the free trial to form my own opinions. Plenty of times I've been blown away enough to put down some money on the game - A Tale in the Desert, Spiral Knights, Puzzle Pirates, Realm of the Mad God. Other times, they are good and interesting in their own right but did not tempt me into spending extra money or time with them - Glitch, Wurm Online come to mind.

More often than not, free trials of more mainstream MMOs just end up confirming my initial opinion - somewhat intriguing for their differences, mainly more of the same level-gear-raid/pvp endgame progression (or gels with whatever the common understanding of the game is, in the case of stuff like Eve or FE), far too much time investment needed and I never get beyond the trial or a month's subscription if that. WoW, Everquest II, Fallen Earth, Lineage II, DDO, Eve Online, etc.

That's not to say that I leave with a bad impression of the game, normally I'm still quite fond of having given it a taste. It's just - "OK, the game tastes like this, and I know I don't have more time to put in now. Maybe another time."

Beta previews and weekends tend to blow me away more. I was impressed enough with AoC at the time to enjoy a few short months with it (going into it with eyes wide open about their stability and longevity). I also liked RIFT enough to enjoy playing it up to level cap and a little beyond (knowing again full well that I don't do the mass group raid/gear grind much.) Guild Wars was a day zero gotta-have-it-nao purchase.

I normally screenshot anything I want to record as a memory of playing that game.

Usually a fantastic landscape or background, I take the time to compose nicely. The scenery's not going to run away. Turn off the UI, experiment with different angles, putting the thing I want to capture in the centre or at dramatic thirds, have the character avatar standing there with different emoted poses or zoom the camera so it's not visible at all.

Combat, action, anything fast paced, anything goes. I just hammer the screenshot button whenever possible and grab whatever. Sometimes you get lucky and get an action shot that looks phenomenal.

Basically, I tend to capture a bunch of experimental shots and go back to pick the nicest one later.

I have been so keyed up for Guild Wars 2 that I've started to avoid reading any more media impressions about it beyond just skimming the headlines.

It's agonizing to hear that press are already being let into it and going "Ooooh" and "Aaahhh" while one is thinking, enough gorgeous art and screenshots, JUST LET ME IN THE GAME ALREADY...

Want to buy: preview weekends open to non-press, and the danged Collector's Edition pre-order already.