Chattanoo

i love the graphics. but am i ok to assume there's nothing different about it gameplay-wise that seperates it from the hundreds of other MMORPGs?

there's complexity by numbers, and complexity by how deep and well simulated the interplay between different objects/entities is.

MMORPGs are the former. they have thousands and thousands of objects,items and spells, but virtually no complexity of actual gameplay. its mostly hardwired reactions, mostly with the slightest of variations between them.

complications like haveing all these different damage channels, is rather SHALLOW, and largely pointless. fire damage, ice damage, poison damage etc... but it takes no brainpower to figure you should use fire spells on an ice mob, and wear ice resistant armour. its not at all an interesting decision to make. just makes you have to collect and juggle around extra weapons/armour/spells and go thru extra hoop jumping. and THATs the kind of complexity typical MMORPGs have. pretty meaningless & hardwired.

its why there are many games that have way more depth while only having like 10 different weapons and a handful of powerups, etc.

in these supposedly "simple" games, the gameplay isn't so hardwired and scripted and is more like a proper simulation. it makes them FAR more complex. it comes from how the different entities interact with each other. there's almost infinite different ways different combinations of different entities will interact. when the games simulate (opposite of hardwiring) well enough to be properly emergent in their gameplay..

people are so easily dazzled by raw numbers, but have seemingly little ability to see how it all adds up and how it really plays out. typical MMORPGs would not be so popular if it was more obvious to people how damn shallow the gameplay is.

@Space Cobra

i would love an Interstate 76 Online virtual world.

is this an MMO?

does it have ANY open world areas that allows more than say......32 players?

"people would literally abandon their group deep within dungeons simply because they got what they came for and didn't feel obligated to help those that helped them, even if it was just to get people safely out of very dangerous places"

those exact kind of situations was what was happening to me near the end of my EQ2 days. me quitting was entirely related to the quest grinding and its divisiveness to groups .i assume that probably happens in any extremely quest centric MMO. its one of the reasons i detest mandatory questing (where just killing mobs without being on a quest for them gives you practically no experience).

yah, i'd never let a terrible community keep me from enjoying whatever gameplay was tickling my fancy the best.

Darkfall is one of the worst communities (judging by the public chat), but its what i've gotten the most enjoyment out of gameplaywise over the past few years.

not that i've played it more than 4 months in total. but i haven't spent any money on any other MMO since it came out.

@Haldurson

nice post.

sounds like the articles complaint is nothing specific to the superhero genre, but just the desire in general from storycentric players to want their interactive entertainment to be more like movies/books.

i am also one who doesn't look for this in games, and am not personally that interested in stories. when i AM in the mood for that, i just watch a movie. even then i generally watch them more for video/audio immersion than for story. but thats just me. i'm just too hard to please when it comes to stories. they are almost always done poorly IMO. even in books and films.

wish i could delete those dupes. *sigh*

hate when messages don't show up right away.

@AltarofScience

ahhh too bad. seems we have nothing in common. 8) i don't think RPG dice rolling combat has any place in ANY game outside of pen & paper. 8)

can't seem to respond more than once to you're OTHER message (it put it at the bottom of the thread, and NOT as a reply...... but this is in response to you mentioning "alternate weapons"...........

my weapon system has 8 rune-lines (reprpesenting 8 diff weapon/spell properties). each with 8 inflfuence levels.

spells/weapons are made by the combination of runes you use. each spell uses 8 runes.

8 x 8 x 8 x 8 x 8 x 8 x 8 x 8 == 16.7 million different spells/"weapons"

being that its procedural combinations, none of them are useless unlike a significant slice of the "thousands" of hardwired spells that every MMORPG has. its almost like designing your own weapons on the fly, but at a certain handleable resolution. and with programmatically enforced balancing of their power against each other.

8 rune lines. each with 8.... lets say "inflfuence levels".

so 64 runes. spells/weapons are made by the combination of runes you use. each spell uses 8 runes.

8 x 8 x 8 x 8 x 8 x 8 x 8 x 8 == 16.7 million different spells/"weapons"