Cheesecake Bandit

@Azrielen roll a char in GW2 and get the elite power Charzooka, find dragon, fire.

Alone on a desert island with an MMO? Whichever one will teach me what I need to know to get off the island probably. Seriously, MMO gaming is no substitute for real life family and friends, even if gaming is my favorite time passer.

Its an argument of complexity vs depth. Nearly every circumstance its complexity without depth as there is only one way to go about whatever goal you have be it min/maxing or just getting through an elaborate quest. The last game I played that had a real feeling of depth was Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you could pick and choose how you went through obstacles and no method was any less viable(not counting achievement hunting).

In MMOs you only have one way to kill a boss in essence and that is to out damage him while mitigating and healing the damage he does, there are no hidden triggers or sneak attacks that render him vulnerable unless they are mandatory mechanics to win the fight. Forget talking your way out of it. Instead you have a stat and talent system that people have to game to squeeze out every last bit of dps and any method outside of it is subpar and won't allow you to defeat the top end content. Outside of that, boss mechanics lead to a dance that has to be pulled off exactly right to stay alive if it is not a straight out dps race. There is no choice outside of succeed or die. While this refers to the top end of the PVE scale, lower end raiding and PVP work this way as well, with no REAL choice. While top end pvp may be dynamic, if you dont have the massive amount of whatever the PVP statistic is, all you do will mean nothing as you will just get squished.

@Mongo8 Well part of the problem isn't that they tried to cater to both, its that they tried to cater to one then the other. It is mostly a problem resulting subscription based games. They see anyone leaving and playing another game as a loss of money when with any other game it is expected, they just hope they come back for the next installment/dlc. They may add different content to increase box sales but you aren't worrying about keeping people constantly engaged month after month. The vast majority of casuals(at least from my point of view) don't like the subscription model, especially when those 15$ don't buy anything aside from server maintenance. They want to pay for content and then play it at their leisure. Again, LOTS OF SPECULATION FROM EVERYONE.

Personally I quit WoW when I stopped having fun just after the 4.1 no content patch and felt that 15$ would be better spent elsewhere. If WoW really wanted to win me back, they would have to either drop the Sub or release regular monthly content i found interesting and worth the $15 it costs. As of right now, I only see WoW being worth those $15 after a major content patch and then I want to play for a month and quit. This is part of the reason I look forward to GW2.

However this argument seems outside the scope of the main article. The WoW equivalent is the whole haste, hit, crit, spirit, mastery, resilience system where certain stats are must haves and everything else is just there gumming up the works, along with the talent trees that at most have 1-5 talents that you can actually choose without hurting your character's damage/tanking/healing potential. The illusion of choice doesn't mean much when it is shattered the first time you step into a raid/bg and you get kicked by the raidleader/afkvotekicked out of a bg. Not to mention the whole pubstomp that is unranked pvp thanks to pvp gear giving an insurmountable advantage.

Even GW2 seems to have complexity just for the sake of complexity with its stats/talents system, but I don't know how that will play out in the long run and if they balance it out to where it is REAL choice instead of the never ending illusion.

1 word. Bacon.

Eating bacon/pork/ham is far less cringe worthy than eating spiders.

Also, ever heard of porcinaphobia? Probably not, but everyone knows of arachnophobia.

Pig wins, end of discussion.

@Maximum Proxy sorry, no that wont cut it. mechwarrior fans have spent a long time separating mechwarrior from "Mecha", so until you stop comparing them, you will be downranked. IE, Hawken is a (vehicle,mech) shooter, Mechwarrior is a sim.

@laggyd making people choose between massive grind and paying real money (especially when its massive grind compared to $1) is not a valid tradeoff. if it takes 10 minutes of normal play to get a key maybe(dont know how long it actually takes) but from an outsider point of view it looks like lockboxes are nothing more than an inventory sink that you have to pay to get rid of or you might as well have never gotten the box in the first place.

IMO Lockboxes are gambling, and if you have to pay money to open them/can pay money to open them, it needs to be subject to gambling laws, IE ILLEGAL since the companies do not operate on a reservation or in vegas. Get gambling out of MMOs please.(and before you ask, yes i hate the loot table gamble as well).

@CheesecakeBandit forgot to add, I hate pvp sandboxes. So I am somewhat biased.

@journeyman FE really looks pretty bad when you compare it to anything else out at the same time. It is clunky to play. It could not make up its mind if it wanted to be a sandbox or themepark to the detriment of both especially in pvp. The leveling system is unforgiving if you make a mistake(real money respecs) and punishing when it comes to earning AP(or whatever its called). When you get past the atmosphere and crafting, Fallen Earth is a bad game(at least when I played it at start). I also dont know if they dropped XP gain in F2P to make people subscribe(if they did they made a grindy game worse).

Unfortunately, Grimlands does not look much better. Mild graphical improvements but still clunky.

Funny, i originally quit FE because of same faction griefing and certain clans claiming towns for themselves. If I wanted an all out free-for-all i would have gone and played EVE or Darkfall or something, I was looking forward to faction warfare but due to that and the lack of any content once i hit cap(or any appealing reason to reroll) I gave up. I don't think im going to go back though, the gameplay didn't appeal to me or feel fluid.