Sulphur on 15/8/2008 at 11:25
You guys still doing the incredible sauce dance from when I left? Holy crapola, that's what I call stamina! Gimme whatever it is you're having for breakfast!
And for the record, I still think you're an amazingly cynical elitist ass, Koki. But don't let that get you to grow some optimism, now. :p
a flower in hell on 15/8/2008 at 13:35
The final word:
All games are time sinks.
Playing games is, on a whole, a waste of time.
No game improves your social or professional standing in the real world. No game will advance your career. No game will make you lose weight and might actually cause you to gain weight if you spend too much time playing and not enough time being physically active.
There is no way that playing a game will positively affect your life outside of gaming, and a huge chance that gaming too much will negatively affect your life otherwise.
But all forms of recreation and escapism are essentially time sinks, a way to waste time in an enjoyable manner. So all that really matters is if you enjoy it, and considering that fun is one of the most subjective adjectives in human history, enjoyment is in the eye of the beholder. What's fun to one person may be an awful bore to another.
FFXI is an incredible grind; RPGs in general are a grind. The grind is an integral part of the genre, single-player or otherwise. The measure of a good RPG is how enjoyable the game designers make that grind. Having played a number of RPGs, multiplayer or otherwise, FFXI is probably the best online RPG I've played, godawful controls and clunky UI notwithstanding.
Out of the others I've played: Anarchy Online, World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Tabula Rasa, Guild Wars... FFXI is the only one that makes absolutely no illusions that it's anything but a multiplayer game. Beyond a certain point there's almost no way to advance without playing with others. People (especially World of Snorecraft fans) complain about this constantly, about FFXI's lack of soloable content.
To them I pose a question; if you want to play by yourself, for fuck's sake why are you playing a multiplayer game?
WoW's endgame is a great big fucking mess for many reasons, but one of the biggest reasons is that the game does not force you to play with other people until the very end. You can do so much by yourself you can get to the end point without knowing a goddamned thing about working together with other players as a cohesive unit. And Blizzard rarely adds new content to anything but the endgame, making the "level grind" feel lifeless and hollow. And the "level grind" is the entire point of a hack-and-slash action RPG, the genre most MMORPGs are rooted in.
Schattentänzer on 15/8/2008 at 14:25
Quote Posted by a flower in hell
RPGs in general are a grind. The grind is an integral part of the genre
No. Roleplaying games are about playing a role. CRPGs are misnomers. They should be renamed to Grinders.
Trance on 15/8/2008 at 15:12
Quote Posted by a flower in hell
The final word:
All games are time sinks.Playing games is, on a whole, a waste of time.
No game improves your social or professional standing in the real world. No game will advance your career. No game will make you lose weight and might actually cause you to gain weight if you spend too much time playing and not enough time being physically active.
There is no way that playing a game will positively affect your life outside of gaming, and a huge chance that gaming too much will negatively affect your life otherwise.
but but but... I just got a high score in sinistar! surely thats gotta count for something? :(
Koki on 15/8/2008 at 15:14
Quote Posted by a flower in hell
The final word:
All games are time sinks.Actually I was considering that argument myself but I was reluctant to make it. What can change the nature of a man?
Schattentänzer: Depends on the cRPG. "True"(And here is my Fallout Fan showing!) RPGs allow quite a bit of RPing.
a flower in hell on 15/8/2008 at 15:23
Quote Posted by Schattentänzer
No. Roleplaying games are about playing a role. CRPGs are misnomers. They should be renamed to Grinders.
You're saying CRPGs are less role-playing and more grinding than jRPGs?
What the fuck are you smoking? jRPGs are far worse.
Edit: Even WoW or FFXI levels of grind cannot compare to the Star Ocean series and their experience level cap of 255.
Yakoob on 15/8/2008 at 17:40
Quote Posted by a flower in hell
The final word:
All games are time sinks.Playing games is, on a whole, a waste of time.
No game improves your social or professional standing in the real world. No game will advance your career. No game will make you lose weight and might actually cause you to gain weight if you spend too much time playing and not enough time being physically active.
There is no way that playing a game will positively affect your life outside of gaming, and a huge chance that gaming too much will negatively affect your life otherwise.
The same argument can be applied to every single aspect of your life. TV, books, sports, friends etc.
Schattentänzer on 15/8/2008 at 17:40
Quote Posted by a flower in hell
You're saying CRPGs are less role-playing and more grinding than jRPGs?
What the fuck are you smoking? jRPGs are far worse.
What the fuck am I smoking? What the fuck do you think you're talking about? Stats are just a tool to project the mechanics of a virtual world, yet every "RPG" ever created plays a lot like Excel:The Calculating, jappo or otherwise. Somewhere between Zork and Oblivion things went batshit and accountancy-addicted munchkins convinced developers that an RPG needs stats to be one. Bullshit. Classic adventure games are closer to RPGs than stuff like WoW ever will be.
It doesn't matter how well the world or story is worked out, if I can't beat an RPG by simply playing a role (of my choice by preference) without having to worry about a stupid
gameplay mechanic, it failed.
Edit: I expect the first CRPGs I can accept as such sometime after the first successful Turing test
a flower in hell on 15/8/2008 at 18:04
Quote Posted by Schattentänzer
What the fuck am I smoking? What the fuck do you think you're talking about? Stats are just a tool to project the mechanics of a virtual world, yet every "RPG" ever created plays a lot like Excel:The Calculating, jappo or otherwise. Somewhere between Zork and Oblivion things went batshit and accountancy-addicted munchkins convinced developers that an RPG needs stats to be one. Bullshit. Classic adventure games are closer to RPGs than stuff like WoW ever will be.
It doesn't matter how well the world or story is worked out, if I can't beat an RPG by simply playing a role (of my choice by preference) without having to worry about a stupid
gameplay mechanic, it failed.
Edit: I expect the first CRPGs I can accept as such sometime after the first successful Turing test
You never played tabletop RPGs, did you?
They were the first, and they're the reason electronic role-playing games are the way they are. The RPG genre has its roots in the original Dungeons & Dragons written by Gary Gygax and other tabletop RPGs.
Now I agree that the runaway obsession with making the number crunching obvious can kill the spirit of a game. But you have to understand, the target audience for these types of games are the people who grew up on tabletop D&D, the people who grew up on Shadowrun and RIFTS, Battletech and Warhammer.
These games are aimed at people who played games that, in order to simulate randomness, were forced to rely heavily on number crunching. There's no way any RPG developer is going to alienate those customers; they are their largest fanbase!
Quote Posted by Yakoob
The same argument can be applied to every single aspect of your life. TV, books, sports, friends etc.
That's what I'm saying. Everything that you love is a waste of time to someone else on earth.
Everything you do, love it, hate it or otherwise... is entirely subjective to you.
Schattentänzer on 15/8/2008 at 18:46
The reason why I'm bitching about CRPGs so much is because I played a lot pen and paper. Some of the best sessions I had, I didn't glance at my chara sheet once. The dynamics between players and a capable GM is what it's about, and D&D is the worst offender in corrupting this. Fuck its gazillion tables, clunky mechanics, stupid dungeon crawls, elf chicks chained to rocks by evil overlords, and static classes. This game is -as you said- the main reason CRPGs are in the sorry state they are.
A computer is a calculator. It should worry about the numbers, while I can concentrate on playing a game.
