On the subject of regurgitated press releases...

[Rii]

Here's another one, this re: GW2, courtesy of Joystiq (http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/27/guild-wars-2-preview-common-sense/):


Take, for instance, this core conceit: Why do other MMOs require you to stand still to use most of your character's abilities? Why not allow them to fire off powers while ducking and dodging through salvos of enemy attacks? Why not let heroes use their powers, regardless of whether or not they're targeting an enemy? Why not put some action in your MMO, or vice versa? ArenaNet seems to have noticed most developers' proclivity for sacrificing streamlined gameplay for staple MMO characteristics, and repeatedly asked that very question: Why?

You can pretty much rewind the article and observe the individual spoonfuls that were fed to its author. To be fair most game previews have a whiff of this sort of thing, but I thought this was a particularly shameless example. And topical!

[Shane]

Nothing new, I don't recall reading a preview of a game(outside of RPS) that pointed out any major shortcomings.

[Tei]

If you are game reviewer, and some game dev want to pay your hotel. *is a trap*

INCEPTION.. The game dev will enter you room, sleep on the next bed, and connect your brain with his brain, and start brain hacking in your dreams.

More likeley than you think.

I think the main cause is that game reviewers want to write a good article. Wen game devs provide very good material, theres no way for the game reviwer to NOT use it.

I N C E P T I O N

[Land Squid]

I don't understand what is wrong with that quote. Isn't it just saying that Guild Wars 2 has action and the writer thinks that is better than other MMOs? Confused...

[sabrage]

Innovation is corruption.

[Nalano]

Forcing the player to stand still to use abilities is a design choice to simplify PvP for folks who aren't, how you say, very dextrous: By nailing a player down to the ground, attacking the player becomes easier. Having a mage be able to play peek-a-boo around corners would, in the eyes of designers, be an unfair advantage against warriors.

[riadsala]

On the subject of regurgitated press releases...

Around about half the articles in the national press (broadsheets) are repackaged press releases or wire stories.

[Tei]

Forcing the player to stand still to use abilities is a design choice to simplify PvP for folks who aren't, how you say, very dextrous: By nailing a player down to the ground, attacking the player becomes easier. Having a mage be able to play peek-a-boo around corners would, in the eyes of designers, be an unfair advantage against warriors.

I don't think this is the case.

I think the problem with MMO's, is that most are designed to be playable with a huge ping, maybe 800 ms. Spells can't take into account things like line of vision. Most spells make a single check, like distance, if that check pass, then the spell will always land.

Having very few "reality checks" means what the player see, and the real state of the server is not really that important.

If you add stuff like "more damage from behind", then ping becomes important.

So MMO's normally don't have any, or too much features, that need these type of checks. Gameplay and everything is built around that.

Also, MMO's are built so the server don't need to do much calculations. In MMO's, theres almost nothing to calculate, except maybe DPS.

Everything designed so a few machines can serve to 4000 players.

Not all MMO's are equal, and some have more phisical interactions than others, and feel more "action" oriented.

[Nalano]

Most spells make a single check, like distance, if that check pass, then the spell will always land.

I dunno what MMOs you played, but that's most certainly not the case in WoW, WAR, AoC or Rift.

[Tei]

I dunno what MMOs you played, but that's most certainly not the case in WoW, WAR, AoC or Rift.

There are exceptions to the main rule, of course. Ignore the example. Think as mmos as "high latency" games, then everything makes sense. The server don't really care that much about things like position, because the server don't really know where are you. If it where very important to know exactly where are you, this will make mmos "low latency" games. And then the massiveness of MMORPG games would be dificult to achieve.

[Nalano]

There are exceptions to the main rule, of course.

I don't think WoW and assorted WoW-clones count as "exceptions."

[soldant]

I think the problem with MMO's, is that most are designed to be playable with a huge ping, maybe 800 ms. Spells can't take into account things like line of vision. Most spells make a single check, like distance, if that check pass, then the spell will always land.

Pretty sure that quite a few (if not pretty much all) do... otherwise spells and stuff would just go through level geometry if it was only distance-based. You're right that they're a lot more lenient than an FPS or something, but there is still quite a bit of calculation involved in line of sight/distance etc. It's infinitely worse for MMORPGs because of the huge player base and game world, but that's why you pay a subscription fee; it's expensive to keep that kind of service running, hence it needs continual financial support.

Like Nalano said there's still a lot of checking that goes into determining if something hits or not. It sounds like an awful lot of data to process but in the grand scheme of things (or the server farm powering it), it's not really all that much.


The server don't really care that much about things like position, because the server don't really know where are you.
The server does know, and it has to feed this information through to various players. What makes them better as "high latency" games is that targets are locked by the player, there's no "aiming" really required beyond "click on that thing to designate as target", at least in most cases. Compare that to a twitch shooter where the player's aiming direction is far more important, and the difference becomes a bit more obvious.

I can assure you though that the server for any game does care about player positioning. If it didn't know where you were, there'd be nothing to feed back to the other clients!

[Kodeen]

If you are game reviewer, and some game dev want to pay your hotel. *is a trap*

INCEPTION.. The game dev will enter you room, sleep on the next bed, and connect your brain with his brain, and start brain hacking in your dreams.

...

I N C E P T I O N

Of course, the publishers' PR departments have to be careful not to embed a press release within a press release within a press release, or they risk having the games journalists' subconscious attack them with their own internalized versions of angry internet men, meaning us. Are we real, or are we figments of a press release?

[Nalano]

Of course, the publishers' PR departments have to be careful not to embed a press release within a press release within a press release, or they risk having the games journalists' subconscious attack them with their own internalized versions of angry internet men, meaning us. Are we real, or are we figments of a press release?

What, like the press retreat for MW3 where you stand a good chance of getting shot dead?