demell

I'm not a big MMO player myself. I got into WoW for a bit in college (think I got to about a level 30-ish Druid) but after that military life is not conducive to a game that requires a bit more constant attention than say Grand Theft Auto. Since most of this thread is a "how would you do it" style discussion, here's the kind of MMO I'd like to see:

In a vein similar to Star Ocean or similar sci-fi mixed with fantasy based title, humanity begins a forced expansion into space because of the Earth's resources running low. You were part of the colonization program and along with thousands of others placed on a ship bound for another planet. Things go wrong, your ship and the four or five others in your convoy don't make it to their destination and instead crash on an entirely unknown planet. You and the remaining survivors must now rebuild civilization and conquer your new environment in order to survive.

- Your starting location is one of the four or five crash sites and the small garrison-style town that sprang up around it.

- There are no classes, you start as a blank slate able to branch out as you see fit. Stats are improved by leveling up through experience. Skills are gained by equipping weapons and items and gaining active and passive abilities from them. As you use weapons or wear items your proficiency with it will improve and let you access more active and passive abilities. Active abilities become stronger through use.

- Traditional quests such as "get me x of that" or "deliver to this person" are gone. Leveling is based on exploring and conquering the environment as well as answering player created requests. For instance, a player that wants to only be a craftsman may put a request out to get 10 pieces of an ore from a specific area. To receive the quest you have to first answer the request (that way 300 people aren't going for the same thing), go get the materials (which will gain you experience for fighting your way there and extracting the ore) and then bring it to that specific person. The game system can be set-up to award players experience (currency only comes from the player that asked for the service) based on the area of the map the request was about.

- Much of the gameplay is based on controlling the world (about equal in size to WoW) by either helping your ship/garrison town expand or going off on your own and starting your own society. Player created towns and services can be built anywhere there is available space (any you have the right money and materials). But it can also be destroyed. So you may work for months to create a small town only to have a larger faction burn it to the ground. But growing that town and fighting against other players nets you experience.

The real difficulty in this game is that if you really want to get into it and build within the world you'll need to devote a lot of time. That has the chance to turn off more casual gamers but is definitely a way to keep the game fresh and changing for hardcore players. Casual players can still get a lot out of this, as there will always be raids, large areas to explore and hunt in, requests being put out from other players, and maybe even the ability to gain a home or shop in the larger, more stable starting locations. So a casual player (like me) could log in, fulfill requests for a bit, go exploring in a new area, and end the day helping a large group go harass or ransack another town and call it a day without feeling like they are outmatched by hardcore players.

Considering the rapid pace at which iOS games are developing, why is this such a bad thing??? Would it not be appropriate to bring in an entirely new generation of video gamers that are buying iPhones, iPads, and iPods by the bushel right now? Get enough promise in the character that a true new game (dare I say a reboot at this point given the time since a MegaMan game was truly relevant to players and anyone that has a concept of the story/canon) can be done in earnest.

iOS games are not inherently bad. The Mass Effect game was awesome and I've read positive reviews on The Dark Knight Rises game. This form of gaming is maturing rapidly and more and more of the gaming industry has even stated iOS and similar gaming is going to become a staple of the industry in the years to come both to put out quick games to more casual players but also to showcase franchises and new ideas.

The times they are a changing.

I find it funny that people on a video game site are debating the personality traits and likeability of one of the greatest athletes in the world today. Not saying all of you have never competed before (that would probably be a very unlikely statistic given little league and such), just saying its ironic that a group of people who make a habit of engaging in a seditary activity are going to call out someone of such a high physical caliber.

But the internet makes everyone equal right?

Very disappointed Bioware is even going to attempt an explanation. I'm all for DLC because I would like to see the story shift to Vega's perspective as ME3 blatantly pushed for Shepard to be a mentor and teacher to Vega and his dialog during missions reflected that as well. Not sure how the powers aspect would work because you would have to play a soldier character but I still think it would be a refreshing change and a good way to look at how the events of the series affected things from a different set of eyes.

I can go on and on about why the ending has merit and the symbolism spread throughout all 3 games but I'm going to be very short and just say I don't care that plot holes exist. A comment was made about the people making these videos being too lazy to think about the ending. Obviously not true because of the time they put into their videos. Instead I would ask why people are wasting their time with these complaints. The story is written, its what Bioware put out. We as fans are entitled to amazing games but at the end of the day we have to live with the product presented. This sense of entitlement makes no sense to me. I didn't make this game, thus I have no right to demand its change. That would be like buying a piece of art, hanging it in my house and pointing it out to all my friends, and then noticing that their is a flaw or a section missing and demanding that the artist finish it for me.

Why? Because I paid for it? So what. The painting may belong to me but it was still the creation of the artist and I bought it as it was. I either live with the mistake or I sell it, give it away, or in some way divest myself of the piece.

"The customer is always right". I never understood that phrase because nobody in sales or business actually uses it because the point of business is to bring the customer around to your way of thinking, not change to theirs. I just think this case is a perfect example of how the mentality of that statement has been blown way out of proportion in the internet and blogging age where we as the consumer think that every single one of our opinions is important because we have the capability of giving anyone that wants to opportunity to read them.

I laughed my ass off when I read this and read through these comments. What a perfect example of what our society is turning into. Notice I don't say gaming community. That's too narrow. This is a problem with our society and culture as a whole and putting all the weight of stupidity on just the gaming community degrades all of us just as much as it gives people like this an excuse to keep acting this way.

Then again you have to wonder if you can ever fix this type of behavior within the gaming community. Games are a way for people to express themselves in an environment where they can hide behind another character. Its the modern day make believe opportunity. So if you give people like this the outlet to express themselves through a medium where it may or may not be known who the person actually is these types of comments and this continuing behavior is going to persists and only get worse as more and more people become a part of the community.

So the real question is........should tournaments and live broadcasts like this continue if they are only going to facilitate this type of behavior? Is it really necessary for us to put a video gamer on a pedestal (incidentally you can make the same argument about sports or Hollywood but that's just a hydra of a debate to have) just because we like playing video games?

Second interesting question that just popped into head.............have video games actually benefited from these types of promotions? I mean, the video game industry (like any media industry) is always trying to bring in new people. In my mind these types of live shows and tournaments don't help them in any way and are only tailored to those only in the community. If they don't help bring people in do we, as a community, really need them?

So wait, everyone is on one side or the other about Vega being a generic Marine (btw as someone who works with Marines on a daily basis I can safely say that he is a good representation of what a "by the book, no nonsense, tough as nails" Marine is though I'm interested in what seems to be Vega's decision to abandon his squad as that's a huge no in the Marine Corps) yet almost everyone is content with Prince being the voice actor......a skinny, nerdy white guy with a slightly high pitched voice is somehow a good choice for what is supposed to be a gruff, muscled, African-American Marine???? Does that make any sense at all? His voice sounds completely wrong for his design. I'm not saying they had to go out and get the AllState guy but someone that sounds a bit closer to the part would have been nice even if it kept the idea of a generic Marine.

Looking forward to how the "sparring" session plays out. Get the feeling Shephard is trying to incite Vega and when he charges wildly put him on his a$$ hard to punctuate the "with age comes wisdom" remark.

I am a PS3 owner, using the first generation 60 GB PS3, and I've had only 2 issues with this game:

1. It freezes at times, but in its defense this happens with all of my games because my console is almost 6 years old and running with about 1 GB of free memory.

2. I get the same quest multiple times, particularly the "Find Red Eagle's Sword" quest, even though the sword is placed on one of my weapon mantles.

I also want to point out that I have tried both the previous two Elder Scrolls games and returned both after about 10 hours of playtime because I was so freaking bored with them. I'm a big fan of sandbox games (Assassin's Creed, Batman, Infamous, etc...) but felt that the Elder Scrolls series lacked direction in keeping my interest for the dozens of hours it required. That is not the case with Skyrim as I have already sunk about 40 hours into the game and I'm not even through Act I of the story yet. Yeah, haven't even met the Greybeards. I literally cannot find it in myself to not travel around the world and complete every sidequest I can.

By my own admission I care nothing for dissecting the frame rate, graphics, voice over synching or anything else that IGN, Giantbomb, G4, Gamespot, or any of the other "experts" talk about......I just want to play a good freaking game and this is a good freaking game. Should Bethesda work on its software? Sure why not, keep up with the times and all. Does it in any way affect how I enjoy the game? Not in the least.

If there is one area of the game that I do take issue with, its the Followers. I haven't really seen a great deal of interest around the internet in using Followers but I'm trying to get a full game experience and so I generally have one with me. But they are pretty worthless and need some major improvement, especially in how you equip them and know what they're skills are. It would have been nice if I could go into my Items menu and flip over to my Follower without having to talk to them, or go to the Skills menu and see what they are good at. Yeah you can have some trial and error or look at them and see what kind of weapons and armor they use but it would have been nice to get a bit more details on this part of the game. Plus having to go through the dialog options to move equipment over to them is just boring as we hear the same comment every single time. Then there is the command options but that's a post for another day.

So really I'd have to say I'm in the minority here of PS3 issues (aside from the patch taking away inherent resistances <shakes fist>) and yet I'm using the oldest version of the PS3 around. I've never seen a backwards flying dragon, watched a mammoth float into the sky, had my face disappear, watched the game slow down after extended play (think my longest play time is about 6 hours), had a save file crash, or any of the other problems people are complaining about. Maybe I'm just one of the lucky ones or I haven't gotten to those problem areas yet.