2017-04-10 09:47:47

Yar, that could be something interesting. Sure some games are like that, most of them, actually, except those with strict one branch storyline. I can see why they're not that fun, since all you can and must do in order to play is progress. It's actually as same as games that require grinding like crazy just to reach one part and progress (which Manamon unfortunately falls in that category if you ask me).

Why do ghost hunters have to hunt ghosts? Well, there's a fear of being ghosted out there. They may need therapy as well as their ghost hunting kit.

2017-04-10 12:45:47

@Mata I agree that manamon could have used to some improvements on the grinding, especially when experimenting with different manamon to see which can work.

@Caccio, I can definitely agree with you about how good exploring is, however for me quests give me a reason! to explore and something to do whilst exploring rather than just wandering around and seeing character stats increase.
A perfect example of this is alteraeon. This is an online game with full scale interesting combat. There are no doors or restrictions or locks on what areas you can go to, though of course walking into a higher level area before you've got tough enough to survive is not advisable. The game even rewards you for exploring areas directly with exploration points.
However if all there was to do in the game was just combat and progress watch your character improve as you slay things there is no reason! to go exploring.

I've always found myself that simply going down into the goblin caves to slay goblins for no reason or just to grind stats holds little fascination, but being told to go and get something or kill the goblin king or given a task to do is a different matter entirely.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-04-10 13:43:00 (edited by Caccio72 2017-04-10 16:27:53)

Dark wrote:

@Mata I agree that manamon could have used to some improvements on the grinding, especially when experimenting with different manamon to see which can work.

@Caccio, I can definitely agree with you about how good exploring is, however for me quests give me a reason! to explore and something to do whilst exploring rather than just wandering around and seeing character stats increase.
A perfect example of this is alteraeon. This is an online game with full scale interesting combat. There are no doors or restrictions or locks on what areas you can go to, though of course walking into a higher level area before you've got tough enough to survive is not advisable. The game even rewards you for exploring areas directly with exploration points.
However if all there was to do in the game was just combat and progress watch your character improve as you slay things there is no reason! to go exploring.

I've always found myself that simply going down into the goblin caves to slay goblins for no reason or just to grind stats holds little fascination, but being told to go and get something or kill the goblin king or given a task to do is a different matter entirely.

It seems you got my concept of "exploring" wrong.
By that term, I don't mean merely wandering around, without any plans or goal set for myselfs,but right the opposite of that:
My aim while exploring is finding new, so far unseen areas, meet, and engage new, so far unknown NPC creatures or human players, loot some cool stuff from those I kill on my way, or even just find them randomly lying on the ground, visiting so far unvisited places, towns, sites, talk to so far unknown NPCs, and yes, accepting their offered quests as well, after all, if I happem to complete some of those during wandering around, even if unplanned, they will still mean unexpected rewards for my character...

So no, exploration-centric gameplay doesn't have to automatically exclude accepting and completing quests, those 2 elements can be combined just fine...UNTIL those quests won't restrict our movement over the game-map in any way.

And yes, I do also dislike when games have their areas adjusted to player's skill-levels, since that results in actual limitations of lower level players again, after all it wuld be quite foolish for them, to venture into realms with let's say 50 level higher/stronger monsters, so they would in matter fact still be restricted to areas adjusted for their current level.

The kind of games I like the most feature areas with totally mixed types of creatures/monsters, of totally different level, plus NPC characters offering quests to players of various races and levels, so that it is worth to any player, at any current skill level, to venture into any of those areas, since everyone of them will, or at least can find something suitable for himself, meaning things to do,like sites to visit and explore,  actions to perform, new monsters to encounter and fight, NPCs to talk to, quests to complete, stuff to loot or find, etc.

From this aspect Gothador would be a perfect game for me, if only there would be not that many quest-dependent elements in it, which I already mentioned before...

2017-04-10 14:15:48

@Caccio, hmmm, interesting. I'll say for me I don't mind level specific areas so long as there is enough at lower levels to remain interesting, give me stuff to explore and tasks to do, since then I know I always have the higher level places to look forward to and the very purpose for me to train my characters skills and abilities is to get tough enough to handle those higher level places so I can explore them and carry out new quests, have new places to go activities to try  etc.

btw as a miner matter of netiquette, I would personally recommend not using the quote function unless your specifically wanting to quote a part of a person's message, since after all most people on this board have screen readers and having to hear their entire previous mesage twice can be time consuming when looking for someone else's reply, ---- personally I only use quotes if I want the specific words another person used to respond tto. Usually to simply respond eo another person without needing their exact words we just put an at sign and the person's name eg @caccio as I have been doing.

It's not an official forum rule or anything like that just a stylistic preference.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-04-10 15:29:01

It sounds like if there's something of your taste, I can see Clok as one, lol. You just can never guess when you'll be thrown into a nethrim infested events full of crappy to god-cry mobs that can one hit instakill you anytime. But then again Clok has areas based on skill level too, not everywhere though.:p

I think the reason of having areas based on skill is to prevent people from dying foolishly for no reason. Some people just like jumping in right away without even considering the mob. And that's how you go boom! Another death knell shall be toaled...uh wait, it's not clok lol.

Why do ghost hunters have to hunt ghosts? Well, there's a fear of being ghosted out there. They may need therapy as well as their ghost hunting kit.

2017-04-10 17:05:56 (edited by Caccio72 2017-04-10 17:45:29)

You are right Dark, I am aware of not using the "quote" function efficiently enough, and I apologize for that.
My only "excuse" for doing that is, that it is much easier, and faster to me, to just quote the full post, by using the "quote" command here, than manually searching for, finding, selecting, then copy/paste certain targeted parts of, often pretty long, forum-posts or replies.
(after all, I myself am a screen-reader user too you know...)
But yes, I perfectly understand your point, so I shall rather avoid using the "quote" function in the future, unless I will consider it for inevitably necessary.

As for skill-level adjusted areas, I probably disapprove them primarily due my, obviously enormous explorer-spirit, which cannot feel satisfied if it is let to venture, for example, initially only into the forest, and can visit the, for example, swamp or mountains, only after reaching a certain level, since I wish to be able to explore them all, meaning all possible, existing map-regions and sites, (depending on my current mood), right from the very start of the game!

2017-04-10 17:20:21

@Caccio on a purely aesthetic level I prefer it if I can enter a higher level area but get a warning than to literally have the area impossible to enter, though practically speaking they are the same thing, it's just one way I get jumped on by a huge hairy beasty if I wander off the path, the other I don't big_smile.

I will agree if there is only one area for each level then things can become tedius, indeed this is one of my design problems with manamon since generally there are only a few manamon types of a given level in a given area and so if the type your using is weak to that area's type it can make progression rather troublesome, especially with the fact you don't get party xp and don't even get an item to share xp until rather later in the game.

Btw, as regards quotes, just quoting text when you directly want to reference another's words rather than just what they said their generally is probably a good idea for board tidiness.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-04-10 19:57:04 (edited by Caccio72 2017-04-11 07:29:37)

Dark, your point of view is absolutely valid, but only in games, which are planned, and functioning the way you just described.

On the other hand, I was referring to those games, which are planned to function totally differently, games, which feature large variety of creatures/monsters, with totally mixed skill-levels, who are sharing the same map region or area.
(check the last part of my previous post)

For such games, where one is initially supposed to be granted a totally free movement, all over the game-map, it is a literal sabotage to implement any type of movement restrictions or limitations, due any made out reason!

I don't know your exact age, but I do hope you still remeber the old, initial Elite game, followed by its sequel Frontier, then by several, more-or-less successful remakes, clones, copies, all the way to the newest, online version of it, called Elite Dangerous.
Or you can also take Eve Online for an example.
All those games featured, or still feature hundreds of star-systems where pilots can venture into, right from the very start of the game.
True, we startt with a crappy ship, low skills or stats, and there are many weaker or stronger NPC enemies, meaning mostly pirates, but sometimes even other players too, all of them of different strength, and at different skill level, and we can run into them, or even into a group of them in any star system we visit, but we are still initially allowed to fly anywhere we desire, depending on our plans, strategy, mood, or gameplay-style we pick.

Now what's the situation in the space-based browser-MMO called Core Exiles, which I am currently playing?
Initially it also features hundreds of star-systems and planets, and many of those are still unexplored, just waiting for explorer-type pilots to find and visit them, and free movement is theoretically granted by the game, (after all, that's why I decided to give it a try), but still...one is not allowed to leave even his/her starting system until he/she reaches level 10 or so, and achieving that requires accepting, and completing dozens of quite boring quests, since that is the only efficient enough way, how new players can progress in the starting phase of the game...

In addition:
And yes, I do remember your comment about Core Exiles, where you claim, that those disputed quests are meant to help us new players, to "find out more about the world".
That is by no doubt a nice idea, it's just that in in cases of those players, who insist on totally independent exploration, that initially good-willing idea, unfortunately turns from demonstrative aid into an unasked, unwanted hinderance.
I mean, players like myself don't want to be told or shown, which way we are supposed to "find out more about the game's world", for we wish to discover that all by ourselves, based on experiences we individually accumulate during the gameplay.
In matter fact, that above-described aspect of independent discovery is, what makes exploration so interesting to me in games!
That is usually the reason, why ,players like myself generally disapprove the "here, let me show you how to play this game" type approach, for finding that out by ourselves, in our own way, provides much more fun to us!

2017-04-11 07:42:26 (edited by Caccio72 2017-04-11 12:29:03)

So guys, now when You know my leading game-expectations, (after describing them this much in detail, I sincerely hope You finally do), can You please recommend me some popular-enough, accessable, browser-based MMOs, which will suit that so "extraordinary" taste of mine???

Edit:
Ooops, I forgot to define the role of quests.
So in my targeted browser-based MMO, the actual number of featured quests is totally irrelevant, there can be only few, but also hundreds of them, what matters to me is their nature.
Namely, I would like them to function as mere optional boosts, (making the game more colorful), eventually provide a chance to grab certain useful rewards, so additional bonus-boosts, which one can either go for, in order to make his/her progress easier and faster, or can just ignore them, and advance in the game the so called "hard way".
What matters to me is, that quests should by no means function as required prerequisits for any aspect of the game, especially not for free movement and exploration over the game-map!
Quite good examples for such type of quests are those in GTA5 online, Elite series, Eve Online, or Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Skyrim.

2017-04-11 15:30:12

@Caccio I have heard of elite but haven't played it to the graphics being inaccessible, though I have had friends who were fans and I myself have always enjoyed games like the Metroid series (at least until they went and made the dam things 3d) that do allow exploration so I sympathise, although to me I believe your perspective little too harsh here.

I don't agree on core exiles as I said, since I view the quests as part of the game world but I don't think this is something we will agree on.

For browser based mmorpg suggestions, the problem is all the best mmorpgs I know are very heavily quest based.
For example puppet nightmares works through a story you play in chapters and more of the world is unlocked as you go through the story.

There are plenty of mmorpg games with no narrative content at all, but they tend to be more of the grinding and less of the exploration variety.

Likewise, I am tempted to recommend the smugglers series, which people have described as turn based elite, however even in those your game progress is very much based on your ship type, eg, you cannot initially leave your starting star system until you've bought a ship with jump engines and cannot do boarding actions until you have a ship with crew compartments.

If you had access to android or Ios I think the star traders game might be what your looking for that has no narrative quests to do, just lots of exploring, trading, bounty missions, different sort of random effects etc.

For the kind of game your looking for online I suspect your best bet are muds.

Muds are multiplayer online games which are connect to by a mud client program which send text directly to your computer in real time.

There are some good accessible mud clients, I'd recommend vipmud from www.gmagames.com though other people also use mushclient.

Ocne you have your client it's just necessary to put in the address and port number of a mud to play,some muds even have soundpacks you can download which give the games more atmosphere than just the text.

many muds are rpgs with built in quests etc and very heavy on the combat, however not all.


The fantasy steampunk game Clok is simply a huge online world where you progress your skills, whether that be fighting, crafting, survival etc, as far as I know the game doesn't have any npc quests at all, just lots of different activities and a massive environment.

Lament is similar, though has fewer players and activities at the moment, while Avalon is very heavy on player interaction and though it has npc quests most of what you do is reliant on other players and on what activities or skills you focus on and where you go, ---- I found the reliance on other players a bit too irritating for my part since I couldn't progress alone but your milage might be different.

There are then several muds set in space, the very pvp heavy miriani, which is much as you describe with player piracy etc, cosmic rage, which is imho my favourite though it does revolve around gaining experience in some activities to unlock others, and promethius which I haven't got as far into and personally found a little more incoherent.

Hth.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-04-11 19:21:26 (edited by Caccio72 2017-04-11 19:34:49)

Thanks for your suggestions Dark, judjing by them it seems you gotquite  familiar with my game- expectations.
I truely regret not owning any IOS-based device, since Star Trader indeed sounds like a perfect "candidate" to me.
However, I shall check out your other recommendations, meaning the MUD clients, and see which one suits me the most!

Thanks for your contribution again, an please allow me a personal question:
You wrote you don't play non-accessable games..
Is that because of your duties here on this website, or are you visually impared yourself as well?

2017-04-11 22:31:58

Well I think some of the muds might be what your looking for, certainly in a game like clok or cosmic rage there is far less in terms of npc quests.

As to myself and games, I have been registered blind all of my life.
I do have a small amount of vision and used it in the past to play graphical games, however the fact I couldn't read in game text and that I needed simplified graphics meant my choice was always limited.
I did especially enjoy very atmospheric and plot heavy side scrollers such as the Metroid or mega man series or the turrican games.

then of course everything went 3d in the 32 bit era and from limited my choice of games dropped to virtually  none apart from beatemups, indeed I only got interested in accessible games in 2005, and so all of my experiences with game genres such as rpgs have been in accessible games.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-04-12 15:55:53 (edited by Caccio72 2017-04-12 15:58:52)

Thank you both for your sincere answer about yourself, and the MUD-game recommendations again!
Strangely, after trying them all out, I decided for 2, which will probably surprise you: Prometheus, and Miriani.
Actually I like both of them so much, that I guess I will neglect all other accessable gamesfor a while now, since those 2 will occupy a hell of my spare-time for sure!!!

The funny thing is, that Prometheus and Miriani are extrenely similar to each-other, as if there were developed by the bery same person or group, (normally I know that's not the case), so I am having a hard time at the moment, to decide which one to play more, LOL!

However, I shall ask You one last favor:
I am playing both games via the VIP-client, (something went wrong with my MushZ), and despite knowing of the existence of soundpacks for both games, I will need the links to download them, since the only 1 I found was for MushZ-client. (in the description of Prometheus here)

Oh yeah, and please also tell me, how to register the VIP-client, since after its demo time has run out, it already warned me of some another, incoming time-limitation...

2017-04-12 16:26:27

Hi.

I know to an extent miriani and promethius were derived from the same initial codebase, and also to an extent promethius was developed primarily because people found the huge pvp and piracy focus of miriani was spoiling their game.

I never fancied miriani myself because unrestricted pvp is not my thing, and promethius I always found hard to get started in due to the help system being a bit lacking initially, though I probably ought to give the game another try.

Cosmic rage is the space have had most success in and like best I think.

As regards soundpacks, I'm not really sure, your best off asking in game, since especially for promethius I am not sure what development is happening where, indeed I don't know how recent the updates to promethius have been.

As to Vipmud, you can register the game fairly easily by going through the registration process in the tools manual, which will also take you to the www.gmagames.com website, howeverregistrationpretty optional.
the only functions you get in the fully registered version of the client are some advanced scripting options, lack of a nag message and use of msp, that is mud sound protocol which some muds use to output sound directly via commands from the website itself.

Comparatively few muds use msp (I can only think of two that do). Indeed most mud soundpacks use triggers, ie, having the mud play sounds when some text comes in, which will work fine with the free version of Vipmud.

I did buy vipmud myself, since I wanted to support David Greenwood and Gma games (they've made some pretty awesome accessible titles in the past and I appreciated vipmud as at the time I'd not tried muds before),  however in terms of actually needing full functionality to continue playing muds I would've been fine sticking with the free version.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-04-12 19:00:46

This thread is interesting!

So, I've been kicking around some terminology distinctions lately, and this discussion seems relevant to that.
Namely, I find myself wanting to distinguish "games" from "simulators".
Call of Duty is objectively more realistic, more complex, and more optimized based on <mumble mumble corporate number crunching> for mass-market enjoyment, as compared to Duke Nukem 2. I do not care and I like Duke Nukem 2 and wish I could get my computer to play it without having to set up a complicated chain of MSdOS emulators, never mind the inaccessibility.
DN2 is a game. For these purposes, CoD is a simulator--yes, I know it has a single player campaign, but even then, it seems more sim-like to me. While I don't think this is what the developers of DN2 were aiming for (see Duke Nukem 3D), it's what happened, because DN2 came out in, like, 1993.
(OK, DN2 is a bad example. It's divided into 4 "episodes", and you are under no obligation to play them in order. But you are limited to the highest level you've reached within each episode, so there's that, I guess.)

This game -> sim distinction is not something I made up, of course. It first came to my attention... OK, it first came to my attention regarding rides vs simulators, at Space-Camp. But game-wise, there was once this big quality debate over the ps2 era Dragonball Z games. The old-school gamers were largely disappointed with the SPARKING! series. Someone who is more of a sim guy pointed out that the SPARKING! games aren't really games, so much as DBZ simulators.

Of course, people usually use simulator in a narrower sense, and I think some of that has to do with what you're talking about, Caccio. Aprone's games do an interesting job of riding the line, so to speak--Swamp is more or less a Zombie Survival sim, but he's always tried to focus on the more game-like elements over the sim-like elements (I think a lot of the feature-demanding and so on are from more of a sim-based mindset). Similarly with Castaways and Lunimals.
But I also think Swamp is a middling example of what you're talking about: on the one hand, it is not very linear and the player is given lots of freedom (Ur, ignoring 3.5), but lots of areas, missions, items, etc are level-locked.
Whereas it sounds like you want something that is truly free-roaming, without any restrictions aside from those which define the world. If nothing was level-locked in Swamp, I get the impression it'd meet your requirements (disregarding how you feel about the ever-present zombies).
I am of two minds about this. I have abused the level select codes in Sonic the Hedgehog since I learned them, because I had more fun exploring the Sonic games than trying to complete everything in order. (Well, and let's be honest, that box puzzle in the second zone? In a game with no saving and finite lives? That's bad enough for fully sighted players! It's like trying to play the Lion King without cheating--you spend so much time failing at the second level that you don't get to see anything, linearly or otherwise. ... Yes, I am aware of the second level in Redsword. It has a cheat for exactly this reason.)
On the other hand, I like the sense of progression and story, and the feeling that there is some direction, so you aren't just wandering around in the hopes of stumbling upon something interesting by chance.
I feel like the best case falls somewhere between a no-cheats Sonic and Skyrim, and the mainstream is still struggling to find that spot (and taking a while, because they don't have to hit it to redecorate their homes with Benjamin Franklin wallpaper).

Consider Mortal Kombat: Deceptions. Forget for a minute that Konquest is effectively inaccessible. You have, what, half the playable cast locked by default, and must complete bunches of easy-to-miss quests to unlock everyone? And the beginner area becomes inaccessible upon leaving, but you must leave and complete several other tasks before the other realms become accessible.
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon makes the unlocking seem more like prizes than a necessity, what with most characters being playable from the beginning. Exploration is still bound by plot, but the idea was always that you had to work for the best things--it's just that now you don't have to work for everything (presumably, you did enough of that to make the money to purchase the game).
And I don't even know who is and isn't available by default in MK9 and MKX, because they dropped the adventure mode entirely, so I just dive into the story and finish it on the Saturday that I start it. Although MKX has an interesting Krypt, I suppose.


This question of how much freedom to give the player has been one that I've thought about for quite some time, since I tend to design story-heavy games, and too much player freedom can seriously mess up the cohesion of the story. (Umm, I haven't... finished most of these story-based games. This might possibly maybe a little have something to do with it.)
Also, if the player can go anywhere they want, then I have to make everywhere. tongue. This isn't as big a deal now as it was when I started on these things... during the Bush43 administration... but it's still a ton of work for an individual.

So, I think I have two questions:
1: how do "tutorial" / "beginner" / "introduction" areas fit into this? Ex, the Island where Sora, Riku, and Kiri live in Kingdom Hearts, which is effectively gone after you complete the introduction. And you must complete the introduction in order to access the rest of the worlds. It's kinda impossible to get away without an introductory section (to the extent that TV Tropes has a page for Green Hills Zone), and letting the player wander off into the ending before proving that they know how to climb is a bit... well, actually, I kinda like this idea, because I don't really like mandatory tutorials all that much, but is it an acceptable design decision?
On the other hand, games like Kingdom Hearts are only somewhat picky about where you can go when, except that there will be some major plot areas that only show up when the plot has sufficiently advanced, and sometimes they disappear afterward (which is very unfortunate for those dalmation puppies we missed in the belly of Monstro. Sorry, Pongo and Perdita.).
Also, compare Gauntlet 4 to Gauntlet Legends. Gauntlet 4's quest mode has only 1 of 5 areas locked by default, that being the final castle, because, well, you win when you complete it, so what's the point of the others if you can skip them? Meanwhile, Gauntlet Legends gives you a whole 1 place you can access at the beginning--you have to go through and unlock everywhere else by completing the others. It's not especially plot-heavy, so there aren't really many reasons to keep harder areas locked by default, other than that they want to force you to play in a certain order.
2: How about online / offline restrictions? I kinda feel like games which force you to do so many tasks in one mode to access the features of the other are kinda... well, it's a questionable decision, and if both modes can stand on their own it shouldn't be necessary. On the other hand, if this is a game with a story unique to the game (and not, say, an adaptation of a book, film, TV series, etc), leaving an unrestricted, free-roaming mode (online or offline, it doesn't matter) presents the potential for messing with the story.
I feel like Dragonball Zenoverse is in a risky spot in this regard. True, the story contains original content (well, it was original when it was in Dragonball Online, but that saw a very limited audience outside of Korea), but it's still majority rehash of the exact same story and fights that every Dragonball Z game since Legends has forced players through so as to unlock characters and such. And that little amount of original story is not very relevant to online mode--just the prologue, which you get just for starting a new game. So, IMO, online should have few, if any, restrictions by default. The premise-establishing scene is all it needs.
(Of course, DB Zenoverse has a very content-poor online mode that is mostly just the DBZ equivalent of WoW's random raids, but that's beside the point. tongue )
What about a game where a free-roaming mode would spoil the story mode? Do we do something like Kingdom Hearts, and make most of the world(s) accessible most of the time, no strings attached, but restrict when you can access the plot-dependent events? The answer to this depends on how loosely we define "plot-dependent", I suppose. And I think, after reading this discussion, I'll probably raise the bar for what qualifies as a plot-dependent event in the future. But stumbling on the climactic information too early is still a problem, and so is returning to places which you last saw being reduced to cinders. (... Huh. Didn't realize I had so many places being reduced to cinders in my plans. Currently up to 5 that I can recall, ATM.)

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
MaxAngor wrote:
    George... Don't do that.

2017-04-12 19:44:09 (edited by Caccio72 2017-04-12 20:20:30)

LOL, I prefer to explore, and find out the possibilities and features of a game myself, by experiencing them step-by-step, even if it's the so called "hard way" for doing that, it still provides me much more fun, remember?
So it is no wonder I like those 2 games, where I am let to encounter all the offered game-features by myself, instead of being "guided" by some unwanted tutorials, or starting, introduction-type quests! (a.k.a. finding out more about the game, as you said)
As for how heavily PvP-centric those games are, I haven't experienced it yet, namely I got so much fascinated by large variety of shops, that I am still on a "shopping route" on my starting planet, LOL! (in both games)

Regarding the VIP-client, I trust your experience, so I shall just continue using it unregistered, and try to simply ignore its threatening comments about "time remaining".

2017-04-13 13:02:29

Lol CAE, would it help if you release one of those games even if it isn't near completion? Maybe player feedback will motivate you to finish it.

2017-04-13 17:59:50 (edited by CAE_Jones 2017-04-13 18:06:32)

lol No. As a general rule, the more awesome an idea, the less demoable progress I've made with it. Like, the sorts of things where I thought I could do it with pocket lent and the VAA, but it turns out doing them without enough money to buy a house (or at least a braille display) is ridiculously difficult.
I mean, there are a couple that I was able to do concept recordings for, but they've gone no further for reasons. ... I think. If there are actually no reasons, I will have words with the Green Lantern Corps.

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
MaxAngor wrote:
    George... Don't do that.

2017-04-13 22:12:46

Well what about the people that are not creative? I myself require a little structure to be able to function. If you give me a gigantic map with all these towns, wilds, undergrounds, NPCS, etc., I will have no idea where to start. I want to play a game that rewards me when I finally earn the right to access the Royal Armory, not one that just hands it to me because I stumbled hap-hasardly into it while wondering aimlessly around the globe. Quest masters also give you insight into where the secret areas of the game are. I want to find these secret areas. I don't want to have to wonder and wonder, talk and talk, search and search for something that I may never find because it's barried in a world with no direction.

Now that being said, I understand your point completely, so don't go off on another rant of how nobody understands your point. I get it. Afterall, I play games to escape the confinds of reality, and become a product of my own creation, nobody elses. Yes I follow a storyline, or orders, or concept, but there is no such game that is not dictated by one of those in some way shape or form. Even an artist, who paints in the middle of the jungle with no interaction of the outside world, has a force guiding his brush. His ideas and expressions are not his own, but in fact brought on by the environment he is surrounded by. So although there is no specific person telling him what to do or what to think, he is still influenced by the world around him. Nobody can say, I have created something without any external influence. Same goes for games as they are man made, not something naturally occurring.

2017-04-14 04:19:32

Hmmm Gemini you do bring up an interesting point, since I have noticed on occasion games which are literally sooooo! open they make any play progress impossible simply due to lack of information.

This indeed kept happening in  4dimensions mud where I'd try something and then find I needed something or someone else that was miles away or literally impossible to find. For example one problem had which I detailed in the 4dimensions topic was where an npc told me to bring them a bundle of skins, and it actually turned out that "bundle" in this case didn't just mean a number of skins bundled together, but an actual skin container needed to hold skins, a container which you needed to get from an entirely different zone, indeed an entirely different time period  of the game.

I'm quite happy with exploring, but simply wandering around a map at random which is about ten thousand rooms in size even I! can get a little disheartened if there isn't an idea of where to find something I need for some process task or progression, ---- eg, I do remember in wayfare1444 once spending literally days running over the planet map looking for a place where I could gather sand!yes sand! (sadly the ascii map available to others wasn't accessible and this was before the gm had let us search for different terrain types in the game).

then there is the problem of simply not knowing which actions in a given place are needed to find something, eg, I recently had trouble in lament because I wanted to start weaving but couldn't find any plants with fibres to weave and no where was I informed in the help files that I just needed to gather flax pretty much on any wilderness tyle.

Of course, this is also more of a problem in games such as muds which work on text descriptions and inputting commands, since if you are talking about an audiogame, or a graphical game where you can explore around and simpy find flax lying on the floor it's less of an issue though even there it might be a problem if there is some obscurity to use or pgoression in some way that is not clear, eg, there is a gem gathering activity but nobody tells you you  to have raised your perception stat to actually find the gems on the map, though I agree in those cases of activities being told "go and find gems" is far more interesting than being told "go five north, two east and one south to find the gem quarry and dig there"

Generally speaking I'd say part of the difference in terms of direction a difference between activities based on searching and quests based on a distinct story.

"activities" whether that be shooting zombies, gathering craftable materials or finding asteroids in your spaceship to mine can be absolutely fine with little to no direction so long as you know you might! find commands/or processes to progress with them and the game isn't so complex that your lyable to simply do the wrong thing, eg, scan for planetoids rather than asteroids or not know where to gather sand.

Quests on the other hand with ongoing story will get frustrating if there isn't enough direction, since it's one thing to be told "go seak the sage of courage to learn your destiny" if you have no dam idea where to find! the sage of courage, anyone who remembers the smugglers 3 marriage where you were told a vague star system reference on where to find a pirate will know just what I mean, ---- one reason smugglers 5 just gave you a scanner and told you what system to look in for bounty missions.

Of course the better written quests will also be able to direct you without directing you through the design of the game. Eg, you will be told to seak the sage of courage, then just outside your village you might encounter a fisherman who offers you his boat if you'll do some fishing for him on the river. When you go to the river  to do the fishing you then run into a frog which turns out to have been the sage of courage magically transformed etc.

Indeed that sort of quest sequence can actually be satisfying since it can give you the impression that  making choices even when on a specific path, or even let you explore fairly extensively but never be short on where you need to go to continue the story.

It's ironic how much difference I once experienced in two different tabletop games between one gm who said "You ride into the village and such and such happens", and another who said "okay, your outside the village what do you want to do?"

Of course as I said above, unfortunately you only can! have that sort of true creativity with a human gm who is as creative as her/his players and can form a story around them, ---- eg if the gm has a plot involving a mad woodcutter the players might encounter him in the village if they enter, or outside in the forest if they don't, but clever writing and game construction can give this impression if a quest is well written enough, after all this is exactly how gamebooks work, and yet anyone will know who has played through some of the more complex choiceofgames titles just how free form a lot of those can feel when you have a hole bunch of choices and different pathways to explore even though the story your doing is by the very nature of the medium finite.

of course this is assuming that one likes narrative quests in the first place.

Myself I like a mix dependent upon the game, though even in a heavy activity based game where I am say crafting or mining or hell just exploring around and finding things to fight, I  find I prefer to feal that I'm actively moving purposefully rather than flailing around.

Iindeed this might be simply the distinction, people like purposive action as opposed to purposeless, pointless action (we have enough of that in everyday life).

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-04-14 04:27:54

Personally I see both points here. Honestly think you might be taking the no help to an extreme though. I want to understand what I'm doing, but don't want my hand held. That being said don't throw me into a game and expect me to know what to do. That's just not fun for me.

Silly Gohan, animals don't eat people. People eat animals.

2017-04-14 09:10:01 (edited by Caccio72 2017-04-14 10:11:44)

The main question is, what is our main, primary goal when/while plaing games?

Is it focused on progressing, advancing in the game, mostly by leveling up, or it is more about entertaining ourselves the way we prefer the most, and by doing so, don't care about faster leveling up at all.

I must admit, I normally did somewhat care about faster progressing in games during my "sighted" period, since I had the urge to actively compete with other players, by "showing, proving them what I am made of!"
However, since I lost my vision, that approach of mine has quite significantly changed.
Namely, recently I don't initially, and primarily aim to compete with other players in, or about a game, (meaning online or offline), but I concentrate more on the possibility to experience games the way I like the most.
(btw, in my situation, I probably wouldn't stand a chance in competing anyway, due being in a significant disadvantage compared to both sighted, and blind players as well, since the vast majority of those were already born, and lived their whole life blind, so that they got used, and adopted to that state much better, than I myself probably ever will)

That is why I recently prefer games which grant me that above mentioned possibility, even if it results in significantly slowing down my game progress.
And that is exactly the reason why I got so much delighted over the game Prometheus, where I am actually still only level 1, after of 2 days of very regular playing, for what matters to me is, that it provides me the very best, most pleasent gaming-experience since my vision loss, primarily by letting me playing it exactly the way I want!
(almost all the time, instead of engaging into activities which reward players with experience to progress, I was just walking around over various sites and location, visiting their large variety of shops and stores, studying their menus and list of offers, enjoying the site-seeing in general, and of course interacting, chatting with other players)

2017-04-14 09:45:23

Well glad you found a game that suits you caccio.

Actually I'd have classed myself very much in the same way as you do. All about the exploring and atmosphere only with levelling just a side bennifit.
I actively dislike  or player conflict in games, mostly because I want to progress at my own pace and don't my game spoiled by others' opposition or my need to oppose others.

Similarly, I always read all the descriptions, listen to the sounds, see what I can see of all the graphics etc, rarely if ever shortcut on details, indeed I once read the entire second edition D&D monsters manual just because I loved reading the descriptions of various fantasy beasties big_smile.

For me however, there is also what I tend to think of as the experiencial element.

If I am playing an rpg and get a new attack, I want to try it out to see what it looks or sounds like, indeed part of the reward of getting that new attack is the new attack in and of itself, as something new in the game to try.

I had this problem recently with the game voyajeur on Ios.
A great game with wonderfully beautiful randomly generating descriptions of planets, however what you did in the game basically didn't vary.
Dock at a planet, read it's description, pick up goods trade them, choose a new destination, rince, repeat (in voyajeur you could never go back to a previously visited planet, you literally just constantly flew on).

I am told the game has an ending, certainly it has progressive traits that increase, but I haven't felt the urge to play further after my first playthrough simply because while the descriptions of the randomly generated planets my ship docked at were very beautiful and wonderful to read, what I was doing in the game never varied.

If a game has me continually doing the same thing, even the same things with bigger numbers, I will eventually start feeling that I'm not actually getting anywhere even if the game's environments and atmosphere anre well described, after if all I need to do to mine or chop trees is to type one command or click one button and do it automatically, what is the point in learning mining after time spent logging or going to the mountains to see what mining is like, since for me as a player mining will feel pretty much the same as logging.

If however there is something progressive going on, eg, if I am told to go and mine ore for an npc who needs it for some important reson, then even though mining might feel! in action terms just like logging, I will be conscious of moving into new territory.

of course the more involved a games' activities, and the more I need to use my judgement as opposed to simply being presented with a repetitive task, the less likely I will be to start feeling static, one reason why I get rather sick of all those online rpgs which have automatic combat.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-04-14 09:59:58 (edited by Caccio72 2017-04-14 10:52:41)

Oh yes, and I still have an issue regarding the VIP-client.
Luckily it's nothing serious, but still slightly annoying.

Namely, it seems it has a game named Valhalla attached to it by default, and a user named Fred Valhalla associated with it, so that each time I run the client, that game automatically starts for that user, instead of just starting "blank", idle that is, (or eventually linked to Prometheus instead), which is the way I would prefer, because the Valhalla-registration-warning-alerts for that Freddy guy, are recently starting to go to my nerves!

First of all, I have no idea why that game, and that user were attached to that client at all, which I downloaded from the GTM website, following a link given here in some MUD-game-description, (no, it wasn't Valhalla), and as second, I would really like to finally get rid of that annoyance, by every single start of the client.!

So I will welcome any hints, suggestions, assisting mein that matter!


Edit:
Dark, you may had the feeling of "not going anywhere" in that Voyager game, but for me, merely listening to the descriptions of all those new, various planets, would already provide enough fun, probably for a long-long time...so now I really deeply regret owning no IOS based device!

2017-04-14 10:12:12

Ah nobody lieks poor Fred big_smile.

Fred is an example of a character profile.
In vipmud you can create these for different muds you play and even get the game to auto login for you. Why David greenwood used Valhalla as his example and included fred I'm not sure, but there you go.
to delete fred just use up and down arrows to select from the character list and hit delete, you'll be asked to confirm.
You can also go to the "quick connect" menu and delete any of the default muds vipmud comes with if you want too.

If the character list doesn't show up at start up you can find it with alt c for the characters menu and the first item, eg, character setup/connect (you probably used the "Quick connect" option from that menu to connect to the mud.

to create a new character profile go to that "character setup/connect" menu item, tab to "add" and hit enter then fill in the fields, you can also select the mud from the list which will fill in server and port numbers, and include name and password and check "auto login" if you want.

There are two main advantages to creating profiles.
Firstly it's quicker and easier than using quick connect especially auto login, ---- I have a vipmud shortcut on my desktop I can connect back to the last mud I played by simply using the shortcut key I setup for Vipmud and hitting enter a couple of times.
Secondly, character pfiles are what vipmud uses to store sounds and scripts, which you will need if you download soundpacks or write your own scripts and triggers such.

Hth.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)