Wouldn't it depend on how you were trained to right?Originally Posted by Renvalt
E.g. Traditional chinese or japanese writing (especially vertical), you start top right - like reading manga.
Wouldn't it depend on how you were trained to right?
E.g. Traditional chinese or japanese writing (especially vertical), you start top right - like reading manga.
Are you a ship 8 player? Want some friends to get started? Start with me! (CURRENTLY Busy with university )
This isn't true. It's Korean MMOs that are generally "grindier", and this has little to do with cultural preferences as much as it has to do with the fact that, in Korea, MMOs are much more of a social thing, with players often playing in the same room as one another thanks to the prevalence of internet cafes as opposed to playing at home. (This is also why they generally do open-world PvP more often - it's easier for them to organize a retaliation when they can just gather people in the same room for a counter-attack.)
Final Fantasy XI, the only "true Japanese MMO" in my mind, is based heavily upon the original Everquest and thus has an extremely solo-unfriendly mindset. And yeah, the original EQ was really, really grindy. That's more an "old MMO" thing than anything else.
In truth, it wasn't until World of Warcraft came out that MMOs started shifting away from the "grind is life" mentality, but that also came alongside a shift of emphasis away from the world part of the MMO towards the game part of the MMO (which was NOT a net positive change, IMO). Aion, for example, is about a thousand times easier to hit the level cap in than Lineage II. Tera even moreso.
Of course, this extrication of grind in MMOs probably also contributes to the phenomenon of exceptionally fast burnout in modern games, as players find themselves without any sort of goal to pursue so they just quit after the first or second month. Hence, developers are trying to find some sort of middle ground that keeps less-dedicated players hooked while giving hardcore players some sort of carrot to chase. In PSO2, they've got plenty of both - casual players can focus on grinding older or more easily-found rares with weaker affixes and trying to hit the 55 cap while the hardcore have the nearly un-findable 10*s to shoot for along with trying to grind and affix those things to the maximum.
Unfortunately, they have a harder time finding a nice middle ground in terms of difficulty, as we all well know. Advance quests have been something of an attempt at that, but even they don't challenge the hardcore players as much as they really should. I'll still applaud them for the effort, however.
Sorry for the wall of text. This is a topic near and dear to my heart, after all, since I pretty much grew up in the dawning days of the MMO.
Actually a bunch of Japanese games are easier than they are for the west. MGS and DMC and NG were legendary for how the Western Versions were in their diffuculty.
Your poor monitor. You might want to start investing in a cover.
If I understand your argument correctly... Because we're selfish, we're better at providing crucial information, and therefore make the world a better place? I follow your logic, though that conclusion seems counter-intuitive. But isn't that the concept which the western world is based off of?
Grey and grey morality.
This is something I felt PSO1 handled well. Grinding to the level cap was incredibly time intensive, but it was also optional. The meat of the game was up to, like, level 130 let's say (I don't know, it'll vary by class and skill level). Getting rares here and there that you could use without investing was a frequent occurrence all the way up to and into ultimate. This was the real player progression to me. Upgrading your gear was not an enormous hassle or stressful chore, it was something that just happened.This isn't true. It's Korean MMOs that are generally "grindier", and this has little to do with cultural preferences as much as it has to do with the fact that, in Korea, MMOs are much more of a social thing, with players often playing in the same room as one another thanks to the prevalence of internet cafes as opposed to playing at home. (This is also why they generally do open-world PvP more often - it's easier for them to organize a retaliation when they can just gather people in the same room for a counter-attack.)
Final Fantasy XI, the only "true Japanese MMO" in my mind, is based heavily upon the original Everquest and thus has an extremely solo-unfriendly mindset. And yeah, the original EQ was really, really grindy. That's more an "old MMO" thing than anything else.
In truth, it wasn't until World of Warcraft came out that MMOs started shifting away from the "grind is life" mentality, but that also came alongside a shift of emphasis away from the world part of the MMO towards the game part of the MMO (which was NOT a net positive change, IMO). Aion, for example, is about a thousand times easier to hit the level cap in than Lineage II. Tera even moreso.
Of course, this extrication of grind in MMOs probably also contributes to the phenomenon of exceptionally fast burnout in modern games, as players find themselves without any sort of goal to pursue so they just quit after the first or second month. Hence, developers are trying to find some sort of middle ground that keeps less-dedicated players hooked while giving hardcore players some sort of carrot to chase. In PSO2, they've got plenty of both - casual players can focus on grinding older or more easily-found rares with weaker affixes and trying to hit the 55 cap while the hardcore have the nearly un-findable 10*s to shoot for along with trying to grind and affix those things to the maximum.
Unfortunately, they have a harder time finding a nice middle ground in terms of difficulty, as we all well know. Advance quests have been something of an attempt at that, but even they don't challenge the hardcore players as much as they really should. I'll still applaud them for the effort, however.
Sorry for the wall of text. This is a topic near and dear to my heart, after all, since I pretty much grew up in the dawning days of the MMO.
Now, hunting for a particular rare with a particular stat (let's say, native/dark/hit) could be painstaking. But, then, that's the same as finding a rare at all in this game. Plus if you found another amazing item, like let's say my oft mentioned 50 hit Sange found while looking for a hit Chainsawd (it took 13 or so to find a 15 hit chainsawd, I consider that lucky), I could trade that sucker for what I wanted. Or maybe the 25 hit Asuka while looking for something else, or--
Point is, they've removed the absurd yet optional level cap grind and turned it into an absurd gear grind that is comparably less optional, yet still optional if you don't care about using noticeably inferior items or what your weapons look like (in a dressup sim most people will care what their weapons look like, and you can bet they're counting on that).
edit: Also, I love AQ's to bits. While HU is still at a serious disadvantage, enemies take on average longer to kill. If zonde wasn't so omgwtf, and hunters were faster and better prepared for things such as flinch, we'd really be on to something. I've always preferred games where multiple enemies take more time to kill than a game with a shitload of enemies with 1 hp. I feel this way in FPS games, RPG's, MMO's, all of it. Longer fights are just more fun.
Longer fights are not more fun. they are absolutely NOT more fun. it's every MMO I played the began to opt for the longer fight nonsense, WoW, Lineage 2, everything! it isn't more fun at all. It's balance that is the issue. City of Heroes for example had the perfect enemy pace. More people show up? more team synergy was required. Higher ranked enemies replaced the low ranks that died in 1-2 hits. Skill timing, spacing and management was a must to keep enemies from swarming you. even though they went down quick, you had to be quick to.
Long fights are just boring, t he game literally turns into a rhythm game. button 1-2-3-5-4 1-2-3-5-4 2-2-2 3. Next... no =/ don't like that at all. rapid changing situations are the best.
That being said PSO2 hasn't mastered the battle encounter. Enemy AI is largely i ndividual and random. and they don't coordinate very well or have any kind of specific process you can adapt to.
Also enemies don't counter ranged fighters whatsoever, so yes forces and gunners dominate everything.
This depends on what you consider "longer." I consider an enemy taking 3-5 hits to kill ideal. Not one. Then you have things like we have now, with long range classes killing in one hit and short range classes being unable to keep up with the pace.
A comment on the "grindiness" of Korean MMOs:
I've noticed that Korean MMOs tend to start small. VERY small. As if they're a proof of concept more than anything when they first start out. The grindiness is there to pad out the game and prevent people from maxing out immediately more than anything else.
If the game can't hold its audience, it is abandoned. If people like it, more effort is put into it. The game grows, the grindiness is slowly phased out in favor of content so that people have more to do, and a more reasonable route to endgame content is established. (Usually to the chagrin of veteran players.)
In a weird way, it's like the game company is pitching the game to its audience. Maybe indeed a webcafe audience is better for that sort of thing, but I think it's also the fact that there's a lot of these newbie MMOs to choose from.
The biggest Korean MMOs I know of didn't get that way overnight. Games such as Mabinogi started out as one town and a tiny overworld with a dungeon or two. That one is huge now.
On the western side, rather than many small games pitched to the populace to test the waters and see what'll sell, a lot of effort is taken to make an MMO into a huge production right from the start. Is it better or worse? I dunno if there's a right or wrong way in this sense. Seems like the usual case of playing pro/con. For the successful games, the end result is the same.
For what it's worth, I never found PSU to be particularly grindy. Most of the content scaled, so you could pretty much do whatever areas you wanted easily from the beginning. The bad part of that is you ran out of content fairly quickly, which probably explains the timed release of story instances. We'll see how things go with PSO2.
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