🚀 go-pugleaf

Great, as is obvious this was sent to the newsgroup by mistake.

Well, since it's somewhat on-topic feel free to discuss even if you are 
not the intended recipient :-P

Man, this is embarassing.

Hmmmm? now that's what I call refreshingly different. Thanks. ;)

Markus you may be interested to watch an episode of the 
USA animated TV comedy series 'South Park' if you happen across it,
Episode  8 in Season 10 "Make Love, Not Warcraft"

Even gets a whole Wikipedia page;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Love,_Not_Warcraft 

(\__/)
(='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste Bunny into your
(")_(") signature to help him gain world domination.

Thanks for the tip but as an MMO scholar AND nerd AND gamer I know that 
episode of course :)

I've even referenced it in my thesis as an example for how MMO lingo can 
find its way into mainstream pop culture and how knowledge of specific 
southpark quotes and similar memes can be an identifier for being a True 
Gamer *g*

Markus


Am 31/07/2013 15:08, schrieb Trimble Bracegirdle:
> Hmmmm? now that's what I call refreshingly different. Thanks. ;)
>
> Markus you may be interested to watch an episode of the USA animated TV
> comedy series 'South Park' if you happen across it,
> Episode  8 in Season 10 "Make Love, Not Warcraft"
>
> Even gets a whole Wikipedia page;
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Love,_Not_Warcraft
> (\__/)
> (='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste Bunny into your
> (")_(") signature to help him gain world domination.

On 31/07/2013 8:24 AM, Markus Schäfer wrote:
> Second, the introduction of the Raid Finder seems to undermine even
> further the sense of Instances as places within a simulated continuous
> landscape (note, however, that I see the navigation INSIDE the Instances
> as a separate topic).

That's true of my only MMO, LotRO, as well. The Instance Finder totally 
disconnects the instances from the landscape. It's not just instances. A 
lot of the time people just want to get someplace fast, and get annoyed 
when there's no "fast travel" option available. They put their character 
on a "slow horse" to the appropriate town and go make a cup of coffee.

> Afterwards, Instances seem to rapidly lose their meaning as
> parts of the geography of the world. They are increasingly treated as
> acts which are performed repeatedly in the service of improving the
> character, helping the guild etc.

I'd agree with this. I was slow to level my characters; by the time I 
got to the point of doing repeatable instances, most of my fellow 
players seem to have adopted this attitude.

Markus Schäfer <markus....@rub.de> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>Thanks for the tip but as an MMO scholar AND nerd AND gamer I know that 
>episode of course :)
>
>I've even referenced it in my thesis as an example for how MMO lingo can 
>find its way into mainstream pop culture and how knowledge of specific 
>southpark quotes and similar memes can be an identifier for being a True 
>Gamer *g*

There's a bit of cognitive dissonance; WoW Player and Real Gamer.

Xocyll

David Lamb <dal...@cs.queensu.ca> looked up from reading the entrails of
the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs say:

>On 31/07/2013 8:24 AM, Markus Sch�fer wrote:
>> Second, the introduction of the Raid Finder seems to undermine even
>> further the sense of Instances as places within a simulated continuous
>> landscape (note, however, that I see the navigation INSIDE the Instances
>> as a separate topic).
>
>That's true of my only MMO, LotRO, as well. The Instance Finder totally 
>disconnects the instances from the landscape. It's not just instances. A 
>lot of the time people just want to get someplace fast, and get annoyed 
>when there's no "fast travel" option available. They put their character 
>on a "slow horse" to the appropriate town and go make a cup of coffee.

This was partially true of City of Heroes.
It had a train system to transport you to difference zones, BUT, there
were 2 different lines and zones that weren't on either AND missions
were often crafted to force you to cross multiple zones, then return to
the contact that gave it to you, who then sent you right back.

Later more stations were added and the two lines combined.


Loads of people left the game fairly early because of all the excess
travel.  You could spend 10+ minutes running to an instanced mission
that took you 5 minutes to complete, then 10 minutes getting back, then
get sent right back to the same location.
Example: A contact in Founder's Falls sends you to Crey's Folly for a
mission, you ...
Cross FF to the zone transition point, cross to Talos Island zone, cross
half the zone to the train station, take train to Brickstown, cross
about a third of the zone to the transition to Crey's Folly, cross
however much of the zone required to reach the mission entrance -
usually at least 80%.  Every zone transition has a loading time which
could be a couple minutes long on a slower computer.
Do the mission, then retrace your steps, only to get sent right back to
the exact same location.  
You spent more time traveling than you did playing.

Most MMOs try to slow down player leveling because once you max out a
characters level there's not much to do - you're no longer making any
progress so further play seems pointless.
The more grindy the game is the less likely people want to start a new
character and do it all over again.
Yes some games have raiding, but again, since you're not actually
gaining anything...
Some games have special gear that's only available at max level, but
again, since there's no actual point in playing the character further
since you're no longer leveling at all, why bother?

Go raiding to get the special stuff only available through raiding to
make you marginally stronger for ... raiding.
It's an end-game people only play because they can't face the
horrendous, monotonous slog of walking around between things that will
actually level another character.

CoH was different in that there were multiple classes and powersets and
the feel of them was very different and doing the same old missions on a
different class or powerset made for a different experience and you
could successfully solo ANY class/powerset combo.

Can you think of another MMO where people might (and some people did)
have 50 or 60 or more characters?
There were people at the end who had dozens of max level characters.

I made _hundreds_ of characters over the years and had dozens when CoH
shut down.

>> Afterwards, Instances seem to rapidly lose their meaning as
>> parts of the geography of the world. They are increasingly treated as
>> acts which are performed repeatedly in the service of improving the
>> character, helping the guild etc.
>
>I'd agree with this. I was slow to level my characters; by the time I 
>got to the point of doing repeatable instances, most of my fellow 
>players seem to have adopted this attitude.

Where's the fun in walking long distances?

Yeah it would make for a short book or movie if the heroes could jump
directly to the end, but would you actually want to play all the endless
walking in Lord of the Rings or something like David Eddings Belgariad
(which had lots of action and also _Months_ of encounterless travel.)

I used to play D&D back in the day, and actually roleplaying travel was
boring as hell if there were no random encounters (which since they were
random sometimes you got none - you could play for a couple hours and
have NOTHING HAPPEN.)
Hardcore players who followed every rule could have entire play sessions
where nothing happened.  
My High School actually had a very short lived D&D club that did this -
the first session was people making characters since a lot of them had
no exposure whatsoever to the game, the second session was travelling to
the destination...we didn't get there and nothing happened;  Walk, roll
for random encounter - nothing, set up camp, set watches, roll for
encounters - nothing happens, walk some more roll for encounter -
nothing happens... for 2 hours.

There was no third session as the consensus was that watching paint dry
would be far more exciting.
That was my first try at D&D, I didn't play again until years later when
new friends got me into it and they had to talk mighty fast to convince
me to try it again.

This got translated into CRPGs and then MMOs and thankfully is going the
fuck away, because pointless travel IS. NOT. FUN.

Bottom line, people who are paying a fee to play, want to actually play
something other than a walking simulator.


If you were a tourist wanting to go see something on another continent,
wouldn't you like to skip the many hours long plane ride where nothing
happens?

Lord of the Rings would be far less EPIC and far more boring if they
traveled over the same ground again and again and again and...
It's only an EPIC story because it's a one time trip and that doesn't
work in MMOs because they don't want to craft a landscape and such that
you'll only see once.

Xocyll

On Wednesday, July 31, 2013 9:21:21 AM UTC-7, Xocyll wrote:
> David Lamb <dal...@cs.queensu.ca> looked up from reading the entrails of

 
> Loads of people left the game fairly early because of all the excess
> travel.  You could spend 10+ minutes running to an instanced mission
> that took you 5 minutes to complete, then 10 minutes getting back, then
> get sent right back to the same location.
> Example: A contact in Founder's Falls sends you to Crey's Folly for a
> mission, you ...

You didn't have to do missions, though fighting in the streets was usually really really crowded, at least at low level.  Lets not forget the newbie zones crashing because of the number of people there regularly.

The missions were more fun though.

Still no where near as bad as EQ, where you literally had to wait a half-hour for a boat, then spend about the same amount of time on the boat to get from one continent to the next.

> 
> Go raiding to get the special stuff only available through raiding to
> make you marginally stronger for ... raiding.

Or PvP, which in most MMOs is done poorly.

> Can you think of another MMO where people might (and some people did)
> have 50 or 60 or more characters?
> There were people at the end who had dozens of max level characters.
> I made _hundreds_ of characters over the years and had dozens when CoH
> shut down.
> 

Yeah, I made hundreds too, I only had 4 max level, one CoH side, and 3 COV side.

Heh, funny that though, if you said you had that many max level in another game like WoW or EQ, people would think you extremely hard-core.

> I used to play D&D back in the day, and actually roleplaying travel was
> boring as hell if there were no random encounters (which since they were
> random sometimes you got none - you could play for a couple hours and
> have NOTHING HAPPEN.)
> Hardcore players who followed every rule could have entire play sessions
> where nothing happened.  
> 
> My High School actually had a very short lived D&D club that did this -
> the first session was people making characters since a lot of them had
> no exposure whatsoever to the game, the second session was travelling to
> the destination...we didn't get there and nothing happened;  Walk, roll
> 
> for random encounter - nothing, set up camp, set watches, roll for
> encounters - nothing happens, walk some more roll for encounter -
> nothing happens... for 2 hours.

WTF?!  Inexperienced DM I guess, but I always just rolled a whole bunch of encounter checks at once, shouldn't take more than a minute or two to figure out if you had an encounter.  When I had enough free time, I'd roll and prepare 'random encounters' in advance for where I thought the PCs might be going.

That's why I really preferred the old fallout/gold box way of doing it in games, just shows you going on the overland map like an old movie with the airplane leaving a line behind it, then if you did encounter something you'd pop into a local area.

Also one of the main reasons I hated Baldur's Gate, even after hacking me up boots of speed for my entire party.

> This got translated into CRPGs and then MMOs and thankfully is going the
> fuck away, because pointless travel IS. NOT. FUN.

I agree completely.  You may want to do some travel the first time somewhere to take in the scenery, but only very shortly, and probably never again with another character.

- Justisaur

Justisaur <just...@gmail.com> looked up from reading the entrails of
the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs say:

>On Wednesday, July 31, 2013 9:21:21 AM UTC-7, Xocyll wrote:
>> David Lamb <dal...@cs.queensu.ca> looked up from reading the entrails of
>
> 
>> Loads of people left the game fairly early because of all the excess
>> travel.  You could spend 10+ minutes running to an instanced mission
>> that took you 5 minutes to complete, then 10 minutes getting back, then
>> get sent right back to the same location.
>> Example: A contact in Founder's Falls sends you to Crey's Folly for a
>> mission, you ...
>
>You didn't have to do missions, though fighting in the streets was usually really really crowded, at least at low level.  Lets not forget the newbie zones crashing because of the number of people there regularly.

Yeah but the missions were the actual content - the only people who only
street hunted were the power levelers in a rush to reach max level and
have nothing to do.

I don't really remember the zones crashing although I do remember
entering atlas park and the sheer number of AFK idlers onscreen dropped
my into seconds per frame mode.

>The missions were more fun though.
>
>Still no where near as bad as EQ, where you literally had to wait a half-hour for a boat, then spend about the same amount of time on the boat to get from one continent to the next.

Never played EQ, heard about the moronic wait times and never wanted to.

>> Go raiding to get the special stuff only available through raiding to
>> make you marginally stronger for ... raiding.
>
>Or PvP, which in most MMOs is done poorly.

I have zero interest in PVP so ...

>> Can you think of another MMO where people might (and some people did)
>> have 50 or 60 or more characters?
>> There were people at the end who had dozens of max level characters.
>> I made _hundreds_ of characters over the years and had dozens when CoH
>> shut down.
>> 
>Yeah, I made hundreds too, I only had 4 max level, one CoH side, and 3 COV side.

I had one each side, a level 50 hero that reached 50 shortly before the
issue that introduced Kheldians and one level 50 villain.
Several in the high 40s, and several in the low 40s,  lots in the 30s
and 20s.
I tended to get bored, get a new character concept/costume idea and make
a new character.

>Heh, funny that though, if you said you had that many max level in another game like WoW or EQ, people would think you extremely hard-core.

I know there were people with 50 or 60 level 50 characters.

>> I used to play D&D back in the day, and actually roleplaying travel was
>> boring as hell if there were no random encounters (which since they were
>> random sometimes you got none - you could play for a couple hours and
>> have NOTHING HAPPEN.)
>> Hardcore players who followed every rule could have entire play sessions
>> where nothing happened.  
>> 
>> My High School actually had a very short lived D&D club that did this -
>> the first session was people making characters since a lot of them had
>> no exposure whatsoever to the game, the second session was travelling to
>> the destination...we didn't get there and nothing happened;  Walk, roll
>> 
>> for random encounter - nothing, set up camp, set watches, roll for
>> encounters - nothing happens, walk some more roll for encounter -
>> nothing happens... for 2 hours.
>
>WTF?!  Inexperienced DM I guess, but I always just rolled a whole bunch of encounter checks at once, shouldn't take more than a minute or two to figure out if you had an encounter.  When I had enough free time, I'd roll and prepare 'random encounters' in advance for where I thought the PCs might be going.

Actually he was experienced, but you have to consider 2 things:
1. the Group was mostly new players and something like 20 people strong
- it was a High School, anyone-can-join, club.
2. he was following the rules _exactly_ as written.  ALL the rules,
encumbrance, food usage, max mileage for the terrain, max travel before
camping, etc.
We never actually got to the mission in that session - the distance to
it was something like 3-4 weeks of travel through the forest to get to
the mission, so all we did was travel, camp, mark off a days rations,
stand watch, travel, repeat.  I think we had one random encounter, of
something like 2 foxes, which got squashed quickly considering the size
of the group.

This was around 1983 and I think it was Basic D&D not even AD&D.
I think the club was formed to teach people what the game actually was -
this was shortly after the hysteria enflamed by Rona Jaffe's "Mazes and
Monsters" movie on TV.

I think the DM was also a war gamer - he liked all the fiddly little
rules.

It probably succeeded in convincing the people who came out that it had
nothing to do with Satanism, but failed in that it showed the game as
Just. Plain. Boring.

When I was introduced to the game again in fall of 1986, that DM
streamlined things considerably - if it didn't help the story and/or
increase the fun, out the fuck it went.
So no food, no counting out the miles or anything else - if the distance
would involve potentially 20 random encounters he'd roll the dice 20
times - if nothing happened, we were there.
We didn't bother with maps either unless absolutely necessary.  So we'd
do whole adventures in one afternoon/evening, not the several months of
weekends it would take following every rule to the letter.

>That's why I really preferred the old fallout/gold box way of doing it in games, just shows you going on the overland map like an old movie with the airplane leaving a line behind it, then if you did encounter something you'd pop into a local area.
>
>Also one of the main reasons I hated Baldur's Gate, even after hacking me up boots of speed for my entire party.

At least you could scroll to the other side of the map and click there
and the party would run there.
Remember Pools of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, where you couldn't
click to move unless all the characters were visible onscreen?
(It also had huge levels that once cleared you would visit again and
again clicking dozens of times to cross each time.)

The same game where the whole party had to stand near a trap the thief
was trying to disarm, so everyone would get hit.

God that game was shite.

>> This got translated into CRPGs and then MMOs and thankfully is going the
>> fuck away, because pointless travel IS. NOT. FUN.
>
>I agree completely.  You may want to do some travel the first time somewhere to take in the scenery, but only very shortly, and probably never again with another character.

I rather like the way they did it in Skyrim - walk there to "discover"
the city, thereafter you can fast travel there if you wish (assuming you
aren't encumbered.)   I just wish the actual landscape of Skyrim was at
least a dozen times larger, not the province stuffed in a large backyard
they implemented.

Daggerfall I had it down to a science - I'd play the mage guild up until
I had access to the guild teleporter, plant a mark in front of him (that
I could teleport to,)  get a mission, recall to him, have him teleport
me to the mission, do mission, recall to him, have him teleport me tot
he city/town/whatever where the mission giver was, hand in mission.
I sometimes cleared out multiple dungeons all over the play area all in
a single day.

Since that play area was the size of Britain, the effect was rather like
getting a mission in Leeds, recalling to London, getting teleported to
the mission in Kirkwall, doing the mission, recalling to London, then
getting teleported to Leeds.
Actual game time used was really only the time in the mission itself -
hours at most.
Going there without teleporting would have been _weeks_ of in-game time.

Rather like traveling in EQ riding on an arthritic Turtle I should
imagine.  I picked a Turtle since it could act as both a mount and a
boat. :)

Xocyll

Am 01/08/2013 02:19, schrieb Xocyll:

> I rather like the way they did it in Skyrim - walk there to "discover"
> the city, thereafter you can fast travel there if you wish (assuming you
> aren't encumbered.)   I just wish the actual landscape of Skyrim was at
> least a dozen times larger, not the province stuffed in a large backyard
> they implemented.

My feelings exactly. I think Skyrim got the basics right but the feeling 
of vast, open landscapes breaks down especially once you have explored a 
bit and notice that many places are not separated by actual distance but 
by carefully placed obstacles.

It's obvious that it wouldn't be much fun having to walk miles and miles 
for every quest. But I believe there must be some kind of compromise 
between an extreme like WoW (and LotR it seems) where you can just 
choose instances like counterstrike maps, and a realistic landscape that 
forces you to walk for hours.

> Daggerfall I had it down to a science - I'd play the mage guild up until
> I had access to the guild teleporter, plant a mark in front of him (that
> I could teleport to,)  get a mission, recall to him, have him teleport
> me to the mission, do mission, recall to him, have him teleport me tot
> he city/town/whatever where the mission giver was, hand in mission.
> I sometimes cleared out multiple dungeons all over the play area all in
> a single day.

Ah, I remember Daggerfall and its huge landmass. It's a shame that the 
wilderness was so monotonous and flat that the only relevant aspect of 
navigation was choosing a heading and going straight for the dungeon 
entrance *g*

What I really liked was the size of the cities, especially compared to 
Skyrim. Solitude is supposed to be the capital of Skyrim province but it 
is pitifully small. I remember the cities in Daggerfall being ten times 
that size in some cases. Granted, there was a lot of repetition in their 
layout but at least they *felt* like cities.

Markus

Am 31/07/2013 17:20, schrieb Xocyll:
> Markus Schäfer <markus....@rub.de> looked up from reading the
> entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
> say:
>
>> Thanks for the tip but as an MMO scholar AND nerd AND gamer I know that
>> episode of course :)
>>
>> I've even referenced it in my thesis as an example for how MMO lingo can
>> find its way into mainstream pop culture and how knowledge of specific
>> southpark quotes and similar memes can be an identifier for being a True
>> Gamer *g*
>
> There's a bit of cognitive dissonance; WoW Player and Real Gamer.
>
> Xocyll
>

I can't agree with you there - but only because I can't afford dissing 
my research subjects while I still need them ;-)

Markus Sch�fer <markus....@rub.de> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>Am 01/08/2013 02:19, schrieb Xocyll:
>
>> I rather like the way they did it in Skyrim - walk there to "discover"
>> the city, thereafter you can fast travel there if you wish (assuming you
>> aren't encumbered.)   I just wish the actual landscape of Skyrim was at
>> least a dozen times larger, not the province stuffed in a large backyard
>> they implemented.
>
>My feelings exactly. I think Skyrim got the basics right but the feeling 
>of vast, open landscapes breaks down especially once you have explored a 
>bit and notice that many places are not separated by actual distance but 
>by carefully placed obstacles.
>
>It's obvious that it wouldn't be much fun having to walk miles and miles 
>for every quest. But I believe there must be some kind of compromise 
>between an extreme like WoW (and LotR it seems) where you can just 
>choose instances like counterstrike maps, and a realistic landscape that 
>forces you to walk for hours.
>
>> Daggerfall I had it down to a science - I'd play the mage guild up until
>> I had access to the guild teleporter, plant a mark in front of him (that
>> I could teleport to,)  get a mission, recall to him, have him teleport
>> me to the mission, do mission, recall to him, have him teleport me tot
>> he city/town/whatever where the mission giver was, hand in mission.
>> I sometimes cleared out multiple dungeons all over the play area all in
>> a single day.
>
>Ah, I remember Daggerfall and its huge landmass. It's a shame that the 
>wilderness was so monotonous and flat that the only relevant aspect of 
>navigation was choosing a heading and going straight for the dungeon 
>entrance *g*

I did run overland a few times due to being a vampire and unable to use
any kind of fast travel or wait during daylight.  (I had health regen
items that kept me alive, but the game wouldn't recognize them and let
me fast travel.)   

Technically this is still a problem in Skyrim because the devs were lazy
shits in how they calculate damage and fast travel.
[Sunlight does X damage per second, items provide Z health regen per
second where Z = X.1. Player would take no real damage no matter how
long the trip.
Except they implemented it as - trip took Y seconds, player takes (X *
Y) damage in one lump amount, and dies instantly.  Where they should
have done player takes ((X-Z) * Y) damage, which would have been zero.]


I got lost more than once going overland - even the tiniest bit off
course means you can miss your destination by _miles_.

>What I really liked was the size of the cities, especially compared to 
>Skyrim. Solitude is supposed to be the capital of Skyrim province but it 
>is pitifully small. I remember the cities in Daggerfall being ten times 
>that size in some cases. Granted, there was a lot of repetition in their 
>layout but at least they *felt* like cities.


Hell some of the _villages_ in Daggerfall were bigger than Solitude.

That's the other problem with Skyrim, you have these capital cities and
a few farms here and there, but no real villages, no sense that this
country could actually grow enough food to feed itself - there just
don't seem to be enough farms or peasants around to do the job.
Or pay for those THOUSANDS of tombs scattered around the tiny
countryside.


That's the thing, if you look at the Tamriel world map, the area covered
by Skyrim is pretty much exactly the same as that covered in Daggerfall.

Only while Daggerfall was something like 700,000 sq km, Skyrim is 20ish.

Even Luxembourg isn't that small.

Skyrim should have been a minimum of 5x larger, preferably 10x.
That would have made it large enough to actually seem like a country
(albeit still abnormally small for a country), but still small enough to
walk places and not be bored silly.

As it is Skyrim feels a whole lot like a 5yr old kid playing Wilderness
Explorer in his backyard - even when he's on the top of the tallest
mountain in the remotest wilderness, he's only seconds away from lunch
when Mummy calls.

Xocyll

Markus Schäfer <markus....@rub.de> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>Am 31/07/2013 17:20, schrieb Xocyll:
>> Markus Schäfer <markus....@rub.de> looked up from reading the
>> entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
>> say:
>>
>>> Thanks for the tip but as an MMO scholar AND nerd AND gamer I know that
>>> episode of course :)
>>>
>>> I've even referenced it in my thesis as an example for how MMO lingo can
>>> find its way into mainstream pop culture and how knowledge of specific
>>> southpark quotes and similar memes can be an identifier for being a True
>>> Gamer *g*
>>
>> There's a bit of cognitive dissonance; WoW Player and Real Gamer.
>>
>> Xocyll
>>
>
>I can't agree with you there - but only because I can't afford dissing 
>my research subjects while I still need them ;-)

Analogous to provoking a stampede at the slaughterhouse?

Not conducive to getting the job done.

Xocyll

On Thu, 01 Aug 2013 11:03:31 -0400, Xocyll <Xoc...@kingston.net>
wrote:

>Markus Sch�fer <markus....@rub.de> looked up from reading the
>entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
>say:
>
>>Am 01/08/2013 02:19, schrieb Xocyll:
>>
>>> I rather like the way they did it in Skyrim - walk there to "discover"
>>> the city, thereafter you can fast travel there if you wish (assuming you
>>> aren't encumbered.)   I just wish the actual landscape of Skyrim was at
>>> least a dozen times larger, not the province stuffed in a large backyard
>>> they implemented.
>>
>>My feelings exactly. I think Skyrim got the basics right but the feeling 
>>of vast, open landscapes breaks down especially once you have explored a 
>>bit and notice that many places are not separated by actual distance but 
>>by carefully placed obstacles.
>>
>>It's obvious that it wouldn't be much fun having to walk miles and miles 
>>for every quest. But I believe there must be some kind of compromise 
>>between an extreme like WoW (and LotR it seems) where you can just 
>>choose instances like counterstrike maps, and a realistic landscape that 
>>forces you to walk for hours.
>>
>>> Daggerfall I had it down to a science - I'd play the mage guild up until
>>> I had access to the guild teleporter, plant a mark in front of him (that
>>> I could teleport to,)  get a mission, recall to him, have him teleport
>>> me to the mission, do mission, recall to him, have him teleport me tot
>>> he city/town/whatever where the mission giver was, hand in mission.
>>> I sometimes cleared out multiple dungeons all over the play area all in
>>> a single day.
>>
>>Ah, I remember Daggerfall and its huge landmass. It's a shame that the 
>>wilderness was so monotonous and flat that the only relevant aspect of 
>>navigation was choosing a heading and going straight for the dungeon 
>>entrance *g*
>
>I did run overland a few times due to being a vampire and unable to use
>any kind of fast travel or wait during daylight.  (I had health regen
>items that kept me alive, but the game wouldn't recognize them and let
>me fast travel.)   
>
>Technically this is still a problem in Skyrim because the devs were lazy
>shits in how they calculate damage and fast travel.
>[Sunlight does X damage per second, items provide Z health regen per
>second where Z = X.1. Player would take no real damage no matter how
>long the trip.
>Except they implemented it as - trip took Y seconds, player takes (X *
>Y) damage in one lump amount, and dies instantly.  Where they should
>have done player takes ((X-Z) * Y) damage, which would have been zero.]
>
>
>I got lost more than once going overland - even the tiniest bit off
>course means you can miss your destination by _miles_.
>
>>What I really liked was the size of the cities, especially compared to 
>>Skyrim. Solitude is supposed to be the capital of Skyrim province but it 
>>is pitifully small. I remember the cities in Daggerfall being ten times 
>>that size in some cases. Granted, there was a lot of repetition in their 
>>layout but at least they *felt* like cities.
>
>
>Hell some of the _villages_ in Daggerfall were bigger than Solitude.
>
>That's the other problem with Skyrim, you have these capital cities and
>a few farms here and there, but no real villages, no sense that this
>country could actually grow enough food to feed itself - there just
>don't seem to be enough farms or peasants around to do the job.
>Or pay for those THOUSANDS of tombs scattered around the tiny
>countryside.
>
>
>That's the thing, if you look at the Tamriel world map, the area covered
>by Skyrim is pretty much exactly the same as that covered in Daggerfall.
>
>Only while Daggerfall was something like 700,000 sq km, Skyrim is 20ish.
>
>Even Luxembourg isn't that small.
>
>Skyrim should have been a minimum of 5x larger, preferably 10x.
>That would have made it large enough to actually seem like a country
>(albeit still abnormally small for a country), but still small enough to
>walk places and not be bored silly.
>
>As it is Skyrim feels a whole lot like a 5yr old kid playing Wilderness
>Explorer in his backyard - even when he's on the top of the tallest
>mountain in the remotest wilderness, he's only seconds away from lunch
>when Mummy calls.

Yeah, but that's a problem almost every CRPG has had. The ones that
don't - "Daggerfall", "Darklands" and "Lords of Midnight" are the only
ones that come to mind - are the exceptions. Its a limitation of
technology and resources. It costs a lot - in memory, CPU, developer
time - to create huge worlds, especially these days when we expect so
much detail applied to every little thing. And while there may be
added realism to gigantic worlds, it rarely adds much to the gameplay.
Even the aforementioned exceptions took shortcuts by using generic
templates to create all the extraneous villages and dungeons, and not
always to the game's benefit.

Now, obviously in a perfect world we'd have a game with a landscape
the size of Daggerfall and the overwhelming detail of Skyrim and
hopefully one day we'll achieve that. But given the choice between the
two, I prefer Skyrim's methodology; the world map might be
claustrophobic but at least I am assured of finding something
interesting every five minutes or so. Daggerfall felt far too
mechanical in comparison; it wasn't fun. 

Spalls Hurgenson <spallsh...@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>On Thu, 01 Aug 2013 11:03:31 -0400, Xocyll <Xoc...@kingston.net>
>wrote:
>
>>Markus Sch�fer <markus....@rub.de> looked up from reading the
>>entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
>>say:
>>
>>>Am 01/08/2013 02:19, schrieb Xocyll:
>>>
>>>> I rather like the way they did it in Skyrim - walk there to "discover"
>>>> the city, thereafter you can fast travel there if you wish (assuming you
>>>> aren't encumbered.)   I just wish the actual landscape of Skyrim was at
>>>> least a dozen times larger, not the province stuffed in a large backyard
>>>> they implemented.
>>>
>>>My feelings exactly. I think Skyrim got the basics right but the feeling 
>>>of vast, open landscapes breaks down especially once you have explored a 
>>>bit and notice that many places are not separated by actual distance but 
>>>by carefully placed obstacles.
>>>
>>>It's obvious that it wouldn't be much fun having to walk miles and miles 
>>>for every quest. But I believe there must be some kind of compromise 
>>>between an extreme like WoW (and LotR it seems) where you can just 
>>>choose instances like counterstrike maps, and a realistic landscape that 
>>>forces you to walk for hours.
>>>
>>>> Daggerfall I had it down to a science - I'd play the mage guild up until
>>>> I had access to the guild teleporter, plant a mark in front of him (that
>>>> I could teleport to,)  get a mission, recall to him, have him teleport
>>>> me to the mission, do mission, recall to him, have him teleport me tot
>>>> he city/town/whatever where the mission giver was, hand in mission.
>>>> I sometimes cleared out multiple dungeons all over the play area all in
>>>> a single day.
>>>
>>>Ah, I remember Daggerfall and its huge landmass. It's a shame that the 
>>>wilderness was so monotonous and flat that the only relevant aspect of 
>>>navigation was choosing a heading and going straight for the dungeon 
>>>entrance *g*
>>
>>I did run overland a few times due to being a vampire and unable to use
>>any kind of fast travel or wait during daylight.  (I had health regen
>>items that kept me alive, but the game wouldn't recognize them and let
>>me fast travel.)   
>>
>>Technically this is still a problem in Skyrim because the devs were lazy
>>shits in how they calculate damage and fast travel.
>>[Sunlight does X damage per second, items provide Z health regen per
>>second where Z = X.1. Player would take no real damage no matter how
>>long the trip.
>>Except they implemented it as - trip took Y seconds, player takes (X *
>>Y) damage in one lump amount, and dies instantly.  Where they should
>>have done player takes ((X-Z) * Y) damage, which would have been zero.]
>>
>>
>>I got lost more than once going overland - even the tiniest bit off
>>course means you can miss your destination by _miles_.
>>
>>>What I really liked was the size of the cities, especially compared to 
>>>Skyrim. Solitude is supposed to be the capital of Skyrim province but it 
>>>is pitifully small. I remember the cities in Daggerfall being ten times 
>>>that size in some cases. Granted, there was a lot of repetition in their 
>>>layout but at least they *felt* like cities.
>>
>>
>>Hell some of the _villages_ in Daggerfall were bigger than Solitude.
>>
>>That's the other problem with Skyrim, you have these capital cities and
>>a few farms here and there, but no real villages, no sense that this
>>country could actually grow enough food to feed itself - there just
>>don't seem to be enough farms or peasants around to do the job.
>>Or pay for those THOUSANDS of tombs scattered around the tiny
>>countryside.
>>
>>
>>That's the thing, if you look at the Tamriel world map, the area covered
>>by Skyrim is pretty much exactly the same as that covered in Daggerfall.
>>
>>Only while Daggerfall was something like 700,000 sq km, Skyrim is 20ish.
>>
>>Even Luxembourg isn't that small.
>>
>>Skyrim should have been a minimum of 5x larger, preferably 10x.
>>That would have made it large enough to actually seem like a country
>>(albeit still abnormally small for a country), but still small enough to
>>walk places and not be bored silly.
>>
>>As it is Skyrim feels a whole lot like a 5yr old kid playing Wilderness
>>Explorer in his backyard - even when he's on the top of the tallest
>>mountain in the remotest wilderness, he's only seconds away from lunch
>>when Mummy calls.
>
>Yeah, but that's a problem almost every CRPG has had. The ones that
>don't - "Daggerfall", "Darklands" and "Lords of Midnight" are the only
>ones that come to mind - are the exceptions. Its a limitation of
>technology and resources. It costs a lot - in memory, CPU, developer
>time - to create huge worlds, especially these days when we expect so
>much detail applied to every little thing. And while there may be
>added realism to gigantic worlds, it rarely adds much to the gameplay.
>Even the aforementioned exceptions took shortcuts by using generic
>templates to create all the extraneous villages and dungeons, and not
>always to the game's benefit.

You break the world into parts - Skyrim would be dead easy to have done
this with all the mountains - simply make each area that's not visible
from the others a separate zone and thus NOT loaded into memory.

That or split into cells, much as Morrowind did.

>Now, obviously in a perfect world we'd have a game with a landscape
>the size of Daggerfall and the overwhelming detail of Skyrim and
>hopefully one day we'll achieve that. But given the choice between the
>two, I prefer Skyrim's methodology; the world map might be
>claustrophobic but at least I am assured of finding something
>interesting every five minutes or so. Daggerfall felt far too
>mechanical in comparison; it wasn't fun. 

I'm the opposite;  Daggerfall felt like a world, Skyrim feels like a
set.   
It's just too small to be a country, hell it's too small to be a county.
The entire map would fit into a corner of Disney World.

If it was 5x the size, it would still be easily walkable, and it
wouldn't have been that much more work doing the graphics (since a great
deal is just snow covered wilderness) but would have been large enough
to at least _possibly_ feel country sized.

That entire country would fit a couple times over in the distance
between my house and the High School I went to - that's not a scale I
can take seriously as a _country_.   No I don't live out in the boonies
either.

Xocyll

On Thu, 01 Aug 2013 10:13:34 +0200, Markus Sch�fer
<markus....@rub.de> wrote:

>It's obvious that it wouldn't be much fun having to walk miles and miles 
>for every quest. But I believe there must be some kind of compromise 
>between an extreme like WoW (and LotR it seems) where you can just 
>choose instances like counterstrike maps, and a realistic landscape that 
>forces you to walk for hours.

I agree with you in regards to the need for compromise. I always
believed that the 'get there once on foot, then fast travel in the
future' was the best compromise.

On Thu, 01 Aug 2013 10:13:34 +0200, Markus Sch�fer
<markus....@rub.de> wrote:

>It's obvious that it wouldn't be much fun having to walk miles and miles 
>for every quest. But I believe there must be some kind of compromise 
>between an extreme like WoW (and LotR it seems) where you can just 
>choose instances like counterstrike maps, and a realistic landscape that 
>forces you to walk for hours.

Another thing I want to add is I've noticed that flying mounts tend to
take most of the  'meaning' (for lack of a better word) out of
traveling and seeing the world. The game environment\world becomes
less important when you can just fly over everything and ignore it
all.

In article <b5sdva...@mid.dfncis.de>, markus....@rub.de says...

> I've noticed that in their game-related communication WoW players only 
> refer to Instances as places (in a spatial sense) in the very beginning 
> of the game, usually when they first start seriously leveling a 
> character. Afterwards, Instances seem to rapidly lose their meaning as 
> parts of the geography of the world. They are increasingly treated as 
> acts which are performed repeatedly in the service of improving the 
> character, helping the guild etc.

I'm not sure you can infer such a disjunction from vocabulary.

Somebody might go to "do Kara" but if contacted while doing it they 
might well say they are "in Kara".

The increased use of direct teleportation probably does erode the 
geographic awareness to some extent.  But I don't know if you can safely 
confound the geographical awareness of the internal map of a place with 
the geographical awareness of where the place stands in relation to 
outside entities.

Somebody who takes the train to a city every day may know the city well 
and consider it a place, and yet be quite lacking in awareness of the 
geographical features he would see if he came by road, by air, or by 
sea.  It's not unique to instances in games.

- Gerry Quinn

In article <b5ujlg...@mid.dfncis.de>, markus....@rub.de says...
> Am 01/08/2013 02:19, schrieb Xocyll:
> 
> > I rather like the way they did it in Skyrim - walk there to "discover"
> > the city, thereafter you can fast travel there if you wish (assuming you
> > aren't encumbered.)   I just wish the actual landscape of Skyrim was at
> > least a dozen times larger, not the province stuffed in a large backyard
> > they implemented.
> 
> My feelings exactly. I think Skyrim got the basics right but the feeling 
> of vast, open landscapes breaks down especially once you have explored a 
> bit and notice that many places are not separated by actual distance but 
> by carefully placed obstacles.
> 
> It's obvious that it wouldn't be much fun having to walk miles and miles 
> for every quest. But I believe there must be some kind of compromise 
> between an extreme like WoW (and LotR it seems) where you can just 
> choose instances like counterstrike maps, and a realistic landscape that 
> forces you to walk for hours.
> 
> > Daggerfall I had it down to a science - I'd play the mage guild up until
> > I had access to the guild teleporter, plant a mark in front of him (that
> > I could teleport to,)  get a mission, recall to him, have him teleport
> > me to the mission, do mission, recall to him, have him teleport me tot
> > he city/town/whatever where the mission giver was, hand in mission.
> > I sometimes cleared out multiple dungeons all over the play area all in
> > a single day.

I thought Morrowind got it right - you couldn't fast-travel at will and 
you could wander around and get lost.  It felt real.

- Gerry Quinn

Gerry Quinn <ger...@gmail.com> looked up from reading the entrails of
the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs say:

>In article <b5sdva...@mid.dfncis.de>, markus....@rub.de says...
>
>> I've noticed that in their game-related communication WoW players only 
>> refer to Instances as places (in a spatial sense) in the very beginning 
>> of the game, usually when they first start seriously leveling a 
>> character. Afterwards, Instances seem to rapidly lose their meaning as 
>> parts of the geography of the world. They are increasingly treated as 
>> acts which are performed repeatedly in the service of improving the 
>> character, helping the guild etc.
>
>I'm not sure you can infer such a disjunction from vocabulary.
>
>Somebody might go to "do Kara" but if contacted while doing it they 
>might well say they are "in Kara".

Having just watched the entire run of Battlestar Galactica on dvd, this
sentence brought an entirely different meaning to mind.

Xocyll

In article <91osv8lf2o1iec835...@4ax.com>, 
Xoc...@kingston.net says...
> Gerry Quinn <ger...@gmail.com> looked up from reading the entrails of

> >Somebody might go to "do Kara" but if contacted while doing it they 
> >might well say they are "in Kara".
> 
> Having just watched the entire run of Battlestar Galactica on dvd, this
> sentence brought an entirely different meaning to mind.

Good point - though the philosophical issues remain the same.

"To be is to do" - Socrates
"To do is to be" - Sartre
"Do be do be doo" - Sinatra

What happens in Thrace stays in Thrace.

- Gerry Quinn