Re: I didn't leave my favorite game series, my favorite game series left me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kekvit Irae
1. I would rather have heavy enforcement than regulation. Log onto any server in WoW and take a stroll through either Stormwind or Orgrimmar. My BadBoy anti-spam addon blocked maybe one spam message every 30 minutes or so, on peak hours. Compare this with any Free To Play Korean MMO (of which I have experienced a few myself), and you'll get completely BOMBARDED with messages in all chat channels with advertisements of gold selling. And when I say bombarded, I mean several messages per second. I'm not kidding about this, I've played FTP games that had this. I like my immersion in a game, thank you very much.
2. Regulation will directly support
humanitarian crimes.
3. Gold and item selling (both of which are regulated in D3) are based on grinding, not skill. I wholeheartedly support Blizzard's decision to have the Mod Marketplace in StarCraft II as a way for modders to gain revenue for their creations, as modding in the game is a bit more than just point and click; it requires skill, patience, and a crapload of balancing to create something enjoyable enough that people will want to play it. Furthermore, SC2 mods are creations by the players themselves, whereas the Diablo III marketplace will list ONLY Blizzard assets that anyone can get, no skill required.
4. It will be eBay all over again. You work hard enough to find that rare Legendary Winged Gun Mace Sword Thingy of Lord Mudkips, so you decide to list it on the marketplace for a fair price. Then some jerk comes along and lists the very same item for a penny less. Then someone else sells their sword for a penny less than him. It eventually snowballs what would have been a decent economy into a massive deflation of value across the board. Anyone who has played WoW will know the horrors of trying to play the auction house without having a PhD in Microeconomics.
1. How do you know that regulation = spam everywhere? If it is regulated they could very well just set rules limiting gold farmers to trade channel (idk how diablo works, never played it myself) at the risk of being enforced while other gold farmers continue to skate by. Then gold farmers wont over step their boundaries because they don't want to be at a disadvantage. Judging from your post about the vocal minority getting what they want in WoW I am sure that when people complain to Blizzard in any of their games (except SC2), they get the oil for their squeeky wheel.
2. You say that as if Blizzard's hands have blood on them. If someone wanted to make a legit gold farming operation that wasn't horribly run, now they can make a living. Just because the Chinese have set the standard on how to make gold farming as profitable as possible doesn't mean that Blizzard is suddenly a monster for realizing that they wont. go. away. ever.
3. I agree but this is the new business model. This is how companies want to get profits now. Blizzard is allowing people to play to level 20 for free. Why? Because the new business model is unlock every thing with real cash, microtransactions that are taxed upon etc... Call of Duty has their "elite" pay system for lots of stats to tell you that you are great with the FAMAS. This is just how things are now. Video games have now been more mainstream than ever. And because of old console video games dont require people to upgrade their PC every 2-3 years. So now the entry barrier for PC gaming is lower than ever and guess what? The masses never want anything good. They want grinding because people don't like putting in effort to gain skill at a game. When a forum gets too big, the comments become closer to YouTube quality. This is how it works and always has been when you transition from a smaller niche of consumers to casuals. I don't care for it, but you can't fight it.
4. I don't see the point here. The pride is in acquiring the item, not in the reward of selling it. The journey is what is truly enjoyable if we are going to get purist here about our video games. If the item doesn't sell for a lot, then it doesn't sell for a lot. Markets are a pain, just like in RL.
Re: I didn't leave my favorite game series, my favorite game series left me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
lars573
Here's a secret about Morrowind. It had level scaling too. Just the least heavy handed of any ES game. So just like in Oblivion you could walk into none quest areas that were full of level keyed critters/undead/bandits. And given how unstable the game was, and my penchant for getting absorbed into playing and not saving. Means in sand box games, I don't go anywhere the game doesn't tell me. That sort of exploring leads to broken controllers. From being fired into the wall/toybox repeatedly. I've went through 2 original Xbox controllers like that. And I can't afford the same with 360 controllers. I nearly broke a controller after dying in an Oblvion gate 8 times. Thankfully it landed on the mailer box for DCUC Swamp Thing, or it might have broke. And the hero of Kvatch has 9 gods looking out for you.
You could argue that fate had an interest in the Hero of Kvatch, but they had no direct intervention from the gods. The Nine Divines are not known to communicate with mortals, with the Neravarine being the prime exception. You do remember Wolf, right??
Quote:
Originally Posted by
lars573
Cyrodill is what half the size of Vvardenfell? The scale is different, ofcourse there's more stuff in Vivec. Your making a VERY bad comparison. Which with Vvardenfell being completely destoryed by the ministry of truth crashing into the city and causing red mountain to obliterate the entire island, if it's ever seen again it will have similar scale to Imperial city.
How is it a bad comparison? Cyrodill is four times the size of Vvardenfell. They had plenty of space and free artistic reign to design the crossroads of the empire however they wanted and they apparently got tired. Where are the kingdom offices? Are the races in the Imperial City so well integrated that they totally lack any special sectors?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
lars573
Oh he probably was. But if you don't draw a weapon and just run along the road, they being in "combat mode" can't catch you. And eventually you'll meet the Imperial watch highway patrol and they'll take care of it.
A character with a speed of <85 outrunning a mountain lion... Interesting. I suppose its no more ridiculous than every single bandit wearing deadric gear. I remember when I had to either risk getting my flesh blown off by a wizard or dive into hole under a Dwemer ruin under a modern city being attacked by steam-punk lizards in order to get MOST of a daedric suit of armor. Thanks to Oblivion, I can simply walk 10 meters outside any city and see a pack of marauders wearing suits with matching weapons. I guess you could make the argument that, as the Oblivion crisis persisted, daedric gear became more common. However, I find the scale of this event depicted in the game to be implausible unless a massive demon train full of dark equipment got stranded somewhere and became a dangerous place of legend accessible only after the Oblivion crisis passed.
