Sometimes you meet interesting new people and have a great time, but quite often you end up on the ground declaring, “I swear to God, I will never do this again.” Until next week, when optimism and amnesia set in and you keep slamming your hand in that car door.
: Zubon
Terra Nova has a good discussion about in-game superstition and urban legends. When confronted by random behavior and rare events, people frequently make up explanations, some of which even sound plausible.
Funny thing is, occasionally they are true. Asheron’s Call really did have a Wi Flag based on character names. In the original A Tale in the Desert, wine flavors were based on the number of grapes that had been crushed in a barrel. In Kingdom of Loathing, you used to be able to change your odds of getting encounters by logging out and back in. Games have all sorts of oddities, which is why a seemingly harmless tweak can cause bugs throughout the game. You are in a non-linear feedback system where quasi-random systems can be based on arbitrary variables.
: Zubon
Many people quit at max level and walk away. I have seen much discussion about a lack of end game content, unwillingness to start the treadmill over, lack of direction without the treadmill, and a few others, but there is one explanation I have heard rarely if ever: people get sick of the treadmill well before 50, but tough it out to “finish the game” before they quit.
Before housecleaning, I would look at our CoH SG and see level 47-49 characters who just walked away one day. “How can you get that close,” I wondered, “and just let it go?” Then I remembered, wait, I did exactly the same thing in Dark Age of Camelot. I quit a few levels shy of the level cap, and I would not have gotten that far if my class were not in demand AFK/borrowed dual box (Earth Theurgist with bladeturn chant). It is easy to get sick of the level grind, and many people have quit in their minds but just want to “beat it,” to say that they did (to themselves, mostly).
For a variant perspective, consider studies in the timing of death. People really do hold on for that birthday, new year, grandson’s graduation, or change in inheritance laws (check Ig Nobel prizes for that last one; it actually is solid research). Yea, the soul-crushing agony of the level grind unto death.
: Zubon
One of the more amusing ways to create a disincentive for goldfarmers, bots, and other fun things that come with real money transfers is to have unrestricted PvP (or nearly so). In EVE Online, for example, there are channels devoted to hunting down gold sellers and AFK miners, and good luck getting involved in the actual game part if half the server has you on its hit list as an eBay twink. If someone can kill you and take your stuff, you are less likely to buy stuff.
In Asheron’s Call, there is the classic story of a Darktide (PvP server) character sold on eBay, advertised as having three Mattekar Robes (are those still worth anything?). Let’s call him Bob. Bob told his friends he was selling the character and where he last logged off. Not long after the sale, “Your friend Bob has logged on.” While new Bob was getting his bearings, old Bob’s friend was traveling through portal space. Old Bob’s friend liked his new robe. Old Bob’s friends also knew which lifestone Bob used. Rough start on the new server, new Bob.
If that story is just an urban legend, please don’t disillusion me.
: Zubon
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: Zubon
[City of Heroes] The Platonic ideal of the grind has nearly been perfected: once a minute, you click on a door; enemies run out; you beat them up; repeat until you get a badge.
Trick or treating is cute, with some nice little rewards, and it is fun … for a while. I respect the direct implementation of “push the button to get a pellet.”
Yes.
Without them, the fish just flop around on the floor, and that’s cruel.
: Zubon
Believed to be a first, a Senator has used her promotion of video game censorship in a television ad explaining why she should be re-elected. This will allow the junior Senator from New York to rejoin her colleagues in their efforts to tax virtual transactions.
: Zubon
David Noonan comments:
That’s the curse of being a game designer—you see so many versions of things that sometimes you can’t remember which things actually see print, in which books, and under which names. If a game designer answers a rules question of the top of his or her head, be a little suspicious. Those heads are crammed with previous versions, playtest versions, and Versions That Should Not Be.
This makes sense to me. At work, once a project is inexorably out of my hands, I sometimes flush it from my mind so that I do not worry about what changes six people down the line are going to make; if I am asked for input later, I can recycle those synapses. Other times, I am the mental archivist who explains that we did that project two years ago under another name, or we changed it half-way through and they are thinking of the old version, or we have yet update the documentation to reflect reality, or…
When you hear a dev make an off-hand comment, he may be thinking of any version of the game starting in pre-beta up through things on internal test, planned for the future, or designed and then scrapped. They may have a different internal name for whatever it is or use some hodgepodge of technical meanings. Really, they are trying to give you the right answer, but you may want to double-check in a more structured environment.
: Zubon