Teras Kasi Archive
Thread: Fear & Loathing The Community-SOE Relationship, or My Cancellation Quandry
Being a 99 years old and having 45 grandchildren has nothing do with playing a game with a mix/maxer mindset. There are mix/maxer folks who are not d00ds, but there are no d00ds who are not min/maxers - its like saying there are no apples that are apples. Also, it was frustrating, because by getting all overly-defensive it seems like you missed the main point.
All any outside observer need do is come in and spend a day or two in this forum to see that this profession is one of a a few that seems to attract a particlar kind of player - the infmaous min/maxer. Min/maxer doesn't need to be a slam - its another way of describing the achiver/conqueror for any of you that ever took the "what kind of gamer are you?" test... now within that category are sub-categories -- of course not every person who plays TK fits the role of a "lame" person. But most of not all of your lamer doods are going to be found in this basic category. And this makes pretty reasonable sense. It would be pretty hard to have a dood tailor -- "OMG MY CLOTHES OWNZ J00 U R TEH SUC HAHAHAHAH LOL!!!!11!!!!!1111" It just doesn't happen much.
So out of curiosity Blackdahlia, you a TK master yet? Do you have any non-combat releated skills that don't directly personally benefit you in combat? (ie. saying you are a master medic doesn't count?) Done anything to be involved and take a role in any player community? You very well might, but if you do, I have a very strong belief that you would represent the minority.
I can almost guaruntee you that statistically speaking, a greater number of TKs are min/max "conquest" type players (nothing wrong with that in and of itself) and a minority or otherwise. Of those min/max types, a higher perctage are your "d00d" types. You, I believe, would be in the minority.
The thing that really bugs me is that this was the point that should have been grasped: I can see very clearly how min/maxers (not using that term as a slam, I am using it to describe the conquest/acheiver type gamer) would not be happy in this game -- if those are your goals, this game FAILS to do justice to those goals. However, my conjecture is that for a socializer kind of a person -- socializer by the way doesn't mean I live my social life in the game, it means that I my gameplay enjoyment centers around community things and livability kinds of content, not how many red conning monsters I can or can't gank -- then I would agrue that the game probably looks pretty **edit** good to them, because there really is a lot for that type of gamer.
And then, yes I did make, and stand by, the apparently controverisal claim that classes in the game that do tend to attract a higher percentage of the min/max crowd do also tend to attract a higher level of the d00dish juevenile attitude as well.
I cancelled my account tonight as well.
I am sorry, but you do not make such enormous sweeping changes to so many professions without showing the apparent lack of thought that went into them. Think about this guys - the classes aren't even balanced in PvE right now!And after they finish that PvP will is gonna be so much further off it's not even funny. That's why it's called balance, devs... You touch one thing and everything changes. You cannot possibly expect to fix anything with your sweeping changes. Go take a look at the other profession forums to see how unfinished every profession is.
I realize MMOs are designed by there very nature to be a timesink. They don't want you to progress fast get bored and cancel you account.I don't mind my progression being slowed.
Here is my problem. I am a master TKA. There is no sense in killing anything else. God knows I killed enough for the pathetic rewards my profession provided. In addition killing creatures is not rewarded in anyway. After master it becomes a complete and utter waste of time. So what do I do? Amass credits? Why? They are practially useless.Too easy to attain. Maybe I will PvP. Why? It is 100% broken and useless. It will reamin broken forever.The problem is with themultiple profession design. Itcan never be balanced. What's more the devs have already made it clear they don't really care about balance. Unfortunately that doesn't sit well with players who work hard on a character only to realize they didn't select the perfect PvP profession combo (which will undoubtedly emerge). So now the character they worked so hard on feels very weak to them. That is not rewarding gameplay. It is only the rewards that keep players playing.
Hmm.. maybe I will cancel my account.
Yes, I will go back and play that other game with well balanced, well thought out, structured classes.
-- So disappointing.. Such high hopes..
Thank you for a well-reasoned, mature post. Something that gets rarer and rarer in these here parts.
I only wish I could say that it would make a difference, ya know? I am having a great time with this game (I am working towards TKA). They nerfed the profession before I even got there, and I am the kind of person they were counting on. I can't be pissed for losing things I never had. But I will tell you this, once master has been reached, and my character is not good enough to engage in battle, I will surely be cancelling my subscription.
Thanks again for the great post, and good luck in your gaming.
*BUMP*
Furthermore Selwynn,
Selwynn wrote:
There are mix/maxer folks who are not d00ds, but there are no d00ds who are not min/maxers
Wow! Do you have some sort of degree in the human psyche? If not then **edit**. This is simply more of your speculative, stereotypical dribble.
of course not every person who plays TK fits the role of a "lame" person. But most of not all of your lamer doods are going to be found in this basic category.
Please see above response to unsubstantiated dribble. I would also like to thank you for that daily affirmation that I am in fact not 'lame'.
I can almost guaruntee you that statistically speaking
Haha! Ok now it's getting deep in here. Just tell me, where are these statistics regarding TK's going to come from? Since you are almost willing to give your personal guarantee on them I have no doubt whatsoever that you will be offering up proof of them.
socializer by the way doesn't mean I live my social life in the game
Sorry, but . . . YES IT DOES!
Selwyn I honestly find your socializer theory a bit hard to swallow. I admire the fact that in the majority of your posts you have the attitude of trying to make the best out of what you have, and to looking on the bright side of things no matter how dim, without coming off as a total kiss ass dev worshipping fanboi. This is something rare in the online gaming world. Your theory sounds nice, and sure SWG has plenty of nice social aspects, but not really any more than any other MMORPG, social people will be social given the opportunity, it doesn't require the intervention of game developers to make it so. I found Everquest to be the most social game I ever played *Shrug*. The forced grouping required you to maintain a fairly good social image as well as being a good player in order to have a constant source of phat lewts and exps. Eventually you could rise above this by joining an "uber" guild and limiting your socialization to your "elite" new group of friends, however I found plenty of people to socialize with to make my downtime,lfg time,etc interesting.
This game really doesn't appeal to any one style of gamer anymore. The whole casual gamer appeal is BS in every game that is not twitch based. If this game had no skills and everyone started out as whatever they wanted so that there was no means of differentiating one character from the other aside from their choices at the character select screen, then yes this game could appeal to "casual gamers". If there is any sort of levelling involved in game play, then there is no way to "reward" casual gamers for their time. Any sort of online game especially one that plans to make it's primary income off of subscriptions, will have to have timesinks for the sake of keeping their playerbase. This will always be to the disfavor of the casual gamer.
This game doesn't have the content to appeal to the powergamer crowd, or even most of the longer playing self proclaimed "casual" gamers. Eventually everyone masters their class, what to do then? PvP? This doesn't appeal to the majority of the gaming community. Or at best most of the ones who do choose to PvP find it a mildly amusing pass time. I know the whole "Reroll your character as blah blah" sounds great on paper, but basically it has no "fun potential" in my eyes.
Why would I destroy something I have put time and effort into, to try something new? I'd just reroll on a diff server or buy a third copy of the game for myself. I have a full time job, I could give a rats ass if I am paying 15 30 or 200$ a month on this game as long as I am entertained. Money serves no purpose other than to sustain me and pay for my entertainment. You will not hear me bitching about how I pay good money to play this game. It isn't good money, 15$ is nothing. If I am amused for 10 minutes a month I got my 15$ worth.
So what to do? Build a house? Might be interesting if it wasn't simply buying a house from someone and selecting a spot to drop it. Sure I could level up an architect and get the "satisfaction" of building it myself, but that really isn't interesting considering I am a master doc, and am working on a chef atm, if you have played one crafting class you have played them all in terms of what it actually entails.
You can help out new players, I do this, when I see people in need of travel cash, or heals, even though I am a master doctor and one of my wound packs would tend to heal their wounds 10X over I still heal now and again. Or I go hang out in the cantina and heal people and just babble aimlessly about what's going on in the world. This is fun for a bit, but I can get the same from IRC or any of the 1000000 chat services around the net.
This leaves exploring new places, I have been to most of the places on the various planets, and I used to enjoy trying killing new mobs that I had never seen before just for the challenge factor, however with recent changes to my class I don't really feel comfortable with my ability to do so on my own. And what group wants a TKA now? We are now the most useless combat class in the game. Before we at least could provide some degree of crowdcontrol and damage reduction or even put out some significant damage, but now all of these things have been reduced significantly. We still do okay damage but less than the majority of the other classes. Throw in the fact that now that we cannot maintain a reasonable ammount of knockdown power to keep mobs down, we are also the first to die, continuously, whereas a group of marksman could keep a single mob pinned for days without taking damage. Who wants to keep resing a TKA who is adding very little to the group?
This leads me to my very biggest pet peeve and bitch, this nerf was what is generally referred to as a "stealth" nerf. There was no word in the patch notes, nothing was admitted by the devs. No one ever said if it was intentional, or a by-product of something else being changed. It was never really admitted that it was an issue, only that "it was being looked into". Today Holo posted some crap "proposals" on how to resolve this issue that still has not been admitted to be intentional or not. In this hehinted that nothing would be done to resolve our concerns regarding knockdown. Still not saying that this was something intentional. To me this is just blatantly rude. In this same post he also listed some proposed changes to VK's he labeled the decrease in health ham cost as something "better" but then proceded to label the proposed increases to mind and action as simply being "Different" and not worse. Does he feel that we are too stupid to do math? He at least pointed out what was worse in the t21 nerf thread. Again I find this to be rather insulting.
These are just tiny things that bug me.... I am at work and keep getting interrupted so I doubt any of this post made sense... But when you spend that much type typing, you just have to submit the post anyway : P
jil~
"This game really doesn't appeal to any one style of gamer anymore. The whole casual gamer appeal is BS in every game that is not twitch based. If this game had no skills and everyone started out as whatever they wanted so that there was no means of differentiating one character from the other aside from their choices at the character select screen, then yes this game could appeal to "casual gamers". If there is any sort of levelling involved in game play, then there is no way to "reward" casual gamers for their time. Any sort of online game especially one that plans to make it's primary income off of subscriptions, will have to have timesinks for the sake of keeping their playerbase. This will always be to the disfavor of the casual gamer.
This game doesn't have the content to appeal to the powergamer crowd, or even most of the longer playing self proclaimed "casual" gamers. Eventually everyone masters their class, what to do then? PvP? This doesn't appeal to the majority of the gaming community. Or at best most of the ones who do choose to PvP find it a mildly amusing pass time. I know the whole "Reroll your character as blah blah" sounds great on paper, but basically it has no "fun potential" in my eyes. "
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Everything you're saying sounds like somone thinking very one dimensionally to me, but I guess I could be wrong. I mean, it sounds like you're thinking about everything in terms of what achieving. Would it shock you to think that there are some people who may by choice never become a "master" of anything but dabble in a little bit of everything for no other reason than because its fun. Not eveyone judges their "success" in the game, but getting the "master" level. Now don't misunderstand, I agree with you that fact that subscription based games inherantly promote timsinks is a disadvantage. I definately agree with that. But you didn't comment on anything I mentioned in my post about the things that mattered to me that this game does well -- the ability to dance and play music as an intertainer with all kinds of instruments and entertainment options, the ability to customize almost anything about the look of your character, the ability to play around with all kinds of different clothes, the ability to know just own a house but own one of many different styles, put them together in a communtiy, the upcoming player cities with urban planners and politician professions, the robust crafting model (some might disagree, but I love surveying and harvesting resources), the very great player ecnomoy with shops and vendors and the bazzar. I could go on and on... These are the things that make the game have lasting value to me. NOT being able to solo anything in the game.
All of these things are things that the min/maxer never talks about and doesn't care about. And that's NOT wrong. I'm not saying it is - that's fine if a person doesn't care about any of those things. But if they don't then yeah, they may not end up being real happy in this game, because SOE has spent more time devoted to the socializer/explorer type (again using categories from the "what kind of gamer are you" profile) than it has for the achiever/conqueror type. And that makes a lot of achievers upset. And I accept that. But at the same time, its making a lot of socializers very happy. And its just a question of what kind of game you want to play. And for some it may in fact be the decision to find something else.
You see this is a combat class. As are half of the other professions. I will give you that combat attracts min/maxers. It does not generally attract RPers and crafters like you. "
I couldn't agree more. I am definately in the minority in THIS class. In fact... didn't I say in my post that I was probably in the minority not coming to TK as a min/maxer? Well if not, that was in fact my point.
In the grand scheme of the overall game, I think min/maxers are in the minority OR if they are currently not, they soon will be because THIS GAME IS NOT CATERING TO THEM! Does anyone disagree with that? This is all that I am saying. The game isn't catering to people who would want to feel powerful and strong as a Teras Kasi. Anyone disagreeing with that? Ok then, so ease off the high ground everyone jumping down my throat..
All I'm saying is that there is a whole different group of people that the game DOES cater too, and ultimately while SOE may be trying to do both, it is only going to end up doing one very well. So I could understand why many of you would want to leave the game or be unhappy. This is not turning out to be a very good game for the achiever types. But it is turning out to be at leasts a pretty good game for the social/explorer/crafter types.
Anyone disagree with anything I said right there? Because I would think we would all be in pretty close agreement on that.
Good GOD Selwynn, what is your problem ???? How dare you call just about everyone on this forum a "d00d". For someone that casually plays this class, you sure do have alot to say. Please go post on the Artisan forum or something. Oh, and thank you for throwing your negativity in a perfect post.
I think I can dig one up...
Here is information on The Bartle Test:
http:// www. andreasen.org/bartle/
And here is a link to the test itself:
http:/ /www. andreasen.org/bartle/test.cgi
I'll probably post this as a separate topic.
Annnnnnnd I definately did not do that. I did not say EVERYONE on this forum is a "dood." In about three different posts I definately did not do that. In fact, I specifically clarified that that was not at all what I was saying. I said very plainly that the term "mix/maxer" was not meant perjoratively, but rather meant symbolically to represent the achiver/conqueror kinds of game players. Not good, not bad, just different. THEN I said that within that group, are all your doods.
Not all min/maxe folks are doods, but ALL doods are min/max folks. It's part of the definition of being a dood hehe. You can't have a dood Chef "my food ownz joo!!" hehehe. So read whatever you want, its like I think its almost deliberate the frequency at which people try to make it as though I'm saying things I'm not saying. Maybe if I held your hand or you know... used really small words...
"Not all min/maxe folks are doods, but ALL doods are min/max folks. It's part of the definition of being a dood hehe"
What a limited, sterile view of your fellow gamers. I disagree.
"So read whatever you want, its like I think its almost deliberate the frequency at which people try to make it as though I'm saying things I'm not saying. Maybe if I held your hand or you know... used really small words..."
Maybe if you stopped using such a self-serving, sanctimonious, "holier-than-thou" tone, people wouldn't have a 'problem' with you Selwynn. The quote above is amazing: at the beginning of the passage, you upbraid the guy for 'attacking' you, then you go on to insult him with subtle "I'm smarter than you" insinuations.
You reap what you sew.
"So read whatever you want, its like I think its almost deliberate the frequency at which people try to make it as though I'm saying things I'm not saying. Maybe if I held your hand or you know... used really small words"
Don't insult my intelligence you insulting pos....I understand your post just fine and honestly I think "most" of them are total BS. I just never felt the urge to reply until now. YES, the wording of your post suggested that the majority of everyone that posts on this forum is a "d00d". Just because some people choose to exclusively play the TKA class and voice their opinions when something negative happens to their class, does not make them a "d00d" or a "min/maxer" (btw, w t f is a "min/maxer" anyways??). You know, your first post on this thread was awesome. Why didn't you just leave it at that ??? Instead, you had to open your hole again and completely hi-jack and excellent post.
I was being subtle? I thought it was pretty overt, myself.
The funny thing is that you think I actually care about your judgements of me. I particular chuckle at folks like Gutshot has he tries to give his pseudo insightful lessons on humanity, and his psycho analysis of my posts. The bottom line is, agree with me, or don't. Like the way I say things, or don't. Apprecaite my opinion, or don't.
I.
Don't.
Care.
For those of you that know me in the game or otherwise, you know I'm a decent person -- but I'm not here on these boards for people to "like" me. I'm not here to be diskliked either, the point is its totally irrelevant. If it seems as though I am subtley saying "I'm smarter than you," rest assured that is not my intention. My intention is to very frankly state, so that there be no possibility of ambiguity, that I am smarter than you.
What I am serious about is this: I dont look to you for your approval, my self esteem doesn't come from whether a bunch of you don't "like" my posts or not. I couldn't care less about that. If I disagree with you, I'm going to say so. If I agree, I'm going to say so. And when you post something against me, there's a good chance I'm going ot respond. So one of the first ways you could see a lot less posts from me is to get off my back.
I'd also like to point out that most of you have taken to ad hominem attacks in response to me as your single method of argumentation. For those of you with large word fear, that means "personal insults" as your way of arguing against someone's points. So much of your insistance that I attack others is really irrelivant to me unless you're ready to raise the bar. If you want to argue with me, let's agrue about the issues. I don't really care if you don't like the way I word things, but I will care very much if you can convince me that your argument is the right one. I care very much about discussing the issues. If you can keep it issue oriented, then I'll TRY to do the same