I suppose I can be one of those guys, but instead of zen, it's more like I make up my own story...especially if it's humanoids in a game. I love grinding against humanoids. It's the only time I get to scream "Let's do the whole fucking village," if you get what I mean.
Inazuma wrote:
By the way, it was well worth it. I was the strongest magic user in the game and never saw anyone better than me.
justifies this:
Inazuma wrote: The process was incredibly tedious, boring and lonely.
I kept this up for 6 fucking months.
Why would you want to be the strongest magic user when you could be having fun instead?
At least for me, the better I get at a game, the more fun I have. Yeah, the boring search for the ultimate item was horrible but it wasn't bad enough to make me quit the game. I would listen to music or watch TV while I cleared the same 2 rooms over and over.
Once I finally found my Psycho Wand and became roughly 30% stronger than before, the game became much more fun for me. To work so hard at something and finally achieve your goals feels really good. Just because something is difficult to accomplish doesn't mean you should give up before you try. The first day I started playing that game I set a goal to become the very best magic user, and to the best of my knowledge, I was. I did come across 2 or 3 other players with the Psycho Wand but they lacked in other areas and weren't even close to the level I was at, equipment and skill-wise.
I guess these types of games just aren't made for me. I play for breadth more than depth. I like to experience lots of different games more than I like to get lost in one particular game. I would rather date my games than marry them.
Well, I can understand why some people enjoy MMOs. There is a social aspect to it, after all - and somehow, there are people who enjoy grinding for 95% of their time playing a game.
I usually drop an MMO once I get to around level 40-50. I've seen all the locations, leveling starts to slow down dramatically, drop rates get too low and every item gets too damn expensive. For most MMO makers, I suppose they think cranking it up this high will keep them playing, but it does the exact opposite for me.
The only MMO I've played for extended periods of time was Anima RO, a free unofficial version of Ragnarok Online. I played it mainly for these reasons:
1) The Exp Rate/Drop Rate was cranked up to 3x/5x. This made it so that leveling didn't become a grind until around level 85, and by that time you are so close to Reincarnation that you may as well go for the goal.
2) I was in the best guild on the server. We owned about three Emperium Castles, while most guilds were lucky to just own one. Aside from that, they were just great people to chat with and play with.
3) It was free to play. "Donating" money would get you access to certain items, but you could always just buy these items from the massive player-run market place with in-game currency.
The MMO I played the second most time was Shin Megami Tensei Imagine Online, and for many of the same reasons above - I was in a great guild and it was free to play. The inclusion of SMT concepts like Demon Fusion and Demon Summoning made it a lot more fun than other MMOs in my eyes. The only reason I stopped playing was because there was a lack of dungeons and places in general to go to. Of course, I did play it when it first came out, so that may have changed at this point.
But yeah, I hate paying for subscriptions on anything, and I hate games that rely on grinding to artificially inflate play time. So, usually, me and MMOs don't get along too well.
J T wrote:I don't understand why people pay for these. Why pay for the "privilege" to play the game you already paid for?
Now, I do buy digital download games, which some people worry will one day no longer be useable if, through some unlikely chain of events, Steam goes under and they don't provide a way to unlock your purchased games. I'll place my bets on Steam lasting for a good long while, but I can understand why people are cautious about joining the digital distribution revolution when there is no absolute gaurantee that you will be able to forever keep your games.
But with subscription based services, you can only play your game as long as you continue to pay for it and as long as the company continues to offer the "service".
Why do people voluntarily sign up for that? It must be a different kind of gamer than me. I play a little bit of a lot of games. I like to sample a lot of them, but only occassional do I get into a game long enough to complete it. Actually, I often don't play them for more than an hour or two before I'm onto the next game. I might come back to the game in another month or two if it was good. I can't imagine dropping change for every month I want to play a game.
So, who pays these subscriptions? Is it the type of person that devotes themselves to whatever their new game is? Is it just because I'm a collector that I don't see the appeal? I don't get it.
I've tried it the online experience + subscription and in the end, I have to agree with you, it's not worth it.
I've played Wow and Aion (recenlty) for a couple of months each, with friends leveling up with me, but at some point we all got bored and switched to non-online games. I do not like the repeatability and the absence of plot depth. And i understand there is no possible way to have a plot when you have thousands of heroes saving the world.
The only online game I can propose, that was actually good and didn't have subscription was Guildwars and I'm looking forward for Guildwars 2 (next year I think)
I must say that I can accept the subscription games on the following basis:
1)I don't pay for the game in the first place
2)Paying the monthly fees is at minimum, something like $5 a month
3)I don't mind paying $10 for a reasonable new expansion.
I find it absurd to pay $60 for a game, then having to pay something like $10 a month. lets imagine they get a million users at $5 a month. Thats like $60 million per year, is that bad?
Thats only 1 million, WoW has like 12?
I can probably accept to pay $60 per year.
But I refuse to pay for it as it is now.
