You can't stop the min/maxers obsessing. I trust that VR know better than the listen to that stuff, but, yes, it is annoying when it's used as an 'argument' in the forums *shrug*
Beefcake is right, that it all comes from our hopes and passion about the game, but people need to remember to not be so opinionated or at least not then be offended if someone disagrees (myself included).
It sometimes feels like a debating society where the aim is to 'win' rather than a forum of people who share an interest/hobby/passion and want to discuss it.
Discussing opinions is great and it helps when they are reasoned and positive, but no one, including the devs, should feel they have to have an air-tight, logical and detailed 'case' to back up anything they want to express or prepare to be 'attacked'.
To more closely reference the OP: The devs don't have to justify to the Nth degree every idea/feature/mechanic they talk about. No one does. The more obsessive amongst us really should learn to be more self-aware and realise they aren't necessarily 'right' (and that most times there is no 'right' or 'wrong' with opinions). It's fine to express and discuss your opinions, but maybe try not to use them to bludgeon others with different opinions into submission and silence.
To be fair to this community, I think it's an 'internet' thing these days, not just here. People look for reasons to be outraged and treat someone disagreeing with them as a personal attack. Some seem to think if you believe X then you *must hate* people who believe Y and Z.
This is a hard one to tackle because you have "close minded" people on both sides
Suffice it to say, if you value 'A', and you have to do 'B' to get 'A'. That's all fun and games.
Until 'B' is not fun. Then you have to ask if 'B' is related enough to 'A' that it should really be a requirement.
Should a crafter have to kill monsters to craft well?
Should a gear collector be forced to level a climbing skill in a game that could easily give everyone climbing for free or be made flat?
People don't want to be "forced" to do something because the more stuff you force the less room there is for different people to enjoy different things.
Noone wants to spend their game time, of all times, doing things they don't enjoy.
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If you were totally fine with being a lorekeeper who gets no gear or experience, you would work in perfect harmony with people who get gear and experience from killing monsters. You are the one asking them for the pie they, strangely enough, feel ownership over, and they have a right to object to you getting anything more than what they get.
It's not so simple as to call one side of that argument "closeminded". Both are trying to force another to have less fun so they can have a more fulfilling game experience.
Unless you find a perfect balance between the two playstyles, giving the same quality rewards for similar effort, including a sufficient amount of people to do it with.
Finding this balance, though, can be very difficult.
When people point out that they don't want to be forced to do something, they just want the assurance of this balance. Can you guarantee that if this system gets put in, every player won't feel any particular pressure to do it?
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As to why they feel forced? Easy! You want money, and a job you don't enjoy is by far the best option you have to get that money. What do you do?
You want friends, and everyone in your village plays wallball whenever they have time for fun in their day. What do you do?
If you have a goal in life, that goal will naturally interact with other stuff you gotta do. Humans hate these interactions quite often. Wouldn't it be nice if you could get the money in some sort of fun way? Wouldn't it be nice if you could get the best gear without leveling up your lorekeeping skill?
Games make this possible, so of course people will closemindedly point it out when you closemindedly try to make them do something they don't want to do, just so you can have more fun (get more, unrelated, rewards) being a lorekeeper, a crafter, a cleric, or whatever.
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/rant
Can people stop with the "wait until testing" argument?
It's 100% false. People develop familiarity with things they experience over a long period of time. Familiarity is a stupidly powerful force in decision making, being hugely responsible for ridiculous things like political uncorrectness and romance.
You want to tell me that putting in an auction house won't make it far more likely that we test it and say keep it, then if I force a decision now? I mean, we already spent the resources, and removing it, that takes resources too, as does implementing some other, replacement solution, and there's this time and easyness factor involved too....
Why not test NOT having lorekeeping, in beta, and then put it in later if we decide we want it? Oh, that would be too late?
Every single thing people want to implement are to deal with some issue they assume will happen, before testing that issue in Pantheon to make sure it happens. I simply don't know how to describe this. How is it ok to say "test this fix to a problem before you judge it" when you are literally judging the "problem" before testing it, to the point that you are trying to put something in the game to fix it?
/end rant.
I don't feel like anything is mandatory. I will play and have fun and let others worry about "if this, then that."
i might gripe/Troll because the game is taking a century to make, but I also pledged big and plan to increase pledge After ALPHA is Live. not another cent before.
I have no doubt this game will be amazing. Joppa and Ben are super smart. I will play whatever they give me and have fun.
I do plan to be a Keeper and max climbing, but because I WANT to, I don't have to do anything. Climbing will happen as i play. I will Seek ways to level keeper because it sounds FUN and for no other reason.
This whole situation is unavoidable.
If any element of the game makes any meaningful difference, people will use it, and account for it in their optimization of their playstyle.
But the game has to be designed for optimal play. Not necessarily for total munchkins, but a decent optimal play. Why?
Because if a casual play style can kill toughest bosses and get you the best loot, then for those who play optimally the entire game will be trivially easy.
If the game is designed for optimal play (which it has to be) then people will either play optimally or not see the high-end.
This means that, if a new and meaningful element is added to the game, players will have to use it.
Not avoidable.
Flapp said:
I don't feel like anything is mandatory. I will play and have fun and let others worry about "if this, then that."
i might gripe/Troll because the game is taking a century to make, but I also pledged big and plan to increase pledge After ALPHA is Live. not another cent before.
I have no doubt this game will be amazing. Joppa and Ben are super smart. I will play whatever they give me and have fun.
I do plan to be a Keeper and max climbing, but because I WANT to, I don't have to do anything. Climbing will happen as i play. I will Seek ways to level keeper because it sounds FUN and for no other reason.
Congratulations on your enlightenment. You happen to enjoy these things, at base.
Not all of the player base will feel this way, however.
Some people have very specific ideas for what they want to accomplish in the game. Even specific ideas for what exactly they do and don't consider fun. Things like the climbing system, or the keeper system, implemented in certain ways, could get in the way of their goals.
THEY WANT to get something, and in order to get that thing, THEY NEED to do something else. That is the problem.
Your fun is based on a more general experience. People who want a more specific experience have issues with things that they need to do before they can have that experience. It's why you have things like powerleveling, or twinking.
Ranarius said:Yaz87x said:
Also it's not about being forced. it's about time vs reward, what is considered meta, and how it will impact your experience with others (how they treat you) and if they will accept you for your choices.
This statement I totally agree with. People are afraid that if they aren't using the meta they will be treated like 2nd class citizens. Which may be true in the top of the top guilds, but I've found that in general the majority of players enjoy more variety than the meta. So, maybe the top of the top players are essentially "forced" to play a certain way (meta), but I wonder what percentage of players that actually is.
Also, just because the top of the top don't want a certain feature in the game (because it's existence "forces" them to use it) doesn't mean it shouldn't be in the game.
I had something like this happen to me when I played Warhammer online long ago. I was a bright wizard and I was just dead set on using fire. I had read many builds and the game went through a lot of changes early on for class balancing. So many bright wizards had started to go another route other than fire and I felt like maybe I should too. But I didn't. I stuck with fire and I was determined to make it work. Once I found combinations of skills and how to best use them I realize that I was far out dps'ing any other bright wizards I had grouped with. It was unorthodox, and not what the community had preferred. But the build was fun and I was effective that's all that mattered to me. I would get into a group with another bright wizard and they could see the difference. Wasn't long and people were posting the very build I was using.
At some point I asked myself should I stop doing this and do what everyone else is doing? I decided to buck the trend and go my own way regardless of the outcome. Had it not been as much DPS I still would have probably stuck with that build because to me it was fun and interesting. People get so caught up in min/maxing that they forget to play the game and have fun. I ran into it a lot on P99. Everyone is so obsessed with min/maxing they will play a race/class combo that is slow, cant see, too big to fit anywhere, is worthless until they get the right gear. And to me that isn't playing the game and having fun. That is having an elitist mentality. While I see why they are doing it and the intentions behind it, they are forgetting to have fun in the process and just trying to set themselves up for greater success.
I know this is a little off the topic of what you're getting at, but it's the same principle. It's thinking you're forced to do one thing when you aren't. All you can say to people is just play the game how you want to and have fun doing it.
Beefcake said:It's no different than the other argument you see here every day:
If Pantheon has X (or doesn't have X) feature/system, I demand a refund/won't play/no one will play.
If it's not exactly what I want, no one will play.
Everyone on here thinks they have the best vision for Pantheon, or any game, and if you disagree with them you're going to ruin the game. That's just how it is. People need to understand that just because they think a feature is the best thing in the world doesn't make it so. People are different, we like different thing. You can ask 100 people who played the same MMO what made it great and you'll likely come up with 100 different answers, or at the very least 50.
Any feature or skill that the communtiy expects everyone to have will often be seen as a "you must do this optional thing to play the game". It's going to happen. Limiting these features impact is key but it is unavoidable.