the lone gamer: 2011

raiderps. the most hated gamers in my book of hated gamers.

it's easy to think of raiderps as mmo nerds. as pencil-bearing geeks who read too much raymond feist and know what 3d6 means.

but they're not.

they're worse.

obsessed with numbers crunched from their latest dps-measuring tool or comparing your gear(derp)score to their own. talking to a raiderp feels decidedly uncomfortable because you have this feeling all they want you to do is unzip your pants so they can get a good look at your penis to see whose is bigger.

greasy little monkeys whose main claim to skill lies not in their ability to actually play, but in the gear they've managed to get by being in a large mob. while i wouldn't be comfortable saying NONE of them can play, there's an element of truth to much of it because they're often lazy players in a way. this shows in how they're the first to demand that no one else has gear of their level.

you see, in games such as wow (and pretty much most mmos), you really can easily kill other players of your level IF you've got some leet gear. you can do it without much effort. you can beat better players, too. gear, then, adds to the inequality of pvp.

there's an argument that inequality is life and raiderps should be allowed to sit smugly in their little gossip groups and deserve the best of the best simply for beating a boss who (let's face it) is simply a more graphical representation of your average mario brothers boss. there's no skill there. sorry, but there just isn't. the fact that raiderps demand you "learn the fight" or "know the fight" before allowing you to sniff their underpants is absurd.

not absurd of them - they can't help but BE absurd just by living - but absurd that all mmos pretty much cater to this crowd by providing little in the way of challenge to the myth that gear=skill. and "knowing a fight" defeats the purpose of a challenge.

remember the rubiks cube? i do. i got one. bloody horrible little thing. once it was messed up, it was an evil thing to solve. my brother once fiddled with mine so it was all messed up and it took me months to put it back. but then someone wrote a book - how to solve it. and everyone had the book. and now there were "moves" and you could "know how to solve it" in just 30 seconds. all those people who bought that book and considered themselves pretty intellecty for being able to solve the cube using it - they're raiderps.

so why do games which spend so much of their time ignoring the levelling side of their games in favour of "endgame" dungeons and raids, make their fights so easy to "learn"?

i maintain that the greatest challenges, and therefore the greatest achievements, lie in defeating the unknown. yet, raiderps demand a static game. a consistent and unchanging map of the dungeon with mobs set in perfect positions which never alter. personally, i can't think of anything worse than a platformer. mario brothers drove me nuts. the fact that the vast majority of endgame dungeons and raids in mmos are simply extentions of these platformers is something developers should be ashamed of. considering the technology at hand, the "skill" as loudly proclaimed by their raiderps, and the power of modern computing, then surely they could up the ante in the endgame department and provide some challenges which are exacty that - challenges.

yet, spend some time in raiderping guilds and enduring vent, and you begin to realise the single flaw every mmo is encumbered with. namely: the players themselves.

it's often said by raiderps that casuals and pugs have ruined the game. but they haven't. they've ruined it themselves. by reducing the game to simple mathematics and demanding raids where the difficulty level is simply defined by the relationship between damage output and damage input of a boss, you get a ridiculous and unreasonable approach to character balance and creation as all classes must then be fitted to cope with a pve system which automatically competes with the pvp system and just widens those gaps faster than a 2 buck whore.

wow is facing this right now. their new "system" is considered hard only because the new mobs have more hit points and deal more damage. to make it "challenging", healers were simply nerfed. despite getting buffs in the next patch, this seems a ridiculous way to create a challenge out of nothing. it's overly simple and about as clever as mortal kombat when as you go up the ladder all that changes is the speed and hitpoints of your opponents. great stuff.

i'm hoping a few mmos on the horizon have looked at what's killing wow as it gets older and begins to show its wrinkles. there's a lot of good ideas in wow which are inadequately implemented. rated battlegrounds stands out as one of their better ideas which turned into a failure because they have no concept of pvp and seem unable to develop it as the vast majority of the wow player base are raiderps who cry foul any time they get killed by another player or - shock horror - someone who didn't choose to play mario brothers gets some gear that possesses some similar numbers as theirs.

and, in the end, that's what it boils down to. still comparing penises. and though it might be considered the fault of the player, it should be remembered that it's the developers who provide the yardsticks to measure the penises with.

personally, i think every form of dps meter should be banned. every gearscore meter should be banned. any way shape or form of "measuring" another player should be eradicated. perhaps then there'll be a little more focus on the skill of the player as represented not in the gold sticker on their forehead, but in the actual skill shown. and in this way, there'll be a bit more focus by the developers on trying to bring groups of differeing players together rather than repeated stabbing some in the eye while bending over for the other.

some call that the business of gaming.

i call it showing no respect for your product.

in summary, i'd like to say i have zero respect for raiderps. the only achievement they've made in downing this or that mario brothers inspired bouncy boss is to find a group of players who would hold hands with them as they chanted, "jump when he goes green!"

big deal.

i get more challenges checking my email.

if you don't think guild wars 2 is the sexiest thing to be looking forward to in the ever-expanding list of future mmos, then you obviously haven't been on the internet lately to know it's coming.

well, it is.

one look at the promises this game has to offer and, if you can get past your natural cynicism (we've heard it all before - it will be different yada yada), then it looks simply amazing. could it be we'll finally have npc wandering around who don't have a big yellow exclamation mark on their forehead like some derpsign? could we finally have a game with some kind of ebb and flow of situational questing so we're not forced to move on to the next area and never return to the starting zones without feeling all weenie again because the only reason we returned was a reroll?

could pvp finally be properly incorporated into a fantasy mmo?

will this at LAST topple wow?

one thing guild wars is good at is self-development. it hasn't caved in like many mmos. the fact it's pretty free to play has helped, but if you've tried guild wars you'd know it's got some interesting ways of looking at how an mmo should be. the only reason i don't play a lot of guild wars is trivial and may sound odd to you - i don't like running at a 3/4 angle. the animation in guild wars made me cringe and was distracting. running straight ahead in guild wars felt like when i was strafing ahead in wow. i'm hoping they'll fix this.

the "painterly" style of guild wars looks equally exciting.

truthfully, i'm looking forward to guild wars 2.

the lone gamer

Sunday, January 09, 2011

raiderps

guild wars 2

in the forums today

latest post for 2011