Great Players and Fun Gaming

[stormlord]

Ever see stuff like this:
"Lf Dps 35-40."
"Need tank 20-25, send tell."
"Lf cleric and monk, 30-35."

Or:
"Just got my epic! Anybody want my dps?"
"Wizard lf group, have my epic and my banished cloak!"
"2.6432dps Rogue, LFG!!!"
"2106hp/2563ac warrior lfg."

IMHO, these're all examples of the way games go down hill. Granted, some of it's just a response to the way a game is coded. For example, if you just HAVE to have a cleric because that's the way the game is then you're incited to ask for one. But a lot of it's just players being dumb and spreading it like a virus until the whole mmo-sphere is infected. This also happens when games get overplayed; they become shriveled and boring.

See, a great player isn't his/her items or buffs or class or level. A great player is a person who responds well when the SHTF. A great player does things right even when they're playing the wrong class in the wrong level range wearing the wrong gear. They respond well and make everybody comfortable around them.

It's also my view that the BEST gaming is not staring at the screen while I'm DPSing and drooling on my keyboard. Good gaming is not wishing you had a better weapon so you could gain 5% dps. Good gaming is not about hitting the same hotkeys every 5 seconds while counting the number of times you've farted since last month. You see, the reason people are so obsessed with gear and level and class and all these other zombie things is because the shit isn't hitting the fan enough. Players get complacent and familiarized to it. They're either grinding too much or the developers have failed to make a compelling game. The game is not in hitting autoattack and sitting back and hoping your gear and level is good enough to compete, the game is in responding to an add that came from no where or running through a maze of tunnels to escape a train or surviving a bad pull or other non-optimal circumstances. Those're the times when our gear and our level become less important than our ability to act in a complex situation with seconds to spare.

I loved this game and still like it today. But never liked the camping. Never liked how pickup groups became less and less popular. It's those SHTF moments when this game shined its brightest because that's when the person comes through, not their numbers. Numbers are too linear to capture the full beauty of experience.

What do you think? I'm nuts? Well I am. But do you have anything to offer to build on this topic? I'm saying that when games lose dynamism then they lose direction. They start losing their soul.

Dynamism is that special indefinable thing that happens when the SHTF.

The opposite of dynamism is campism. Everything is a scientific law in campism. People have their perfect permanent roles and everything proceeds as planned and the most that happens is zzzzzzzzz.

That's how SHTF moments are killed.

It's my view that a mmorpg should reward people who die the most (AND adventure) more than anybody else. Instead many end up rewarding everybody indiscriminately that kills something. This ends up favoring the campers and the min/maxers and others who make the game into a scientific discipline and henceforth kill the fun. I myself have enjoyed min/maxing in the past. I love numbers. But I have to be honest with this post. After all the numbers and rules have been figured out and approved by Julius Caesar it KILLS the game.

To put it plainly... The fun isn't in the answers to problems, it's in the struggle.