Age of Conan Editorial: Delayed Gratification

Gaming is a serious industry, and so now you have serious gamers. But this I ask you: what ever happened to game being played just for fun?

"The standard response to this would simply be, 'Get over it; it's just a game' but for some individuals, it's not just a game, it's a way of life!"

This fortnight we look at how such an emotional investment into 'Age of Conan' may be affecting your own potential enjoyment of the experience the game has to offer now and at release.

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since this has not been replied to, I figured I'd chip in feedback.

I believe that the problem stems from those who are age-handicapped. I wish this were not the case, and no, I cannot be 100% sure, but the posters who bring up such complaints tend to be illiterate or semi-literate, and unable to spell out basic words. Granted, that's not just an age issue, but I find it most prevalent in the younger generations.

Being an "old fart" myself, I'm all for being able to just play a game. I have a similar tale to your City of Heroes point.

Primarily, I quit CoX back in the days when Issue 3 came out with the enhancement standardization. The game simply no longer contained that "zing", and the constant barrage of nerfs leading up to the introduction of PvP seemed based on decisions reached through forum imput from whiners, rather than actual mathematics.

Case in point: I had a Dark Melee/Regen scrapper. Superb for taking down bosses in a mission, incredible DPS combined with fantastic survivability. Was this game-breaking in PvE? Not really. Fire Controllers, Inv Tankers and others still had their niche and abilities - there was no way I was taking on 30+ mobs with regen. However, against a single pull, it was nearly impossible to kill the regen scrapper.

I believe that the developers after this point went into "balancing", and lost sight of the vision of the game. I paid my $15.00 a month to be a superhero, not some over glorified water-boy.

The simplest solution to all of this would be to have modified the basics to change depending on PvE or PvP - different rules applied to both. Heavy nerfs would not have been necessary, and those who enjoyed PvE would have stuck with their builds for PvE and not done PvP.

I digress; the basic point is that when you have a demanding playerbase who are primarily catered to IRL as well as in-game, you get such posts raping developers for their decisions. It's not pleasant, but hopefully, it will diminish upon release, where parents (I hope) moderate the younger types from the game.

Telling the "kiddiez" to STFU and enjoy the game just does not work. I've been through about 10 or more MMOs, and it simply does not work. I hope the devs understand that about 2.5% of the feedback given on the forums will be from those who are non well-intentioned toward anything in life; and that they would bash anything decent and good. Hell, if you make a cure for cancer, they'd be the ones going on and on about the horrible side effects (when these occur in less than 1% of the population).

Now, back to emotional investment: I am probably emotionally invested in this game, generally due to the dearth of any decent games out there currently. WoW, CoX, etc. all seem to provide repetitive and boring gameplay which requires button-mashing and little else in order to master your foes. Then, they either have huge grinds for the end-game or repetitive gameplay which really you can only stomach for a month or two prior to cancelling. Now comparing to some of the non-subscription MMOs out there, I wonder where that $15.00 a month goes to; they all seem to listen to the loudest screamers, rather than the calm feedback from posters with a multisyllabic vocabulary.