Zyrusticae

@(Unverified)

Agreed, I'm actually impressed by what I'm seeing here. Of course, it helps that they show players fighting against large mobs of enemies at once. That feels a LOT better than having to engage in duels with every little thing because you risk death otherwise (and lack the tools to properly engage multiple opponents). I'm still kind of floozled over why MMOs choose that kind of incredibly boring encounter design. Good thing we're moving away from it!

@(Unverified)

I just feel the need to point out that a LOT of people have no real outlet for their sexual needs, and that a good chunk of the US looks down on any sort of sexual content or behavior. Keeping in mind that sex is a big part of an human's life cycle, the way it tends to be treated in the public sphere leaves little room for much in the way of sexual expression.

If you think about it, the proportion of sex to violence in video games has absolutely no relation to the actual proportion IRL. That's just fine and dandy, of course - they serve two very different, often opposing, purposes, after all. And especially when it comes to sex, you would much rather be a participant than an observer, right? But still, you have to think about it from that lens - because of the limited outlets, people will go to where they CAN get an outlet, whether that is a brothel, a chat room, or Second Life. That's just human nature for ya.

Also, while you may see virtual sex as something "pathetic", I must repeat the old adage here: "Don't knock it 'til you try it!" There's a whole host of rather fascinating psychological underpinnings to the whole experience, such that, even without the direct physical intimacy, there's still a level of connection to the eroticism that appeals to the participants in its own way.

I like how Kieron Gillen put it in this article (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/12/30/erotisim-sex-the-sims/):
"The second precedent is cyber-sex – text-based exchanges between anonymous individuals on the internet, via one of the many communication systems (Instant Messenger, IRC, MUDs). The comparison here is that it’s a form of erotic stimulation only made possible by a machine. When collected into a text document, cyber-sex looks like a badly written sex story – reading one is high comedy. The kick is in the process of its creation, the improvisation, the waiting between words, the place for the mind to run rampant. It’s sex cut to the ideas. We know that sex exists primarily in the mind, but, as Julian Dibbell wrote in his book charting his time living on LamdaMUD, My TinyLife, “It’s one thing to grasp the notion intellectually and quite another to feel it coursing through your veins amid the virtual steam.”"

So, don't look down on people just because they're using the program as an outlet for something that they just don't otherwise have access to. Don't look down on them because the act somehow seems "inferior" for not being the real, physical thing. In fact, don't look down on people in general - that tends to not be a good thing in any case...

I really like this kind of thinking.

Currently, most of the MMOs on market completely neglect the issue of timescale and the way it affects immersion. It's really immersion-breaking for an entire in-game 24 hours to pass in the span of two real-time hours, and I just don't understand why developers think that's acceptable. Similarly, being able to cross an entire so-called "continent" in the space of an hour or less is completely absurd - they may as well just be called small countries, at least then it's remotely believable. Same thing with "cities", which usually end up being small outposts or villages in-game.

So it's nice to see a developer seriously thinking about these issues and how to tackle them in a manner that aids immersion instead of taking away from it. Though I still don't know if they're going to successfully tackle the issue of cityscapes, this is at least a good halfway point.

As obvious and/or inevitable as this was, I would like to give credit to Bethesda for supporting the mod community as well as they do.

No other developers does as much as they do. None. It makes me sad that that's the case, but I am at least happy that Bethesda does it. The things people can do with the previous toolsets have been ceaselessly amazing, and with the Creation Kit out and capable of EVEN MORE STUFF than the previous toolsets, I am very optimistic for the future indeed. Very optimistic.

@(Unverified)

I'm not sure how a system designed to encourage grinding out SP is any better than the real-time system.

I'm also wondering why you're training up for ships you can't afford. That's... not very smart?

@Glyph

I disagree, true "pay to win" is when you MUST pay in order to even be competitive with other players. When the item shop has items that cannot be acquired legitimately in-game, THAT is pay-to-win.

DUST's system, on the other hand, assuming it works like EVE's, requires you to sell PLEX on the in-game market first, in exchange for ISK that you can buy items with. In other words, it is literally impossible for you to buy anything that a regular player who forgoes payment cannot with enough investment in time.

And let's be fair, here - some players are time-rich but money-poor (two things that tend to correlate, I might add, but I digress), while some players are money-rich but time-poor. F2P games are the ONLY games that cater to the latter, for whatever reason, and not tapping that latent pile of money is a mistake on the part of any developer.

People need to understand the difference between a proper "F2P" game (which is ONLY free to *play*, they don't promise anything else with that moniker), and a P2W game. The two are conflated way too often, and that just serves to reduce the credibility of those who argue in that vein.

@Everfaust

I find it a little disingenuous to complain about "content" for what is quintessentially a sandbox game.

As long as all the moving parts are there (and as far as I can tell, they are), it is not at a lack for content... unless there's just not enough players populating the game world, since they're the ones that make up the meat of the "content", as it were.

@Menx

Same here, although in my case it was the closed beta (the Chinese one, at that!), not the trial.

I'll note that I was going into it with no or low expectations. That seems to help.

@cotheer

I just feel the need to point out that, unless the "rifting event" is running, a player doesn't have to worry about being ganked from 1->50.

51-55 pretty much requires the player do group instances to get XP, so ganking is less of an issue there (and they should be in a good legion at that point, too).

@(Unverified)

"Damned if you, damned if you don't"?

Not very fair, if you ask me.