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JC - This game is not Ready Player One....


Mordgier

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....and if it were - that would NOT be a good thing!

 

Alright, this is something that's been bothering me for some time from JCs interviews - and yesterday's Easter Egg interview pushed me over the edge to where I really have to say something...

 

First and foremost - lets face the reality that Ready Player One would be a horrible game for most people nor would the events of the book be enjoyable for the majority of the player base.

 

If you're looking at your game and going "Hey look it's just like RPO!" - what I hear is "Look just a handful of no lifers got to have all the fun!". That IS the plot of RPO. A tiny group of players who take the game WAY WAY WAY WAY too seriously get to enjoy the content while the rest may as well not exist.

 

The puzzle fit this perfectly. A tiny group of players with tons of NDA covered information going back to pre-alpha solve a puzzle while the rest of the community doesn't even know it exists. Yup  - very RPO.

 

JC - The takeaway from the puzzle event should not be that "Look it was just like RPO! I did a good job!" - it should be that "The event was a complete failure and did not involve the majority of the community in a meaningful way, and was solved largely due to a bug and alpha knowledge that was not available to the bulk of the community."

 

Please please please for the sake of DU - stop trying to make this game like a fictional book about a fictional game. You need to take a serious look at how other games have done community events and have managed to involve much larger groups of players. Everything from opening the gates of Ahn'Qiraj to the Elite Dangerous Alien events - yes they were flawed in their own ways - but by and large involved more people.

 

 

Finally, this doesn't just cover events. The general game mechanics cannot be based on the mindset "Just like RPO!" - because I repeat - RPO would be a horrible game. In fact, I would go as far as saying if you are looking at any upcoming part of the game like AvA or Territory Warfare or Atmospheric combat and can say "This is just like RPO!" - then it probably needs to be reworked to NOT be like RPO but to be like an actual game that would be fun for more people.

 

Once again - face reality - RPO was a no life simulator where only the no lifers mattered.

 

This means designing things in consideration of players who are not willing to play DU 16 hours a day - and entire teams of such players.

 

Players are not going to want to spend hours waiting for an attack on a territory to man the manual guns because you refuse to consider automatic defenses.

 

Players are not going to want to fly dedicated gunners or escorts for every single hauler just because they may get attacked.

 

Players are not going to want to sit in their ship for hours watching the radar while their orgmates mine out an asteroid.

 

I could go on and on, but the core point is that the game mechanics need to be designed around giving people who do not no life the game a chance to have fun and stand a chance in pvp vs those that do.

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The creator of the oasis was a power-hungry eccentric that didn't remotely care about humanity. The easter egg was a selfish, irresponsible vanity that was all about Halliday's narcissism and ego.

 

Even on his deathbed, he couldn't summon enough moral fiber to consider how his creation affects others! Instead, he wanted to make a contest that of course favored the powerful players that could afford virtual currencies...people that crave this sort of attention even in death are the worst sort of evil.

 

The point of RPO is not "the oasis is so neat". 

 

Halliday is the villain, not the hero. 

 

If you want to mold a digital society, you should probably be able to understand the theme of a fairly one-dimensional pop-fiction book... ?‍♂️

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It is content.

 

It is an Easter egg.

 

It is being compared to RPO because it is a recent movie and a book brought to the forefront because of the recent movie.  

 

It is part of the lore of the game.  We are no longer around Earth, we are still learning about this star system, and it is obvious that there is a story here, we just don't know what yet.

 

So get out and explore and learn maybe we can unfold this mystery.

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5 minutes ago, LouHodo said:

It is content.

For whom?

 

7 minutes ago, LouHodo said:

It is an Easter egg.

That only a minority even knew to try to find.

 

 

8 minutes ago, LouHodo said:

It is being compared to RPO because it is a recent movie and a book brought to the forefront because of the recent movie.  

The plot of RPO revolves around solving a puzzle - the fact that the puzzle is hilariously vain is a sperate issue. (Although you know the whole JC's castle thing having a part of the puzzle is a bit...vain.)

 

9 minutes ago, LouHodo said:

So get out and explore and learn maybe we can unfold this mystery.

Why? If anything this event shows, is that it's a complete waste of my time to even try to partake in these events that will be dominated by 200-300 man orgs with extensive alpha knowledge.

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10 minutes ago, Mordgier said:

For whom?

 

That only a minority even knew to try to find.

 

 

The plot of RPO revolves around solving a puzzle - the fact that the puzzle is hilariously vain is a sperate issue. (Although you know the whole JC's castle thing having a part of the puzzle is a bit...vain.)

 

Why? If anything this event shows, is that it's a complete waste of my time to even try to partake in these events that will be dominated by 200-300 man orgs with extensive alpha knowledge.

Then if that is the attitude you are going to have then why play any game like this?  When it is obvious that numbers will always prevail over the individual or few.

 

I understand that not everyone is into the same things in a game.  But to complain about an attempt to make something for that small group or in this case larger group that is there unlocking and tracking down the lore and easter eggs well who are you to tell them that isn't fun.

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7 minutes ago, LouHodo said:

Then if that is the attitude you are going to have then why play any game like this?  When it is obvious that numbers will always prevail over the individual or few.

 

I understand that not everyone is into the same things in a game.  But to complain about an attempt to make something for that small group or in this case larger group that is there unlocking and tracking down the lore and easter eggs well who are you to tell them that isn't fun.

Did I say it wasn't fun?

 

It was unfair. It was borderline rigged. It was extremely exclusive.

 

So maybe it was fun for about two dozen people - and if JC's goal is to make a game that is going to have thousands of players that is fun for a handful that is indeed the RPO structure.

 

7 minutes ago, LouHodo said:

why play any game like this?

Every day I ask myself the same question. Many have asked themselves the same thing and come to conclusion that this is in fact a game they should not play. The fact that this is become that game is why I made this post.

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In original WoW there was an instance released called Naxxramas. It was the last raid released before Burning Crusade came out.

 

The mechanics were amazing. Complicated boss fights requiring significant coordination. Only problem was that it was so difficult that only, iirc, ~2% of guilds ever successfully cleared it.

 

They ended up bringing it back in Wrath of the Lich King so that players actually had a chance to experience the content because Blizzard realized it was stupid to spend so much time creating content that very few people would ever see.

 

My two cents.

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A future secret game could probably be designed to be more inclusive. This last one was kind of progressive with each secret leading to another and another. Maybe if it was more basic, like 100s of randomly hidden artifacts where any player had an equal opportunity to find one and claim the discovery, and contribute to the goal of finding all or most of them to unlock something.

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I said it on YouTube and I say it here too:

 

Not sure I like bew content/minerals/whatever bring hidden behind such egghunts/events. Only a fraction will participate and only a few will do it. If it's unlocked for a wieder audiance later on anyway, why do it in the first place then. Just do such cents for fun but not to unlock new content. Its only there for 24/7 no lifers and splits playerbase.

 

Ymmv

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Just now, Mordgier said:

 

Not seen ready player one, or got any idea what it is about.  Might be because i am old.  I think i get what you are talking about BUT, it is possible to create a game where both can exsist.  Where the hardcore players create the gameworld for the others.  Of course it would take the right mechanics and improved game stability and performance but it can be done.  Would give examples but rushing a cracking ship build at the moment.

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6 minutes ago, Moosegun said:

Not seen ready player one, or got any idea what it is about.  Might be because i am old.  I think i get what you are talking about BUT, it is possible to create a game where both can exsist.  Where the hardcore players create the gameworld for the others.  Of course it would take the right mechanics and improved game stability and performance but it can be done.  Would give examples but rushing a cracking ship build at the moment.

tl;dr brilliant programmer makes a persistent online one shard virtual reality MMO and hides a piece of content behind a series of puzzles that only no-lifers have a chance of cracking.

 

Good movie. I recommend it.

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1 hour ago, LouHodo said:

It is part of the lore of the game.  We are no longer around Earth, we are still learning about this star system, and it is obvious that there is a story here, we just don't know what yet.

 

So get out and explore and learn maybe we can unfold this mystery.

I hate to be this person, but it isn't so obvious there's a story or lore in this game...

 

Earth decides to build this massive humanity-saving Ark in a feat of unparalleled cooperation, but they all agreed in advance that as soon as people thaw out it'll be a free for all with no government or law? Well, first they decide to build like 20 copies of the same city...then it's time to start thawin' people out and letting 'em do whatever the heck they want. 

 

The real dark theme of DU is that humans aren't capable of learning from their mistakes and will be locked in eternal pointless conflict forever. :D 

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12 minutes ago, HangerHangar said:

I think the puzzle does a good job at displaying how much the devs underestimate the players.   five weeks to solve a two year puzzle means that the devs under estimated the player capability by 21 times (104/5 = 20.8).

Eh not really - the artifacts were not supposed to show up on radar but did. This was a massive decrease in difficulty.

 

 

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6 minutes ago, Mordgier said:

Eh not really - the artifacts were not supposed to show up on radar but did. This was a massive decrease in difficulty.

 

 

More along the lines of the devs not expecting the players to bother to try to use the tools available to them.    The devs did not even try to game out/test how the players would approach the problem.

 

That bodes worse for the future of the game, than the devs being surprised by player skill.

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32 minutes ago, HangerHangar said:

That bodes worse for the future of the game, than the devs being surprised by player skill.

I'm more concerned about player tactics and uhh 'playstyles' and devs being surprised by them. The current PvP meta is a perfect example.

 

It should have been obvious that the rules as they are favored xs cubes with L weapons and crippled everything else. It should have been obvious on paper. Yet here we are.

 

This is why I'm actually dreading territory warfare despite being very pvp focused at heart. If they released pvp in this shape, and yeah I know it's the first pass and yeah I know that they know it's broken, what shape will TW be in on day one?  The fact is  that the pvp as implemented was non viable  and yet was totally missed. What will TW be like if the 'vision' blinds them to the reality of how such games are played?

 

JC is too blinded by what he wants DU to be to see what it actually is and is too busy imagining how players will play the game instead of actually looking at how other games like this were played. It's almost like he's willfully ignorant or just outright deceiving himself.

 

The interview is a perfect example of the mindset. The people who solve the puzzle used a bug to find the artifacts. This is what happened. No JC - the fact that they made a lua script to further abuse this bug doesn't make it more like RPO and doesn't mean that technology was being developed to solve a puzzle. A bug was further being abused  - or leveraged if you prefer to use a less polarizing term - to solve the puzzle. That is what happed. There can be no debate around this.

 

This is where so much of the disconnect and frustration I have is. Use an untended mechanic to steal a ship? You're bad for using an 'exploit'. Use a bug to find artifacts? Get an interview with JC praising you for it. Come on.....

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I didn't know about this until it was over.   And I'm fairly active checking their discord a couple times a week, these forums a couple times a week and the ATV discord every so often as well. Plus I follow them on two different twitter accounts, lol.   I guess that's just not enough attention, obviously, but I normally like to spend the majority of my game-time playing the game instead of reading about it.

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I'm sorry, but I have to address your complete ignorance of RPO's plot, story and setting. The entire PLANET in RPO was using VR to play Halliday's game. Not only that, most of the economy was done through VR, people using it to work virtual jobs, or real jobs remotely via VR, and education was all done through VR as well, students putting on headsets at home and logging into a virtual classroom. Ironically not much different from the current environment of Zoom meetings and other virtual meeting software being heavily used due to the pandemic. This was the entire world of RPO, and the easter egg hunt that is the main story of the book, involved literally everyone who had a VR headset and access to the game. The company and CEO that serve as antagonist hired endless people to search for the easter egg in the game for them just so they could beat the rest of the entire planet. In fact, the game itself is so integral to the world, that owning it makes one, one of the if not the most powerful and richest people on Earth, and this is exactly *why* the antagonist CEO and company want control. This is NOT as you say, "a tiny group of players" or "no lifers". The end battle of the book and film involves EVERYONE in the entire game gathering together to battle the antagonist CEO and his company. You are 100% dead wrong about your entire comparison of this DU easter egg event to RPO. I do agree with most of your other points about DU, however.

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1 minute ago, Ram said:

I'm sorry, but I have to address your complete ignorance of RPO's plot, story and setting. The entire PLANET in RPO was using VR to play Halliday's game. Not only that, most of the economy was done through VR, people using it to work virtual jobs, or real jobs remotely via VR, and education was all done through VR as well, students putting on headsets at home and logging into a virtual classroom. Ironically not much different from the current environment of Zoom meetings and other virtual meeting software being heavily used due to the pandemic. This was the entire world of RPO, and the easter egg hunt that is the main story of the book, involved literally everyone who had a VR headset and access to the game. The company and CEO that serve as antagonist hired endless people to search for the easter egg in the game for them just so they could beat the rest of the entire planet. In fact, the game itself is so integral to the world, that owning it makes one, one of the if not the most powerful and richest people on Earth, and this is exactly *why* the antagonist CEO and company want control. This is NOT as you say, "a tiny group of players" or "no lifers". The end battle of the book and film involves EVERYONE in the entire game gathering together to battle the antagonist CEO and his company. You are 100% dead wrong about your entire comparison of this DU easter egg event to RPO. I do agree with most of your other points about DU, however.

That's an interesting take - so who where the characters who solved the puzzle in RPO?

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Just now, Mordgier said:

That's an interesting take - so who where the characters who solved the puzzle in RPO?

This is an interesting leading question. Let me break down your point behind your reasoning here. It's a competition. Competitions are everywhere in the real world. From sports to video games to companies competing for consumer attention. Does every company win? Does every sports team win? Does every video game player win? No, in a competition, there is usually 1 winner, regardless of the number of competitors. That is how it works. In any competition, most people do not win. You are attempting to say, "look, only like 5 people who were super nerds were able to dedicate the time and effort to solving the RPO puzzle" out of some idea that this is bad, because you compare it to, "look, only like 5 people who were super nerds were able to dedicate the time and effort to solving the DU puzzle". Even IF everyone was told about the DU puzzle and given ample time, the first few dedicated nolifers would still have found it and the same exact outcome would have happened. What is your point here regarding it? That competition is bad? It's a non-starter. You have no real point I'm afraid, except that DU should not be like a fictional video game, which it isn't, but ingame easter eggs have nothing to do with that, and neither do mini-events around a handful of players finding them. Additionally, now that *one* out of the doubtless many scattered throughout the solar system, has been found, and covered, that now gives everyone else opportunity to look for others. Now everyone *does* know and *does* have ample time to find more. What is the problem here?

 

As to directly answer your question, a small group of players who knew their stuff because they were supernerds about Halliday, was able to solve the puzzle. They were not the only ones trying, however.

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