Massively OP update

You wouldn't have a person who hates sports games, and doesn't understand the appeal review them would you? It's fine to criticize things that are wrong with the game. Myself, I don't need to have a whole lot of people playing the game. They can give this game all the bad reviews they want. It won't stop me from playing the game. The aspects I like about this game are the same ones that this reviewer suggests getting rid of. I worry that the things that make this game good will get changed to draw more players, appease the reviewers, etc., and will end up ruining the game for those who don't want to play 'industry standard' game that this reviewer seems to expect. Bottom line, there are plenty of people who do enjoy the game and don't want it melded into something they don't want to play.

 

Did i miss something in the review that said reviewer hates single player narratives or mmorpgs? just trying to understand where the sports game hater review analogy is coming from.

 

I will only speak for myself in these things but there are plenty of backers who have left so I'm not sure your broad assessment.

 

Understandable, truly we can all only speak for ourselves... however i did state "Still playing" nothing about backers that have already left.

 

You might want to read the rest of the thread to catch up...you did miss something.

 

Which is why its best to acknowledge both sides of that coin. Call out those who are blinded by fandom. Call out those who criticize due to disinterest.

 

I am not in contact with him, some folks in our guild have been before. I thought I would pass it along again.

 

"The reality is that when I start playing a game for Choose My Adventure, the odds of it slotting into my usual play pattern are relatively low." It might be a misinterpretation but I read this as play pattern = what he enjoys playing. Again, if we are inaccurate on our assumption that will change some things, but that's editor issue not having the writer clarify his intent.

 

ok re-read forum and review, still at a loss where it states review hates MMOs, or single player narrative... just to ensure were talking about same review and i didnt get mixed up this is the correct one right? http://massivelyop.com/2017/08/31/choose-my-adventure-the-why-behind-shroud-of-the-avatar/ but yes i could agree i wouldnt want someone whom hates sports game writing a review on a sportsgame, i just dont see how that analogy fits with the linked review.

 

Hate is probably an extreme statement and unfair.

"Theoretically, of course, this ties into the game’s main story. But if you’re not following that (per votes), you don’t really get that as motivation."

Translation, because people voting did not WANT him to actually try to follow the story, he is adrift and not having as much fun. So even if he may have been interested in single player narratives or MMO, he is refusing to do it because of the way the votes went and that is limiting what he sees as fun.

*edit* I actually missed this on my first read through of the article, so I'm slightly less harsh on what he did because of the format he is constraining himself to. That's definitely my bad on not catching that originally.

 

Is there anyway we can put a cease the desist order out on this website? It doesn't seem fair that they are making up BLATANT lies about the game and trying to ruin it before it even truly begins!

 

I never said the writer hated MMO's, you may want to re-reread my post....I said this:

"This guy, if I remember correctly, admits at the outset of the review that he doesn't really like MMO/RPG's, except some Japanese ones that he used to play."

This is what the writer of the article said at the outset of the review...

I really know pretty much nothing about Ultima. This is only partly my fault. Way back when the Ultima games were a big deal on PC, I was still decidedly locked to consoles, where the options for getting into the series were rather limited. Aside from that, it was years before I really acquired much of a taste for the Western style of RPGs as opposed to the Japanese style… and considering that the roots of that style are half-buried in Ultima (along with Might & Magic and Wizardry, to be very broad and avoid overburdening this header), you can see why I’d kind of give things a pass.

 

Please define 'Plenty' and then correlate that to numbers from games you would consider a commercial success. Are those 'plenty' enough to sustain it? Even if you quadruple 'plenty'?

It's very easy to make a blanket statement like that, but there's a reason Portalarium doesn't release numbers . . . . . .

Should we also 'cease and desist' all the current backers who agree with his assessment? Instead of 'listening' to the critics/backers, is it really better to just keep driving them away until 'Plenty' actually = 25-50 people?

People can cite his lack of professionalism all they want to, but his message rings more true than false. Obviously the game did not captivate him, he obviously wasn't impressed by 'ground-breaking' development ideas, bottom line is, his experience is not that much different than a lot of other people. You don't have to like how he said it, you don't have to like the fact that he didn't review it under 'your' criteria and expectations of 'his' professionalism, but no matter what you say, you can't change the fact the he's not a fan, not gonna be a fan, and he is not alone. Actually, there are more people who have tried it and are on his side than are on Portalarium's side. He logged in for whatever amount of time he did, and obviously the missing factor was 'fun'. Go figure.

United we stand, divided we fall. . . . . . . oh wait, i'm pretty sure we're already face down on the concrete, we just have 50-100 people left in the game that haven't realized it yet.

 

Pretty confident that SD is just trolling as usual.

As for agreeing or not with what his "review" says, if you've actually read most of the thread, we aren't disagreeing with him or his views as much as the fact that he appears to not be interested in the genre, has no interest in fact finding or engaging with other players, and is actively avoiding the quests and content because the readers voted for him to do it this way and thus finds it rather pointless to keep grinding for no reason as he has nothing to achieve.

I agree with much of the problems our game has, but when you have someone disinterested from the very start, why give him the same weight that you would to people who actually WANTED to like the game and give it a fair shake?

 

lol

 

Certainly, if they are reaching this many people and are purposefully making the game look bad.

 

That quote says to me that at the time UO came out he wasn't interested in MMOs until years had passed. It speaks to his distant history not to his current tastes.

 

curious... with all the people bashing this guy as a reviewer.. did he actually even say anywhere he was reviewing the game?

This is more like a blog post, and its even listed under the tags "opinion" and "column" and not listed as a game review.... so why would we expect him to break things down more completely to do a proper review?

Its a guy diving into a game and doing what the community votes on, and then writing about it.

 

A whole lot of "he doesn't get it" in this thread which is ironic because a whole lot of posters in this thread don't seem to have taken the time to even understand what this column is about. We discussed the previous articles from the column relating to Shroud here. I've aimed this response to be slightly less repetitive than the thread I've just read, but only slightly.

I disagree. I've barely followed the storyline at all, racked up more than 2000 hours since persistence.

It's not a review.

SotAMap doesn't currently work in most of the new scenes, which are co-incidentally the scenes new players spend most of their time in. It's not surprising that their first instinct later on isn't to open up SotAMap.

It's not a review.

He didn't say that. He said that he wasn't bothered looking up which of the three paths he was on. He was playing the Truth path because the reader vote was that he should follow the path of truth. He stopped playing the quests because the reader vote was that he should stop playing the quests and go explore instead.

It's not a review, and at no point did the author say this.

What was ignorant about the map rant? He's right.

He writes for MassivelyOP, which covers only MMOs.

In the case of the blog post series "Choose My Adventure" of which this is a part, the whole point is in fact that he doesn't do that and instead does what the readers vote that he should do.

No, he said he didn't get into MMOs and western RPGs until after Ultima and UO. Since both these things were about 20 years ago and 99% of MMOs have been released after the last Ultima and UO this is not the same thing as saying he doesn't currently like MMOs or RPGs.

The article is not a review.

What quotes? And again, it is not a review.

You have nearly understood the point of the "Choose My Adventure" column. However, instead of being "asked/forced to" he spends a month playing a game he wouldn't normally play, at the end of that month the readers are asked to vote on what game he will play next. Every week he writes about his experiences in the game and the readers again get to vote on what he should do the following week until the month playing that game is up and there is a vote for the next game. All of this can be quickly grasped if you scroll to the bottom of the article and click on the link Choose My Adventure.

It's not a review.

 

I don't consider whether a game is a commercial success or not. It's no concern of mine. I care only whether I like the game or not. As far defining Plenty, the amount of people I currently see playing the are fine by me. Here is an early review of Ultima Online, which is still running 18years later, that has a headline of: "In its current form, Ultima Online is a major disappointment." In retrospect, they were way off about UO, and I have a feeling this game will be not be much different. So, as I said, it's really irrelevant what people say about this game in a review, or in these forums. People will either like the game or they won't. It's all about personal tastes.