Idle Thumbs Episodes & Streams
Idle Thumbs UK 2: Conversation Killer
By Marek, January 13, 2009 in Idle Thumbs Episodes & Streams
What?™
Hey! It took us a while, but here's a new UK edition podcast...
We start out by discussing MMOs, which has kind of become a tired genre... we talk about what's wrong with MMOs, but what also rules about them when they get things right. After the break we are joined by Rusalka (yufster), and we have a chat about Metal Gear Solid 4 and Pokemon. Finally, we pitched some stupid game ideas to our friends from the games industry (on this forum as elijay and Pirate Ben) .
Games Discussed: WoW: Wrath of the Lich King, EVE Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Ragnarok Online, Planetside, and like every MMO ever. Also: Metal Gear Solid 4, Pokemon Diamond Edition and My Whores & Me.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/idlethumbs-uk
http://www.idlethumbs.net/
http://podcast.idlethumbs.net/UK/uk_idlethumbs_podcast_2.mp3
Edited January 13, 2009 by Spaff
Man, in the intros it always seems like I'm laughing about nothing, which is weird. It's probably because they're not the first takes, or because someone is making faces at me in the background or whatever. Nothing like a podcast to make you super self-conscious.
Mailbox Stuffer
Listening now, this is a nice little surprise!
Oops, the RSS feed may be borked until Jake can take a look at it. Until then only the direct link will work.
elmuerte
Wizard of Science
Phaedrus' Street Crew
Location: a city named after cheese
I have to turn up my volume up to 13 just to hear anything :/
Spaff
Video James
my amp goes up to 100 so 13 seems fairly quiet ¬¬
ok ok i'll investigate, but it should be just fine....
I wanted to kinda talk more about stories in MMOs cus listening back I don't think I explained myself in a particularly clear way, or with any depth, the subject is something an entire podcast could easily focus on… anyways, let me just add the following opinions of mine…
it got kind of long, so long that i can't spend any time going back to make sure I'm not speaking out of my arse too much, so erm, maybe skip it if you dont give a shit
Story based games are generally a very single player experience… sure you can share that by say, playing grim Fandango together, or taking turns to play through Morrowind, but both of those games are primarily designed to be single player, they live in the single player box. This is kinda true for books, movies etc too… kinda.
With multiplayer games, in my experience at least, story will often either take a back seat, or be forgotten entirely; In a death match / PvP game against other players for example, story is irrelevant, and when playing co-op through say, Halo, or errr Diablo, the story is there and entertains you, but in-between the cut-scenes and minor pieces of mission briefing, the *reason* you are playing is probably not to drive along the story, or unfold epic plot lines with twists and turns, not scripted moments of cinematic genius - it's the experience of playing side by side with your friends, and the things that happen, the war stories or the epic moments where you took on 500 guys, become your story. The actual story becomes more of an excuse for it to be happening, rather than a reason.
Adding more in-depth story experiences was the continually cited reason that co-op, once a staple gaming mode, completely disappeared from games for a number of years and had to be hacked back in by the users… Half-Life or AvP for example were too heavily scripted towards single player, and to allow two players to be in that experience would break it.
With MMOs, I think that magnifies again…
WoW has an epic story line, tons of lore, masses dialogue all there too enjoy and keep you entertained, but I find that as soon as you group with people to quest, the actual story of why you need 10 bear claws or to kill some giant crab thing kind fades away a bit, and becomes second seat to adventuring, exploring, battling and playing with others… the more people that join, the less the reasons matter. When I'm enjoying the story, and reading all the dialogue, taking it all in, I'm far more likely to be playing solo. This becomes even more prevalent when you start doing 5,10, 25 or (god help you) 40 man instances, especially after the first time you've done them,…
In WoW you might repeat a dungeon over and over, sometimes too many times yes, but often you're doing a dungeon or Raid a number of times because you want to repeat an awesome experience you had, challenge yourself in new ways, or maybe play it on a harder difficulty. The game even makes you repeat them to earn various loot, tokens, cred, whatever – I'm not saying that's great gameplay necessarily, but it is working, and tons of people love it.
Now don't get me wrong, the lore and story of WoW turns me on, I love it, but it's more something that pulls me into the world than something that drives my playing.
Additionally, the story in WoW exists around you, but the main lore is not pushed along by your actions very often, but more by world events. Some people get annoyed at this, that the player should be the focus of the story, slay the dragon and win the day – but in this kind of game you're one of many awesome warriors, the real heroes take 25 top level guys to take down. This is reflected in stories like Lord of the Rings, where may heroes exist at once.
So when this 'fourth pillar' of story is discussed by the Old Republic folks, it makes me nervous. I'm a huge fan of KoToR but I don't see how they can implement a storyline of that magnitude, with world changing events, nine times over, into a massively multiplayer experience, without it being detrimental to the multiplayer aspects, or making them pointless entirely. Will the henchmen type characters re-enforce that? – when I've seen them used previously they become a replacement for other players, when you need to solo and turn a multiplayer experience into a single player one.
Guild Wars sues this solution, with hire-able henchmen and even heroes with stories that follow you around. They also use instancing so that if you want to help someone out who isn't as far along the story as you, you can join in their game, as it shapes the world around the party leader .Sadly though this isn't a solution, because then it means your game isn't an MMO anymore, it's just an MO – Guild Wars is mo more an MMO Than Diablo II really as in GW only the towns are persistent and can contain more than a party's worth of people.
Sooooo all this makes me boil it down to what I say in the pod cast itself, "meh ignorance."
Hopefully though the reason they are banging on about this, because they really have worked out a way to do this well that no one has seen before…. That would be an incredible achievement, and I hope they make it, bring us some innovation! No really, I may love my WoW and how it works, but I'm not totally close minded to change, and hey, I friggin' love KoToR, so bring it on.
I'm very skeptical though.
Aaanyways, this is a subject that we should discuss over a beer some time (or several), it would be easier face to face, it deserves a conversation rather than a one sided essay, and we could have a good old rant, so come and join me in the pub. J
toblix
Fjord Lord
Great job! The game suggestions were awesome and hilarious.
Salka
I want a purple sparkle Jazzmaster :(
Yeah by the way I've since started to time the MGS4 cutscenes and the end of an act/mission briefing/beginning of a new act cutscenes... it's like a 40 - 45 minute solid block of cutscenes. So fuck that shit. I thought I was just bored watching them and exaggerating how long they were in my head. But no.
t4ffer
Location: Tallinn
Good episode! I liked the talk about how markets and stuff evolve in MMO's, but since I don't play MMOs myself, some of it went over my head. What's instancing? etc.
The game pitches were fun!
DanJW
Location: Brighton UK
Yeah, the high production values of the American podcast are a lot to live up to. If you're going to do more I'd think about saving up for better equipment.
But Rusalka was easier to hear. Lawrence and Ben too. Spaff and Marek, no offence, but you both mumble a bit (someone had to say it).
Still I enjoyed it; adding Rusalka definitely improved the energy levels, so good move there.
The game concepts part was great.
Nazi Drew ftw
Spaff and Marek, no offence, but you both mumble a bit (someone had to say it).
someone's not invited on the podcast ¬¬
:\
SignorSuperdouche
almost always a prick
adding Rusalka definitely improved the energy levels, so good move there.
Agreed. Spaff's and Marek's voices sound too, uh, deep and manly on their own.
I have no interest in playing MMOs or Pokemon but you folks kept me interested and, more importantly, listening the whole time so I'd say you did a pretty good job. Also, I'd like to hear a whole episode from the pub sometime.
Wiihii!
Dunno if this was figured out yet, but the UK RSS is wonky because Marek put January 2008 as the date. ¬ ¬
Chris did this last week with the US cast as well and I caught it earlier that time ¬ ¬ ¬ ¬
Scrobbs
Sunnyvale Supervisor
I think you're a bit wrong about the length of time it takes to get involved in Eve - especially with regards the battles. I'm nearly 3 months old, last week I was in the middle of a 700+ pilot tear up between the Goons, BoB, -A- and numerous other small alliances (one of which was the one I was in).
Also, even young pilots can be useful in fleet actions - you fly a small fast frigate (generally the first half decent craft available). The game is designed in such a way that a frigate has a chance to survive against a battleship - the battleship's guns are very large indeed, and if they hit would wipe you out in one go - but you can actually orbit the battleship faster than its guns can track you. Plus there's the targetting, which relies on your signature radius - small ships have a small sig. radius, and correspondingly targetting from a larger vessel takes a while, so before the guns that can't track fast enough to shoot you, the targetting systems can't resolve you (and therefore lock on). While you're doing this, you can tackle the larger ship stopping it from warping, and web it to stop it travelling very fast, which allows your fleet members in larger ships to bring their big guns to bear on the bigger ship (and damage them more than you will be able to do). Your guns would merely scratch the surface, and are only useful for defending yourself against the enemy battleship's support frigates etc.
P.s. not seen you online!
Yeah I failed to play more EVE due to having to wrap some stuff up now that I have a new job in the pipeline. I'll probably log in again this week though.
I heard about the contribution that small vessels can make in large battles. They actually call them tacklers don't they? It sounds cool. I've been told several times that the real fun doesn't start until about 6 months in though, when you really have a deep understanding of the world and things start to really matter to you.
'Tacklers' is the correct term, yes. Your life expectancy isn't high, but it doesn't matter because Rifters (Minmatar frigates) cost nothing.
If you want to get straight into the thick of it, join the alliance I'm in - we seem to be constantly at war with at least 3 or 4 Corps at a go, and at the moment we're slap bang in the middle of the great Northern Coalition Offensive, the objective of which is to kick Against All Authorities out of the area. They are not having it, of which that big 700+ battle last week was the first major engagement. The Goons let it be known that they were coming, and AAA released a propaganda pic of 13 Titans (!) ready for the defence. I've did a write up of the battle from my perspective, can post it up if you want, along with other adventures I've got involved in. I never actually saw the Titans, but I think we engaged Goons in one of the outlying systems.
Tanukitsune
Eternal Backlog Battler
When you started talked about Pokémon I started to hum the exact song you play in the break!
I'm NEVER playing an MMO game again, the simple thought of of paying for a game that never ends seems madness to me, not to mentioned I was seriously addicted to WOW when I did play.... It was not a pretty picture....
Location: Surbiton, England
The weird thing is that you couldn't get away with going on for so long about specific things in films or TV shows. Or any other game, really. It's kind of cool that someone who can do insane stuff like that actually does, but there's definitely a reason why it's considered so insane. I mean, not to spoil things too much, but the non-interactive portion at the end of the game goes on for way longer than either other medium could support. The climax happened hours ago! Roll the damn credits!
I did like the game, though, despite its numerous faults (I can't get over how people take a game which jokes about a man shitting himself so seriously). I even went so far as to get whichever medal it was that requires you to play through it in a couple of hours without getting seen or anything. The fact that time wasn't actually a major concern really drove home quite how much of that game is consumed by cutscenes and so on. Of course, knowing what you're doing also helps a lot.
For me, the best thing about MGS4 will always be those adverts at the beginning. They were so unexpected, so brilliantly made, and so bizarre. I wish there was more of that sort of thing integrated into the main game itself. That would interest me way more than all the conspiracy stuff.
Also, Nazi Drew is a fantastic creation, on a linguistic level if nothing else.
Yeah, it's actually insane how 40 minutes of a cutscene can be spent discussing one tiny detail that I don't even care about. It's so frustrating to me. It wears me out. I'll turn on the game, play it for 30 minutes, then have to endure a 40 minute cutscene, and by the end of it I'm so bored and frustrated that I'll have to turn it off and do something else.
It's especially frustrating because I really love the gameplay. I think I'm going to start skipping the cutscenes because do I really care? I'm not sure.
Maybe it would even help cut out some of the absolutely bollocks storylines I've been encountering. I mean come on,
Snake's MUM? And why did she have her tits out?! And why was there sexual tension between them???
You know, I've been dreading the ending since about Act II. It's going to be such a nause, I know it. I'm going to hate it.
DISCLAIMER: I love MGS4.
As far as I'm concerned, the end of MGS4 is alternately awesome and awful. Contrast this with World at War, which manages to be both simultaneously.
Bad Brain's Intern(TM)
Finally came round to listening to the podcast, and it's really good! Congrats, guys. It strikes a great balance between those three distinct chats, none of which are too long or unentertaining. I'd like to see you pursue this format some more. And Rusalka's presence is excellent, more Pokémon talks!
Thumb Resident
Great discussions
Now we need an iTunes link.
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