Most games have strict time limits. You can’t just show up at 3AM in the basketball stadium and score into the empty basket while the other team is asleep. Nor you can’t go AFK in chess and wait until your opponent has to stop playing and win while he is away. In other games the task is itself trivial (like run 100 yards), but the winner is decided by who performed it fastest.
In MMOs on the other hand it’s completely OK to spend the whole day farming or showing up at 3 AM at some objective or wait until the other guy logs of or gives up in boredom. Strike that, many players consider their willingness to spend extreme amount of time in the game a positive thing, dubbed as “effort”. They spew hate on the natural counter of no-lifership: AFK-cloaking. You can’t play more than an AFK cloaker.
The question is “is it a good game design”? First we must ask if basketball would be a better game if you could win by scoring into the empty basket? I doubt if anyone would say yes. It would remove the athletics element from basketball. The ability to play basketball would be secondary to the ability to camp the stadium 24/7. Even the current basketball stars would have no chance against a no-lifer who scores hundreds while they are asleep. But if so, why do people support the no-lifer approach to MMOs?
I can imagine two ways of handling a time-limit. One could be applied on MMOs with multiple shards like World of Warcraft: the servers are in different timezones but every server is up for only 3 hours a day. You simply can’t log in in the other hours. Of course you can find another server to log in (just like you can play basketball any time if you have team, or just by yourself if you have a basket), but your progress cannot be transferred to the servers of another time zone. This way your progress in a server would only be the function of your performance as you simply can’t play more than your competitors.
For single-sharded MMOs the above cannot be implemented one by one. However it can be on a per player basis. You set up your playing hours, up to 3 hours, it would be 16:00-19:00 EVE time for me. I could log in only in this time. Corporations and alliances would also have to set up such time zone. The time zone cannot be changed for more than once a month. All the corporation structures would be reinforced outside the time zone and freely attackable in the time zone (multi-day reinforcements apply).
Such change would seriously change the MMOs. However I’m sure it would be for the better. Your progress in the game would depend on your actions more than your time commitment to the game. Players with healthy life could be competitive with those who have no job or school, assuming equal abilities. Botting would disappear or at least would be limited to the occasions when the player can’t play in his play hours. If we consider that those with healthy life are much more likely to pay money to the developer instead of RMT-ing or just farming in free-to-play games it’s double gain.
PS: I do not comment yet on the Rubicon changes, both because we know too few details, and the Devil is always in the details.
Another ganker joined the corp and found this beautiful anti-tear:
In MMOs on the other hand it’s completely OK to spend the whole day farming or showing up at 3 AM at some objective or wait until the other guy logs of or gives up in boredom. Strike that, many players consider their willingness to spend extreme amount of time in the game a positive thing, dubbed as “effort”. They spew hate on the natural counter of no-lifership: AFK-cloaking. You can’t play more than an AFK cloaker.
The question is “is it a good game design”? First we must ask if basketball would be a better game if you could win by scoring into the empty basket? I doubt if anyone would say yes. It would remove the athletics element from basketball. The ability to play basketball would be secondary to the ability to camp the stadium 24/7. Even the current basketball stars would have no chance against a no-lifer who scores hundreds while they are asleep. But if so, why do people support the no-lifer approach to MMOs?
I can imagine two ways of handling a time-limit. One could be applied on MMOs with multiple shards like World of Warcraft: the servers are in different timezones but every server is up for only 3 hours a day. You simply can’t log in in the other hours. Of course you can find another server to log in (just like you can play basketball any time if you have team, or just by yourself if you have a basket), but your progress cannot be transferred to the servers of another time zone. This way your progress in a server would only be the function of your performance as you simply can’t play more than your competitors.
For single-sharded MMOs the above cannot be implemented one by one. However it can be on a per player basis. You set up your playing hours, up to 3 hours, it would be 16:00-19:00 EVE time for me. I could log in only in this time. Corporations and alliances would also have to set up such time zone. The time zone cannot be changed for more than once a month. All the corporation structures would be reinforced outside the time zone and freely attackable in the time zone (multi-day reinforcements apply).
Such change would seriously change the MMOs. However I’m sure it would be for the better. Your progress in the game would depend on your actions more than your time commitment to the game. Players with healthy life could be competitive with those who have no job or school, assuming equal abilities. Botting would disappear or at least would be limited to the occasions when the player can’t play in his play hours. If we consider that those with healthy life are much more likely to pay money to the developer instead of RMT-ing or just farming in free-to-play games it’s double gain.
PS: I do not comment yet on the Rubicon changes, both because we know too few details, and the Devil is always in the details.
Another ganker joined the corp and found this beautiful anti-tear:
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