[BE88] The Strategist

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I'm moving there. I feel that Blogger is not keeping up with the times, and that its functionality is very limited.

Updates stopped for this blog. Last post 20 August 2013.

Sunday, June 07, 2009

Like I said, I'll be writing a post on how Maplestory makes people think that games are shallow.

First, lets see what makes a game sophisticated, intellectual, and leaves a lasting impression on the player. Games like that usually have a solid storyline, with good character progression, a proper timeline and of course, a good plot. It doesn't necessarily need to have very challenging missions or achievements, but it needs to be enjoyable, and not frustrating. Also, it should be as immersive as possible, as that is where the video games genre shines the most. After all, we are advancing from books to movies to video games, where words become a fixed video, and the boundaries of that video is stripped off to give you a video game, where you become the main character.

Of course, not all games are made this way. Casual games are examples of games that cannot exactly feature such characteristics in a game. However, they do possess an entirely different set of features. Gameplay is definitely higher up in relation to the other aspects of such games, as they do not need to focus a lot of work on things I mentioned above. The gameplay has to be fun, enjoyable, difficulty rises on a progressive level, easy to grasp, and can be picked up to play anytime. Notice how the immersion factor is hugely reduced for such games.

Next, lets look at how Maplestory is played, as well as what it is (Maplestory 2 is in the works, by the way). As you should know, Maplestory is an MMORPG. You make a character, you start at level one, and you progress in the world of Victoria Island, leveling up, doing quests, and later you go on to more areas that you discover. That sounds pretty much like majority of MMORPG's out there, doesn't it? Well, the difference is that this form of gameplay is very poorly implemented into the game. Playing from level 1-40, I've only had one quest (party quest) out of a few hundred that wasn't about killing X monsters to get Y number of loot, or deliver items to people. Such quests are very inane in nature, and I'm pretty sure a chimpanzee can be taught to play it. Worse, the experience rates for the game is rather insane. You'd have to kill thousands, and maybe tens of thousands at higher levels just to gain a level. With a maximum level cap of 200, you'd have killed 100,000+ monsters in your lifetime.

Let's stop talking about the leveling, and move on to what a player can do. Hmm... socialise, kill world bosses, and doing party quests. You socialise in every MMORPG you play, so I'm not going to talk about that. Let's examine the part about killing bosses and doing party quests. Apparently, there's no real strategy or tactic that's needed in doing either of them. You just do them. Exactly. All you need is a bunch of potions to keep alive, and then you whack, run away, or jump.

Now, after examining the problems with Maplestory, let's see how it causes people to think that video games are stupid.
1. Apparently killing 100,000 creeps is really enjoyable and fun.
2. Bosses feel like a creep with 10x more health and 10x more damage.
3. You meet really immature people in Maplestory.

If people are brought into Maplestory and given such an idea of what a video game is like, of course they'll start stereotyping and generalising all video games. In my opinion, Tetris has more depth than Maplestory.

With no story, a repetitive gameplay, no sense of immersion at all, and childish-styled graphics to complement the game, casual players are tricked into thinking that the video game genre is going to be more or less similar to Maplestory, as Maplestory will be considered one of the bigger and "hardcore" games to them. They quit the game with a false idea of what video games are, do not go on to explore other games, and eventually label all video games as shallow.

posted @ 11:38 pm
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