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[personal profile] bolson
Empire Building of various sorts makes for lots of good games, it can even be open ended and ever onwards and upwards (or renewed by periodic patches to the game universe).

"Empire Building" is my new nicer name for "grinding" or "farming". Grinding and farming are common in World of Warcraft, and to some extent the whole top level of content is this, running through the same dungeon repeatedly until it's reliably doable and you get all the stuff you need out of it to be capable of the next dungeon. Empire Building makes more sense when applied to EVE, but it's kinda the same dynamic and game feature as grinding in WoW.

Player-vs-Player content is inherently more interesting to me because I want to challenge my skill and ingenuity with that of other human players. The computer adversary in these games is designed to always be conquerable after enough trying or levelling up. People can always come up with some new idea!

WoW, and to some extent EVE, both require grinding to enable PvP, and right now I think this sucks. When you have a board game with Empire Building, your empires will clash, but everyone started at the same time. WoW has old players who have had more time to aquire kickass gear, and has players with more time to put into the game to acquire kickass gear, and that is prohibitive against pitting my skill and ingenuity aginst them. It's just pitting their time-in-game against mine, and that sucks. EVE has old teams who have been playing for years and have acquired huge amounts of stuff, but the universe is still big enough and diverse enough to leave room for new players, so far, maybe I just haven't run into that wall yet. But if you want to PvP in EVE, you still have to rake up huge piles of cash to keep buying new ships because you'll get yours blown up as often as you blow up the other guy. Hmpf.

So, I want to decouple Empire Building and PvP.
I want a PvP game where everyone gets some uniform points to spend on character/gear/ship/stuff/etc and with that you can change up your strategy, then you go in and challenge someone and see how it turns out. No grinding, no farming, just skill and ingenuity.

Date: 2008-03-14 07:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ultimatepsi.livejournal.com
Have you checked out "Guild Wars"? It's a primarily PvP MMORPG. Anyone can make a max level PvP character from the start and select from a variety of skills. There is still some "grinding" involved in that some skills or items you need to "unlock" with a non-PvP character, but it's still orders of magnitude less than say WoW.

Date: 2008-03-15 10:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neuralrxn.livejournal.com
Well what I like about WoW is that to some extent you need people skills and social ingenuity to play at a high level. Do you do heroics? Have you made craftable bind on pickup items with b-o-p parts?

WoW has a new pay-for feature tournament realms (?) that basically give you a sandbox of gladiator gear and classes so you can show off your skills on an equal playing field without grinding for days or sharing accounts.

Date: 2008-03-17 08:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fengshui.livejournal.com
Team Fortress 2 doesn't have any empire building, and is quite fun. However, right now, there isn't really any point building either. (There is talk of giving additional tools to those players who have satisfied all of the achievements, but the details are still unknown) I'm not sure if a FPS is the sort of gaming you're looking for, but it's worth a try, especially if you haven't played Portal and can get them both as part of the Orange Box.

thanks much

Date: 2008-03-27 04:01 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
well done, brother

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