A Toxic Culture in XIV

[Iscah]

What do you mean "how it's supposed to be played"? Games are supposed to be played how the person WANTS to play it, especially MMO's.

I mean, the game is designed to have things that you can do at every stage of it, and the story is designed to be part of the experience.

Telling someone "you won't be able to start having fun until 200 hours into the game" is assuming that nobody can derive enjoyment from what comes before, instead of accurately describing what comes before (as I said, the equivalent of five 40-hour games not a single 200-hour game) and letting them decide whether that sounds interesting.

And "games should be played how the person want to play it" is a nice sentiment, but one that only goes so far. If you want to buy a car racing game and drive slowly, sure you can do that, but you won't get past the first level. If you want to play a war game and not kill anyone, good luck.

Those are exaggerations of course, but the fact is, the creators of the game set the basic plan of how you are intended to approach a game, and if you disagree with it you're probably going to have a bad time.

Also, I didn't "skip over" the other part of their reply, I simply have nothing to say regarding it. It is a natural fact of gaming and personal taste that people will try a game and dislike it. You don't need to sell a game to everyone, just the people who will enjoy it.

I personally would much prefer to go through the game's story to as close to completion as I can, then come back and start doing everything else. This type of thing isn't available to me, because I first have to spent 100's of hours JUST doing the story.

The thing is, you're viewing it as "one game that lasts 200 hours". Don't think of it that way.

Imagine that A Realm Reborn was a stand-alone game and the expansions are its sequels – separate games released years later with the same cast. Would you insist on playing the entire series before you can return to play ARR's post-credits activities or would you finish off everything in that game before putting it aside and starting on Heavensward?