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MMOs - Lack of community and mere grinding?
Nilat
Member Posts: 4
Hey,
I've been looking around these forums for the past month or so and I'm noticing quite a few people who play MMOs but get bored quickly of grinding and having the same experience everyday and start alts, which lead to more alts. Well, I am one of those, but I can't help myself in loving MMORPGs. I've played Dransik, UO, WoW, EVE online, Archlord and EQ2 and it is always the same. I'm all excited for about a week (except for Archlord, which was about 1 minute). Dransik (in 2002) sustained my interest for the longest period of time, due to the thriving community and continuous socialising, as playing the actual game was not the most important part of the game.
But today, and many may agree, the major MMOs are either based on grinding with little community based elements such as those amusing weddings, funerals, trading, crafting and so on. Yes, most of those happen in nearly all MMOs, but it doesn't have the sense of true interacting; just a part of the long and weary path to the top level. Also, many MMOs that claim that they have a community like this, but are very unfriendly to beginners in their immersiveness, for example EVE online.
So to wrap up, I have two questions:
1. What drives you people who get to the top level (and several times)? Doesn't grinding and the hollowness of social interactions bother you?
2. And the inevitable "recommendation" question, which always sparks arguments (
) : Is there a MMO out there that has a strong, mature community, which is not miniscule? Is this MMO relatively friendly for beginners and includes minimal amounts of soulless grinding?
I know I am being a bit idealistic in the second question, but I am only curious as to if there is a game, which resembles that?
I've been looking around these forums for the past month or so and I'm noticing quite a few people who play MMOs but get bored quickly of grinding and having the same experience everyday and start alts, which lead to more alts. Well, I am one of those, but I can't help myself in loving MMORPGs. I've played Dransik, UO, WoW, EVE online, Archlord and EQ2 and it is always the same. I'm all excited for about a week (except for Archlord, which was about 1 minute). Dransik (in 2002) sustained my interest for the longest period of time, due to the thriving community and continuous socialising, as playing the actual game was not the most important part of the game.
But today, and many may agree, the major MMOs are either based on grinding with little community based elements such as those amusing weddings, funerals, trading, crafting and so on. Yes, most of those happen in nearly all MMOs, but it doesn't have the sense of true interacting; just a part of the long and weary path to the top level. Also, many MMOs that claim that they have a community like this, but are very unfriendly to beginners in their immersiveness, for example EVE online.
So to wrap up, I have two questions:
1. What drives you people who get to the top level (and several times)? Doesn't grinding and the hollowness of social interactions bother you?
2. And the inevitable "recommendation" question, which always sparks arguments (
) : Is there a MMO out there that has a strong, mature community, which is not miniscule? Is this MMO relatively friendly for beginners and includes minimal amounts of soulless grinding? I know I am being a bit idealistic in the second question, but I am only curious as to if there is a game, which resembles that?
Comments
this kind of has to do with the topic, but i think that most of this is due to the scaling up of graphics and scaling down of content
Its a lot easier to have a comunity feel when everything isnt based on a single level (i.e. combat level)
Think of WoW (or basically 90% of the MMO's out their who ahve a similar style), everthing is based on the combat level. To get new content you raise your conbat level, you are defined by your combat level.
Now think of games where their are many different skills which you can raise and any one of them may define you (often times these are older games such as UO). Now who is to say how different skills match up with one another, i have level 10 skill x, 20 skill y, and 50 skill z, while someone else has 30 skill x, 20 skill y, and 30 skill z, It is not clear who is the "higher up player".
A system such as was described here can better contribute to community, because players are not restricted to one skill which defines them, so their is no feeling of "i am better than you but worse than you", everyone is basically the same.
This also helps with the grinding aspect, although moreso just making it less noticable. In a system where there is no single defining skill, there is less pressure to spend those hours upon hours grinding that skill. Yes their will still be a grind, but when you get bored you can always just quit and it will not affect you socially at all, no one will take notice.
I think most of this is to blame on graphics, although better graphics are of course better than bad graphics, better graphics means that it will take more time to impliment everything. Every new skill means more animations, models, and development time, and having better graphics makes this increase expidentially. having lots of content in a 2D or isometric game takes a lot less time that it does if you were to use the unreal 3 engine, and having a 10+ year development timeframe is just not practical at all. So the rising graphical standard in games is giving rise to games with less content and overall less creativity and most importantly community
We once had a game of what you ask;
- weddings
- Great crafting
- trading
etc.
Everything was absed around socialising, it was called SWG then they ruined it and its no longer that.
If I want to, "Grind," I'll get a job.
I just bought Medieval Total War 2, good game. PLaying that now instead of MMO's.
Like many of us we all share the same frustration as you, but there seems to be no visible resolution at hand. I guess the target audience for gaming companies are younger these days, and they seem to prefer cool action over community
your gonna have to wait about 10 years.
mmo's evolve very slowly.
Gotta say i agree with a_new_era swg was 1 of a kind until they fired the head dev (who is making a brand new game that will own SOE's SWG) and that before too much longer there should be a pre cu swg emu server out there for those that still wanna play! and yes it its totally legal. I guess all the games have come down to nothing but grinding now days and due to that its less about each other and more about the next level, sad sad times for the mmo world that once was great.
Peace out,
HENDOG
Uhm, those games you mentioned aren't built like community games. Infact there are alot of functions in place to limit player interaction. Such as EVE has plenty of things that really make you feel alone, and no one ever talks in that game. Same with Ultima Online. WoW's community is a bit immature, but light years ahead of those 2. EQ2 is the same kinda community as WoW and just like it limits its community through relatively low pop servers (like 3k max).
There have actually been a slew of mmo's that were made to be community builders, not just tossed in as a feature filler. The Sims Online and Ragnarok Online really showed this concept in action first. Then there is There and Second Life now. However, these games have been around too long and the community has grown AFK which is something that affects anygame, only in these types the decline has been slower. There are only a couple community builder mmo's coming out next year, Ragnarok Online 2 and Project Wiki.
Over the past 10 years, the player base has changed more than the MMOG games themselves. Back in the day when UO and EQ first came about, you had to go out of your way to even find those games. It was all about the real gamers back then. Fast forward 11+ years and now MMOGs are in every department store and you can easily order them off of thousands of different websites. Back then the games were huge time sinks that required dedicated armies of guildmates to achieve. Today, while it is true you needs large groups for most of these games, most of them can be done with pickup groups. Today's gamer is no longer the "computer geek" of yester year. Today, MMO gamers come from all walks of life of all ages. That said, the industry really dumb downed what gaming was all about. Proof being that you can pick EQ2, WoW, or any new game and a total noob can go from 0-max level all by themselves without ever grouping. That by itself leads to a very anti-social climate. Saying that, it was a good thing. The more gamers we have the more chances companies will take in delivering us new games in different genres.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
Why I hate wow is becouse of the instances, in old MMO's you could actually meet new people while adventuring, but in wow endgame experience basically only involves meeting with same people all the time in similar enviroment. Instanced games are huge setback for the whole MMORPG market, and now basically every new one has instances to save on the server costs. Instances are degenerating MMO's
unfortunately you have a very vocal group that think the game should be played thier way and only thier way. And no im not talking about PVPers, I am talking about the self labelled "hardcore" gamers. You know the guild that needs you to play 50+ hours a week and has to be the first to kill everything.
then when they do burn through all the content, they come to the forums and say "god this game is boring what else is there to do?!?! add some more high level content". Also unfortunately you have alot of people who play these games for JUST the gratification, there has to be a reason for them to do something or they wont do it.
Developer: "slay the incoming giant horde and protect the city!"
Gamer: "cool .... what kind of loot do they drop?"
Developer: "were adding PVP!"
Gamer: "awesome ... what do i get if i kill someone"
god forbid if there is no carrot the content will never be done.
And here is the really bad news ... with the success of the crap that is WoW, nothing will change soon. Developers will just come up with larger raid content with more uber loot to pull some of WoWs customers away.
I'd be willing to bet the more interdependence needed, the better the community.
Game publishers learned through trial and error that to encourage community/socializing was a financial mistake. Atomizing players keeps them all much more manageable. Alone, players aren't able to make demands of the publisher that need to be addressed because individuals can be ignored forever, they have very little weight. But there is no easy solution to a server-wide "strike" by players who are already organized through social activities. Lead by recognized players leaders, organized players can demand that the publisher actually fix a problem, deliver interesting content, or anything else that the publisher doesn't want to do because it costs money. These players have weight and energy to press home their demands; they are a game publisher's worst nightmare.
It's similar concept in the workplace: without a union to rally employees against an abusive employer (and, they all will abuse you if there's nothing to stop them), you, the individual worker, are at the mercy of the employer. 99% of the time this means you will be told to do more work during your shift, and workplace conditions, benefits and pay raises will be completely controlled by the company.
Games aren't like a workplace, exactly, but there are some striking similarities that have to do with the vast, untapped power of organized groups vs. the weakness of an individual against the game publisher's efforts to deliver the bare, minimum, pos product.
Game publsihers realized something else when they began designing games that tended to atomize players. They found that a new layer of gamers were attracted to games that could be "won" or dominated by persons who weren't able to understand the social aspect of MMORPGs and , therefore, did not want one in order to play. All these morons wanted was to be able to "pwn" fellow players and talk in chat about armor stats! lol. You know who I am talking about, right? These idiots were easily drawn away from classic FPS shooters to a new type of FPS shooter disguised as a RPG, which seemed more interesting on the surface but at the core were simply a shoot 'em ups. These halfwits view any game as a series tactical situation and they bristle at the very mention of a social aspect because they're too dumb to participate in it.
We won't see game publishers designing games for we community types until the economic advantage of eliminating it goes away. I don't see how that can happen at the moment because no one will walk away from profits.
This is just a small part of what it was like and this, I think, has fully dissapeared in a larger scale. Why would there be MMOs if community is not important? I think Oblivion has a richer community than many MMORPGs!
I agree witht he last point about the community based MMO being economically unprofitable for the companies. They have the resources and talent to create a MMORPG that gives incentives to interact with other players (more than just trading, flaming and "LFG"). I bet we, the "community gamers", will never become a majority which saddens me.