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Dumbing down your mmorpgs. What's next?
angus858
Member UncommonPosts: 381
The current trend in mmorpgs is to make them easier, both by design and by modification after release. Simplistic game play, limited options, and tightly scripted adventures seem to be what the industry considers "next generation" features. How long will it be before apes can play our mmorpgs? It may be sooner than you think. Check it out:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/04/12/orangutan.videogames.ap/index.html
Comments
I am curious what you are basing your statement on about making MMO games "easier"? I honestly dont think I have ever played one that was difficult. I can think of one recent release which did increase XP gain after launch and I believe is altering the death penalties, but those two things do not equal easy. They just make the gaming experience less time consuming.
Just want to see where you are going with this first and how you define easy. Maybe an example of an older hard game?
They will have no problem playing lord of the rings
I find that most games I've played in the last few years have been 'easy'.
I don't know what you've played and what you have for a basis of comparison, so it will be difficult to answer your question.
For me? WoW = Easy. You have your hand held from the very beginning, dying costs you nothing, you can solo to the level cap pretty painlessly in a month, monsters are predictable and raid instances, once mastered, can be farmed on a weekly basis. You can reset your talent tree (your complete character 'spec') very cheaply, and no decisions you make have consequences.
So what's hard? Depends on what kind of a player you are. Anyone can log onto a game and play it, get in a group, level up, and have fun. If you couldn't do that then what would be the point?
Look at older games. Asheron's Call? Complete character building freedom at the stat and skill level ( no classes ) - your decisions mattered and how you were built determined what you could handle. Look at AO - again, customizable at the skill level. (And speaking of AO...just setting up your character's implants was so complicated that people made many 3rd party tools to help you do it properly...was a very fun logic puzzle XD). It took me over a year to reach the level cap in both games. Everything that's been out since has taken me a month, or two months tops.
Remember the challenge of EQ1?
I could digress all day on this XD.
But games are becoming easier to reach a larger market, leaving those of us who miss things like 'strategy' and 'tactics' feeling a little empty.
Look at sequels?
AC1 - complete skillbuilding freedom, no obtainable level cap for the first few YEARS
AC2 - capped at 50, and shoved into class-based skill trees.
EQ1 - took months to make progress, or years to max out
EQ2 - takes a month to hit lvl cap
Don't get me wrong, I like to make progress. I like to log in and feel like I've accomplished something - but I don't want to be finished with a game before my free month is up, you know?
Gaming? That's not gaming!
That's just people sat 'round in costumes drinking...
Might I also take time to troll that AoC will be dumbed down for the console? Yes I might because thats true for 99% of all PC games...but of course of course we'll wait till beta.
WTB Shadowbane 2
That is true with titles which seek to target the mass market. Fortunately that leaves open niche markets for small companies to pursue. There are a few now coming along and we should see more in the near future. Faith Manages.
Sign off,
Hamilton
That is true with titles which seek to target the mass market. Fortunately that leaves open niche markets for small companies to pursue. There are a few now coming along and we should see more in the near future. Faith Manages.
Exactly! I will be looking at Force of Arms with great anticipation! They embody the idea of what true MMO gamers want... I should say, what mature gamers want...
that's a friggin' riot
____________________________
TheCore
I have to ask, how can you feel like you accomplished something when you farm? Isn't that like cheating or turning on godmode in a FPS? My first thought was that you were just a good player so existing games no longer challenge you. Now I'm not so sure. If you want to feel like you accomplished something, try playing a game without farming or powerleveling. I don't do that and when I finish a mission and gain a level, I do feel like I did something.
If there was a game that serious death penalties, unpredictable monsters, and impossible to farm (basically no way to beat it easily) would many people play it?
Is it me or are more people concerned about reaching max level by any means possible than enjoying the journey. It's all about PL and ganking and instant gratification. Aren't games suppose to be fun?
I'm currently playing 0 MMOs because none of them are fun in the first 20 hours of play (or even fun in the first 300 or more hours of play). I'm not going to invest _any_ time in a game before it becomes "fun". Call the 1-69 levels a tutorial or whatever, but games with a forced tutorial are a failure in my book.
"Do not fret! Your captain is about to enter Valhalla!" - General Beatrix of Alexandria
"The acquisition of knowledge is of use to the intellect, for nothing can be loved or hated without first being known." - Leo da Vinci
Look at sequels?
AC1 - complete skillbuilding freedom, no obtainable level cap for the first few YEARS While it was good that there was no target "endgame" AC had a few flaws. 1) make a bad choice at character creation and your toon was potentialy gimped down the line and the math didn't manifest itself until much much later, sometimes causing people to re-roll well into the game. The old newbie experience was cryptic at best. 2) grind. AC had its share of grinding. It was one of the first MMOs and it was in fact grind based. Yes, there were lots of quest BUT there was over the top grind also back in the day.
AC2 - capped at 50, and shoved into class-based skill trees. And how does this make it "easier"? You still had choices to make. You couldn't have everything.
EQ1 - took months to make progress, or years to max out Progress = Grind. A rose is still a rose by any other name.
EQ2 - takes a month to hit lvl cap Removing grind doesn't necessarily make a game "easier" just less grindy. The shift away from pointless grinding and "math" is a good thing in my opinion. Now MMO developers need to fill in that gap.
Its always surprising when people advocate grinding but if you suggest a game like Lineage 2 which embraces grinding, thats the first thing people moan about.
Don't get me wrong, I like to make progress. I like to log in and feel like I've accomplished something - but I don't want to be finished with a game before my free month is up, you know?
In an MMO what exactly are you trying to "finish"??? If you play it like a concole game ANY mmo will rap up in a month or so. No matter how hard devs make these grinds, some butt munch always makes cap in a few weeks.
Sit back and relax. Try to enjoy the gameworld instead of finishing it. There still many games out there that doesn't fit into this anyway. Take a look at some alternitives to the fantasy clone.
It all depends how you define "easy". I agree that WoW is "easy" but its designed to be a video game first and doesn't really try to be a "virtual world".
This post was made with smiles. Nothing aggressive about it.
The youth today are really getting dumber, I agree.
You are wrong, and so is this article.
Making a game appealing to casuals that have limited time, and dumbing it down, are two things quite differents. See, a game that allows the casuals to master some aspect of the game COMPLETELY, this is fine with me. A game can offer differents aspects, and some of them may be as hard, as achieving, as requiring as you want, without removing anything from the casuals.
As to taking a precise game as example, well, most games where always easy, dumb down, not fun for long, I see no reason why suddenly all games labeled MMOs should be differents. A few rise above the crowd, and not exclusively the most popular.
It is important to give realist goals to casuals, to semi-casuals, to hardcore and so on. A casual won't be happy to be an un-accomplished adventurer who is a weak and meek version of what the hardcore play. And the casual is right when he doesn't support such a game. There are many roads, many ways, many alternatives to explore in order to create an appealing game, both to the majority of casuals, and to the minorities of players that want more from a game. Yet, the minorities of players must understand, they will not get the core of the focus, nor the core of the attention, it will be harder version of what exist for casuals, and this is fine.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
So when would orangutans start using Blender3D or Maya?
You are really hostile.
Here, happy flower break
You are really hostile.
Here, happy flower break
Thanks, I needed that. yea I'm unnaturally aggressive tonight, think I better go to bed
A) Watch mmorpg.com for possible upcoming online RPG's you might like. And while you wait...
And if thats not enough...
Well you might rethink about formating your wetware
EQ is often held up as a standard, and indeed it had that special something that devs are trying to recreate, but often with little success. However, along with the good elements, EQ also had a great deal of tedium. What's so hard is getting rid of the tedium, but still keeping the essence of what made EQ a great game. Often developers throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak, and that's when we get the so-called "dumbed down" game.
But take a look in the other direction. Vanguard tried to make a more in depth, more challenging game, (but still friendly to casual players), and look how that turned out. Not so hot, IMO. They kept a lot of the tedium, but added no excitement. It's a huge world that is better explored in a group, but players start a million miles apart from each other in different racial areas, and then they added diplomacy, a solo card game, to a design that is supposed to encourage grouping. It turned out pretty to look at (if you had a high end computer) but just not that much fun to play.
Then there's EVE. By all accounts EVE has a great deal of depth, and is definitely not dumbed down. It's an unusual success because the game constantly gains subs, while the usual course of an MMORPG is to peak very quickly after release, stabilize, then slowly decline. HOWEVER, tons of players say the learning curve for EVE is just to steep. It's definitely not dumbed down, but neither is it fun the first few hours, or weeks, after you log on. You have to spend a lot of time learning the quirks of the game before it actually becomes fun. I applaud EVE for being more of a virtual world than most MMORPGs, but future games will have to be accessible to new players in addition to having depth. You need to introduce complexity slowly, while providing fun gameplay early on, so that a player barely feels the learning curve because they're having so much fun.
It's a hard forumula to get right.
Absinthe Lovers
People want quick wins these days, if they are faced with a more complicated or challenging game it suddenly becomes bad game design... go figure.
But its much like music or TV, bland generic stuff for the masses and creative complex for the minority.
Now playing: VG (after a long break from MMORPGS)
Played for more than a month: Darkfall online, Vanguard SOH, Everquest, Horizons, WoW, SWG, Everquest II, Eve
Hey gillvane1, just a few comments....
EQ is often held up as the standard mainly because of nostalgia IMHO. Log on to it today, Its not "fun". The hard core from back in the day are still playing it today. BUT because it was the first MMO to become noticed, it is held up as a model. It is a seriously flawed model however. Back in the first few years of its release it was hot because there were only 2 or 3 other MMOs to choose from. It was a new genre and no one knew any better. It was an awesome idea that you could log into a game and play with tons of other people with a persistant character. It didn't matter that what you were doing was brainless grinding, you did it with other people, lots of other people and could actually buy/trade and sell each other stuff and in some cases kill each other....it was the innocent "good old days".
Times have changed. Its not that simple anymore. You can't go back to the "good old days no matter how clever a mousetrap you build, the mice have changed.
Vanguard failed and fell flat on its face, not so much because it modelled after EQ but its just plain old sucky launch and some design decissions that hinged on it drawing a large amount of players. (multiple starting areas, 15 or so, over a HUGE game world) It would have worked if the game wasn't a p.o.s. It would have wore itself out much faster then other games because everyone has been there and done that.
EVE is a different bird but it is a tedious bastage to play. I agree that it does a great job at showing you CAN do things different. But in the end, its still a drag to play most of the time. Devs of these games need to work harder on gameplay and less on graphics. Fat lot of good it did Vanguard to develope that PC crushing engine they have. The gameplay is dull as it is EQ grind based. Kill mobs, ding, rinse repeat. THAT is the core problem right there. The over dependency of MMO designers on the hoping the "math" will make it "fun".
So yeah, I agree to a point with the OP (MMOs are so easy a monkey could play them) MMO's are still the same old thing just easier to grind in now. It says something about an entire design when a few people can write scripts for just about any game to run itself and its difficult for players to identify them and the bots are just as successful if not moreso then actual players. Go figure.