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Sameness is overwhelming
L12aRd_K1n6
Member Posts: 33
I thought this game was great for about 3 weeks. Now I'm just bored, and it really seems to be the same kind of crowd that were attracted to WoW.
Having said that, I don't think its so much a problem with the given game as with these games are designed. At their core most MMORPGS are basically the same. You have your tank, healer, stealth, and DPS classes and sometimes hybrids which can do a bit of both.
Playing my minstrel, people are always spamming me group invites, and sending me tells like "hey want to do x instace?".
Sometimes I will help out but then when I put out the call "anyone doing y instance" and no one wants to help me I get a little bit fucked off.
Certainly in EQ2 and even WoW I never had this problem once I found good guilds. Ones willing to look after and help their healers.
I'm bored shitless with this style of gameplay now. I like playing healers because its easy to get a group, but soloing is so lame. I like playing DPS class cause its easy to solo but its so hard to find a group. At least WoW went somewhat to addressing it. The Feral Druid and Shadow Priest were actually fun classes to play, but as soon as you hit level cap you have to respec to a restoration or holy build and you're back to the same old 1 week to solo a single mob scenario.
What we need is something innovative and new or I won't be touching another MMO.
Having said that, I don't think its so much a problem with the given game as with these games are designed. At their core most MMORPGS are basically the same. You have your tank, healer, stealth, and DPS classes and sometimes hybrids which can do a bit of both.
Playing my minstrel, people are always spamming me group invites, and sending me tells like "hey want to do x instace?".
Sometimes I will help out but then when I put out the call "anyone doing y instance" and no one wants to help me I get a little bit fucked off.
Certainly in EQ2 and even WoW I never had this problem once I found good guilds. Ones willing to look after and help their healers.
I'm bored shitless with this style of gameplay now. I like playing healers because its easy to get a group, but soloing is so lame. I like playing DPS class cause its easy to solo but its so hard to find a group. At least WoW went somewhat to addressing it. The Feral Druid and Shadow Priest were actually fun classes to play, but as soon as you hit level cap you have to respec to a restoration or holy build and you're back to the same old 1 week to solo a single mob scenario.
What we need is something innovative and new or I won't be touching another MMO.
Comments
Every class can solo, every class can kick some serious butt. No more "healers in the back."
Nice post. Is there any healers in WAR? at all haha.
Well... actually... no.
We have 4 healer classes depicted so far. Runepriest, Warrior priest, Zealot and Shaman
Of these, 2 are the like Mythic has depicted as warrior healers. Go in the middle of the fray and stay there. fine all nice and dandy.
a shame neither the shaman nor the zealot obey these rules. These are not pure healers, no, but they should never be in middle of a melee either, lacking armor and melee abilities of any type. THey are casters from head to toe and should stay behind the front lines.
So yeah, no pure healers. Nay, healers in the fray. depends on the classes.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
Tabula Rasa, Age of Conan, Pirates of the Burning Sea, etc.
All those might just be that.
I think it's just the Fantasy genre that so many people are burned out on. It's time for some good SciFi or Modern MMOGs to arrive.
WAR's approach is appraised a lot and the game get uber-hype. But ever thought about the downsides of making every class kick ass? Do you remember what a REAL healer in Everquest or, even in WoW, would heal. With a good healer you would survive extremely hard fights. If you have only half-assed hybrids I see another aspect which will make WAR what I expect it to be - An egomanic disaster!
Meridion
It is rather linear isnt it?
Not true,
i have played with people in eve that have never PVP. All they do is run missions and build stuff. Some missions you cant solo. And there are corps that just do that and help each other, And yes there is named loot and big bosses at the end. So no EVE is not all pvp just for the ones that choose to do it.
If you are playing MMORPGs for the game play you are playing for the wrong reasons. If the RPG in MMORPG does not appeal I wish you luck in finding a new hobby.
I miss DAoC
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
If you are playing MMORPGs for the game play you are playing for the wrong reasons. If the RPG in MMORPG does not appeal I wish you luck in finding a new hobby. RPG combined with broken mechanics is as boring as innovatice mechanics without RPG.
Most of us played a lot of games and mmo games. Some of us are real veterans and we know the utopia and we want the utopia. But game companies dont care to much. mmo games had and have no real evolution. Its status quo or even degeneracy. For some reasons the gaming industry doesnt want to produce a next gen mmorpg.
We are stuck with 20 year old game designs. Useless crafting, repetive boss runs, idiotic itemization, quest hells, PvP, generic cookie cutter games. PCs get more powerful every day, and all they do is render nice landscapes. Boring toons, bad animations, to few emotes, always the same emotes, yadda, yadda.. And you are right. many people will look for another time sink. The phenomen "8 mill. WoW subs" will die some day. And so will the industry, because they refused to evolve.
Your analogy with cars is very good. Modern cars suck as much as modern mmo's. There have been innovations and they have been ignored. I d happily trade my modern ford for a brand new model T.
If you are playing MMORPGs for the game play you are playing for the wrong reasons. If the RPG in MMORPG does not appeal I wish you luck in finding a new hobby.
This is just narrow-minded to me. I am saddened by the fact that the run-in-the-mill MMOs out there have gotten to you to the point where you think that is the only way to do it. I agree with the OP, I also quit playing LOTRO after about 2 weeks because I just could not stomach the idea of doing the same thing as usual all over again. Innovation is needed, and contrary to what L12aRd_K1n6 believes, it is entirely possible. It is just not as safe to make an innovative MMO as to make one that fits the now classic mold, and since developing MMOs is a very expensive process, most companies prefer the safer path.
EVE pulls of an innovative game excellently, and has a lot of players. I would play it except for the fact that I really do not like the space setting very much. Yes, EVE is not for everyone, but then again, who said that it has to be? If I were developing an MMO today, I would not even try to compete with the big hits, I would find a niche where I knew there are interested players and I would cater to them. For example, if and when Darkfall Online comes out, a lot of people will subscribe to it that have been waiting for a game with full PvP and skillbased advancement game for a very long time (about since they got bored of UO).
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It wasn't because their healing skills weren't as good, (er, oh wait, thats right, they weren't) but their power pools were significantly smaller than a person geared/spec'd for resto. There's a reason why most raid gear at the time (esp in MC and BWL) favored the resto spec player. Wasn't until AQ 40 that we started seeing more feral/shadow sets, and even then they had to be supplemented from outside sources.
I left before TBC but I've heard some of the instances were a bit more flexible.....
Nuts, always getting off topic... back to the OP, I'm in the same boat...I started out great in LotRO..but suddenly got really bored, I think it really was too much of the same and I am burned out on fantasy MMO's right now.
I started playing EVE last month and am really having a great time so far, despite its lack of group PVE at the early levels (I hate grouping anyways, except for PVP). Though I will say, people in my corp get together a few times a week to either group mine/haul or pve rat in a belt..... just to hang out and have fun...
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
With all respect, I hear that often enough myself. Its maybe half truth, but the other half is, that we see so little real innovation in MMO gameplay, and all the relaunching the same crap over and over. Fetch me 20 bear paws. Bring me 40 hawk livers. How many times can you do that? Sure, there is a burnout, but not of MMOs itself, we are sick of seeing the same EQ-style games for years now.
What I hear of games like Warhammer, the Agency or Pirates of the Burning Sea gives me hopes we see change and REAL novelty next year. Hopefully. I too am just tired of the same old boring grindfests, and no fancy titles can override the quick bore the always same old things in LOTRO create.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Nobody said that just because a game was innovative it was good. What keeps being said is that none of the major games released now, or in the near future, have much in the way of innovation. The entire genre of mmo's seems to have stagnated, with the majority taking the "safe" road to fantasy, and a few trying variations of some Star Trek, Star Wars, or Stargate theme.
Surely there are more possible themes around than just those two.
Somewhere here on MMORPG.com someone made a list of the games in (or announced for) development. Of the 80 listed, 64 were Tolkien like fantasy based games, and 11 were SF. Of the two that did not follow those, one was an mmo about ponies for preteen girls, and one was a historical mmorpg that is still in 'the concept stage of development".
And BTW, Roma Victor is one of the very very few really innovative games out there. You are right that it's present incarnation pretty much sucks - but that is a fault of the game design (and severe underfunding), not the theme or the fact that it was innovative. And I think the "no sub" plan of theirs to make money was also a very stupid decision. A "real" game company, such as SOE, Turbine, etc could have taken that theme - no fantasy, no magic - to a (I think) successful game.
MMO's need to start breaking new ground if they want continued success - and LOTRO (nor Vanguard) did that.
I find it interesting that some of the most innovative games are OLD ones - Asheron's Call 1, now almost 10 years old, has more innovation than WOW and LOTRO combined. WW2 Online (6 years old) has essentially scrapped the "game goes on forever" concept. But those are anomalies, not the norm.
"Don't try to experience everything all at once... maximize your MMO value by enjoying the ride to the highest level."
The MMO genre is suffering what seems to be both the best and worst thing that can happen to any genre: Popularity. The moment the "suits" start seeing he $$$ in it, you can pretty much guarantee a decline is soon to follow.
I remember at one time it seemed many companies wouldn't touch MMOs with a ten-foot pole.. It was still something new and "unproven". And of course, as usual, the ones who did dare to pursue MMO design regardless were trying to stand apart from each other in some way - to offer something different from "the other guy" - to try and attract a healthy playerbase.
Then... they started getting more popular and suddenly, more companies started seeing their potential. And then the band-wagon movement started. People started copying other games - which ever was most popular - to try and get those players. The sense of creativity and originality in a MMO started its decline.
Then WoW came along.. and that pretty much settled it. Tons of MMOs to come out after WoW would try to copy that game - in one way or another - to bring in more players.
The originality and creativity that once drove MMO developers to create something that stood out has now become something to avoid because all the most popular ones aren't doing it.
Just like FPSs, RTSs and a number of other genres... MMOs have been reduced to the same formulaic, generic, "don't tread any new ground" status... with few exceptions. They are very notably becoming dumbed down. The once wide-open sense of adventure and exploration - where the fun in the MMO was actually to be challenged - is being replaced with hand-holding, overly-generous rewards and barely existent penalties.
It is very sad.
The flip-side to that is that the playerbase is also to blame. How many times do you see people claim they want something new... then when it's given to them, they complain because it's not more like "insert other game here". In a sense... the developers are giving players what they want.. they're just not doing it in a new and interesting way.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
One idea would be to have serverwide votes on each new major gameplay change before they start implementing it. So say if 1000 people complain about full loot (this is an example) in the forums. Before going "oh, we best remove the full loot or people will start leaving", you start a vote, that shows up when you log into the game (because not everyone goes to the forums). Basically, to continue playing you have to vote. I think some major changes would never have been made to several games had this mechanic been in place
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I think one reason why games are becoming more and more generic is that developers - ever watchful of their bottom line - are trying to appeal to as wide a playerbase as possible. The so-called "casual" playstyle seems to have the widest appeal because the hardcore players can play through it and succeed, but then so can the casual players - even if neither side is completely satisfied with the setup (casual types always want it more casual, hardcore types always want it more hardcore).
In my personal, arm-chair opinion... I think companies need to start focusing on a specific playstyle and stop trying to please everyone. Find a group that exists looking for a specific playstyle and really go for that. There are MMOs still in existence that don't have WoW's numbers but are hardly a failure. Final Fantasy XI is a great example of this. Its playerbase has hardly ever budged - even after WoW's launch. Compared to WoW's well known "8 million" stats... one might think that FFXI's 600k or so stats aren't very impressive.. Keep in mind, though... FFXI is SE's main cash-cow right now. It's hardly a failure. WoW's numbers are more an anomaly than anything else. Very few MMOs can boast those numbers - that doesn't mean any other MMO that doesn't match them is a failure. You don't need 8 million subscriptions to be successful or profitable.
The point I'm getting to here is.. Square-Enix has accomplished this by sticking to their vision, making very few changes to the difficulty and design of FFXI overall and hasn't jumped on the "more like WoW" bandwagon as many others seem to be. Regardless, they have a healthy and very loyal playerbase. FFXI is showing no signs of slowing down.
So... I dunno... I see less and less satisfaction with MMOs following the WoW model.. and more and more people expressing a desire for something different.. a paradigm shift of some kind to the MMO model. I think it will come at some point... and I don't expect it will be from one of the "big players" on the market - they're the ones often playing it safe.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
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