Glad alot of you enjoyed the read. That is the way I feel and am very pleased many feel the same way I do. To people who don't, that is cool too, I am happy to hear all points of views.
When did MMORPGs turn into linear single player rpgs? What happened to the sandboxes we should have and player driven action? Every stupid new game that comes out has a focus on how many quest it has, or not having the "grind". Is this what people want, their online game they pay for to be finished fast as it can? I never really believed that there was anything wrong with linear progression (level/class) or lateral progression (sandbox). The problem I see is when a game is limited to only one or the other. The problem with linear progression is the threat of an endgame and grind. The problem with lateral progression is the lack of specialization. I think devs are selling their customers short when the invest fully in one or the other. I believe that the ideal type of progression is going to be a mixture of the two (or maybe both at the same time).
These are suppose to be worlds that feel lasting. Why are so many people concerned with finishing their online game they pay monthly for? It is about the journey and that is where the developers should fill content at. All you do when you get to the end of a MMORPG is stagnate. I am also sick of being force fed quest to linear go through these games. I feel players should make their own quest. It is the devs job to make the world and interesting place and it is the player's job to explore it and make their adventures. I don't need some npc telling me to kill 10 orcs or to go kill Tom Foolery in Dungeon X. Should their not be big monsters, dragons and demons in deep caverns along your journeys in the world waiting to be discovered? There should be some treasures and rare random mob spawns through out the world as well to run into. Sometimes in games people are so focused on the destination that they fail to have fun on the journey. I personally believe that the secret to getting your customers to enjoy the journey is to give them a lot of options. When a developer forces a player to play a certain way, instead of the way they want, is when a game starts to become a grind. I also believe that games should not have an endgame. MMORPGs should be a never ending progression of the character. Quests are ok if they are not overdone. However, when they become commonplace is when they become boring. Quests should be epic and make a player feel like part of the lore.
Players should find your game interesting enough to form a group to explore dungeon X without quest to do so. Players should form groups to slay monsters in the wild to see what is at the end of the cave. Again why does everyone feel like they have to get to the end of a game to enjoy it? I find this absurd, I love the journey and would love a longer one from a game I pay monthly for. Afterall the journey is where all the character building is happening at, alot more than collecting gear at the finish line. Do people not enjoy getting more skill points to spend, or are excited about the next ability they are getting or which direction your character will be taking? What happened to real gamers rather than people who enjoy the shallow garbage that is WoW? Give us our sandbox and make it a fun sandbox. Make the journey long, make it feel like a journey that lasts. I am not going to pay $15 per month to play a online single player rpg. Thanks but I can "solo" without being connected to the internet. I want community I want a player driven world. I want encouraged player interaction such as grouping. Why again are people accepting such shallow games named WoW? Let people play how they want. The moment a developers starts telling people how they should play is the moment the developer starts hurting their own game. It is ok to encourage a certain playstyle, but it should never be required. Why should there only be one way to do things? Let people choose their own path.
I finish with, has devs forgotten why DnD was popular for so long? Character building, it was slow and fun and it was a group activity. Singler player linear garbage online? No thanks. I don't want to do the same thing everytime I log into a MMORPG. Some days I want to raid, some days I want to group, some days I want to PVP, and some days I just want to veg-out and solo. Don't force me to conform to someone else playstyle, and I will try to prevent others from forcing you.
"Those who dislike things based only on the fact that they are popular are just as shallow and superficial as those who only like them for the same reason."
maybe the simplest answer is quests. the focus on having lots of quests made mmo's suck. Does TBC suck more than pre-TBC, yes it does (pre TBC didn't really suck tbh, until you ran out of 5 mans with your 4 friends and didn't know 35 other people), what's one huge difference between them, well the amount of quests is one.
In tabula rosa grinding is actually hard to do (well from lvl 1-11 anyway) but there are plenty of quests, yay solo.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You? if I were to kill a titan tomorrow and no CCP employees showed up to say grats I would petition it. Waiting for: the next MMO that lets me make this macro if hp < 30 then CastSpell("heal") SpellTargetUnit("player") else CastSpell("smite") end
We have quest in Vangaurd, but to explore a cave going into a mountainside or the same for some ruins you can just go in. I do this all the time - dangerous...but I still do it. ^_^ But you're right...game companies ahve forgotten the three little letters that come after MMO and how important they are. RPG is a just as much a part of this game genre as MMO and it isn't about just playing a fighter or a mage or a rogue. It's about the little things. Like setting a camp and visiting with your adventuring companions. Or being able to enter a tavern in game and having your character be able to sit in a chair at a table. These are the little things that add to the immersion factor of a game world and make it really come to life.
I am hoping the guys working on Vanguard do this someday because Vanguard is a game that brings out the RP in a lot of people...to bad it doesn't have the tools for us to really be able to RP like we were able to do in SWG pre-NGE.
Personally, I think the next step in the evolution of MMORPGs will come when someone creates a game where the world is proactive, instead of interactive. Let me 'splain what I mean. In current, typical MMORPG worlds, the environment just persists. It offers essentially the same experience to player after player, character after character. A single experience will not meaningfully take into account the players class, race, religion, skills, talents, level, or most of the players past actions (excepting of course, the limited "faction" functionality offered in some). The environment never changes or if it does, it does not change radically, and certainly does not present a different experience for one player versus another. But of all the issues, the one that is the most radically boring is the fact that all games today require YOU, the player, to interact with the world in order to uncover quests, or items, etc. YOU have to go up to NPC XYZ and hail them. YOU have to travel to a place where there is a boss that spawns and kill him (and he miraculously appears again for other groups). YOU have to run around to different NPCs to unlock quests, or to buy certain items, or to interact at all with the environment. /yawn. In a proactive world, the environment changes as a result of singular player's activity, skills, talents, and other character attributes. It also serves as a "character" in and of itself, and will seek YOU out as a player, rather than the other way around. The same event experienced by 100 different players may yield 100 different results, depending on any number of circumstances. Wow. Imagine a game where your experiences are different than anyone else's. Imagine a game where different characters can enjoy radically different experiences. Imagine a game where the world recognizes you for your charcter specifics and treats you accordingly. How could that get old? How cool would that be? To illustrate: You are walking through a forest, and a tree falls in front of you. It narrowly misses crushing you (you saved on your reflex roll!). A group of wood nymphs jump out. They peer at you skeptically, then ask you a number of questions, which you answer, and then your screen goes black and you suddenly find yourself in a room with no windows or doors, and you have to .. do something to figure out what the heck just happened. Another player comes across this same tree, already down in the road, and is jumped by bandits who where hiding behind it. He fights them, kills a few, and the others flee. Searching their corpses, he finds a map. He has to then figure out what it means. Another player happens by this same tree, but it's being chopped up by a group of men. The player hails these men, and they respond jovially, offering to trade their firewood for our player's cloak. He agrees, and makes the trade, and finds out later the wood is enchanted and makes a fine hilt for a magic weapon. Another player comes by and the tree is gone, and he passes by this little area without incident. While it may sound horribly expensive or terribly difficult to create this sort of player experience, it's not outside the realm of what is already being created for players by MMORPG companies. It's certianly not outside the realm of possibility, only outside of the box in terms of current game design. In addition, in a proactive world, your activities will have consequences. For example, if you go into the woods and slaughter a few dozen wolves, you'll suddenly find it a little more difficult to gain admittance to a druidic guild or temple. However, the nearby town's Militia is suddenly more interested in hiring you for things like guard duty, something they'd not be willing to ask just anyone. And this opens up new opportunities .. perhaps you get to learn new weapon skills, or leadership skills, etc. My point is this: games will need to change their player experience focus. Games should not be about a player walking through the same, static environment anymore. The world should come to them, interact with them, give them experiences unique to them. Make their actions and choices meaningful. Give them a chance to fully create a unique persona and gaming experience. Give them a chance to really immerse themselves in a world that cares. When your play because you're excited to uncover your next experience, because you never know what it's going to be, then playing isn't about grinding, or money, or leveling, or progressing anyore. It's simply about enjoying new and exciting adventures, that in the end, result in the progession of your character. That's not a 'grind'. That's just pure fun. /dares to dream.
if money has to be in game put a strict limit on what things can sell for, then make it so nobody can just give money to another player. with a limit on what an item can sell for and no money gifts there can be no gold farming!
Put immersion back into MMO's, my favorite way at the moment is through farming as an example.
real farming, where people grow things much the way they would in the real world, and that theyre skill yields varying results! They would have bugs to worry about eating the crops! they would need to know what season to plant what crops, and dammit make seasons change the look and feel of the game!!! :P
Then an alchemist would be one of the professions that relies on farmers, his potions would vary according to his ability and the quality goods he got from farmers.
Grinding should be in a MMO but it should be non essential stuff, and it should be fun as possible. For example instead of having to click over and over to make housing, make the house building a challenging artform.
bottom line make a virtual world that is polished! polish polish polish will get our game popular.
Also for those that cannot log on enough for the real time professions have both non real time profession as well as jobs that allow people to be hired by those that cannot log on as much as theyd like.
Personally I would hafta say Ultima Online had that. There was no 'Levels' you used skill. There were no set templates you could make your character have any skills you wanted. A warrior/tailor/with a bit of magic skill, or a Lumberjacking mage. That was the nice part of UO. You wanted to use a sword, that didn't mean you had to be a warrior only.
In UO there were houses to be bought n the land to explore. There were no quests. People just found things to do they explored the world and found stuff and places to go. Now games such as WoW tell you where you should go to find XX number of pink bunny slippers to collect. Questing is good to have once in a while, but it shouldn't be the sole basis of a game.
I think people should have more freedom to explore the game world. Not be limited because they are not level XX and they will die straight away. The fun part of UO is you could make a newbie and call on one of your friends who would gate you to where ever he/she was hunting and you could have fun straight away anywhere. Even if you died 20 times it was still a blast.
Personally I would hafta say Ultima Online had that. There was no 'Levels' you used skill. There were no set templates you could make your character have any skills you wanted. A warrior/tailor/with a bit of magic skill, or a Lumberjacking mage. That was the nice part of UO. You wanted to use a sword, that didn't mean you had to be a warrior only. In UO there were houses to be bought n the land to explore. There were no quests. People just found things to do they explored the world and found stuff and places to go. Now games such as WoW tell you where you should go to find XX number of pink bunny slippers to collect. Questing is good to have once in a while, but it shouldn't be the sole basis of a game. I think people should have more freedom to explore the game world. Not be limited because they are not level XX and they will die straight away. The fun part of UO is you could make a newbie and call on one of your friends who would gate you to where ever he/she was hunting and you could have fun straight away anywhere. Even if you died 20 times it was still a blast.
There weren't quests in UO, people used to be constantly working on their skills. Some of those skills took a really long time to go up. Grandmaster _______ were really rare on the servers and if you accomplished this you were respected by other players and you could make some of the best items in the game.
These days everything is spoonfed to people because people were whining stuff was taking too long to get skills in and/or they don't have enough time to play. More hand holding and less time/accomplishment reward.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
*sigh* I miss UO and pre CU-SWG where you weren't looked down upon because of your level and guilds were about making friends rather than sticking to a raiding timetable. Even the original EQ wasn't too bad in that respect and most guilds didn't mind if you took a bit longer to level up.
Nowadays the reason it's possible to solo is because if you couldn't it would be almost impossible to find a guild who would accept you. High end raiding guilds will only take you in if you already have the right equipment, some of which you can't even get now because it comes from dungeons that are dead. At some point guilds stopped being about community and became all about loot and raiding, this is where I think the solo style of play came in.
*sigh* I miss UO and pre CU-SWG where you weren't looked down upon because of your level and guilds were about making friends rather than sticking to a raiding timetable. Even the original EQ wasn't too bad in that respect and most guilds didn't mind if you took a bit longer to level up. Nowadays the reason it's possible to solo is because if you couldn't it would be almost impossible to find a guild who would accept you. High end raiding guilds will only take you in if you already have the right equipment, some of which you can't even get now because it comes from dungeons that are dead. At some point guilds stopped being about community and became all about loot and raiding, this is where I think the solo style of play came in.
I wish I would have known about MMORPGs when UO was in it's original state. It is unfortunate that I think I had a 386 with the slowest dialup connection in the world back then too.
Comments
Glad alot of you enjoyed the read. That is the way I feel and am very pleased many feel the same way I do. To people who don't, that is cool too, I am happy to hear all points of views.
"Those who dislike things based only on the fact that they are popular are just as shallow and superficial as those who only like them for the same reason."
Because we'd rather reach end level, so we can pvp?
maybe the simplest answer is quests. the focus on having lots of quests made mmo's suck. Does TBC suck more than pre-TBC, yes it does (pre TBC didn't really suck tbh, until you ran out of 5 mans with your 4 friends and didn't know 35 other people), what's one huge difference between them, well the amount of quests is one.
In tabula rosa grinding is actually hard to do (well from lvl 1-11 anyway) but there are plenty of quests, yay solo.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
if I were to kill a titan tomorrow and no CCP employees showed up to say grats I would petition it.
Waiting for: the next MMO that lets me make this macro
if hp < 30 then CastSpell("heal") SpellTargetUnit("player") else CastSpell("smite") end
When people insisted that they able to solo their characters to the level cap. Next question, please.
We have quest in Vangaurd, but to explore a cave going into a mountainside or the same for some ruins you can just go in. I do this all the time - dangerous...but I still do it. ^_^ But you're right...game companies ahve forgotten the three little letters that come after MMO and how important they are. RPG is a just as much a part of this game genre as MMO and it isn't about just playing a fighter or a mage or a rogue. It's about the little things. Like setting a camp and visiting with your adventuring companions. Or being able to enter a tavern in game and having your character be able to sit in a chair at a table. These are the little things that add to the immersion factor of a game world and make it really come to life.
I am hoping the guys working on Vanguard do this someday because Vanguard is a game that brings out the RP in a lot of people...to bad it doesn't have the tools for us to really be able to RP like we were able to do in SWG pre-NGE.
I wish to play your game! You go girl! ^_^
if money has to be in game put a strict limit on what things can sell for, then make it so nobody can just give money to another player. with a limit on what an item can sell for and no money gifts there can be no gold farming!
Put immersion back into MMO's, my favorite way at the moment is through farming as an example.
real farming, where people grow things much the way they would in the real world, and that theyre skill yields varying results! They would have bugs to worry about eating the crops! they would need to know what season to plant what crops, and dammit make seasons change the look and feel of the game!!! :P
Then an alchemist would be one of the professions that relies on farmers, his potions would vary according to his ability and the quality goods he got from farmers.
Grinding should be in a MMO but it should be non essential stuff, and it should be fun as possible. For example instead of having to click over and over to make housing, make the house building a challenging artform.
bottom line make a virtual world that is polished! polish polish polish will get our game popular.
Also for those that cannot log on enough for the real time professions have both non real time profession as well as jobs that allow people to be hired by those that cannot log on as much as theyd like.
Just a start!
Alot of good points and ideas in the thread so far. Thanks for participating.
Personally I would hafta say Ultima Online had that. There was no 'Levels' you used skill. There were no set templates you could make your character have any skills you wanted. A warrior/tailor/with a bit of magic skill, or a Lumberjacking mage. That was the nice part of UO. You wanted to use a sword, that didn't mean you had to be a warrior only.
In UO there were houses to be bought n the land to explore. There were no quests. People just found things to do they explored the world and found stuff and places to go. Now games such as WoW tell you where you should go to find XX number of pink bunny slippers to collect. Questing is good to have once in a while, but it shouldn't be the sole basis of a game.
I think people should have more freedom to explore the game world. Not be limited because they are not level XX and they will die straight away. The fun part of UO is you could make a newbie and call on one of your friends who would gate you to where ever he/she was hunting and you could have fun straight away anywhere. Even if you died 20 times it was still a blast.
There weren't quests in UO, people used to be constantly working on their skills. Some of those skills took a really long time to go up. Grandmaster _______ were really rare on the servers and if you accomplished this you were respected by other players and you could make some of the best items in the game.
These days everything is spoonfed to people because people were whining stuff was taking too long to get skills in and/or they don't have enough time to play. More hand holding and less time/accomplishment reward.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
*sigh* I miss UO and pre CU-SWG where you weren't looked down upon because of your level and guilds were about making friends rather than sticking to a raiding timetable. Even the original EQ wasn't too bad in that respect and most guilds didn't mind if you took a bit longer to level up.
Nowadays the reason it's possible to solo is because if you couldn't it would be almost impossible to find a guild who would accept you. High end raiding guilds will only take you in if you already have the right equipment, some of which you can't even get now because it comes from dungeons that are dead. At some point guilds stopped being about community and became all about loot and raiding, this is where I think the solo style of play came in.
______________________________
WAR is coming. Look busy.
I wish I would have known about MMORPGs when UO was in it's original state. It is unfortunate that I think I had a 386 with the slowest dialup connection in the world back then too.