Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
How to explain the disconnect? Old vs. New.
Silverhawk25
Member Posts: 6
LONG READ
First time poster, long time lurker. I decided to come out of my shell because some of the threads I read on here make me angry. Why does “fun” game play always equate to less time sinks or work involved? Why do games always have to keep the “me too!” crowd happy? I’m old school and that colors my thinking. But I want to try to explain how I feel about then and now when it comes to mmo’s. The best analogy I can think of to describe casual player games vs. old school invest-and-immerse-yourself-in-the-world games uses football for an example because it’s the best I can think to describe it.
Casual
You and a couple friends decide to get together on a Sunday afternoon at the park and play some touch football. It’s nothing but fun, you joke, laugh and hang out with your friends for an hour or two and then go home. Later in the week you might talk about how Jim tripped himself while running for a catch and have a laugh but you probably won’t think much about it. It was simple fun.
Old School Immersive Game
You are a high school football player. You spent most of your summer doing two-a-days, running until you wanted to puke, doing exercises, learning plays, techniques, and such. You then get to spend a couple hours a day after school at practice doing the same things. It’s not all bad, you bond with your team mates, share some laughs, get in shape but all in all you’d skip it if you had the choice. But then comes Friday night and you step onto that field under the lights, heart pounding as you see all the people in the stands cheering. The game stays close with both teams going back and forth all night until it comes down to the last couple plays and you are down by 6 with 30 yards to score. You team is able pull out the needed score with skill and a bit of luck. The feeling you get is euphoric and there is no place you’d rather be in that moment. The camaraderie afterwards with your team mates in the locker room, talking to the fans, flirting with the girls. At the party later that night, maybe you get lucky with a girl you’ve been trying to get with for quite awhile.
In the first example you had quick and easy simple fun, no work involved. You’re not liable to get any strong feelings or remembrances of that day. In the second example you had to work and spend time doing stuff that wasn’t all bad, but it wasn’t great either. But you put it together with the fun of the Friday night game and what happened after and it makes the whole experience something great, something immersive. It still elicits strong emotion and fond remembrance even years later.
I hope you all understand what I’m trying to communicate although if you didn’t play football it’d be a bit harder to visualize I guess. This is the disconnect from what the old school player thinks and feels about the mmo’s they played back in the day compared to the new casual friendly stuff. They had faults and you had to work at stuff, but your experience was stronger because of it and so was the fun.
Comments
Give me the first example any day. I want to have fun with my friends. I don't want it to be work, I work enough as it is. I have no need to show off to anyone and certainly, I don't want to "get the girl" because my wife would probably frown on that. The whole experience is to have a good time in the limited free time that I have to dedicate. I couldn't care less if I remember it, I couldn't care less if I was immersed, I met the goal I had at the time and I enjoyed myself.
Most people who want grand, memorable experiences probably ought to get off their computers and go outside. Anything you do moving pixels around the screen is ultimately pointless.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
I agree with Cephus in that games are merely entertainment for me. I have enough real life responsibilities that the last thing I want is to have to work REALLY hard at my games too. They should be fun and immersive without requiring you to treat them like a job.
That being said, I have previously played MMOs as if they were a job. At one time, I could afford to regularly spend 8 hours a day in game working towards difficult goals. But that was a long time ago and I am quite a bit older and more bogged down with responsibilities at this point. I simply could never dedicate that much time to a game again, no matter how much I might want to...
Unlike the last 2 posters, I do want to work at it a bit, and I don't consider my accomplishments in MMO's to be meaningless. (most of life is meaningless, who's to say what's relevent?)
And yet, I've had busy real life the entire time I've played MMO's, have never even considered playing them 8 hours a day and even with my more casual gaming style (2-3 hrs a day) have managed to complete most content (not all) in the games that I've played.
I do appreciate a good challenge, am patient and willing to work for the common good of the team, realm or even a random stranger who I help with a task.
It's just a different sort of mindset, not necessarily better or worse than those who prefer their games to be more on the casual side.
"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
I think you may have taken me a little to literally. I didn't mean anything grand and all encompassing or damn near orgasmic from a computer game.
Basically it's like this, the practicing and work is having to level/skill up, get the right items needed for what you are doing, traveling to different area that may take quite awhile to get to, etc. The "friday night game" is the thing you are doing the work for. Maybe you saw on a map that there was this jut of land thats mountainous across the continent and you thought "I wonder what's there" and packed up some gear and headed off.
It took you over an hour to get there but during that hour of travel you ran into another player surrounded by mobs and having a hard go of it. You help him out and start talking. He asks what you are doing and you say heading to an island to see whats there. He says that sounds like it could be fun and asks to join you. So you both head out and along the way you talk about stuff and get to know each other (comaradarie, talking to fans). While you are both traveling you see another lone player coming right towards you who is "flagged red" you and your new friend both think "Uh oh" because you don't want to die or lose gear and judging but what he is wearing he looks tough. You agree to defend each other and stand and fight instead of running. The pk attacks you and it's a close fight but between you and your friend you are able to take him down. You got a rush knowing you could of bit the big one but instead you took on the pk and won. (the up and down nature of the football game, finally winning) You both laugh and pat each other on the back about the victory and travel on.
Again while traveling you happen to find a tower and inside you both find a cool looking room and with a treasure chest and a book shelf with magical scrolls. You end of getting a new spell from one of them and you both get some gold from the chest. Maybe the party and the girl, its just stuff that happens due to the traveling I.E the "football game")
When you finally do reach place you are looking for you find a beatiful cliff view looking out over the ocean, and the sun happens to be settting in the game world and gives you a great swath of sunset colored sky. There is also a gravestone there with an inscription " Even those that fall may be redeemed in the end." You both say in chat to each other co"wow nice". Your new friend says, "Wonder who the gravestone is for and what the inscription is suppose to mean?" You ask him, "Want to explore the area and see what we can find out?" "Sure." your friend says.
Or you can just hop on a flying griffon for a couple of silver and head to the town thats like 2 minutes from the piece of land. Once at the town you get on your uber flying carpet that goes real fast and fly the rest of the way. You see there is a cliff, but the grave stone is hard to see from up in the air so you miss it, and since it took you a whole 5 minutes of travel time the sun is high in the sky and the view isn't as good as it could be but the veiw still wasn't bad and it didn't take you very long to sate your curiousity so it was good you guess. What was more interesting and fun?
Gotta say I agree with Ceph and Anub.. Games are for fun, I want to have fun and play around. As your example eludes to, I want to do something to waste time and have a laugh, nothing that is serious and time consuming to accomplish anything.
And seriously, why would I want that after 8 hours of serious work each day? It seems to me that the people posting these types of arguments aren't really challenged in their everyday life and need to find challenge in a game. I can't fathom how anyone who works using their brains all day would want to come home to a "game" such as EVE, which to me felt like a second job more than a game.
Oh, and Kyle, 2-3 hrs/day is pretty hard core. 2-3 hrs/week is casual
Why does a movie as terrible as Transformers 2 make $800,000,000 worldwide and a movie like Moon make $8,000,000?
Why do shows like 30 Rock and Arrested Development rate like crap and reality trash rate high?
Because people on the whole are braindead idiots who just want dumed down rubbish.
I love the comments "oh, I work soooooooooooooo hard and I'm in such a high pressure job and I have not one, but TWO kids". No, your job is not stressful and a two hundred years ago you would have had at least 6 kids plus worked in the fields all day, had no electricity and had to grow and prepare all your own food.
Look, I'll break this to you, you like dumbed down entertainment not because your life is stressful but because you have the intellectual capability of an earthworm. If you won $50,000,000 in the lottery and never had to work again would you suddenly become interested in hardcore mmorpg's or read quality magazines and literature? No, you wouldn't.
Lets look at this another way - Homer Simpson has 3 kids and "works" all day too.
Being a leader of a country is stressful not pushing a couple of pens around on your desk.
Getting back to shows like 30 Rock and Arrested Development. They were light entertainment. They were funny, not stressful so why don't/didn't they rate much higher? Why does American (or whatever your country is) Idol rate so high even though its the same crap year in year out?
Its got nothing to do with time available to play. To give you an example awhile ago the guild I was in had this young kid in it. He got on every afternoon after school and stayed online to late at night. When it came to raids he turned up without consumables, never having looked at the strats, not having his gear repaired etc.
On the other hand there was another guy who worked full time, had a family at studied at night so he could only raid about 3 times a fortnight. When he did raid he was always on time, had researched the strats and came with consumables. He was always prepared. He was focus and motivated towards achieving a goal. Yes, his ability to reach that goal was limited by time but he was still determined to work towards his goals at his own pace.
You'll find a lot of these saying "oh, I work so hard and have so little time" still watch copious amounts of TV and play their XBOXs and Playstations and you'll find they approach mmorpg's the same way they would approach playing a single player game on their consoles. They'll play when they feel like it and expect to achieve everything in a timeframe of their own chosing.
If you look back at the early mmo's, from sand box to theme park, people revelled and in the uniqueness of what mmo's offered. Old timers looked at mmo's and emphasised the MASSIVE part of Mmorpg. Now players coming to the mmorpg format expect and demand that the game should be shaped and suited to their own INVIDIDUAL demands. - much like a single player game.
So to answer the OP's questions the disconnect is explained partly by generational issues. Teenagers these days are even more instant gratification and attention challenged than previous generations. And of course the flood of Homer Simpson like people discovering mmorpg's for the first time.
You missed the point quite remarkably. I never watch or have watched a reality show, I enjoy reading non-fiction and watching documentaries. But that not relevant as i enjoy the learning part of those activites and increasing my general knowledge.
You don't learn anything from MMO's (at least not until they make an adventure MMO), and MMORPG's are the reality shows of the gaming world. "Harder" MMO's essentially mean more time consuming and/or twitched based, not more intellectually challenging.
"...nothing that is serious and time consuming to accomplish anything."
See, I think that right there is the problem and the disconnect the OP was talking about. This idea that players have to be fed constant "accomplishments" in rapid succession.
That really is what's happened to these games. Everything that might slow people down on their way to their next "accomplishment" has been removed and as a result these games have been gutted down to the most basic element of progression. Progression, progression, progression. To hell with exploring. To hell with social interaction. To hell with adventure. To hell with trying to make the game feel like a world. Just feed them their progression pellets fast enough and they'll be happy.
People worry so much about getting that next level or that next piece of equipment that they start referring to relaxing and actually playing and having fun as "work". Why is it work if you can't insta-travel to the other side of the world? Traveling there on foot might take longer but you're still playing the game. If there are some adventures to be had along the way it should still be fun. People call it "work" because they might have to go five minutes without a progression pellet and they start Jonesing for their fix....not because it's actually work. They don't want to relax and have fun. They want to keep frantically pressing the lever for their next pellet.
I should have put in a "too" in there to make my point come across I guess. So what you are suggesting that the pellet should be dispensed after 8 hours? 10 or 12? You are not disagreeing with me on the fundamentals, but on the timing.
I would like to add that accomplishments can come in many forms, and its to the community's detriment that it's solely focused on gears, stats, weapons, levels etc. Games should have accomplishments for i.e. "number of words typed in guild chat" and such to encourage socializing, "%-age of world seen" for exploration. But this is a moot point as I can only ee "challenging" being equaled by time consuming and/or technical of nature as there is little or no room for intellectual challenge in MMORPG's.
And for crying out loud: they are GAMES, defined as "an amusement or pastime". This is opposed to an occupation, defined as "the principal activity in your life that you do to earn money". What's amusing killing 1500 goblins the same exact way to gain 3 points in sword mastery or whatever when its not amusing after 3? Someone should be paying me to do the latter
Sliverhawk25,
I agree with your examples, it seems spot on. But, you waste your time, because what you CAN'T get through any of the new players thick skulls is also something you didn't mention from old school players such as myself.
It's not as much that there are casual MMO's...everyone deserves to have a game cater to them that they can enjoy. It's the frustration in the fact that nearly EVERY MMO is casual, catering to the new crowd completely, and in the process leaving the old schoolers with nothing but fond memories. Also, the frustration of seeing the genre fade away entirely to what I cannot define as MMO's. They are more glorified console RPG's in an MMO wrapper than anything. Their are almost no real MMORPG's anymore. And by real I mean....
Where are the open worlds to explore? Where are the tight knit communities? Where are the meaningful quests? Crafting systems? Robust economies?
Most MMO's now are heavily instanced killing world economies, sense of community, and exploration..which also stems from instant ports, etc. The worlds are linear, fast paced in every aspect, give awards every 5 minutes for little effort, give in-game GPS, etc, etc, etc. What I'm getting at is that there is almost NOTHING that separates them from console games anymore. THAT is what frustrates me more than anything. This is also why I am currently not playing one. Why? I can bascially get the same gratuification out of a console game I pay a one time fee for than a monthly fee for the same thing they are calling MMO's now a days. It's sad.
I'm not sure if you quite got the point I was trying to make.
So let me ask you a question. Why is traveling across the game world "work" but using some form of fast travel isn't work?
Let's assume that you need to travel to the other side of the world (or feel you need to). On foot it will take you 90 minutes. The other scenerio is that the game has some instant travel option so you can do it in less than one minute. In either case you're still playing a game.
In the 90 minutes scenerio you aren't required to do it all in one sitting. If you like you can stop and log out at any time and pick it back up the next time you play.
So why is the 90 minute travel time "work"? The only real difference between the two is the time it takes you to reach your goal. If you have to travel 90 minutes you're still playing a game. You're not working. You're frollicing through fantasy land killing orcs and crap as you go, running from ghouls and ghosties or whatever.
The ONLY difference is the fact that in one scenerio it takes you 90 minutes of total play time to get whatever reward you're after and in the other it takes you less than one minute to get it.
Do you understand what I'm saying? People are associating "fun" with the receipt of rewards and not with the actual gameplay. In other words, they aren't playing to play they are operating the game to get imaginary rewards.
I think the OP's analysis is pretty accurate and I like the fact he was able to express it without putting either side down because neither point of view is right or wrong. It's not about entitlement generations, elitists, slackers and no-lifers, it's just a question of preference.
I enjoy games that require a real time investment.
I don't see a reason to pay 15 bucks a month for a mmorpg that lets me hit cap in two weeks then in a matter of a month hands me gear equal to what 2+ year old vets have.
I become so much more attached to my character when i have to invest real time in it. Even now as a casual player I still feel the same way.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Seems pretty simple to me play a console if you have no time or feel pc mmo with effort feels like work. Leave the PC to us who like a challenge. You are making the wrong platform choice and we have to suffer for it.
The sporting metaphor is a good one, and one that I've often used myself.
That's a huge part of why WoW's success is so far ahead of the rest of the games on the market: none of them make anywhere near the same effort as Blizzard does to target both extremes of playstyle (and everything in between), or, if they do, they fail at hitting those targets.
Meanwhile, WoW carries on appealing to players ranging from the ultracasual to the world first raid guilds and the e-sport arena teams.
I'll take the second example anyday. I still manage to lead a very full, active life and yet have time to play a highly detailed MMO like your second idea suggests. If only a modern one were made in a setting I like.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
I can relate to the busy schedule. But that's not an excuse for anything.
I was, am, and will always be a 'hardcore gamer' with a 'casual schedule'.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
I think much of this misses the point. The discussion was similar to one comparing console fighting games and MMORPG PVP. If you want the quick and fun fluff games, there are plenty of them out there. Go play Bejeweled or Farmville. Why should MMORPGs be diluted?
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Here's the deal: it's just nostalgia. You think the old games suck too. You know how I know? You're not playing them! AC, UO, DAoC, or whatever, most of them are still running. You whine that nothing is as good as them, but then you can't bring yourself to play them anymore. The problem is that too many people let their warped, nostalgic recollections of a game influence their expectations of a new game. Nothing will ever be good enough for you because you think you've played the perfect the game, even though compared to newer games it's worse in every way.
Here's the deal: that's just opinion.
Go with some examples from around six years ago - CoH and WoW. Think about how both games were early on and how they have "grown"...it is not about nostalgia of how the games were and them being games one no longer plays. People have played those games for the six years, watching how they have catered to the "New" and abandoned the "Old"...and how much more people have bitched along the way than they did at the start.
Now think about another game that has been around slightly longer - Eve Online. A game that has not catered to the future breeders of the coming idiocracy...and guess what? You do not get the complaints that you do with either CoH or WoW.
So the tl:dr version...no.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
If there is to be any MMOs in the future that had features the old school vets like and my self is coming up with compromises and options to make stuff that is boring for casuals fun and fun for us as well. Not difficult nor impossible
Fast Travel Vs. Normal Travel-The key here is incentive as one MMO already does Darkfall has the Chaos Chest system, making world travel more bearable and makes exploring more fun and exciting, The chests are a random spawn within each grid or zone of the game world the place of them isnt always the same, but the chest can have common stuff like a few gold here and there and sometime rare items that drop for housing or rare ores and other great goodies, sunken treasure and static places where you can find rewards are already in the game , but having a reason to travel around normally this is a good way for budding explorers and travellers to pick up some coin or shinys. Of course you can implment fast travel but it shouldnt just be fast travel anywhere you wish unless its a portal or other genre nickname then its ok, for fast travel options to racial NPC towns or Capital Cities, you can cater to both camps here without taking one route or another.
FFA PVP- Many of the majority if there is even one dislike FFA PVP or just PVP in general , PVP is confined into instances and battlegrounds with no real reason to pvp excpet for points or shinys, solution there already is one EVE Online has a great setup for having FFA PVP but confined to areas of space where most of the bigger corps and best minerals and rewarding experiences lie, that being said why isnt this setup being introduced into normal and newer games and refine and improve on this concept to make sure no shennigans are pulled on casuals and non pvpers?
Lets take a fantasy based game you can have FFA PVP and have safe areas all in the same game just like EVE designate parts of the world FFA PVP terrorities where larger kingdoms rule the land with a iron fist or a just hand, just like EVE have resources to fight over and rare spawns and lots of risk vs reward for veteran players and with that thought in mind have a underworld kind of like the equilvant of 0.0 where the most dangerous and most evil of players and mobs or bosses spawn with great rewards, keeping all terrorities of equal size and maybe giving the underworld ( my nickname for hell the size of the enitre game world on a seperate server cross server play)
To deal with the issues of ganking and griefing the main land for the casuals and nonpvpers would be of great vast no pvp or suicide ganking would be allowed and restricted to only the contested terrorities and the underworld. It's possible once again to have your cake and eat it too allowing once more both vet or (hardcore and casual) to enjoy the best of both worlds.
I got a lot more solutions to a lot of the problems dealing with the lack of MMO today to cater to the vets and casuals but I'm not writing a book here and I want some more Domino's
The ADD generation keeps screaming loudest, so the game makers target them. They are easy money for game devs.
They want instant entertainment in a cooperative environment (for the most part), not a virtual world to have an alternate existence in.
They view mmo's like we used to view arcade games, eh?
Yeah... because a game that released in 03 didnt kick the shit out of every new game in 09 for the game of the year votings on multiple mmo sites.
Dude the new games are watered down, have cramped heavily instanced worlds and shit communities, sure the graphics are nice but thats all.
As for playing older games still, alot of us do but you need to understand that sooner or later you will get tired of even the best games. I love counterstrike and Starcraft but i certainly dont still play them because i got tired of them.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
This is pretty much spot on. There are very few MMOs today that can catter to "old schools", and we can't do much about it. That's not where the money is and both developers and investors are in it for the money. Of course Indie Companies tries to launch something different but it doesn't always work out too well.
Single-Player Online Role Playing Game is the way to go nowadays.
The only way is to find solutions to bring old game mechanics and features into new MMO and find a compromise where both can find it rewarding and fun.