I have never read a high fantasy (i.e. not sci-fi) book where they zip zap across the continent as a common way of transportation. As a matter of fact, most of the adventure is in the journey and not in your destination.
It is nice for you that instantly teleporting thousands of miles is ok but for alot of us other, who are into virtual worlds and not not just computer games, it is not ok.
You want instant gratification, and that is fine, alot of gamers are like that these days. But it would be nice to have a couple of high quality fantasy MMORPG that does not cater to the casual-WoW gamer but rather to the hardcore type that wants things to be hard/realistic and not easy.
Imagine Frodo and the group insta-teleporting from Rivendell to Rohan to the White City instead of actually travelling there.
A-ha! Lord of the Rings has fast travel:
In every game that has fast travel (those that I've tried), you always have to "explore" or find the area first before you can fast travel there. Now, Frodo had to travel to Mordor because he hadn't been there and it took three movies or about 800-1000 (depending on your book) pages to get there but the way back happened in a blink of an eye in comparison.
Why? Because Frodo had already been there and it's not interesting!
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
When I think of instant travel, i liken it to instant character development. They're there to compensate for flawed game design and lack of content. And when i see others jump to it and when I experience it, it makes me feel so game-play unaccomplished and that the game-play has much less to provide a sense of accomplishment, that I get this unnerving sense that I'm within a cheating environment and cheating myself.
Then stop using it, theres many situations where you dont HAVE to use instant travel, but people do anyway then they bitch about it, because apparently they cant control themselves.
It has very little to do with choice when your environment conditions you to use the things you don't want. Consider the scenario where you get invited to a group to go play somewhere and they say "come on over here" we're already killing. You tell them that it will take you some time to get there because you're riding/walking/taking the slower option and they simply state that they don't want to wait for you and tell you not to bother making the trek.
When everybody around you is using instant travels/faster travels you use them to because most of the new generation of gamers don't want to wait for anything... especially other people.
Can yo u blame them? Why should i wait 20 min for someone to show up when i can only play 2 hrs in the evening? Like it or not, waiting is not something people like to do.
I want random dungeons (not generated) that are hidden well, so explorer's can come across them. Is it really hard to program a cave inside a cliff that isn't easily seen on the road? What is the whole point in this land mass if there only DUNGEON A, B, and C and they have a big advertizement saying "COME HERE".
Why can't we have many and many hidden depth's located around the world? I just want the simple things (lol even th
And this will last until about a day and a half into open beta, when the entire world map, "secret" locations, quest solutions, etc, will be posted all across the Internet.
What you want is a time machine to 1990. Let me know when you get it.
Or, you could actually use some imagination and intelligence, get 4-5 friends together, buy the latest version of D&D (or an old version), or GURPS, or Hero System, or Exalted, or any of a few hundred other paper & pencil RPGs, and get all the mystery, exploration, and genuine adventure that your DM can provide.
Well walking 20 min from point A to point B is mind numbingly easy. Taking a 20 min boat ride is mind numblingly easy.
For me: Fun >>> boring or mind numblingly easy travel time
Remember, dear sir, that to the folks on MMORPG.com, "Challenge" is a synonym for "I have a huge bladder and an addiction to no-doz".
Fighting a monster after waiting five minutes==easy.
Fighting the *exact same monster* after waiting for 72 hours==difficult.
Clicking a mouse button 5 times to get something==easy.
Clicking a mouse button 500 times to get the exact same thing==difficult.
I'm sure you get the point.
Most of the folks who post here are severely clueless about game design and suffer from extreme cognitive dissonance -- that is, they want contradictory things. They want games focused on group play, and they want huge world, and then they want to make it impossible to actually get a group together without spending an hour or more traveling -- ignoring the fact that a huge world+slow travel==low population density, and if a player logs in, and spends a week locked out of any interesting content because the game mechanics make grouping hard, he will log out and never play again -- and so the population density drops and the vicious cycle continues.
People put up with it in EQ because there were no other choices. As other choices appeared, EQ added things like POK to make it much easier to get a group together -- the world went from "Cross zone X, cross zone y, cross zone z, then beg for someone to port you" to "Go to POK, take stone X". Anyone whining "But that ruuuuuuined it!"... well, if they hadn't done that, there would not be even the faint shadow of EQ that still remains today.
Time spent doing things is fun. Time spent waiting to do things is not fun. And while this can lead to community and friendship, quite frankly, the current crop of MMORPGers are not anyone I would WANT to spend time chatting with in-game, as they're basically sub-literate morons. I do not relish spending an hour waiting for a spawn, as I did in EQ, with no companions but a hyperactive 13 year old on a Twinkie high who insists on having his character ka-boing all over the place like a demented kangaroo. WHY do they DO that? What POINT does it serve?
Most of the folks who post here are severely clueless about game design and suffer from extreme cognitive dissonance -- that is, they want contradictory things. They want games focused on group play, and they want huge world, and then they want to make it impossible to actually get a group together without spending an hour or more traveling -- ignoring the fact that a huge world+slow travel==low population density, and if a player logs in, and spends a week locked out of any interesting content because the game mechanics make grouping hard, he will log out and never play again -- and so the population density drops and the vicious cycle continues.
I'm sure you can't actually back up any of this post, so what I will dispute is that the only players that would be dissuaded from this type of gameplay are the instant-gratification type of player that isn't wanted for this style of game in the first place. Problem solved.
It's not unreasonable to expect a form of entertainment to be consistently entertaining.
That's the disconnect. To most of us, MMOGs are just games. A form of entertainment.
To a vocal few, they're an alternate world they can lose themselves in.
The two viewpoints can never reconcile because neither side can empathise with the others position.
While I agree that I don't necessarily empathize with the situation, it's not because I can't appreciate that there are people that want push-button constant entertainment with little to no requirement. it's because every other genre of electronic game already does that.
EDIT: I also disagree with the "most of us" part. Even if it comes down to the WoW playerbase- while there are some that want instant gratification and dumbed down content, others are really just waiting for a more Diablo-esque multiplayer action game, while others who have WoW as their very first MMO are just ignorant that they should expect more.
For me not having instances and having travel times isn't about being harder or feeling superior to casual gamers. It is about having a proper online world and feel immersed, as soon as you add instances and instant travel you lose the world. I love travel and the world personally because world PVP is amazing like in the old WoW times. The problem is they removed world PvP and put it all in the battlegrounds so people aren't in the world anymore. Get rid of Battlegrounds and let you capture contested territory and watch the world come alive.
I'm a casual gamer but I still prefer riding a horse to get to places. However, there are few games that make travelling worth while anymore. It would be nice to meet some random and possibly rare encounter while travelling but most MMOs have glued mobs to certain spots. I don't think dungeons will ever remain hidden due to the internet but you could still make many dungeons travel only locations.
Todays MMOs cater too much for instant gratification which is why we see cash shops and instant travel. I wouldn't put it past the Devs of new MMOs coming out to make it where you can buy a dragon in crate with a sign that says stick sword in slot for Dragon Slayer Title and 5000 XP. Its really getting bad in the MMO world where it is all about eye candy and gear and none of it is about story or adventure. The (RPG) of MMORPG is for the most part being removed from all MMOs. I admit it is difficult when you have only a few hours a week as a casual player but I feel it more rewarding when I accomplish something. MMOs today give the illusionary race that you have to max out your character in the first few days of release of the game. This is a terrible model and results in a large amount of boredom for non-casuals. Currently games like those from Cryptic (Champions and STO) have this problem. Realistic MMOs are possible but they need incentives built in. For example, there should be a chance to have a rare encounter when traveling by foot or by horse that you would never get from instant travel. While travelling on foot you might find rare animals to tame, rare monsters to kill and gain rare loot, a merchant with rare goods, a strange man who offers to sell a map to a hidden location, or rare ingredients to find for crafting. Give players a reason to travel.
Eventually enough people will get sick of the instant gratification model of MMOs which will force the gaming market to shift gears again or at least allow for an Independent to be the first to take the risk and succeed. Till then I'm afraid all we can do is wait and give a voice that we are willing to pay for a real MMORPG that delivers roleplay.
It's not unreasonable to expect a form of entertainment to be consistently entertaining.
That's the disconnect. To most of us, MMOGs are just games. A form of entertainment.
To a vocal few, they're an alternate world they can lose themselves in.
The two viewpoints can never reconcile because neither side can empathise with the others position.
While I agree that I don't necessarily empathize with the situation, it's not because I can't appreciate that there are people that want push-button constant entertainment with little to no requirement. it's because every other genre of electronic game already does that.
EDIT: I also disagree with the "most of us" part. Even if it comes down to the WoW playerbase- while there are some that want instant gratification and dumbed down content, others are really just waiting for a more Diablo-esque multiplayer action game, while others who have WoW as their very first MMO are just ignorant that they should expect more.
Again, you highlight the problem.
We make assumptions about the opposing sides preferences and tolerances because we don't empathise with them. You've (incorrectly) made the correllation between a gamer not wanting to sit around waiting and a gamer wanting dumbed-down easy hack-and-slash because they don't know any better. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Allow me to clarify. I like challenge. I play games on the highest difficulty settings because I enjoy beating tough challenges. The "win" is sweeter when the battle is harder, and complexity plays a large part in that. If all I'm doing is mashing a few buttons repeatedly, the outcome is decided by statistics and dice-rolls and I don't consider that to be a challenge.
To reiterate: I don't want dumbed down. I don't want simple. I don't want easy.
I also don't want boring. A 10 minute journey isn't boring the first time; I'm looking at things and places that I haven't seen before. It's a new experience so I'm happy to do it because it's interesting. Repeating it is boring and I want the option to skip it if I don't want to do it.
My preference is inclusionary. Being able to skip a journey doesn't prevent others from not doing so. If you like to manually travel then you can still do so in a game that supports instant travel. The reverse is not true.
In the end this argument is really immersion Vs practicality.
Immersion says I want every one at best to only be able to ride mounts, maybe only at the very of the game once you have already explored and traveled most of the game.
Practicality says I want to be able to log in do what I want to do and if I happen to have a limited amount of time to play be able to spend all of that time doing what I want to do, and not just spending all my time traveling.
Most game developers try to make amends and at least end up some where in between. Even WoW does this, at first every one had to mount and at best use FPs, if you think FPs were instant then you never played Horde going to MC/BWL back in the day. Sure you could just be a jerk and wait for a Warlock to summon you but even then warlocks had to summon 1 person at a time and would often run out of regents.
If your a die hard Immersion fan and think any fast travel is a sin then you might want to start making your own MMO, because the likely chance that a AAA MMO without any fast travel coming out is very very unlikely.
The other problem in this debate is that the immersion players are vastly out numbered, add on to this the fact that even if you made a game that was dedicated to the Immersion players not all would go to that game, maybe it didn't have a good IP, or possibly made by a company not all of them trusted.
Most of the folks who post here are severely clueless about game design and suffer from extreme cognitive dissonance -- that is, they want contradictory things. They want games focused on group play, and they want huge world, and then they want to make it impossible to actually get a group together without spending an hour or more traveling -- ignoring the fact that a huge world+slow travel==low population density, and if a player logs in, and spends a week locked out of any interesting content because the game mechanics make grouping hard, he will log out and never play again -- and so the population density drops and the vicious cycle continues.
I'm sure you can't actually back up any of this post, so what I will dispute is that the only players that would be dissuaded from this type of gameplay are the instant-gratification type of player that isn't wanted for this style of game in the first place. Problem solved.
What is there to back up? These are facts. Look at any game with a large world and a dwindling population -- Vanguard is one sad example. (Damn, I loved that game...). WAR is another -- the entire game was built on the idea of group PVP, then they had no features to make it easy to actually get a group together and scattered players over far too many zones. Both suffered the same death spiral. Need a group... can't get a group.... quit game... harder for anyone else to find group. Likewise, you will usually see a de-powering of formerly group only content in lower end zones, as new players become fewer and fewer -- when I first played EQ2 in 2004, damn near everything required a group, when I tried it again in 2007, only dungeon content did. The "overland" group content had been removed, because there were no longer enough players in newbie zones to make a group possible, and the developers didn't want anyone drawn into the game getting bored and quitting. (Even the "group quest" on newbie island, the "kill the pirate in the cave" quest, had been nerfed to single player.)
As to your second point, the "instant gratification" player (i.e, the one who wants to play the game, not wait to play the game) is the vast majority of the paying customer base. Again, we see massive cognitive dissonance. Small instances, especially those built from pre-fab components, can be put together by a small team. A huge, open, world requires more people, not to mention a longer testing cycle. More people==more expense, more expense==more audience appeal needed to recoup the investment. So what you want is a game which will appeal to a dwindling niche (masochists with a lot of free time), yet which requires the kind of investment only mass appeal can repay.
You are all entitled to want whatever you want of course. But the amount of emotional energy invested in wanting what you are unlikely to ever have seems wasteful to me. Honestly, I think the majority of MMORPG hating that goes on here is based on the unwillingness of people to admit that THEY'VE changed, that they're actually getting older, bitterer, and disillusioned (it's called "life", buckos!) and seeking to recapture a thrill they felt years ago that they never will -- not because "New games totally SUCK!" but because they're beyond the point in their life where they're capable of experiencing that thrill. Now, THAT was speculation, but it does seem to fit the observed facts.
While I agree that I don't necessarily empathize with the situation, it's not because I can't appreciate that there are people that want push-button constant entertainment with little to no requirement. it's because every other genre of electronic game already does that.
EDIT: I also disagree with the "most of us" part. Even if it comes down to the WoW playerbase- while there are some that want instant gratification and dumbed down content, others are really just waiting for a more Diablo-esque multiplayer action game, while others who have WoW as their very first MMO are just ignorant that they should expect more.
By "more", you mean "the exact same gameplay, only waiting longer".
If you want "immersion", you will never get it from an MMORPG, at least not with present or reasonable near future technology. Play a paper&pencil game -- unless that's too much work for you, of course.
As for me, I think the online gaming experience fell apart when they started adding graphics to MUDs. Suddenly, you didn't even need to read or write to play -- you could just click the mouse on the pretty little pictures. Hell, you didn't even have to know how to configure a Telnet client properly! The community was flooded with little EQ kiddies who just wanted to run around and see things, instead of reading descriptions. How can simplistic colorful graphics convey as much information as text which describes smells, touch, sensation? They can't, but today's kids just don't know they ought to expect more. So it goes.
By "more", you mean "the exact same gameplay, only waiting longer".
If you want "immersion", you will never get it from an MMORPG, at least not with present or reasonable near future technology. Play a paper&pencil game -- unless that's too much work for you, of course.
No. Its like cooldown timers for skills. Changing the timer changes the gameplay.
Adding traveltime will change the gameplay and make it more immersive. Not perfectly immersive, but enough so that its worth it.
I did the whole run across the world in EQ many times. Waiting for the boats, chatting with guild or whoever is there to help pass the time. It certainly helped with the immersion and it was different gameplay than what i'd be doing if i could just tp myself anywhere i want.
These days, i play LOTRO, there are many forms of instant travel.
1) Map, usable once an hour,to whereever you last bound yourself (used a milestone)
2) Racial skill. Return to home town, once an hour.
3) Horse ride. costs money, takes a little while depending on where you are going. Still much quicker than running. And you have to have been to the stable already to take a horse ride there.
4) Horse ride+swift travel. Costs even more money, instant travel time. the epitome of small world instant travel.
Of these, 4 is the biggest offender. 3 is not as bad, but if they slowed it up a little, it would still give people some downtime to get a drink, or chat. I really don't mind 1, i only use it when i am about to log off anyway, it can't be used all that often.
I have never read a high fantasy (i.e. not sci-fi) book where they zip zap across the continent as a common way of transportation. As a matter of fact, most of the adventure is in the journey and not in your destination.
It is nice for you that instantly teleporting thousands of miles is ok but for alot of us other, who are into virtual worlds and not not just computer games, it is not ok.
You want instant gratification, and that is fine, alot of gamers are like that these days. But it would be nice to have a couple of high quality fantasy MMORPG that does not cater to the casual-WoW gamer but rather to the hardcore type that wants things to be hard/realistic and not easy.
Pretty much ANY high fantasy novel will skip large uninteresting parts of the journey that heroes take and focus on the adventure parts.
Our heroes set out, they walked for a day, nothing happened, 2nd day nothing happened, 3rd day nothing happened, 4th day nothing happened, 5th nothing happened, 6th day nothing happened, 7th day nothing happend on the 8th day they were beset by raiders.
Most commonly, you'll get "the first week of the journey was uneventful and on the 8th day....". that "first week" is the MMO equivalent of fast travel. Immersion-wise, "Fast travel" doesn't mean that you instantly appearaed elsewhere. It just means that your journey was not worth mentioning. It could be a caravan, it could be a horse, a flying mount (high fantasy novels? I distinctly remember Gandalf flying an eagle and riding a superfast horse through the air).
Speaking of novels, how many of the high fantasy novels you read have as high of a concentration of magic as most MMO settings? What novel has 10 million Gandalfs running around killing 10 million Saurons? None.
But ultimately, immersion is in the eye of the beholder. If you cannot feel immersed in thinking "I rode with a caravan to the next city and slept most of the way", then I honestly feel bad for you, as it will be difficult for your to find true immersion as no game offers full-scale virtual world with a minute by minute recreation of mundanity.
I love immersion and I love to take journeys and explore. One of my favourite MMO memories is making camp in the middle of nowhere in SWG and listning to my friend play his saxophone by the fire we'd made. It was amazingly immersive. But it was no less immersive that the next time I made a similar journey, I took a shuttle that flew right over that spot without any incident. One experience did not diminish the other.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall Currently Playing: ESO
I have never read a high fantasy (i.e. not sci-fi) book where they zip zap across the continent as a common way of transportation. As a matter of fact, most of the adventure is in the journey and not in your destination.
It is nice for you that instantly teleporting thousands of miles is ok but for alot of us other, who are into virtual worlds and not not just computer games, it is not ok.
You want instant gratification, and that is fine, alot of gamers are like that these days. But it would be nice to have a couple of high quality fantasy MMORPG that does not cater to the casual-WoW gamer but rather to the hardcore type that wants things to be hard/realistic and not easy.
So true.
It is about instant gratification. Every developer, aside from CCP which is as successful - if not more - than an "A" mature studio, has completely misread the market into thinking that the template for 'every' mmorpg success is easy this, easy that, no consequences here, player-centric undermined here, and instant this and instant that.
Since we,the mmorpg community are inclined to vote with our wallets, well, we have. In the last 5 years, not one mmorpg has been nearly as great as Lineage or WoW; with the exception of EVE on the Indie side, or Aion on the "A" mature studiio side.
So, if a 200,000 player-base is the new benchmark for success, and we can rattle-off 10 mmorpgs that have that base with their hodge-podge design why not a more challenging world that is less of instant gratification-based, and more challenging-based?
So, if a 200,000 player-base is the new benchmark for success, and we can rattle-off 10 mmorpgs that have that base with their hodge-podge design why not a more challenging world that is less of instant gratification-based, and more challenging-based?
A teeny weeny troll bait there, right?
Timesink =/= challenge
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
The casuals complain they do not have enough time in the day to accomplish anything in their games and fast travel makes it easier for them instead of having to waste 30 min riding on a mount. The casuals whine and the mmo gods listen, thats how it works.
Well, that's one way of putting it. Another would be is it really enjoyable to have to spend 10 hrs a day to play a game? The problem with hardcore players is that there aren't enough of them to make these types of games popular to become en vogue mmo.
So, if a 200,000 player-base is the new benchmark for success, and we can rattle-off 10 mmorpgs that have that base with their hodge-podge design why not a more challenging world that is less of instant gratification-based, and more challenging-based?
the only title i saw close to what you say is aika!if you can access the global version(you cannot be from america)
i highly recommend it to you had ton of fun in there be it country quest and whats not.the only issue is that fact it isnt a global title and for a game like that to be fun and all it need to be global .you see chat tread the dude is speaking in a foreigh langage
you are more on your toe because your like is he conspirring to do a civil war in this nation etc .emn before 7 of april was great
game is still the same but player had left by the time gpotato made the final ruling player had moved on!global version show do good.doesnt take a lot of ressource and it is very small to download for the quality!
I have never read a high fantasy (i.e. not sci-fi) book where they zip zap across the continent as a common way of transportation. As a matter of fact, most of the adventure is in the journey and not in your destination.
It is nice for you that instantly teleporting thousands of miles is ok but for alot of us other, who are into virtual worlds and not not just computer games, it is not ok.
You want instant gratification, and that is fine, alot of gamers are like that these days. But it would be nice to have a couple of high quality fantasy MMORPG that does not cater to the casual-WoW gamer but rather to the hardcore type that wants things to be hard/realistic and not easy.
So true.
It is about instant gratification. Every developer, aside from CCP which is as successful - if not more - than an "A" mature studio, has completely misread the market into thinking that the template for 'every' mmorpg success is easy this, easy that, no consequences here, player-centric undermined here, and instant this and instant that.
Since we,the mmorpg community are inclined to vote with our wallets, well, we have. In the last 5 years, not one mmorpg has been nearly as great as Lineage or WoW; with the exception of EVE on the Indie side, or Aion on the "A" mature studiio side.
So, if a 200,000 player-base is the new benchmark for success, and we can rattle-off 10 mmorpgs that have that base with their hodge-podge design why not a more challenging world that is less of instant gratification-based, and more challenging-based?
I think EVE is anything but "instant gratification" based, yet it has 3 modes of fast travel. Again, jsut because something has fast travel or instances or any other "technological tool", doesn't always mean that it will result in a certain type of user experience.
Also, i wouldn't say that making a game that caters to the same audience as the most financially successful game out thers is "misreading the market", it's actually reading the market perfectly. I think what you mean to say is that there are other markets than just that one, which is true. Unfortunately they are small.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall Currently Playing: ESO
No. Its like cooldown timers for skills. Changing the timer changes the gameplay.
Adding traveltime will change the gameplay and make it more immersive. Not perfectly immersive, but enough so that its worth it.
I did the whole run across the world in EQ many times. Waiting for the boats, chatting with guild or whoever is there to help pass the time. It certainly helped with the immersion and it was different gameplay than what i'd be doing if i could just tp myself anywhere i want.
These days, i play LOTRO, there are many forms of instant travel.
1) Map, usable once an hour,to whereever you last bound yourself (used a milestone)
2) Racial skill. Return to home town, once an hour.
3) Horse ride. costs money, takes a little while depending on where you are going. Still much quicker than running. And you have to have been to the stable already to take a horse ride there.
4) Horse ride+swift travel. Costs even more money, instant travel time. the epitome of small world instant travel.
Of these, 4 is the biggest offender. 3 is not as bad, but if they slowed it up a little, it would still give people some downtime to get a drink, or chat. I really don't mind 1, i only use it when i am about to log off anyway, it can't be used all that often.
I've played LOTRO a bit; basically, you're describing the same mechanics WoW has, except WoW only has one bind point while LOTRO has two. Oh, and WoW has only very limited instant travel other than bind points -- there's a few major city portals, but most of the time, you have to fly a griffon or ride. Hell, EQ, with POK, had more instant travel than WoW does -- everyone just went to Grand Central Station to go to the zone they wanted. (Please note, BTW, Planes Of Power came out years before WoW was released, so unless Sony has a time machine, they weren't "pandering to the WoW kiddies".)
Sitting and waiting isn't gameplay. Just fire up a chat program. It doesn't "change the gameplay", it adds a delay in getting to the gameplay which doesn't actually add anything to the game. I do not consider watching someone jump up and down and run in circles for ten minutes to "add to my immersion".
Travel and exploration are meaningful and fun... once. After you've explored a zone manually, spending 15 minutes or more running by the same territory you've already seen doesn't add much to immersion or fun; it's just a tedious chore. The greatest weakness to WoW's travel system, and probably to LOTROs, though I didn't play it long enough to find out, is that the death penalty is so trivial that low level players will run through high-level zones, dying over and over, until they respawn close to the next flight point/satable. Requiring exploration to locate "quick travel nodes", and making it so such exploration can't be accomplished via Suicide Express, would be a good thing, IMO.
Overall, though, the fact is, if I have 1-3 hours a night to play, 2-3 nights a week, at most, I do not want to spend a half hour running over terrain I've run over 50 times just to get to where the rest of my party is, or stand around doing nothing while waiting for someone ELSE to do that. If there's nothing to DO while traveling -- no real risk, nothing to stumble over and discover for the first time, etc -- there's no POINT to it. It's a timesink which exists mostly as a legacy of trying to adapt older games to new mediums, ignoring that when you change mediums, you change the rules.
Hell, even in pencil&paper games, you almost never bother with tediously playing out each and every day of travel. You have one encounter to set the mood, describe the local environment, then you say, "OK, two weeks later, you have reached...."
As a side note, I will believe people want "immersion" when they argue for:
a)Realistic encumberance based on weight and *volume*, not on "slots".
b)Damage to equipment from water -- go for a swim, see your armor rust, your spellbooks get soggy, and your spell components ruined.
c)Realistic morale and exhaustion penalties. You want the "immersion" of running cross country, but then being perfectly capable of fighting when you've done so? Tell you what, go run 5 miles, in heavy plate armor, and then pick a fight. Let me know how it goes. Also, get a crowbar and swing it back and forth for, oh, 10 minutes or so. Tell me how your arms feel.
d)Realistic need for food and drink, including passing out from starvation and thirst.
e)Realistic times to wear/remove armor. Every try putting on plate armor? Trust me, you can't do it when an orc is pounding on you -- and if you just wear it long term, you get worn out, quickly, not to mention overheated and dehydrated. (See 'c' and 'd', above.)
Some games have had some of these things, to some degree, but, over time, most games abstract them or reduce penalties -- because they ultimately do not add to fun. "Immersion" is a major component of fun -- persistent world games are appealing because they represent, well, a world -- but it's not the only one. Also, in terms of allocation of design resources, I'd rather immersion be achieved by making locations more "living" -- more NPCs going about their business, more day/night cycles, seasonal effects, and so on, rather than by adding in time and money sinks that ultimately do not enhance play.
(A final note, for those looking for a slow travel, high realism, persistent world, check out "Fallen Earth". It's really quite good.)
I have never read a high fantasy (i.e. not sci-fi) book where they zip zap across the continent as a common way of transportation. As a matter of fact, most of the adventure is in the journey and not in your destination.
It is nice for you that instantly teleporting thousands of miles is ok but for alot of us other, who are into virtual worlds and not not just computer games, it is not ok.
You want instant gratification, and that is fine, alot of gamers are like that these days. But it would be nice to have a couple of high quality fantasy MMORPG that does not cater to the casual-WoW gamer but rather to the hardcore type that wants things to be hard/realistic and not easy.
So true.
It is about instant gratification. Every developer, aside from CCP which is as successful - if not more - than an "A" mature studio, has completely misread the market into thinking that the template for 'every' mmorpg success is easy this, easy that, no consequences here, player-centric undermined here, and instant this and instant that.
Since we,the mmorpg community are inclined to vote with our wallets, well, we have. In the last 5 years, not one mmorpg has been nearly as great as Lineage or WoW; with the exception of EVE on the Indie side, or Aion on the "A" mature studiio side.
So, if a 200,000 player-base is the new benchmark for success, and we can rattle-off 10 mmorpgs that have that base with their hodge-podge design why not a more challenging world that is less of instant gratification-based, and more challenging-based?
I think EVE is anything but "instant gratification" based, yet it has 3 modes of fast travel. Again, jsut because something has fast travel or instances or any other "technological tool", doesn't always mean that it will result in a certain type of user experience.
Also, i wouldn't say that making a game that caters to the same audience as the most financially successful game out thers is "misreading the market", it's actually reading the market perfectly. I think what you mean to say is that there are other markets than just that one, which is true. Unfortunately they are small.
way bigger then you think but before we would go buy the game oh i dont like it shelf it!today people are pissed off to shelf crappy game or low pop game so instead they dont buy no game and often they come here
and there a unhappy mortal tread an unhappy whatemacallit tread .the player say to himself
TANK GOD I DIDNT BUY THAT GAME YESTERDAY!imagine i would soloing a mmorpg .(beurk)and he go make himself a coffee, tanking witchever god he pray to!
Comments
I have never read a high fantasy (i.e. not sci-fi) book where they zip zap across the continent as a common way of transportation. As a matter of fact, most of the adventure is in the journey and not in your destination.
It is nice for you that instantly teleporting thousands of miles is ok but for alot of us other, who are into virtual worlds and not not just computer games, it is not ok.
You want instant gratification, and that is fine, alot of gamers are like that these days. But it would be nice to have a couple of high quality fantasy MMORPG that does not cater to the casual-WoW gamer but rather to the hardcore type that wants things to be hard/realistic and not easy.
My gaming blog
A-ha! Lord of the Rings has fast travel:
In every game that has fast travel (those that I've tried), you always have to "explore" or find the area first before you can fast travel there. Now, Frodo had to travel to Mordor because he hadn't been there and it took three movies or about 800-1000 (depending on your book) pages to get there but the way back happened in a blink of an eye in comparison.
Why? Because Frodo had already been there and it's not interesting!
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Can yo u blame them? Why should i wait 20 min for someone to show up when i can only play 2 hrs in the evening? Like it or not, waiting is not something people like to do.
For me: Immersion >> casual or easy
Well walking 20 min from point A to point B is mind numbingly easy. Taking a 20 min boat ride is mind numblingly easy.
For me: Fun >>> boring or mind numblingly easy travel time
And this will last until about a day and a half into open beta, when the entire world map, "secret" locations, quest solutions, etc, will be posted all across the Internet.
What you want is a time machine to 1990. Let me know when you get it.
Or, you could actually use some imagination and intelligence, get 4-5 friends together, buy the latest version of D&D (or an old version), or GURPS, or Hero System, or Exalted, or any of a few hundred other paper & pencil RPGs, and get all the mystery, exploration, and genuine adventure that your DM can provide.
Remember, dear sir, that to the folks on MMORPG.com, "Challenge" is a synonym for "I have a huge bladder and an addiction to no-doz".
Fighting a monster after waiting five minutes==easy.
Fighting the *exact same monster* after waiting for 72 hours==difficult.
Clicking a mouse button 5 times to get something==easy.
Clicking a mouse button 500 times to get the exact same thing==difficult.
I'm sure you get the point.
Most of the folks who post here are severely clueless about game design and suffer from extreme cognitive dissonance -- that is, they want contradictory things. They want games focused on group play, and they want huge world, and then they want to make it impossible to actually get a group together without spending an hour or more traveling -- ignoring the fact that a huge world+slow travel==low population density, and if a player logs in, and spends a week locked out of any interesting content because the game mechanics make grouping hard, he will log out and never play again -- and so the population density drops and the vicious cycle continues.
People put up with it in EQ because there were no other choices. As other choices appeared, EQ added things like POK to make it much easier to get a group together -- the world went from "Cross zone X, cross zone y, cross zone z, then beg for someone to port you" to "Go to POK, take stone X". Anyone whining "But that ruuuuuuined it!"... well, if they hadn't done that, there would not be even the faint shadow of EQ that still remains today.
Time spent doing things is fun. Time spent waiting to do things is not fun. And while this can lead to community and friendship, quite frankly, the current crop of MMORPGers are not anyone I would WANT to spend time chatting with in-game, as they're basically sub-literate morons. I do not relish spending an hour waiting for a spawn, as I did in EQ, with no companions but a hyperactive 13 year old on a Twinkie high who insists on having his character ka-boing all over the place like a demented kangaroo. WHY do they DO that? What POINT does it serve?
I'm sure you can't actually back up any of this post, so what I will dispute is that the only players that would be dissuaded from this type of gameplay are the instant-gratification type of player that isn't wanted for this style of game in the first place. Problem solved.
It's not unreasonable to expect a form of entertainment to be consistently entertaining.
That's the disconnect. To most of us, MMOGs are just games. A form of entertainment.
To a vocal few, they're an alternate world they can lose themselves in.
The two viewpoints can never reconcile because neither side can empathise with the others position.
While I agree that I don't necessarily empathize with the situation, it's not because I can't appreciate that there are people that want push-button constant entertainment with little to no requirement. it's because every other genre of electronic game already does that.
EDIT: I also disagree with the "most of us" part. Even if it comes down to the WoW playerbase- while there are some that want instant gratification and dumbed down content, others are really just waiting for a more Diablo-esque multiplayer action game, while others who have WoW as their very first MMO are just ignorant that they should expect more.
For me not having instances and having travel times isn't about being harder or feeling superior to casual gamers. It is about having a proper online world and feel immersed, as soon as you add instances and instant travel you lose the world. I love travel and the world personally because world PVP is amazing like in the old WoW times. The problem is they removed world PvP and put it all in the battlegrounds so people aren't in the world anymore. Get rid of Battlegrounds and let you capture contested territory and watch the world come alive.
I'm a casual gamer but I still prefer riding a horse to get to places. However, there are few games that make travelling worth while anymore. It would be nice to meet some random and possibly rare encounter while travelling but most MMOs have glued mobs to certain spots. I don't think dungeons will ever remain hidden due to the internet but you could still make many dungeons travel only locations.
Todays MMOs cater too much for instant gratification which is why we see cash shops and instant travel. I wouldn't put it past the Devs of new MMOs coming out to make it where you can buy a dragon in crate with a sign that says stick sword in slot for Dragon Slayer Title and 5000 XP. Its really getting bad in the MMO world where it is all about eye candy and gear and none of it is about story or adventure. The (RPG) of MMORPG is for the most part being removed from all MMOs. I admit it is difficult when you have only a few hours a week as a casual player but I feel it more rewarding when I accomplish something. MMOs today give the illusionary race that you have to max out your character in the first few days of release of the game. This is a terrible model and results in a large amount of boredom for non-casuals. Currently games like those from Cryptic (Champions and STO) have this problem. Realistic MMOs are possible but they need incentives built in. For example, there should be a chance to have a rare encounter when traveling by foot or by horse that you would never get from instant travel. While travelling on foot you might find rare animals to tame, rare monsters to kill and gain rare loot, a merchant with rare goods, a strange man who offers to sell a map to a hidden location, or rare ingredients to find for crafting. Give players a reason to travel.
Eventually enough people will get sick of the instant gratification model of MMOs which will force the gaming market to shift gears again or at least allow for an Independent to be the first to take the risk and succeed. Till then I'm afraid all we can do is wait and give a voice that we are willing to pay for a real MMORPG that delivers roleplay.
Again, you highlight the problem.
We make assumptions about the opposing sides preferences and tolerances because we don't empathise with them. You've (incorrectly) made the correllation between a gamer not wanting to sit around waiting and a gamer wanting dumbed-down easy hack-and-slash because they don't know any better. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Allow me to clarify. I like challenge. I play games on the highest difficulty settings because I enjoy beating tough challenges. The "win" is sweeter when the battle is harder, and complexity plays a large part in that. If all I'm doing is mashing a few buttons repeatedly, the outcome is decided by statistics and dice-rolls and I don't consider that to be a challenge.
To reiterate: I don't want dumbed down. I don't want simple. I don't want easy.
I also don't want boring. A 10 minute journey isn't boring the first time; I'm looking at things and places that I haven't seen before. It's a new experience so I'm happy to do it because it's interesting. Repeating it is boring and I want the option to skip it if I don't want to do it.
My preference is inclusionary. Being able to skip a journey doesn't prevent others from not doing so. If you like to manually travel then you can still do so in a game that supports instant travel. The reverse is not true.
In the end this argument is really immersion Vs practicality.
Immersion says I want every one at best to only be able to ride mounts, maybe only at the very of the game once you have already explored and traveled most of the game.
Practicality says I want to be able to log in do what I want to do and if I happen to have a limited amount of time to play be able to spend all of that time doing what I want to do, and not just spending all my time traveling.
Most game developers try to make amends and at least end up some where in between. Even WoW does this, at first every one had to mount and at best use FPs, if you think FPs were instant then you never played Horde going to MC/BWL back in the day. Sure you could just be a jerk and wait for a Warlock to summon you but even then warlocks had to summon 1 person at a time and would often run out of regents.
If your a die hard Immersion fan and think any fast travel is a sin then you might want to start making your own MMO, because the likely chance that a AAA MMO without any fast travel coming out is very very unlikely.
The other problem in this debate is that the immersion players are vastly out numbered, add on to this the fact that even if you made a game that was dedicated to the Immersion players not all would go to that game, maybe it didn't have a good IP, or possibly made by a company not all of them trusted.
What is there to back up? These are facts. Look at any game with a large world and a dwindling population -- Vanguard is one sad example. (Damn, I loved that game...). WAR is another -- the entire game was built on the idea of group PVP, then they had no features to make it easy to actually get a group together and scattered players over far too many zones. Both suffered the same death spiral. Need a group... can't get a group.... quit game... harder for anyone else to find group. Likewise, you will usually see a de-powering of formerly group only content in lower end zones, as new players become fewer and fewer -- when I first played EQ2 in 2004, damn near everything required a group, when I tried it again in 2007, only dungeon content did. The "overland" group content had been removed, because there were no longer enough players in newbie zones to make a group possible, and the developers didn't want anyone drawn into the game getting bored and quitting. (Even the "group quest" on newbie island, the "kill the pirate in the cave" quest, had been nerfed to single player.)
As to your second point, the "instant gratification" player (i.e, the one who wants to play the game, not wait to play the game) is the vast majority of the paying customer base. Again, we see massive cognitive dissonance. Small instances, especially those built from pre-fab components, can be put together by a small team. A huge, open, world requires more people, not to mention a longer testing cycle. More people==more expense, more expense==more audience appeal needed to recoup the investment. So what you want is a game which will appeal to a dwindling niche (masochists with a lot of free time), yet which requires the kind of investment only mass appeal can repay.
You are all entitled to want whatever you want of course. But the amount of emotional energy invested in wanting what you are unlikely to ever have seems wasteful to me. Honestly, I think the majority of MMORPG hating that goes on here is based on the unwillingness of people to admit that THEY'VE changed, that they're actually getting older, bitterer, and disillusioned (it's called "life", buckos!) and seeking to recapture a thrill they felt years ago that they never will -- not because "New games totally SUCK!" but because they're beyond the point in their life where they're capable of experiencing that thrill. Now, THAT was speculation, but it does seem to fit the observed facts.
By "more", you mean "the exact same gameplay, only waiting longer".
If you want "immersion", you will never get it from an MMORPG, at least not with present or reasonable near future technology. Play a paper&pencil game -- unless that's too much work for you, of course.
As for me, I think the online gaming experience fell apart when they started adding graphics to MUDs. Suddenly, you didn't even need to read or write to play -- you could just click the mouse on the pretty little pictures. Hell, you didn't even have to know how to configure a Telnet client properly! The community was flooded with little EQ kiddies who just wanted to run around and see things, instead of reading descriptions. How can simplistic colorful graphics convey as much information as text which describes smells, touch, sensation? They can't, but today's kids just don't know they ought to expect more. So it goes.
No. Its like cooldown timers for skills. Changing the timer changes the gameplay.
Adding traveltime will change the gameplay and make it more immersive. Not perfectly immersive, but enough so that its worth it.
I did the whole run across the world in EQ many times. Waiting for the boats, chatting with guild or whoever is there to help pass the time. It certainly helped with the immersion and it was different gameplay than what i'd be doing if i could just tp myself anywhere i want.
These days, i play LOTRO, there are many forms of instant travel.
1) Map, usable once an hour,to whereever you last bound yourself (used a milestone)
2) Racial skill. Return to home town, once an hour.
3) Horse ride. costs money, takes a little while depending on where you are going. Still much quicker than running. And you have to have been to the stable already to take a horse ride there.
4) Horse ride+swift travel. Costs even more money, instant travel time. the epitome of small world instant travel.
Of these, 4 is the biggest offender. 3 is not as bad, but if they slowed it up a little, it would still give people some downtime to get a drink, or chat. I really don't mind 1, i only use it when i am about to log off anyway, it can't be used all that often.
Pretty much ANY high fantasy novel will skip large uninteresting parts of the journey that heroes take and focus on the adventure parts.
Our heroes set out, they walked for a day, nothing happened, 2nd day nothing happened, 3rd day nothing happened, 4th day nothing happened, 5th nothing happened, 6th day nothing happened, 7th day nothing happend on the 8th day they were beset by raiders.
Most commonly, you'll get "the first week of the journey was uneventful and on the 8th day....". that "first week" is the MMO equivalent of fast travel. Immersion-wise, "Fast travel" doesn't mean that you instantly appearaed elsewhere. It just means that your journey was not worth mentioning. It could be a caravan, it could be a horse, a flying mount (high fantasy novels? I distinctly remember Gandalf flying an eagle and riding a superfast horse through the air).
Speaking of novels, how many of the high fantasy novels you read have as high of a concentration of magic as most MMO settings? What novel has 10 million Gandalfs running around killing 10 million Saurons? None.
But ultimately, immersion is in the eye of the beholder. If you cannot feel immersed in thinking "I rode with a caravan to the next city and slept most of the way", then I honestly feel bad for you, as it will be difficult for your to find true immersion as no game offers full-scale virtual world with a minute by minute recreation of mundanity.
I love immersion and I love to take journeys and explore. One of my favourite MMO memories is making camp in the middle of nowhere in SWG and listning to my friend play his saxophone by the fire we'd made. It was amazingly immersive. But it was no less immersive that the next time I made a similar journey, I took a shuttle that flew right over that spot without any incident. One experience did not diminish the other.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
So true.
It is about instant gratification. Every developer, aside from CCP which is as successful - if not more - than an "A" mature studio, has completely misread the market into thinking that the template for 'every' mmorpg success is easy this, easy that, no consequences here, player-centric undermined here, and instant this and instant that.
Since we,the mmorpg community are inclined to vote with our wallets, well, we have. In the last 5 years, not one mmorpg has been nearly as great as Lineage or WoW; with the exception of EVE on the Indie side, or Aion on the "A" mature studiio side.
So, if a 200,000 player-base is the new benchmark for success, and we can rattle-off 10 mmorpgs that have that base with their hodge-podge design why not a more challenging world that is less of instant gratification-based, and more challenging-based?
A teeny weeny troll bait there, right?
Timesink =/= challenge
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Darkfall.
Need i say more?
Well, that's one way of putting it. Another would be is it really enjoyable to have to spend 10 hrs a day to play a game? The problem with hardcore players is that there aren't enough of them to make these types of games popular to become en vogue mmo.
the only title i saw close to what you say is aika!if you can access the global version(you cannot be from america)
i highly recommend it to you had ton of fun in there be it country quest and whats not.the only issue is that fact it isnt a global title and for a game like that to be fun and all it need to be global .you see chat tread the dude is speaking in a foreigh langage
you are more on your toe because your like is he conspirring to do a civil war in this nation etc .emn before 7 of april was great
game is still the same but player had left by the time gpotato made the final ruling player had moved on!global version show do good.doesnt take a lot of ressource and it is very small to download for the quality!
I think EVE is anything but "instant gratification" based, yet it has 3 modes of fast travel. Again, jsut because something has fast travel or instances or any other "technological tool", doesn't always mean that it will result in a certain type of user experience.
Also, i wouldn't say that making a game that caters to the same audience as the most financially successful game out thers is "misreading the market", it's actually reading the market perfectly. I think what you mean to say is that there are other markets than just that one, which is true. Unfortunately they are small.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
I've played LOTRO a bit; basically, you're describing the same mechanics WoW has, except WoW only has one bind point while LOTRO has two. Oh, and WoW has only very limited instant travel other than bind points -- there's a few major city portals, but most of the time, you have to fly a griffon or ride. Hell, EQ, with POK, had more instant travel than WoW does -- everyone just went to Grand Central Station to go to the zone they wanted. (Please note, BTW, Planes Of Power came out years before WoW was released, so unless Sony has a time machine, they weren't "pandering to the WoW kiddies".)
Sitting and waiting isn't gameplay. Just fire up a chat program. It doesn't "change the gameplay", it adds a delay in getting to the gameplay which doesn't actually add anything to the game. I do not consider watching someone jump up and down and run in circles for ten minutes to "add to my immersion".
Travel and exploration are meaningful and fun... once. After you've explored a zone manually, spending 15 minutes or more running by the same territory you've already seen doesn't add much to immersion or fun; it's just a tedious chore. The greatest weakness to WoW's travel system, and probably to LOTROs, though I didn't play it long enough to find out, is that the death penalty is so trivial that low level players will run through high-level zones, dying over and over, until they respawn close to the next flight point/satable. Requiring exploration to locate "quick travel nodes", and making it so such exploration can't be accomplished via Suicide Express, would be a good thing, IMO.
Overall, though, the fact is, if I have 1-3 hours a night to play, 2-3 nights a week, at most, I do not want to spend a half hour running over terrain I've run over 50 times just to get to where the rest of my party is, or stand around doing nothing while waiting for someone ELSE to do that. If there's nothing to DO while traveling -- no real risk, nothing to stumble over and discover for the first time, etc -- there's no POINT to it. It's a timesink which exists mostly as a legacy of trying to adapt older games to new mediums, ignoring that when you change mediums, you change the rules.
Hell, even in pencil&paper games, you almost never bother with tediously playing out each and every day of travel. You have one encounter to set the mood, describe the local environment, then you say, "OK, two weeks later, you have reached...."
As a side note, I will believe people want "immersion" when they argue for:
a)Realistic encumberance based on weight and *volume*, not on "slots".
b)Damage to equipment from water -- go for a swim, see your armor rust, your spellbooks get soggy, and your spell components ruined.
c)Realistic morale and exhaustion penalties. You want the "immersion" of running cross country, but then being perfectly capable of fighting when you've done so? Tell you what, go run 5 miles, in heavy plate armor, and then pick a fight. Let me know how it goes. Also, get a crowbar and swing it back and forth for, oh, 10 minutes or so. Tell me how your arms feel.
d)Realistic need for food and drink, including passing out from starvation and thirst.
e)Realistic times to wear/remove armor. Every try putting on plate armor? Trust me, you can't do it when an orc is pounding on you -- and if you just wear it long term, you get worn out, quickly, not to mention overheated and dehydrated. (See 'c' and 'd', above.)
Some games have had some of these things, to some degree, but, over time, most games abstract them or reduce penalties -- because they ultimately do not add to fun. "Immersion" is a major component of fun -- persistent world games are appealing because they represent, well, a world -- but it's not the only one. Also, in terms of allocation of design resources, I'd rather immersion be achieved by making locations more "living" -- more NPCs going about their business, more day/night cycles, seasonal effects, and so on, rather than by adding in time and money sinks that ultimately do not enhance play.
(A final note, for those looking for a slow travel, high realism, persistent world, check out "Fallen Earth". It's really quite good.)
way bigger then you think but before we would go buy the game oh i dont like it shelf it!today people are pissed off to shelf crappy game or low pop game so instead they dont buy no game and often they come here
and there a unhappy mortal tread an unhappy whatemacallit tread .the player say to himself
TANK GOD I DIDNT BUY THAT GAME YESTERDAY!imagine i would soloing a mmorpg .(beurk)and he go make himself a coffee, tanking witchever god he pray to!