Why do I get the feeling this thread was started in order to justify the FFXIV game mechanics.
I'm doing a rather bad job at it then, not even mentioning said game once.
we were under the impression you were quite fond of ffix.
what changed your mind?
I came to a realization that the game will be released in a quite unfinished state, which is painfully logical considering they did the same with XI and it ended up being a 'good thing' for them.
I am not willing to pay for an extended beta test however, and will wait until the game satisfies me.
For this discussion, it would be a bad idea to even mention the game, because of my past and because of the irrelevancies that would definitely hurt the discussion and stray it off-topic.
I do have an explanation for the surplus system though, if MMO_Doubter still wants to hear it (in PM) .
Using LOL is like saying "my argument sucks but I still want to disagree".
I noticed in a recent article a comment made by the writer comparing the LOTRO game world and he eluded to a point similar I think to your own, he implied the game world seemed smaller and less immersive because of systems like swift travel and teleporting through the map and home skill but does that really make the world smaller? While it may appear to do so we all know it doesn't, that would imply when we discovered supersonic speed the earth became smaller.
MMORPG industry as far as stability goes is living in the dark ages and are lagging light years behind the offline pc and console industry as far as development standards go and that has little to do with actual or percieved world size. some may say well yes developing for a console is easier with the standardiized specs but pc offline and multiplayer games seem to have there act together too the only people who seem comfortable putting welfare products on the shelf are these mmo devs we are stuck with which is really no surprise to me that so many of them are in fact not successful non mmo producers.
I have to disagree with the first paragraph.
If developers implement such systems like swift travel and teleporting, what is the point of making the game world so big in the first place? Why are there not only the features that the player wants to experience while skipping all that "fat" that goes into making expansive game worlds that people are not going to be seeing or interested in anyway, with teleports around.
Rather than creating large worlds, and then ways to skip it completely in favor of convenience, shouldn't developers try to focus the more important things, things that people Are doing? Things at the other side of the teleport. Instead of making huge areas, they could focus on the gameplay and how to make it so it isn't hindered by the server's limitations for example, when hundreds if not thousands of people's data is being sent to the server and back every second.
It seems like many people don't give a crap about game worlds, they would rather teleport to the destination and be done with it. Closer the shops are, the better, and if NPC's sold everything there is to sell, that would be perfect.Server wide LFG where you can just teleport to instance from a hub with a group ready to move, not even bothering to say "hi" and instead "come on lets go hurry plz".
IMO, the less developers try to make an MMO and instead make the game with gameplay's terms, the better. MMORPG's are huge projects with a lot of factors to take into consideration- online RPG's less so. You can prioritize much better.
I think world size has to do a lot with how the genre is lacking behind. It's just one more thing developers need to consider while also trying to move the genre forward- a lot of times too big of a task, especially if you want to enhance the gameplay experience. This is what I've noticed.
Why ask why? I for one use functions like swift travel but that doesn't stop the fact that I explore in every game that I have ever played where it was plausible. We also disagree because I think you are of the opinion that a vast majority of mmo's are no good and I just think they aren't for me which is the only way I can explain your sentiment of them worrying about creating content on the other side of the teleport (which in my opinion LOTRO my example does an excellent job of).
I can't be bothered with those who don't give a crap about the game world because I don't think that way, I do care about the game world but I also care about not having to do prep work for up to an hour or more every single time I want to experience the game either.
Again I don't have a vested interest in whether the industry decides to create a term for games that I enjoy like LOTRO,TOR and the like but I think again you basically are saying things like being forced to walk everywhere, group to complete content etc. is what makes an mmo massive and that's just wrong, yes that forces one to know how massive the world is but it doesn't make it more massive just less accecable to the masses.
The other point your post made that I want to stress is it is just wrong to even suggest because the games are online rpgs marketed as mmo is the reason they fail, while you can find posts like this one that basically amount to when your grandfather tells you how a candy bar costed a nickel you won't find many that state "AOC sucx because you can swift travel".
Now as far as what devs waste resources on, I don't see things like swift travel as a waste of resources I mean honestly how long could it take to get that feature working when every single game has a function like that (which probably takes no more technical ability than respawning does). Yes I see these are features you have no interest in as is usually the case when people say "I would rather see the devs use resources on ___" but these are the features that helped the industry grow beyond the crowd that would have been playing table top rpg's.
End result is nothing in this post suggests anything other than "I don't think these games being made are mmo's because___" and again I say, so what? While it is your opinion it isn't fact and it does nothing to help games get better especially since a post like this suggests that the problem is anything other than the lack of quality and honesty displayed by most mmo dev houses.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
I remember back before I even played mmos, I played rts,fps and online rpgs. They were a great multiplayer experience and still are. The problem is that devleopers try to make mmos like online rpgs with all the instancing and as we all can see the majorty fails miserably at it. MMOS need to be completely different than rpgs because if not then why call them mmos ?
This is something that i've been thinking about alot lately and I agree the genre needs more classifications than just straight MMORPG:
Example:
Blizzard just added their Real ID this year which allows you to communicate across servers and across all battlenet games.
Is that a feature that fits within the mmo frame? Would it be better now to define this game as a Social Networking MMO?
I know what I want in a game and i'm personally hoping that Final Fantasy 14 will do the job but honestly if it doesn't I probably won't be looking at MMO's anymore at all, not that I don't want to play them just that I feel there not really being made anymore according to what I percieve an MMO to be.
Why ask why? I for one use functions like swift travel but that doesn't stop the fact that I explore in every game that I have ever played where it was plausible. We also disagree because I think you are of the opinion that a vast majority of mmo's are no good and I just think they aren't for me which is the only way I can explain your sentiment of them worrying about creating content on the other side of the teleport (which in my opinion LOTRO my example does an excellent job of).
I can't be bothered with those who don't give a crap about the game world because I don't think that way, I do care about the game world but I also care about not having to do prep work for up to an hour or more every single time I want to experience the game either.
Again I don't have a vested interest in whether the industry decides to create a term for games that I enjoy like LOTRO,TOR and the like but I think again you basically are saying things like being forced to walk everywhere, group to complete content etc. is what makes an mmo massive and that's just wrong, yes that forces one to know how massive the world is but it doesn't make it more massive just less accecable to the masses.
The other point your post made that I want to stress is it is just wrong to even suggest because the games are online rpgs marketed as mmo is the reason they fail, while you can find posts like this one that basically amount to when your grandfather tells you how a candy bar costed a nickel you won't find many that state "AOC sucx because you can swift travel".
Now as far as what devs waste resources on, I don't see things like swift travel as a waste of resources I mean honestly how long could it take to get that feature working when every single game has a function like that (which probably takes no more technical ability than respawning does). Yes I see these are features you have no interest in as is usually the case when people say "I would rather see the devs use resources on ___" but these are the features that helped the industry grow beyond the crowd that would have been playing table top rpg's.
End result is nothing in this post suggests anything other than "I don't think these games being made are mmo's because___" and again I say, so what? While it is your opinion it isn't fact and it does nothing to help games get better especially since a post like this suggests that the problem is anything other than the lack of quality and honesty displayed by most mmo dev houses.
What I am basically trying to stress is that, it would be smarter for developers who want to appeal to those who don't want to deal with inconveniences to just make a game without them.
I'm not really caring about the massive aspect as much as I care about the social aspect, which can be done in a much more compact world too, but not in the same way if you can simply teleport everywhere and get everything from NPC's and so on.
And by wasted resources I mean making the zones large, then implementing swift travel, even hubs where you just teleport to instances. If developers would prioritize their development time differently, the end result would be different as well. LOTRO gameplay is not much more different from other 'MMO's', but if they had created the game differently, the gameplay could be much closer to something like Monster Hunter, PSO, C9.
Lastly, I'm not saying lack of quality is not the problem here, I am just giving a reason as to why this is the case. Especially since MMO's are expected to receive constant updates, that gives companies an excuse to release them unfinished. Hey, it's gonna get better later on anyway?
Using LOL is like saying "my argument sucks but I still want to disagree".
Unless it is one of the first two options you are full of hot air. You just wrote a whole thread stating nothing but your own personal opinion and labelled it as somehow repesenting the masses.
Nope.
Oh boy, you might be right! Sue me?
I want to have a discussion, in which you can either participate in or stay away from.
Would you like some homemade nachos to get you through this discussion?
Why do I get the feeling this thread was started in order to justify the FFXIV game mechanics.
I'm doing a rather bad job at it then, not even mentioning said game once.
we were under the impression you were quite fond of ffix.
what changed your mind?
I came to a realization that the game will be released in a quite unfinished state, which is painfully logical considering they did the same with XI and it ended up being a 'good thing' for them.
I am not willing to pay for an extended beta test however, and will wait until the game satisfies me.
For this discussion, it would be a bad idea to even mention the game, because of my past and because of the irrelevancies that would definitely hurt the discussion and stray it off-topic.
I do have an explanation for the surplus system though, if MMO_Doubter still wants to hear it (in PM) .
What MMO has ever been perfect at release or finished for that matter? Isn't that surplus system where get reduced XP or no XP for playing a particular class for a while? Wouldn't that system be there in beta to get people to test other jobs? I don't know why people are getting worked up about FF XIV for I plan on buying it due to the fact that it has a real crafting system and I can run a business and sell things that are valued on a player based economy.
Why do I get the feeling this thread was started in order to justify the FFXIV game mechanics.
I'm doing a rather bad job at it then, not even mentioning said game once.
we were under the impression you were quite fond of ffix.
what changed your mind?
I came to a realization that the game will be released in a quite unfinished state, which is painfully logical considering they did the same with XI and it ended up being a 'good thing' for them.
I am not willing to pay for an extended beta test however, and will wait until the game satisfies me.
For this discussion, it would be a bad idea to even mention the game, because of my past and because of the irrelevancies that would definitely hurt the discussion and stray it off-topic.
I do have an explanation for the surplus system though, if MMO_Doubter still wants to hear it (in PM) .
What MMO has ever been perfect at release or finished for that matter?
there are several degrees of acceptance i think firefly.
and thats the whole point of this article - you want convenience in your game - and that's fine, WoW was created precisely to cater for this trend of "i don't have enough time to play and when i do i want to be able to feel i've made progress".
and i agree with you that some people will be put off by a "convenience hassle" - albeit that can ALSO be made right.
this goes back to the never-ending debate (which hyanmen brought up here), of whether you prefer a simple, constant non-stop action, highly intense albeit shorter interverals experience to a more meaningless, less intense, longer interval experience. or simulation vs convenience for short.
so some find fun in the former, some in the latter.
Fun being subjective doesn't change the fact that more people have fun certain ways than others. When a game involves an excessive amount of tedium and hassle, that turns away the majority of people.
"convenient hassle" was a typo which I fixed. Games which are a big inconvenient hassle are the ones I complain about, and the ones I see many players avoid. Games which conveniently provide fun are the ones which I see succeed, and which I enjoy myself.
The majority of players enjoy good game systems. Good game systems mean that your actions clearly produce an outcome which is based on those actions. The issue with the "longterm" games is they forsake the majority of meaningful decisionmaking in favor of each decision have a more longterm effect. So it becomes a question of whether you want to play an interesting game of Chess, or whether you want your AFK-harvested/gathered Queen-factory to win your games of Chess for you 6 months down the line. The majority of players prefer the former to the latter.
Basically any form of permanent power accumulation that doesn't harm the short-term decisionmaking ecosystem is great -- and any permanent power accumulation which overrides the value of short-term decisionmaking prevents the game from being interesting to most players.
MMORPGs themselves certainly try to combine the two concepts as much as possible. WOW progression being a simple example of how they let you advance this huge distance, but then if you PVP or PVE you're doing it against similar-level opponents (which factors out your progression, which brings your decisionmaking to the forefront of what determines your performance -- and therefore remains a strong game system.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
and thats the whole point of this article - you want convenience in your game - and that's fine, WoW was created precisely to cater for this trend of "i don't have enough time to play and when i do i want to be able to feel i've made progress".
and i agree with you that some people will be put off by a "convenience hassle" - albeit that can ALSO be made right.
this goes back to the never-ending debate (which hyanmen brought up here), of whether you prefer a simple, constant non-stop action, highly intense albeit shorter interverals experience to a more meaningless, less intense, longer interval experience. or simulation vs convenience for short.
so some find fun in the former, some in the latter.
Fun being subjective doesn't change the fact that more people have fun certain ways than others. When a game involves an excessive amount of tedium and hassle, that turns away the majority of people.
"convenient hassle" was a typo which I fixed. Games which are a big inconvenient hassle are the ones I complain about, and the ones I see many players avoid. Games which conveniently provide fun are the ones which I see succeed, and which I enjoy myself.
The majority of players enjoy good game systems. Good game systems mean that your actions clearly produce an outcome which is based on those actions. The issue with the "longterm" games is they forsake the majority of meaningful decisionmaking in favor of each decision have a more longterm effect. So it becomes a question of whether you want to play an interesting game of Chess, or whether you want your AFK-harvested/gathered Queen-factory to win your games of Chess for you 6 months down the line. The majority of players prefer the former to the latter.
Basically any form of permanent power accumulation that doesn't harm the short-term decisionmaking ecosystem is great -- and any permanent power accumulation which overrides the value of short-term decisionmaking prevents the game from being interesting to most players.
MMORPGs themselves certainly try to combine the two concepts as much as possible. WOW progression being a simple example of how they let you advance this huge distance, but then if you PVP or PVE you're doing it against similar-level opponents (which factors out your progression, which brings your decisionmaking to the forefront of what determines your performance -- and therefore remains a strong game system.)
and thats the whole point of this article - you want convenience in your game - and that's fine, WoW was created precisely to cater for this trend of "i don't have enough time to play and when i do i want to be able to feel i've made progress".
and i agree with you that some people will be put off by a "convenience hassle" - albeit that can ALSO be made right.
this goes back to the never-ending debate (which hyanmen brought up here), of whether you prefer a simple, constant non-stop action, highly intense albeit shorter interverals experience to a more meaningless, less intense, longer interval experience. or simulation vs convenience for short.
so some find fun in the former, some in the latter.
Fun being subjective doesn't change the fact that more people have fun certain ways than others. When a game involves an excessive amount of tedium and hassle, that turns away the majority of people.
"convenient hassle" was a typo which I fixed. Games which are a big inconvenient hassle are the ones I complain about, and the ones I see many players avoid. Games which conveniently provide fun are the ones which I see succeed, and which I enjoy myself.
The majority of players enjoy good game systems. Good game systems mean that your actions clearly produce an outcome which is based on those actions. The issue with the "longterm" games is they forsake the majority of meaningful decisionmaking in favor of each decision have a more longterm effect. So it becomes a question of whether you want to play an interesting game of Chess, or whether you want your AFK-harvested/gathered Queen-factory to win your games of Chess for you 6 months down the line. The majority of players prefer the former to the latter.
Basically any form of permanent power accumulation that doesn't harm the short-term decisionmaking ecosystem is great -- and any permanent power accumulation which overrides the value of short-term decisionmaking prevents the game from being interesting to most players.
MMORPGs themselves certainly try to combine the two concepts as much as possible. WOW progression being a simple example of how they let you advance this huge distance, but then if you PVP or PVE you're doing it against similar-level opponents (which factors out your progression, which brings your decisionmaking to the forefront of what determines your performance -- and therefore remains a strong game system.)
Koster addresses socialization and uptime/downtime flow, but addresses few of the topics actually being discussed in this thread (long vs. shortterm decision-making; good game systems; and avoiding excessive tedium/hassle.)
I can accept claims that WOW fails to be a spectacular game, socially. But that's a rather sharp tangent to veer off on, and doesn't address WOW's strong game systems being the very reason so many players played it.
Could you make a case that players value social interactions more than gameplay ones? Perhaps, I mean there were 12 million WOW subscribers vs. 80 million monthly Farmville players a while back (numbers are 7+ months old for each but the point remains.)
But the subject at hand is that WOW has managed to be the strongest contender despite shaving off some of the typically strong social systems of MMOs. And they've accompished this, among other reasons, due to particularly strong gameplay systems.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
and thats the whole point of this article - you want convenience in your game - and that's fine, WoW was created precisely to cater for this trend of "i don't have enough time to play and when i do i want to be able to feel i've made progress".
and i agree with you that some people will be put off by a "convenience hassle" - albeit that can ALSO be made right.
this goes back to the never-ending debate (which hyanmen brought up here), of whether you prefer a simple, constant non-stop action, highly intense albeit shorter interverals experience to a more meaningless, less intense, longer interval experience. or simulation vs convenience for short.
so some find fun in the former, some in the latter.
Fun being subjective doesn't change the fact that more people have fun certain ways than others. When a game involves an excessive amount of tedium and hassle, that turns away the majority of people.
"convenient hassle" was a typo which I fixed. Games which are a big inconvenient hassle are the ones I complain about, and the ones I see many players avoid. Games which conveniently provide fun are the ones which I see succeed, and which I enjoy myself.
The majority of players enjoy good game systems. Good game systems mean that your actions clearly produce an outcome which is based on those actions. The issue with the "longterm" games is they forsake the majority of meaningful decisionmaking in favor of each decision have a more longterm effect. So it becomes a question of whether you want to play an interesting game of Chess, or whether you want your AFK-harvested/gathered Queen-factory to win your games of Chess for you 6 months down the line. The majority of players prefer the former to the latter.
Basically any form of permanent power accumulation that doesn't harm the short-term decisionmaking ecosystem is great -- and any permanent power accumulation which overrides the value of short-term decisionmaking prevents the game from being interesting to most players.
MMORPGs themselves certainly try to combine the two concepts as much as possible. WOW progression being a simple example of how they let you advance this huge distance, but then if you PVP or PVE you're doing it against similar-level opponents (which factors out your progression, which brings your decisionmaking to the forefront of what determines your performance -- and therefore remains a strong game system.)
Koster addresses socialization and uptime/downtime flow, but addresses few of the topics actually being discussed in this thread (long vs. shortterm decision-making; good game systems; and avoiding excessive tedium/hassle.)
I can accept claims that WOW fails to be a spectacular game, socially. But that's a rather sharp tangent to veer off on, and doesn't address WOW's strong game systems being the very reason so many players played it.
Could you make a case that players value social interactions more than gameplay ones? Perhaps, I mean there were 12 million WOW subscribers vs. 80 million monthly Farmville players a while back (numbers are 7+ months old for each but the point remains.)
But the subject at hand is that WOW has managed to be the strongest contender despite shaving off some of the typically strong social systems of MMOs. And they've accompished this, among other reasons, due to particularly strong gameplay systems.
i just don't why understand why you keep associating tedium and hassle to "downtime".
downtime doesn't need to be either of them - unless its a bad game.
and he addresses the immersion and convinience topics you criticised my article from being "rough".
Let's take a bank as an example. The question came up as to how you would use a bank. It matters because of how we lay it out. If you have to walk inside and use a computer terminal, then we need wide doors and spacious interiors and lots of terminals. But we could also make it so that you could use it anywhere inside the structure--we'd get rid of the terminals, change the layout somewhat based on the flow. Probably have many doors in, since people would tend to stop at the doorway, which is the first place they can do their transaction, and then turn around and leave.
Then we said to ourselves, "Wait a minute. We have a credit economy. We could make it so that you used the bank from anywhere via your datapad." First we talked about a radius around the bank--like say, in the courtyard outside. Then we started talking bigger radii. Finally we we said, "You know, you could just use the bank from anywhere in the city!"
And we said, "Wow, that's awfully convenient! Saves tons of time! We could do that for pretty much every municipal structure!"
here he offers an example of how convenience can go against community and ultimately immersion. and you are arguing that anything short of convenient is fail.
I have to disagree. I think that I play agame specifically for the social aspects of it. Why play Ryzom alone when you can join a guild and spend hours wandering the planet? Sure, we can teleport to certain places, but I prefer to drag out the experience and make the game more challenging. You encounter a lot more enemies when you aren't floaing through cyberspace.
i just don't why understand why you keep associating tedium and hassle to "downtime".
I've barely touched upon "downtime" in this thread, though admittedly it is related to comments about excessive hassle. So it feels a little like you're trying to put words in my mouth here...
Mostly I'm examining the actual market and how things have played out, whereas you're very singularly focused on Social design, which hasn't really been a pervasive theme in the thread. And even then, I once again point out WOW's success-despite-weaker-social-design. In the process of shaving away hundreds of little unnecessary hassles, they eliminated some Social elements in the process -- and yet because the game was so much better as a game than the competition, they succeeded.
My thoughts on downtime are that anything which isn't necessary must be eliminated. (Which is really the concept of efficiency that pervades all design: game, organism, or otherwise.) Once a game's goals are established (which may include 'be social') then any downtime which doesn't carry the game towards one of those goals runs the risk of carrying the game away from those goals by diluting the experience.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The current trends is about easy casual gaming. 10 years ago it was about hardcore gaming.
10 -12 years ago we didn't have that many options so we took what we could get to have an MMO experience. If we had those choices like we do today then I'm positive we would have seen the same trend then as we do now.
It's not about revolving trends. Hard core gaming like we saw in EQ back in 99 will never make a comback again. It is doomed to be a nieche market forever.
At the risk of sounding trolling, MMORPGS back in the day used to be for basement dwellers with infinite time. What we are really whining about is wanting the genre back to being just that. For a "small group of people". As much as I feel part of that group I also have to admit that my time living on mom and dads paychecks giving me unlimited hours infront of a PC is over, now that I have an adult life with adult responsibilities. That doesn't mean I don't miss the communities and experiences those old games fostered.
One of my main gripes with MMO's today are instances. Lack of a true a seamless world. But again I don't see an alternative for people like me who now don't have time for time sinks that takes away from gaming and move it more towards a chatroom.
I think two things are happening that are being jumbled up. One is the extension of online gaming into a much wider market simply because more people have access to PCs and broadband than before and that's changed the demographics.
The second thing is the old problem identified in the MUD days about different types of player and what happens when the games are skewed too much in one direction.
For the sake of argument take the Bartle classification as the start point so we have explorer, socializer, killer, achiever types. In reality people are varying mixtures of all four so let's say that if someone isn't 66% in one of the classifications then they're part of a fifth "mixed" group. What happens if the games are skewed towards one type?
If the devs only listen to the socializers then the game will get more socilaizer friendly and the more the game changes that way the happier the socializers will be. Other player types might not like it but the socializers will.
The same with the killers. The more PvP friendly the game gets the more the killers will like it. Other players might not but the killers will.
Same with explorers. The more the game swings to explorer friendly the more they'll like it. Other types might not.
In reality this is only partly true as other player types leaving the game might detract from the overall experience but in themselves game changes made to appeal to killers, socializers and exploreres will make those types happier.
This isn't rue of achievers at least not in the long-term.
What do achievers want?
1. They want constant progression.
2. They want to be better than other players in game terms which usually means level and gear.
Achievers don't like any barriers to constant progression and so they complain about slow levelling, slow travelling etc until the game changes. The ideal game from this point of view requires the shortest time to max level and that's the evolution you see in games like WoW and more consciously in games like GW. Anything that slows down levelling speed is constantly attacked until the devs give in. Then once people are at max level then it becomes about gear.
Why can't this work long term?
Because achiever psychology is non-combat PvP. Games can't give 80% of achiever players what they want because what they want is to be better than 80% of the other players. It's logically impossible. Whatever form the obstacle takes, be it brains, game time or spare cash there will always be 20% of achiever types at the top and 80% below.
So the 80% will constantly ***** and moan about everything that slows levelling time and if it's changed that will please them a bit but it won't help long term because the faster levelling will effect everyone's levelling time and so the whole game gets full of max levels. So then it becomes about gear grind and the top 20% will get far ahead of the rest and the 80% will ***** and moan about the speed of access to top level gear. If that's changed they'll be happier for a while but not for long because if it's made easier to gain the gear then the top 20% of achievers aren't happy any more and the other 80% of achievers soon stop being happy when all the other players get the same gear too.
(On a secondary note RPGs are all about progression. An achiever personality who also likes RPGs is in a conflict between their achiever urge and their RPG urge because if you make the progression too quick and easy, which is what their achiever side wants, it kills the progression side because progression *requires* time in the same way a sense of world scale *requires* time.)
If you give achiever types what they want then you'll eventually end up in a pure achiever game but it's not logically possible to have a pure achiever game that can make 80% of achiever types happy. So how can you make the majority of achiever types happy (or happier)?
1. Compromise a bit (but not too much as it won't work).
2. Give explorer, socializer and killer types more of what they want.
Why would that work better?
1. Because then the killers, socializers and explorers get distracted more while levelling thereby making it easier for achiever types to overtake them.
2. The killers are running around in average PvE but good PvP resist gear. The socializers are running round in the gear they think looks best. The explorers are running round in gear that drops off some squid in the remotest part of the world that only a dozen players on the server even know exists.
In a nutshell, you can't make achiever types happy by giving them what they want i.e to be "better" than 80% of the other players, if you try and give them what they think they want. However if you give other types what they want then they'll be too busy to compete with the achievers on those terms so even the suckiest achiever can still feel good.
The game evolution we're seeing imo has two elements which then overlap. One is people who are crossing over from FPS and action games who want MMORPGs to be more that way. The second part is one segment of the set of people who have a specific liking for RPGs and progression have an internal logical contradiction when it comes to the game elements neccessary for that progression.
Comments
we were under the impression you were quite fond of ffix.
what changed your mind?
I came to a realization that the game will be released in a quite unfinished state, which is painfully logical considering they did the same with XI and it ended up being a 'good thing' for them.
I am not willing to pay for an extended beta test however, and will wait until the game satisfies me.
For this discussion, it would be a bad idea to even mention the game, because of my past and because of the irrelevancies that would definitely hurt the discussion and stray it off-topic.
I do have an explanation for the surplus system though, if MMO_Doubter still wants to hear it (in PM)
.
Why ask why? I for one use functions like swift travel but that doesn't stop the fact that I explore in every game that I have ever played where it was plausible. We also disagree because I think you are of the opinion that a vast majority of mmo's are no good and I just think they aren't for me which is the only way I can explain your sentiment of them worrying about creating content on the other side of the teleport (which in my opinion LOTRO my example does an excellent job of).
I can't be bothered with those who don't give a crap about the game world because I don't think that way, I do care about the game world but I also care about not having to do prep work for up to an hour or more every single time I want to experience the game either.
Again I don't have a vested interest in whether the industry decides to create a term for games that I enjoy like LOTRO,TOR and the like but I think again you basically are saying things like being forced to walk everywhere, group to complete content etc. is what makes an mmo massive and that's just wrong, yes that forces one to know how massive the world is but it doesn't make it more massive just less accecable to the masses.
The other point your post made that I want to stress is it is just wrong to even suggest because the games are online rpgs marketed as mmo is the reason they fail, while you can find posts like this one that basically amount to when your grandfather tells you how a candy bar costed a nickel you won't find many that state "AOC sucx because you can swift travel".
Now as far as what devs waste resources on, I don't see things like swift travel as a waste of resources I mean honestly how long could it take to get that feature working when every single game has a function like that (which probably takes no more technical ability than respawning does). Yes I see these are features you have no interest in as is usually the case when people say "I would rather see the devs use resources on ___" but these are the features that helped the industry grow beyond the crowd that would have been playing table top rpg's.
End result is nothing in this post suggests anything other than "I don't think these games being made are mmo's because___" and again I say, so what? While it is your opinion it isn't fact and it does nothing to help games get better especially since a post like this suggests that the problem is anything other than the lack of quality and honesty displayed by most mmo dev houses.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
I remember back before I even played mmos, I played rts,fps and online rpgs. They were a great multiplayer experience and still are. The problem is that devleopers try to make mmos like online rpgs with all the instancing and as we all can see the majorty fails miserably at it. MMOS need to be completely different than rpgs because if not then why call them mmos ?
An MMORPG can be an ORPG, but an ORPG cannot be an MMORPG, right?
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
This is something that i've been thinking about alot lately and I agree the genre needs more classifications than just straight MMORPG:
Example:
Blizzard just added their Real ID this year which allows you to communicate across servers and across all battlenet games.
Is that a feature that fits within the mmo frame? Would it be better now to define this game as a Social Networking MMO?
I know what I want in a game and i'm personally hoping that Final Fantasy 14 will do the job but honestly if it doesn't I probably won't be looking at MMO's anymore at all, not that I don't want to play them just that I feel there not really being made anymore according to what I percieve an MMO to be.
What I am basically trying to stress is that, it would be smarter for developers who want to appeal to those who don't want to deal with inconveniences to just make a game without them.
I'm not really caring about the massive aspect as much as I care about the social aspect, which can be done in a much more compact world too, but not in the same way if you can simply teleport everywhere and get everything from NPC's and so on.
And by wasted resources I mean making the zones large, then implementing swift travel, even hubs where you just teleport to instances. If developers would prioritize their development time differently, the end result would be different as well. LOTRO gameplay is not much more different from other 'MMO's', but if they had created the game differently, the gameplay could be much closer to something like Monster Hunter, PSO, C9.
Lastly, I'm not saying lack of quality is not the problem here, I am just giving a reason as to why this is the case. Especially since MMO's are expected to receive constant updates, that gives companies an excuse to release them unfinished. Hey, it's gonna get better later on anyway?
Make a game world, fill it with teleports, hubs, and instances, and it's like you're playing an ORPG.
It's harder if not impossible to do the opposite way, from ORPG to MMORPG. I think you are right.
Dunno really, I'm in it for my own convenience and leisure.
If it sucks , it sucks, ... if I like it, I like it ... don't give a crap how its labeled.
Would you like some homemade nachos to get you through this discussion?
Yes, please.
What MMO has ever been perfect at release or finished for that matter? Isn't that surplus system where get reduced XP or no XP for playing a particular class for a while? Wouldn't that system be there in beta to get people to test other jobs? I don't know why people are getting worked up about FF XIV for I plan on buying it due to the fact that it has a real crafting system and I can run a business and sell things that are valued on a player based economy.
Their pretty good considering I didnt eat anything yesterday consumed lots of booze but I'm feasting tonight :P
there are several degrees of acceptance i think firefly.
vanguard was a mess, for example.
other games had issues but were playable.
No MMO.
I'd rather start playing when its in a good enough shape for me, however. It's not a "now or never" situation, MMO's are dynamic.
um....no?
Fun being subjective doesn't change the fact that more people have fun certain ways than others. When a game involves an excessive amount of tedium and hassle, that turns away the majority of people.
"convenient hassle" was a typo which I fixed. Games which are a big inconvenient hassle are the ones I complain about, and the ones I see many players avoid. Games which conveniently provide fun are the ones which I see succeed, and which I enjoy myself.
The majority of players enjoy good game systems. Good game systems mean that your actions clearly produce an outcome which is based on those actions. The issue with the "longterm" games is they forsake the majority of meaningful decisionmaking in favor of each decision have a more longterm effect. So it becomes a question of whether you want to play an interesting game of Chess, or whether you want your AFK-harvested/gathered Queen-factory to win your games of Chess for you 6 months down the line. The majority of players prefer the former to the latter.
Basically any form of permanent power accumulation that doesn't harm the short-term decisionmaking ecosystem is great -- and any permanent power accumulation which overrides the value of short-term decisionmaking prevents the game from being interesting to most players.
MMORPGs themselves certainly try to combine the two concepts as much as possible. WOW progression being a simple example of how they let you advance this huge distance, but then if you PVP or PVE you're doing it against similar-level opponents (which factors out your progression, which brings your decisionmaking to the forefront of what determines your performance -- and therefore remains a strong game system.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
read here and get back to me:
http://www.raphkoster.com/2009/01/28/ways-to-make-your-virtual-space-more-social/#more-2486
Koster addresses socialization and uptime/downtime flow, but addresses few of the topics actually being discussed in this thread (long vs. shortterm decision-making; good game systems; and avoiding excessive tedium/hassle.)
I can accept claims that WOW fails to be a spectacular game, socially. But that's a rather sharp tangent to veer off on, and doesn't address WOW's strong game systems being the very reason so many players played it.
Could you make a case that players value social interactions more than gameplay ones? Perhaps, I mean there were 12 million WOW subscribers vs. 80 million monthly Farmville players a while back (numbers are 7+ months old for each but the point remains.)
But the subject at hand is that WOW has managed to be the strongest contender despite shaving off some of the typically strong social systems of MMOs. And they've accompished this, among other reasons, due to particularly strong gameplay systems.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
i just don't why understand why you keep associating tedium and hassle to "downtime".
downtime doesn't need to be either of them - unless its a bad game.
and he addresses the immersion and convinience topics you criticised my article from being "rough".
Let's take a bank as an example. The question came up as to how you would use a bank. It matters because of how we lay it out. If you have to walk inside and use a computer terminal, then we need wide doors and spacious interiors and lots of terminals. But we could also make it so that you could use it anywhere inside the structure--we'd get rid of the terminals, change the layout somewhat based on the flow. Probably have many doors in, since people would tend to stop at the doorway, which is the first place they can do their transaction, and then turn around and leave.
Then we said to ourselves, "Wait a minute. We have a credit economy. We could make it so that you used the bank from anywhere via your datapad." First we talked about a radius around the bank--like say, in the courtyard outside. Then we started talking bigger radii. Finally we we said, "You know, you could just use the bank from anywhere in the city!"
And we said, "Wow, that's awfully convenient! Saves tons of time! We could do that for pretty much every municipal structure!"
http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/socialization.shtml
here he offers an example of how convenience can go against community and ultimately immersion. and you are arguing that anything short of convenient is fail.
I have to disagree. I think that I play agame specifically for the social aspects of it. Why play Ryzom alone when you can join a guild and spend hours wandering the planet? Sure, we can teleport to certain places, but I prefer to drag out the experience and make the game more challenging. You encounter a lot more enemies when you aren't floaing through cyberspace.
www.ryzom.com
I've barely touched upon "downtime" in this thread, though admittedly it is related to comments about excessive hassle. So it feels a little like you're trying to put words in my mouth here...
Mostly I'm examining the actual market and how things have played out, whereas you're very singularly focused on Social design, which hasn't really been a pervasive theme in the thread. And even then, I once again point out WOW's success-despite-weaker-social-design. In the process of shaving away hundreds of little unnecessary hassles, they eliminated some Social elements in the process -- and yet because the game was so much better as a game than the competition, they succeeded.
My thoughts on downtime are that anything which isn't necessary must be eliminated. (Which is really the concept of efficiency that pervades all design: game, organism, or otherwise.) Once a game's goals are established (which may include 'be social') then any downtime which doesn't carry the game towards one of those goals runs the risk of carrying the game away from those goals by diluting the experience.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I do
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
10 -12 years ago we didn't have that many options so we took what we could get to have an MMO experience. If we had those choices like we do today then I'm positive we would have seen the same trend then as we do now.
It's not about revolving trends. Hard core gaming like we saw in EQ back in 99 will never make a comback again. It is doomed to be a nieche market forever.
At the risk of sounding trolling, MMORPGS back in the day used to be for basement dwellers with infinite time. What we are really whining about is wanting the genre back to being just that. For a "small group of people". As much as I feel part of that group I also have to admit that my time living on mom and dads paychecks giving me unlimited hours infront of a PC is over, now that I have an adult life with adult responsibilities. That doesn't mean I don't miss the communities and experiences those old games fostered.
One of my main gripes with MMO's today are instances. Lack of a true a seamless world. But again I don't see an alternative for people like me who now don't have time for time sinks that takes away from gaming and move it more towards a chatroom.
People don't want to play MMORPG's.
I think two things are happening that are being jumbled up. One is the extension of online gaming into a much wider market simply because more people have access to PCs and broadband than before and that's changed the demographics.
The second thing is the old problem identified in the MUD days about different types of player and what happens when the games are skewed too much in one direction.
For the sake of argument take the Bartle classification as the start point so we have explorer, socializer, killer, achiever types. In reality people are varying mixtures of all four so let's say that if someone isn't 66% in one of the classifications then they're part of a fifth "mixed" group. What happens if the games are skewed towards one type?
If the devs only listen to the socializers then the game will get more socilaizer friendly and the more the game changes that way the happier the socializers will be. Other player types might not like it but the socializers will.
The same with the killers. The more PvP friendly the game gets the more the killers will like it. Other players might not but the killers will.
Same with explorers. The more the game swings to explorer friendly the more they'll like it. Other types might not.
In reality this is only partly true as other player types leaving the game might detract from the overall experience but in themselves game changes made to appeal to killers, socializers and exploreres will make those types happier.
This isn't rue of achievers at least not in the long-term.
What do achievers want?
1. They want constant progression.
2. They want to be better than other players in game terms which usually means level and gear.
Achievers don't like any barriers to constant progression and so they complain about slow levelling, slow travelling etc until the game changes. The ideal game from this point of view requires the shortest time to max level and that's the evolution you see in games like WoW and more consciously in games like GW. Anything that slows down levelling speed is constantly attacked until the devs give in. Then once people are at max level then it becomes about gear.
Why can't this work long term?
Because achiever psychology is non-combat PvP. Games can't give 80% of achiever players what they want because what they want is to be better than 80% of the other players. It's logically impossible. Whatever form the obstacle takes, be it brains, game time or spare cash there will always be 20% of achiever types at the top and 80% below.
So the 80% will constantly ***** and moan about everything that slows levelling time and if it's changed that will please them a bit but it won't help long term because the faster levelling will effect everyone's levelling time and so the whole game gets full of max levels. So then it becomes about gear grind and the top 20% will get far ahead of the rest and the 80% will ***** and moan about the speed of access to top level gear. If that's changed they'll be happier for a while but not for long because if it's made easier to gain the gear then the top 20% of achievers aren't happy any more and the other 80% of achievers soon stop being happy when all the other players get the same gear too.
(On a secondary note RPGs are all about progression. An achiever personality who also likes RPGs is in a conflict between their achiever urge and their RPG urge because if you make the progression too quick and easy, which is what their achiever side wants, it kills the progression side because progression *requires* time in the same way a sense of world scale *requires* time.)
If you give achiever types what they want then you'll eventually end up in a pure achiever game but it's not logically possible to have a pure achiever game that can make 80% of achiever types happy. So how can you make the majority of achiever types happy (or happier)?
1. Compromise a bit (but not too much as it won't work).
2. Give explorer, socializer and killer types more of what they want.
Why would that work better?
1. Because then the killers, socializers and explorers get distracted more while levelling thereby making it easier for achiever types to overtake them.
2. The killers are running around in average PvE but good PvP resist gear. The socializers are running round in the gear they think looks best. The explorers are running round in gear that drops off some squid in the remotest part of the world that only a dozen players on the server even know exists.
In a nutshell, you can't make achiever types happy by giving them what they want i.e to be "better" than 80% of the other players, if you try and give them what they think they want. However if you give other types what they want then they'll be too busy to compete with the achievers on those terms so even the suckiest achiever can still feel good.
The game evolution we're seeing imo has two elements which then overlap. One is people who are crossing over from FPS and action games who want MMORPGs to be more that way. The second part is one segment of the set of people who have a specific liking for RPGs and progression have an internal logical contradiction when it comes to the game elements neccessary for that progression.