To be honest, coming back to the original post, i have to say that only the second point is in fact the one that i may agrree with.
On a side note, I find second point slightly contradictory with the third point. How would you like to achive beauty of diversity, if you want to make a game with strong emphasis on grouping (bah, I've got an impression that you would prefer to prevent players from solo play).
Look, I think that if were talking about any sort of MMORPG, we have to keep in mind Role Play thing, which to some degree reflects real world. And that means, that were not all alike, some of us love to teamplay, some of us are lonely wolves, and only like to group from time to time.
The real mastery is to accomodate all kinds of teamplay, not to create a game that may please only a few. Because where there are a few only, its not MM anymore.
As for "too easy" way to level cap, Gennadios pointed it out nicely, do you really want to reward "the more you play, the better you are"? If thats the case, Aion would be to your liking i guess.
And i think were missing a point here, because :
- If getting level capped is meaningless, repetitive process and serves only the purpose of having fun at the endgame, it's always too long.
-If getting level capped means that were at the endgame, where's nothing to do except "rinse and repeat" for gear, it's always too short.
So it really depends on the approach to leveling process I think
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation
1. Imagine if Nintendo had made it so dying in Super Mario Bros 3 meant respawning at an earlier checkpoint without the loss of anything; so, anyone, even your grandma, could beat the game because everyone would be given an infinite number of extra lives.
Don't you mean 'fail to beat the same level over and over for eternity'? I really do not consider failing forever to be the equivalent of 'beat the game'.
I really have to wonder at people who think that all you need to beat a moderately well design game is keep repeating the same mistakes over and over. What kind of horribly designed games have they played? In any decently designed game, the only way to beat a hard encounter is to learn from your mistakes no matter how many times you try to brute force it.
In a Mario game if you cannot make a vital jump you are not gonna beat the level no matter how many times you fail to make the jump. You either learn to do the jump or go play something else.
To be honest, coming back to the original post, i have to say that only the second point is in fact the one that i may agrree with.
On a side note, I find second point slightly contradictory with the third point. How would you like to achive beauty of diversity, if you want to make a game with strong emphasis on grouping (bah, I've got an impression that you would prefer to prevent players from solo play).
Look, I think that if were talking about any sort of MMORPG, we have to keep in mind Role Play thing, which to some degree reflects real world. And that means, that were not all alike, some of us love to teamplay, some of us are lonely wolves, and only like to group from time to time.
The real mastery is to accomodate all kinds of teamplay, not to create a game that may please only a few. Because where there are a few only, its not MM anymore.
As for "too easy" way to level cap, Gennadios pointed it out nicely, do you really want to reward "the more you play, the better you are"? If thats the case, Aion would be to your liking i guess.
And i think were missing a point here, because :
- If getting level capped is meaningless, repetitive process and serves only the purpose of having fun at the endgame, it's always too long.
-If getting level capped means that were at the endgame, where's nothing to do except "rinse and repeat" for gear, it's always too short.
So it really depends on the approach to leveling process I think
It doesn't have to be "the more you play" but there could be alternate ways to level your character so that many choices have to be made and that no character is ever truly "capped". Otherwise, Aion is a ridiculously easy game to level in. There are games where one could play for months and months and never level. However, I imagine most of those games are more about time put in as opposed to deep character choices.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
1. Adequate penalties for dying. A 10% durability loss on equipped items (WoW)--or being able to die 10 times before your stats are reduced by 50% for only 4 mins (Rift. Although you can heal yourself for a minute amount of money before it gets to the point where you stats are reduced by 50%)--are not adequate penalties for dying in any game, let alone a MMORPG.
When I die in a single player game, I reload to the last save, where I was at full health, with any ammo/items I used up dying restored. That is what I want in every game I play. My idea of the perfect death penalty would be to be restored to full health, no loss of any kind other than a short walk back to where I died.
2. Not enough ways to develop your character.
Agreed. Options are good so long as they are meaningful. Getting to develop, say, dyes to change your armor color doesn't count as meaningful to me.
3. Lack of emphasis on incentives for grouping up with other adventurers at low to mid levels. The genre is called Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Game (MMORPG).
There's no part or definiton of MMORPG that says grouping is mandatory. There's lots of reasons that lots of people like to solo. For myself, I want to group only when it's fun to do so, and never because the content requires it.
4. It takes too little time and effort to hit level cap. I don't care if in a given MMORPG the primary way to gain experience is through killing monsters, or through questing--or a mix between the two. But for the love of the MMORPG genre, please stop churning out games in which players can hit the level cap in a week or two.
How many hours are being played in a session? If someone's a dedicated player like myself, 10-12 hours a day isn't uncommon. I think 168 hours is plenty long to reach the cap.
5. The way in which NPCs behave is lacking. I'm talking about being able to run away from attacking NPCs until they magically stop chasing you ("SORRY MAN, MY MOM'S CALLING ME FOR DINNER!"), becoming invulnerable, and then running back to their spawn point at 500% speed.
Agreed.
Keep in mind that: there is no perfect set of rules to make a "right" MMO. What you like may be totally at odds with what others do. As such, it's better to make a post saying what you like and want to see in online games, and not blanket statements about how any MMO that doesn't meet your standards is somehow wrong.
Finally, it's a very, very good thing that we have MMOs with different approaches; open pvp vs not, solo-friendly vs group-focused, etc. It not only gives all gamers a better chance at finding games they like, it helps to lump together gamers with similar ideas in the same game.
To be honest, coming back to the original post, i have to say that only the second point is in fact the one that i may agrree with.
On a side note, I find second point slightly contradictory with the third point. How would you like to achive beauty of diversity, if you want to make a game with strong emphasis on grouping (bah, I've got an impression that you would prefer to prevent players from solo play).
Look, I think that if were talking about any sort of MMORPG, we have to keep in mind Role Play thing, which to some degree reflects real world. And that means, that were not all alike, some of us love to teamplay, some of us are lonely wolves, and only like to group from time to time.
The real mastery is to accomodate all kinds of teamplay, not to create a game that may please only a few. Because where there are a few only, its not MM anymore.
As for "too easy" way to level cap, Gennadios pointed it out nicely, do you really want to reward "the more you play, the better you are"? If thats the case, Aion would be to your liking i guess.
And i think were missing a point here, because :
- If getting level capped is meaningless, repetitive process and serves only the purpose of having fun at the endgame, it's always too long.
-If getting level capped means that were at the endgame, where's nothing to do except "rinse and repeat" for gear, it's always too short.
So it really depends on the approach to leveling process I think
It doesn't have to be "the more you play" but there could be alternate ways to level your character so that many choices have to be made and that no character is ever truly "capped". Otherwise, Aion is a ridiculously easy game to level in. There are games where one could play for months and months and never level. However, I imagine most of those games are more about time put in as opposed to deep character choices.
Well, my point is that if leveling process is dull, boring, and serves the purpose of "sigh, at last I'm capped, I may start to enjoy the game", get the hell out of it then, and I refuse to spend my time on it anymore.
If leveling up is promising me choices, personal story and simply provides fun, it may never end (Well, SWTOR comes to my mind)
Now, when i got older, I stopped looking at the mmo from the perespective "well, I'll grind my ass of, but ill get this pauldrons", but rather "do I have some fun while i play it or not?"
P.S. Leveling in Aion IS ridiculously easy. But i'ts boring and time consuming. And you know, I don't like that anymore.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation
1.) Classic model. Exp penalties, perminent penalties, etc...have been tried over & over again, and if you plan to hook a large audience they do not work for casual players. Personally I wish nothing happened, but immersion is low on my priority list.
2.) To eaches own. Skill grinds are just another type of grind and how much / many you want to have, also has to do with how much you enjoy the fact they exist. Some people play for solely gear & social aspects, others for immersion...so assuming you come from the later camp & I come from the former, I'll throw a curve ball & say I agree...more skills should still be around.
3.) This point I agree with, though with far less fervour. PLing has basically become an mmo staple, ruining all but end game content for most, or for the small few who put forth the extra effort to attempt to experience the content w/o the ease of burning through it.
4.) This point I agree with whole heartily. I hit level 20 in GW and just had no impedus to play any longer; though I will say the amount of end game content can also make up for a lack in a drawn out leveling curve.
5.) I'm sorry but I 100% disagree with this. Trains & swarms of mobs endlessly following, regardless of "realism" or immersion...is just not needed. Leashing not only helps performance, but also gives you a 'flee' option similar to console games of old. It may take away from the experience for some, but for those who enjoy "fighting to the death" every single mob, they can simply pretend the mob doesnt leash and do so...there are plenty of mob spawns that trains are no longer necessary (if they ever were).
Overall this post seemed like a "everything should be like the old days" post, reading similar to experiences I had in EQ, AC & FFXI. But at the end of the day, games evolve and the genre has gotten more open to a larger playerbase...so alot of these are for the hardcore only & AAA titles should not develop for niches. I welcome changes and for those who like all of the above 5, stick to old MMOs and maybe hope one day they will re-release them w/ updated graphics...or continue the trend of progression servers, so that design ideaology will live on (somewhat). So really the 5 things aren't wrong, just different - get with the times or play the games of old
I would say FFXI is, as the fellow stated. I've raided in WoW for over 4 years and being a top raider is not difficult and takes not too much extra effort, unless you want to be top 1%...but it still doesn't hold a candle to the complexity of Classically modeled mmos: FFXI, EQ, AC, etc...
Although this will probably never really come to be, I think devs should stop thinking about other games and what makes them tick, and focus more on their own game and their own vision on the way they want it to become a reality.
1. Imagine if Nintendo had made it so dying in Super Mario Bros 3 meant respawning at an earlier checkpoint without the loss of anything; so, anyone, even your grandma, could beat the game because everyone would be given an infinite number of extra lives.
Don't you mean 'fail to beat the same level over and over for eternity'? I really do not consider failing forever to be the equivalent of 'beat the game'.
I really have to wonder at people who think that all you need to beat a moderately well design game is keep repeating the same mistakes over and over. What kind of horribly designed games have they played?
Modern MMOs.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Biggest problem for me is that other than questing to max level, and then raiding a bunch of boring content, there is absolutely nothing to these games. No economy, no community, no adventuring.
4. It takes too little time and effort to hit level cap. I don't care if in a given MMORPG the primary way to gain experience is through killing monsters, or through questing--or a mix between the two. But for the love of the MMORPG genre, please stop churning out games in which players can hit the level cap in a week or two. Level 50 in Rift? Who cares. Level 90 in the original Everquest? Holy $#!^.
What would you suggest? A long grind filled with repeatedly killing the same stuff for hours and hours? That isn't fun for most people.
Maybe MMOs of the future (SWTOR hopefully) will get away from the grind and give us an immersive story to experience where the focus isn't on leveling up. I wouldn't care if it took me 6+ months to level as long as I'm not just repeating boring quests or repeatedly killing the same critters for hours.
1. Imagine if Nintendo had made it so dying in Super Mario Bros 3 meant respawning at an earlier checkpoint without the loss of anything; so, anyone, even your grandma, could beat the game because everyone would be given an infinite number of extra lives.
Don't you mean 'fail to beat the same level over and over for eternity'? I really do not consider failing forever to be the equivalent of 'beat the game'.
I really have to wonder at people who think that all you need to beat a moderately well design game is keep repeating the same mistakes over and over. What kind of horribly designed games have they played?
Modern MMOs.
Which ones? I can only name a few isolated instances of encounters where a fight would not reset to its original state after you failed it and died.
In general if you die and fail an encounter, when you get back to try again the fight has reset and all the enemies are at full health and/or mana and you gain no advantage from the fact that you died. If you then repeat the same failed strategy, you will die again and will end up repeating this till you figure out a better way.
Which ones? I can only name a few isolated instances of encounters where a fight would not reset to its original state after you failed it and died.
In general if you die and fail an encounter, when you get back to try again the fight has reset and all the enemies are at full health and/or mana and you gain no advantage from the fact that you died. If you then repeat the same failed strategy, you will die again and will end up repeating this till you figure out a better way.
For me it goes like this: against the same encounter, if I die a 3rd time, I`ll give some serious thought to rethinking my strategy. After 5 failures, I look online. Around the 7th or 8th, I look for a cheat. If I can`t find that, I quit the game, never to return. Over my decades of gaming this has resulted in me not seeing a lot of content. IMO, this should never happen. For me, it means the writers, artists, developers, have wasted their time and efforts. For a few games, it means I saw less than 20% of it.
Every game should have built in settings to allow the user to change the difficulty so that they can see all the content.
For MMOs, this becomes more complicated. I think that the more difficult content should have easier versions (offering lesser rewards ofc) so that everyone can experience it. FWIW, I think raiders who will fail against a boss 20 times or more and still continue to go back are masochists. For me, dying 20 times against one encounter isn`t fun in the least.
For MMOs, this becomes more complicated. I think that the more difficult content should have easier versions (offering lesser rewards ofc) so that everyone can experience it. FWIW, I think raiders who will fail against a boss 20 times or more and still continue to go back are masochists. For me, dying 20 times against one encounter isn`t fun in the least.
So would you say there's a clear line between challenge vs. payoff and complete and utter frustration?
I would say FFXI is, as the fellow stated. I've raided in WoW for over 4 years and being a top raider is not difficult and takes not too much extra effort, unless you want to be top 1%...but it still doesn't hold a candle to the complexity of Classically modeled mmos: FFXI, EQ, AC, etc...
Absolutely. I gave the complexity of fishing as an example. This is because fishing is a simple "distraction" from the main game, and they put that much effort into its complexity.
Lets look at the synergy between combat capabilites. Every class has access to specific weapon types, and they each get specific weapon abilities to do when they gain enough power. That in itself is neither ground-breaking, nor even excessively spectacular. Then they decided to add in the Skill Chain systems. When you have a group of people together, they can chain their specific weapon abilities with timing into specific Skill Chains. Each type of skill chain has a specific element associated with it, so you have to figure out which chain will produce the appropriate elemental attack, so that you can get the biggest bang for your buck with the monsters (who have unique elemental strengths and weaknesses).
On top of that, the Magic casters in the group have the ability to cast a spell (timing important) that matches these abilities to get a "Magic Burst" for even more damage.
Lets not forget that days of the week (in-game) had different elements associated with them, strengthening or weakening certain elements. Storms went through areas, and THEY had specific elements... You get the picture.
Complexity of that type is what keeps players engaged, it helps to build a cohesive world, and one that feels more than just a series of zones.
1. NO. I use to think it too but this is a false view of the way these games are built. Making it more difficult by penalties is not the answer. Making it more open leads to more players willing to take a challenge and not have to suffer the set back.
2. Very true. Making a predefined class is easy to develop and balance but it leads to a cookie cutter builds. Even with open end systems this is true if there is not enough good variety to make different choice valid.
3. True and not true. First off MMORPG is Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. No where in that acronym is there any mention of a group. If it was true then the acronym would be MGORPG. Forced mechanics leads to segregation and segregation leads to a rift between players. Incentive to group should be a natural thing rather than dividing the solo and group content. Making a game all group and no solo or all solo and no group is not the answer either. It is a tough and heated debate in its own right.
4. False. Making a game grind to level x is just a carrot. Making a game that has no levels and has a meaningful immersive story worth playing would keep the players coming back just to feel part of the game world without having to grind skills and levels.
5. The current design of server hardware makes writing a persistent world with all activities a nightmare because every tick has to calculate the position of the NPC their action and their decision branch weather you are in the vicinity or not. Having a million calculations on a relative small world would require a main frame just to calculate it and not the player activity, database transactions and all the in between stuff.
2. Very true. Making a predefined class is easy to develop and balance but it leads to a cookie cutter builds. Even with open end systems this is true if there is not enough good variety to make different choice valid.
Would giving the players a large amount of character options remedy the cookie cutter mentality to make way for personal taste/playstyle, or just exacerbate it? Then again, the cookie cutter ideal will probably be around regardless.
2. Very true. Making a predefined class is easy to develop and balance but it leads to a cookie cutter builds. Even with open end systems this is true if there is not enough good variety to make different choice valid.
Would giving the players a large amount of character options remedy the cookie cutter mentality to make way for personal taste/playstyle, or just exacerbate it? Then again, the cookie cutter ideal will probably be around regardless.
no.
Making the entire skill system available and set a limit on the number of skills they can master/grandmaster will allow a vast difference between builds.
Say 10 of 80 skill lines can be mastered and of those 10 only 5 can be grand mastered. There are valid choices through the system.
At novice level they are able to do a basic spell or combat art or buff. At apprentice level player can do a specific move. At mastery the players get several moves on that skill line and several combinations. At grand mastery they can add the effects of several moves and do considerable more damage, gain protection, heals and so on. This kind of system allows the player think about the direction they really want to advance their character. It is a bit difficult to balance as we discuss in the other thread because in the hands of a skilled player even a master would be able to beat a non-educated Grandmaster.
Honestly, I can agree with static worlds being a proble, but there is not much of an alternative to it. Big bosses and creatures need to respawn, dungeons need to repopiulate, quests reset, otherwise there would be nothing to do for the thousands per server that exist. Big bosses to fight is a huge draw to per server, if anyone remembers the sleeper in EQ, upon defeat usually in the next weeks the servers ended up generally losing 1/3 to 1/2 their population of non-maxed players.
For MMOs, this becomes more complicated. I think that the more difficult content should have easier versions (offering lesser rewards ofc) so that everyone can experience it. FWIW, I think raiders who will fail against a boss 20 times or more and still continue to go back are masochists. For me, dying 20 times against one encounter isn`t fun in the least.
So would you say there's a clear line between challenge vs. payoff and complete and utter frustration?
Absolutely. I could offer 10 million dollars to anyone who could chew threw a 5 foot thick safe and I`d never have to pay. Any attempting would be only frustrated, not challenged.
For me, I often find beating a difficult encounter not rewarding, but a relief; ``thank god that`s over`` and not ``woo hoo!``
Please change the title into ' Five things I dont like about Modern-Day MMORPGs' . If you dont realise that some of your points might be a good thing for other players, you lack perspective and need a reality check.
Comments
To be honest, coming back to the original post, i have to say that only the second point is in fact the one that i may agrree with.
On a side note, I find second point slightly contradictory with the third point. How would you like to achive beauty of diversity, if you want to make a game with strong emphasis on grouping (bah, I've got an impression that you would prefer to prevent players from solo play).
Look, I think that if were talking about any sort of MMORPG, we have to keep in mind Role Play thing, which to some degree reflects real world. And that means, that were not all alike, some of us love to teamplay, some of us are lonely wolves, and only like to group from time to time.
The real mastery is to accomodate all kinds of teamplay, not to create a game that may please only a few. Because where there are a few only, its not MM anymore.
As for "too easy" way to level cap, Gennadios pointed it out nicely, do you really want to reward "the more you play, the better you are"? If thats the case, Aion would be to your liking i guess.
And i think were missing a point here, because :
- If getting level capped is meaningless, repetitive process and serves only the purpose of having fun at the endgame, it's always too long.
-If getting level capped means that were at the endgame, where's nothing to do except "rinse and repeat" for gear, it's always too short.
So it really depends on the approach to leveling process I think
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation
Don't you mean 'fail to beat the same level over and over for eternity'? I really do not consider failing forever to be the equivalent of 'beat the game'.
I really have to wonder at people who think that all you need to beat a moderately well design game is keep repeating the same mistakes over and over. What kind of horribly designed games have they played? In any decently designed game, the only way to beat a hard encounter is to learn from your mistakes no matter how many times you try to brute force it.
In a Mario game if you cannot make a vital jump you are not gonna beat the level no matter how many times you fail to make the jump. You either learn to do the jump or go play something else.
It doesn't have to be "the more you play" but there could be alternate ways to level your character so that many choices have to be made and that no character is ever truly "capped". Otherwise, Aion is a ridiculously easy game to level in. There are games where one could play for months and months and never level. However, I imagine most of those games are more about time put in as opposed to deep character choices.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Well, my point is that if leveling process is dull, boring, and serves the purpose of "sigh, at last I'm capped, I may start to enjoy the game", get the hell out of it then, and I refuse to spend my time on it anymore.
If leveling up is promising me choices, personal story and simply provides fun, it may never end (Well, SWTOR comes to my mind)
Now, when i got older, I stopped looking at the mmo from the perespective "well, I'll grind my ass of, but ill get this pauldrons", but rather "do I have some fun while i play it or not?"
P.S. Leveling in Aion IS ridiculously easy. But i'ts boring and time consuming. And you know, I don't like that anymore.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation
My thoughts on your points:
1.) Classic model. Exp penalties, perminent penalties, etc...have been tried over & over again, and if you plan to hook a large audience they do not work for casual players. Personally I wish nothing happened, but immersion is low on my priority list.
2.) To eaches own. Skill grinds are just another type of grind and how much / many you want to have, also has to do with how much you enjoy the fact they exist. Some people play for solely gear & social aspects, others for immersion...so assuming you come from the later camp & I come from the former, I'll throw a curve ball & say I agree...more skills should still be around.
3.) This point I agree with, though with far less fervour. PLing has basically become an mmo staple, ruining all but end game content for most, or for the small few who put forth the extra effort to attempt to experience the content w/o the ease of burning through it.
4.) This point I agree with whole heartily. I hit level 20 in GW and just had no impedus to play any longer; though I will say the amount of end game content can also make up for a lack in a drawn out leveling curve.
5.) I'm sorry but I 100% disagree with this. Trains & swarms of mobs endlessly following, regardless of "realism" or immersion...is just not needed. Leashing not only helps performance, but also gives you a 'flee' option similar to console games of old. It may take away from the experience for some, but for those who enjoy "fighting to the death" every single mob, they can simply pretend the mob doesnt leash and do so...there are plenty of mob spawns that trains are no longer necessary (if they ever were).
Overall this post seemed like a "everything should be like the old days" post, reading similar to experiences I had in EQ, AC & FFXI. But at the end of the day, games evolve and the genre has gotten more open to a larger playerbase...so alot of these are for the hardcore only & AAA titles should not develop for niches. I welcome changes and for those who like all of the above 5, stick to old MMOs and maybe hope one day they will re-release them w/ updated graphics...or continue the trend of progression servers, so that design ideaology will live on (somewhat). So really the 5 things aren't wrong, just different - get with the times or play the games of old
I would say FFXI is, as the fellow stated. I've raided in WoW for over 4 years and being a top raider is not difficult and takes not too much extra effort, unless you want to be top 1%...but it still doesn't hold a candle to the complexity of Classically modeled mmos: FFXI, EQ, AC, etc...
Although this will probably never really come to be, I think devs should stop thinking about other games and what makes them tick, and focus more on their own game and their own vision on the way they want it to become a reality.
1. Most mmos aren't fun today.
2. Just about every mmo has a crap ton of fedex quests.
3. Time consuming.
4. Dumbing it down for the masses.
5. Lack of community, everything is being catered to the solo player, the anti-grouper.
Modern MMOs.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Biggest problem for me is that other than questing to max level, and then raiding a bunch of boring content, there is absolutely nothing to these games. No economy, no community, no adventuring.
What would you suggest? A long grind filled with repeatedly killing the same stuff for hours and hours? That isn't fun for most people.
Maybe MMOs of the future (SWTOR hopefully) will get away from the grind and give us an immersive story to experience where the focus isn't on leveling up. I wouldn't care if it took me 6+ months to level as long as I'm not just repeating boring quests or repeatedly killing the same critters for hours.
Which ones? I can only name a few isolated instances of encounters where a fight would not reset to its original state after you failed it and died.
In general if you die and fail an encounter, when you get back to try again the fight has reset and all the enemies are at full health and/or mana and you gain no advantage from the fact that you died. If you then repeat the same failed strategy, you will die again and will end up repeating this till you figure out a better way.
For me it goes like this: against the same encounter, if I die a 3rd time, I`ll give some serious thought to rethinking my strategy. After 5 failures, I look online. Around the 7th or 8th, I look for a cheat. If I can`t find that, I quit the game, never to return. Over my decades of gaming this has resulted in me not seeing a lot of content. IMO, this should never happen. For me, it means the writers, artists, developers, have wasted their time and efforts. For a few games, it means I saw less than 20% of it.
Every game should have built in settings to allow the user to change the difficulty so that they can see all the content.
For MMOs, this becomes more complicated. I think that the more difficult content should have easier versions (offering lesser rewards ofc) so that everyone can experience it. FWIW, I think raiders who will fail against a boss 20 times or more and still continue to go back are masochists. For me, dying 20 times against one encounter isn`t fun in the least.
So would you say there's a clear line between challenge vs. payoff and complete and utter frustration?
Absolutely. I gave the complexity of fishing as an example. This is because fishing is a simple "distraction" from the main game, and they put that much effort into its complexity.
Lets look at the synergy between combat capabilites. Every class has access to specific weapon types, and they each get specific weapon abilities to do when they gain enough power. That in itself is neither ground-breaking, nor even excessively spectacular. Then they decided to add in the Skill Chain systems. When you have a group of people together, they can chain their specific weapon abilities with timing into specific Skill Chains. Each type of skill chain has a specific element associated with it, so you have to figure out which chain will produce the appropriate elemental attack, so that you can get the biggest bang for your buck with the monsters (who have unique elemental strengths and weaknesses).
On top of that, the Magic casters in the group have the ability to cast a spell (timing important) that matches these abilities to get a "Magic Burst" for even more damage.
Lets not forget that days of the week (in-game) had different elements associated with them, strengthening or weakening certain elements. Storms went through areas, and THEY had specific elements... You get the picture.
Complexity of that type is what keeps players engaged, it helps to build a cohesive world, and one that feels more than just a series of zones.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
This is just my view.
1. NO. I use to think it too but this is a false view of the way these games are built. Making it more difficult by penalties is not the answer. Making it more open leads to more players willing to take a challenge and not have to suffer the set back.
2. Very true. Making a predefined class is easy to develop and balance but it leads to a cookie cutter builds. Even with open end systems this is true if there is not enough good variety to make different choice valid.
3. True and not true. First off MMORPG is Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. No where in that acronym is there any mention of a group. If it was true then the acronym would be MGORPG. Forced mechanics leads to segregation and segregation leads to a rift between players. Incentive to group should be a natural thing rather than dividing the solo and group content. Making a game all group and no solo or all solo and no group is not the answer either. It is a tough and heated debate in its own right.
4. False. Making a game grind to level x is just a carrot. Making a game that has no levels and has a meaningful immersive story worth playing would keep the players coming back just to feel part of the game world without having to grind skills and levels.
5. The current design of server hardware makes writing a persistent world with all activities a nightmare because every tick has to calculate the position of the NPC their action and their decision branch weather you are in the vicinity or not. Having a million calculations on a relative small world would require a main frame just to calculate it and not the player activity, database transactions and all the in between stuff.
Would giving the players a large amount of character options remedy the cookie cutter mentality to make way for personal taste/playstyle, or just exacerbate it? Then again, the cookie cutter ideal will probably be around regardless.
no.
Making the entire skill system available and set a limit on the number of skills they can master/grandmaster will allow a vast difference between builds.
Say 10 of 80 skill lines can be mastered and of those 10 only 5 can be grand mastered. There are valid choices through the system.
At novice level they are able to do a basic spell or combat art or buff. At apprentice level player can do a specific move. At mastery the players get several moves on that skill line and several combinations. At grand mastery they can add the effects of several moves and do considerable more damage, gain protection, heals and so on. This kind of system allows the player think about the direction they really want to advance their character. It is a bit difficult to balance as we discuss in the other thread because in the hands of a skilled player even a master would be able to beat a non-educated Grandmaster.
Honestly, I can agree with static worlds being a proble, but there is not much of an alternative to it. Big bosses and creatures need to respawn, dungeons need to repopiulate, quests reset, otherwise there would be nothing to do for the thousands per server that exist. Big bosses to fight is a huge draw to per server, if anyone remembers the sleeper in EQ, upon defeat usually in the next weeks the servers ended up generally losing 1/3 to 1/2 their population of non-maxed players.
Absolutely. I could offer 10 million dollars to anyone who could chew threw a 5 foot thick safe and I`d never have to pay. Any attempting would be only frustrated, not challenged.
For me, I often find beating a difficult encounter not rewarding, but a relief; ``thank god that`s over`` and not ``woo hoo!``
Yeah, for all intents and purposes this.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Well for community you need reason to build it.
the only problem with todays mmos's is wow. plain and simple. We would have much better games if wow never existed.
Top 3 MMO's PRE-CU SWG GW1 GW2
Worst 2 wow and Lotro Under standing stones it went woke
Please change the title into ' Five things I dont like about Modern-Day MMORPGs' . If you dont realise that some of your points might be a good thing for other players, you lack perspective and need a reality check.