RAT’s Ranthole I: MMO Comparisons – Self Inflicted Mental Blocks of Personal Enjoyment.

Viper_One

 

     We sure are stupid.  No really, I mean that.  As players we are extremely fickle, finicky, overbearingly negative (especially me when it comes to SOE – unrepentedly I might add), and highly prone to extreme “end all be all” statements at the drop of a hat with little to no factual basis to form our opinions around.

 

     “This game is the next WoW killer!”

 

     “OMG, this game is gonna absolutely blow.  No, I haven’t seen it – not even a screen shot – but I just know it will fail.”

 

     We as gamers have began to foster a subculture that is flawed with multiple issues – and we defend our missteps with blind and heated passion instead of simply taking a breath, stepping back, and looking at things with a clear mind calling things for what they are unfettered with emotional responses...  and I am absolutely one of the guilty parties involved.

 

     The topic of this thread, (the first in my “RAT’s Ranthole series”) is one of our greatest blunders and yet is committed more often than many of our other unintelligent sins; the simple act of Comparing one MMO to another.

 

     It’s time for us as a community to pull our proverbial noggins out of our fiber filters and be realistic.  ALL MMO’s are in one way or another very much like each other.  Asking a game company to come up with a completely new and innovative way to do things is the same as asking them to re-invent the wheel.

 

     Expectations from players have been set, and have been for quite a while now – which by definition makes them ‘industry standards.’  These standards are now basic ‘givens’ of any MMO.  Hotbuttons.  Hotbars.  Health Points.  Skill / Class progression trees / paths / builds.  Experience.  These are all basic staples of an MMO.  So why do we insist on claiming “X” game is copying “Y” game when we are talking about something that is also used games A, B, and C?

 

Hotbars were not invented by Blizzard,

 

Elves were not invented by Verant Interactive,

 

Dragons were not invented by TSR,

 

And J. R. Tolkien did not invent medieval fantasy.  No, really… he didn’t.

 

     Comparing MMO's to each other and saying "OMG They have Hotbars and Quests!  It’s just like WoW!  OMGLAAAAME!" is the same as complaining that two cars from two different companies have four wheels so they must have "copied" each other.

 

     Let’s start being logical as a community for once.

 

     MMO's have to be judged on their own merit now.  On their own standing.  Maybe not during the initial stages in the late ‘1990’s and early ‘2000’s, but they do now.  Each iteration has a new story to tell, a new experience, a new way of seeing the possible realities that lay before us – past, present, and future.  Therefore, it is not the mechanics that truly differentiates one MMO from another – but the experience.  The journey, not the goal.

 

     Mechanics should be perfected, polished and continued to be improved on - absolutely.  However, not changed so much that you have to learn an entire new set up each and every game.

 

     There is a minimap in the upper right corner of your screen, a compass in the upper center, and your Avatar in the upper left.  Think I’m talking about WoW?  No, which is my point.  What game then?  Take your pick… a lot of games have this layout actually.  Our eyes have been trained (motor memory - “praxis”) where to look on the monitor for specific pieces of information.  Why break this?  Just to be able to say that the game is “different and innovating?”  I would instead call it “annoying” and “anti-productive.”

 

     A good MMO that distinguishes itself uses current expected mechanics, polishes the flaws that annoy players out of those mechanics that are present in current games, and then provides a unique world and in game experience that cannot be compared to with another game.  Player immersion is almost instantaneous this way because the learning curve is low.  At this point it becomes the in-game experience that becomes the defining benchmark of a fun game / experience or not.

 

     Am I suggesting that every game become MMO cookie cutters of each other?  If this is what you have picked up, than you have completely missed the point.  MMO’s can be innovative and original without repairing things that do not need repairing.

 

     Those of you involved in Creative Writing at any level are already familiar with this statement:  “There are no new stories, only new ways to tell them.”

 

     Could you imagine reading a book “preview” in the New York Times in 1936 about a book that is announced to be released in 1937 called “The Hobbit, or There and Back Again” that went like this?

 

     "That J.R. Trollkind guy!!  What a freakin newb!  I can't believe he copied the same Elf and Dwarf thing that the Nords have already written about first!  I ain’t ever gonna read his loser trash books!  GAWD!!  Come up with something original already FFS!"

 

     A game is supposed to be enjoyed for the sheer sake of being a game.  We have started to lose this in a big way.  We have erected our own “Self Inflicted Mental Blocks of Personal Enjoyment.”  No wonder it’s difficult to be a game developer these days… we are their customers: a bunch of self deserving entitlement demanding simpletons who have lost their joy and spend more time on game forums being negative than remembering the simple experience of looking over that next hill just for the simple joy and experience or adventure of seeing what is there…

 

 

----------

 

     Agree or disagree, that is fine – no discussion can be healthy without counterpoints to learn from or even possibly concede to.  But if your reply to this is based on spell checking, grammar fixing, or post counts instead of the ACTUAL TOPIC you have failed to contribute anything substantial and are therefore unworthy of any ones time.  If you are going to post, please contribute to the TOPIC.

 

Thank you,

 

- RATFather

 

 

 

Future Rantholes:

 

“My MMO costs .037 cents…”

 

“Stone Knives, Wicker Armor, and on foot for a year after release… in a Sci Fi.”

 

“Grinding vs. Instant Gratification… or:  ‘I deserve a raise just for showing up on time.’”

 

- Please message me if you have any suggested topics you would like me to cover.

Decadentia

Well, as a off-and-on writer myself, i'll say you presented this well. You truly did follow the "say the same thing in a different way" though, this has been discussed plenty before.

There's two sides to the blade though...one being we do expect a lot for our money and are highly critical, two being that we seem to buy up almost anything that comes out.

I'm considering sinking this very night into an MMORPG i'll likely not play past a few months, why? They hooked me when I was younger, I have money now, and most importantly im rather bored. Now that's coming from someone who can admit they are part of the problem, just think at all those people who buy up every MMO that comes out?

Along the same lines, everything in this forum seems to be rehashed over and over just like the very games we're anticipating. We're restless, frustrated, hungry consumers. Our interaction with the gaming industry in this sense is a bit counter-productive, they see us itching and they rush the product.

Again, well written, I enjoyed it.

Evasia

Dont generalise that where all like you discribe.

First only a very small part of community comes here and even a small part of mmorpg.com comes here on forums its mainly same forum dwellers.

Some yes or to please you a bigger part act like you discribe but not all of them.

So dont generalise where all like you say hehe.

Dont forget that majority still enjoy games themselfs and thats even millions of players that we as you assume, block out and punish ourselfs by not having fun anymore hehe.

Castillle

Actually I thought the whole comparison problems started when umm...Players focused solely on MMORPG games, ignoring everything else.  

I used to think each of them differently but I never really tried games that felt the same and I try to mix it up just to get rid of the comparisons o.o  Ofc that stopped me from playing Allods Online and RIFT because it really felt so similar that I was just like "meh...Ill go back to sword of the new world or asda story".  O.O

And I dont really let the comparisons stop myself from enjoying o.O  I just played WoW a lot and that made me get bored of Allods and Rift before I even got a few hours in.  Now really if I wasnt enjoying those, would it be getting in the way of personal enjoyment that I stopped playing them to play something more fun? o.O

Games were meant to be enjoyed?  Ofc.  So why should I keep trying to play something tht bores me? o.O

Also, I choose mmorpgs based on what I get from them.  Whenever I want to play single player, I play Sword 2 or Dungeons or one of my single player games.  When I want to play an MMORPG with people, I play City of Heroes o.O   Everyones always saying "I dont always want to solo" and well...Me neither thats why I play something else to play solo o.o  Just like how I sometimes want to see spaceships in my MMO or something less fantasy (I have global agenda for that and black prophecy) or how I want to sometimes be a gnome or w/e.  Its not that everyone compares.  Its just that they got tired of that specific gameplay for now.  When I was playing Allods recently, I just kept thinking "Id rather sub to WoW since I have a high level warlock thats more fun than this summoner..." and well...Thats me o.O because if I have to go play WoW and go through the quest grind as well from the beginning, Id get bored.

Loktofeit

*thumbs up*  I enjoyed reading that.

 

You should definitely put this in the MMORPG.com blog section along with future rants.

 

 

Ihmotepp

Originally posted by RATFather

 

    

 

     A game is supposed to be enjoyed for the sheer sake of being a game.  We have started to lose this in a big way.  We have erected our own “Self Inflicted Mental Blocks of Personal Enjoyment.”  No wonder it’s difficult to be a game developer these days… we are their customers: a bunch of self deserving entitlement demanding simpletons who have lost their joy and spend more time on game forums being negative than remembering the simple experience of looking over that next hill just for the simple joy and experience or adventure of seeing what is there…

 

 

 

I pretty much agree with everything, except this part. Enjoyment is not determined by self inflicted mental blocks.

It's like saying someone is wrong to enjoy what they do, or they need to learn to enjoy a game they don't now. that's silly.

No one needs psychoanalysis to remove mental blocks becuase they don't like a particular game.

Maybe you like Darkfall. maybe you hate it. Maybe you like WoW. Maybe you hate it. Either way, it's not because of any self inflicted mental blocks, nor is anything wrong with you.

Kyleran

Originally posted by RATFather

 

   

 The topic of this thread, (the first in my “RAT’s Ranthole series”) is one of our greatest blunders and yet is committed more often than many of our other unintelligent sins; the simple act of Comparing one MMO to another.

 

     It’s time for us as a community to pull our proverbial noggins out of our fiber filters and be realistic.  ALL MMO’s are in one way or another very much like each other.  Asking a game company to come up with a completely new and innovative way to do things is the same as asking them to re-invent the wheel.

 

     Expectations from players have been set, and have been for quite a while now – which by definition makes them ‘industry standards.’  These standards are now basic ‘givens’ of any MMO.  Hotbuttons.  Hotbars.  Health Points.  Skill / Class progression trees / paths / builds.  Experience.  These are all basic staples of an MMO.  So why do we insist on claiming “X” game is copying “Y” game when we are talking about something that is also used games A, B, and C?

 

Hotbars were not invented by Blizzard,

 

Elves were not invented by Verant Interactive,

 

Dragons were not invented by TSR,

 

And J. R. Tolkien did not invent medieval fantasy.  No, really… he didn’t.

 

     Comparing MMO's to each other and saying "OMG They have Hotbars and Quests!  It’s just like WoW!  OMGLAAAAME!" is the same as complaining that two cars from two different companies have four wheels so they must have "copied" each other.

Seriously now, you can't differentiate between a WOW clone and a MMORPG w/o a bit more originality?

Sure, there are mechanics similiar to the genre, but its how you implement them that distinguishes one MMO from another.

Compare games such as EVE or DF (or AC1 or DAOC) to WOW or Rift and tell me you can't see the differences and undertstand that every new game does not have to follow the standard MMORPG themepark model.

Not every game has to lead the player from quest hub to quest hub, who hasn't really found Rift to be more than a little annoying how compact everything (much worse than WOW back in the vanilla days, and very much like the Catacombs levels.

You don't explore, you are lead from hub to hub to do you 1/2 dozen quests and then move on.

It doesn't have to be this way.  Where's the player housing?  Open world PVP combat between 3 factions, crafting that really matters, and lets get rid of the damn gear grind, not every MMORPG needs to have it. 

As I told someone in another thread, if you're loading a DPS meter to play an MMORPG, you're playing the wrong game.

Of course a game can have hotbars and quests, but they can be implemented differently from WOW or Rift and still be fun.  I don't need my MMO interfaces "standardized" like a Windows interface, I'm happy to learn something new to play an MMO, its all part of the fun.

I remember when I remapped my keyboards the way I wanted them (because there was a need to) nowdays while you can still do it, there's no point.

Theres's so many directions MMORPG's could go and we'd not call them a WOW clone (hell, I'd love to just once call a game a DAOC clone, or AC clone or UO clone, but.......), yet right now the dev's feel that only by following the formula can they make these games pay off, (they might be right) but it really doesn't lead to interesting gaming.

blazin-ace

Actually, I really do expect developers to reinvent the wheel to some degree  for their game for the same reasons that tanks need treads and Martians need walkers...

 

I would use STO as just one game example of where reinventing the wheel a little for their combat model would have benifited rather than trying to force everything strictly into the standardized trinity model (tank, heals, DPS.)

 

Is it fair to expect some degree of break away creativity in game design from a development company rather than seeing them treat the coded mechanics as nothing but a refined technology like the insides of a mobile phone rather than an oppurtunity to be original? I don't know. I am just a game player and not a bussiness man funding their project.

 

Is it fair for players to scream clone when their isn't enough divergence from the standard? To me it's like asking what if every wall in your house had the same painting.

 

A lot of the frustration with current games seems to be that they are no longer truly individual pieces of art but overly refined tech products only distinguishable "in the end user's" eyes by delivered content. A text message by any other name to your moble phone...

 

Now I am all morbid, doom and gloom. I blame you for making me think about this. lol

MumboJumbo

A worthy rant ratfather: "Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it." The quality of criticism needs to go up by ppl learning more about the development process required/involved in making games; not being gluttonous consumers gobbling the latest content/game and immediately reaching for the next one...

Castillle

Just to add, I think that people who decides on NOT TRYING games because of their preconceived ideas about what the game was going to be like then Id say that theyre blocking themselves from the possibility of enjoyment.  If they judged say...Rift and decided to not play it because they think it plays like WoW but never actually tried it themselves then they might be.  But then if they dont like it because of the fantasy setting then why force them?  If they dont feel like playing a fantasy game then thats their thing.  Will they be missing out on something good? Possibly.  But that wont really affect them because playing a fantasy game probably wont be fun for them. 

 

Ive read a lot of books.  And I absolutely hate reading horror novels.  When I hear the word horror novel, I think of...A horror novel.  And IVe given it a lot of tries but its really not my thing.  Now a big new horror novel releases Im going to go "Oh hell no!" But then I like reading romance novels.  I expect romance.  Will I compare it?  Of course I will compare it to other romance novels I read but then I like them so Ill read them anyways because theyre most likely going to be enough differences when compared to other romance novels.

You can apply that to anything.  I like my Cordonne bleu with extra cheese, slightly more chicken than ham (around 3:7 ratio) and I like the bread toasted a bit.  But then I still eat other ways its prepared. Because I like cordonne bleu!  Now for something I absolutely despise like egg plant.  When I try to taste it, I know what it tastes like so Ill expect that I wont like it.  But then experience with eggplants lead me to believe they are bad so I wont try them. Im not missing much at all from doing that because ther are other food out there o.O 

People hate the hotbar combat?  Then that means they dont enjoy it!  They hate quest hub grinds?  That means they wont enjoy it.  If a game releases using those 2 mechanics, people who dont like them will pass up on it because they know how it looks like.  Chances are theyd look into it a little bit at least just to see if theyll like it or not. o.o

People dont know what they want most of the time.  But they sure as hell know what they dont like o.o