Well, I dislike instances, thus I dislike most/a lot of the newer EQ content even (since LDoN). I play a massive multiplayer game to be in a massive multiplayer world....Not some secret dungeon that only me, or me and up to 5 friends can play in without ever seeing anyone else.
The open dungeons could cause problems, wipes, trains, etc.....BUT they were more exciting imo. Karnors Castle, Seb, and the Sarnak dungeon were some great fun in EQ. I enjoyed having a good group, pushing the pull limit, pulling from as many named phs as the group could, and then having a group good enough to mez/heal /tank adds from someone elses train/wipe train. I found it more fun, when you pushed the limits, verse having an instance and everything being controlled and boring imo.
I know a lot of people like the lfg/lfd tools, which doesn't mean you need an instance, and I don't think it would ruin the fun, you could have a lfg group be transported to outside of a open dungeon (let the group form, then they could pick a dungeon to play). I do not think instance and lfg tools need to exclude open dungeons. I wish someone would make a newer game with atleast 50% open dungeons and was a quality mmo.
UGH! Not YOU again! Why must you always hang onto WoW's beanbags. I didn't even nention that game....nor were we talking about it in particular.
Yes, WoW's success DID dwarf it...happy now? But there is still a difference. When EQ released it was still a virtually unknown genre with little media exposure and a MUCH smaller community. WoW mass advertised via radio, internet, t.v., etc. Not too tough to be successful when you do that. Also, because WoW was made to appeal to the masses....making it more "user friendly."
WOW was bigger even before advertising.
But that's not even the point. The point is that if EQ1 had been as streamlined as WOW later was, EQ1 would've been considerably more successful. The timesinks were part of EQ1's inefficiency at entertaining people -- inefficiency which held the game back from its maximum success potential.
That's what the earlier guy was saying.
As for 'hanging on WOW's beanbags', I'll probably continue praising WOW's design until another company actually puts out a game of equal or greater design and polish. Thus far I've tried an awful lot of MMORPGs and not found one (though Rift and CoX are both close.)
Yeah...and Blizzard was already known for it's Starcraft series so I hear, so I am sure it wasn't hard for people to try their new game WoW. And EQ came out YEARS before WoW...it was amongst the first..so of course it wasn't as streamlined....the genre was still i it's infancy. But it was quite successful at it's time. The MMO genre was a very small niche community, so 150K subs was a lot then.
And it's your opinion WoW is so great. To me, it is everything that is wrong with the genre now. It added features like stat boards and instanced battlegrounds, giving it a fast paced feel (too fast)...SUPER easy , insta travel to the hilt...flying mounts to further shrink the world, crappy quests, and with nearly every consecutive patch and expansion...further simplified it to a mind numbing extreme. Which I feel was done to pull in console gamers and others that have never been in the MMO genre....hence, it's extremely poor community of people whining for anything and everything to further make them more like glorified console games than MMO's and peopel who have no clue. End game is it's main goal..which is ridiculous. MMO's are suppose to be about the journey, NOT the destination. So if you want to praise a game that greatly helped the downward tumble of the genre that's fine, but don't expect me to. But again...that is MY opinion.
P.S. I played WoW from release to just before BC. Quit due to the above...but mainly because of the crappy community.
...and if WOW had been genuinely crap, players would see right through it and stopped playing. Instead the game grew by leaps and bounds before a large ad budget was applied. I'm not biased at all...soon as a game with better and more polished combat* than WOW, that's the one I'll play. Many years have passed without this happening though.
(* or whatever other core game activit(ies). I'm down with non-combat stuff too.)
Doom and Quake can't be blamed for the plethora of bad FPSes that followed. But eventually we got Tribes 1 and Half-Life 1. The MMORPG industry just needs better devs who understand the value of polish and solid core systems. And that doesn't mean stepping backwards to repeat the mistakes of the past like timesinks.
It was...just lots of new players from the console world that had no clue what MMORPG meant and like having everything handed to them (Like in console games, see the connection?) is why it did so well. It was crap as far as being called an MMORPG. It is more a console RPG than a MMORPG. And the reason you haven't seen any new MMO come out that is truly great is because they are all busy emulating WoW to make quick bucks and in the meantime, fading away the MMO genre into instant gratification crud....like WoW.
And again...WoW has timesinks too...just like every other MMO to date...so don't make it seem like only EQ had them. It's just done in different ways now to diguise it a bit more from the otherwise clueless masses.
And again...WoW has timesinks too...just like every other MMO to date...so don't make it seem like only EQ had them. It's just done in different ways now to diguise it a bit more from the otherwise clueless masses.
The difference is that Blizzard has historically shown a willingness to reduce the level of pointless timesink.
SoE's lack of paying attention to its own customers ("forced grouping" etc.) complaints is another big factor behind WoW's success. It was guilds leaving EQ that were the first big raiding guilds in WoW. If not for EQ's best players abandoning the game, WoW would never have leaped into dominance so quickly.
SoE had just released (and was only interested in supporting) EQ2, which somehow failed to save the franchise from irrelevance, despite a small headstart in release date. Just the last in a series of fundamental blunders.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
It was...just lots of new players from the console world that had no clue what MMORPG meant and like having everything handed to them (Like in console games, see the connection?) is why it did so well. It was crap as far as being called an MMORPG. It is more a console RPG than a MMORPG. And the reason you haven't seen any new MMO come out that is truly great is because they are all busy emulating WoW to make quick bucks and in the meantime, fading away the MMO genre into instant gratification crud....like WoW.
And again...WoW has timesinks too...just like every other MMO to date...so don't make it seem like only EQ had them. It's just done in different ways now to diguise it a bit more from the otherwise clueless masses.
Console world, instant gratification... Stereotypes. Strawmen. Exaggeration. Blizzard picked the best from existing MMORPGs, made improvements, and made it user friendly. WoW was one of the first MMOs which were convenient and suitable for casual players. EQ wasn't - atleast not to the extent WoW was.
All this "it is not a proper MMORPG" is just purist hogwash. You ask 100 people what makes an MMORPG and you will likely get 100 different answers.
WoW is the most succesful MMORPG out there without a doubt. I've never been interested in WoW and I can say that.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Timesinks are bad. That doesn't mean everything should be queued instant transport type stuff.
One o fthe problems with some of the older games was you often had nothing else to do while you waited around other than a few things many people didn't like.
You have to be careful with queues they can detract from your overall experience by trivializing certain things. But Timesinks can have the same effect due to a different cause they make an experience less desirable as well. When you consider doing something you contrast its good value vs it bad. Timesinks add to the add and queue can detract from the good.
This is why you get a game like WoW which minimized timesinks but had no queues in its initial release. Maybe queues have crept in and that is the nature of the beast you will keep advancing a feature until you take it too far.
To some extent you will never be able to complete get rid of some timesinks its just the way the universe is made.
Excessive timesinks or excessive queuing will appear equally bad but feel different. As users you may feel confused and vacilate back and forth based upon the difference in feeling, but when push comes to shove you will do a cold hard "enjoyment calculation" and come up with an answer and a decision very fast and surely. In one case you will say "Nah that is too much of pain in the ass; its just not gonna be fun right now" in the other you will say "Meh this is just not that great; I am nto feeling it today". Same result though. Same result. Functionally the same. Experentially different.
Are time sinks part of adventure? Depends on what your definition of a timesink is. Most people I know defined those games bundled into Windows (Solitare, Minesweeper, etc) as timesinks.
I would call the 'activities' most people in this thread are labeling as a timesink 'enforced tedium'.
As a way of putting things into perspective: Would you tolerate buying a 1,000 page book just to find out that half of it is blank pages, spaced randomly throughout in 50 page sequences? Or going to see a movie that had quite a few 2 minute intervals of a blank screen?
I suspect that the fondness that quite a few of you have for this type of thing is more likely a product of a combination of rose-tinted glasses, misattributing the source of 'community' in your respective game, as well as a big dose of Stockholm Syndrome.
Since this thread looks to have become partly a discussion of instances and part of community I will address each one in sequence.
Instances came about because players were being denied access to content. It was no fun for a group to form, travel to a dungeon, then find that every single spawn point was being camped. Because of this, non instanced dungeons are almost certainly a thing of the past.
As long as available playtime is a factor, you're going to have automatic queue systems for instances. There are just far more people who cannot afford to wait for long periods for a group to form, and who don't like having to do the work to put a PUG together.
As long as you have the Holy Trinity system in your game (tank, dps, heals) you will have variable queue timer length, because you can't just slam a random group together. You will also have the side effect that once in the dungeon, communication within the group will be minimal unless it is either A) new content or your group is in some way incompetent. Otherwise you know your roles, you know the dungeon, know the tactics, and your group performs like a well-oiled machine. No need for talking.
if you don't have the Holy Trinity, then each encounter isn't automatically predefined. You will have to find out what each player can bring to the table, and work out strategies to make best use of what you have... hence more need to communicate.
My own hypothesis as to what made the community in the earlier MMOs had more to do with the fact that EQ1 and UO benefitted from just as much of a 'perfect storm' of conditions as made WoW what it was. Namely, that these games served as a focal point for particular types of players because they were the only places at the time that provided access to a particular playstyle. Before EQ1, co op play was the red-headed stepchild of PC gaming. In EQ1, it was the whole point. so an awful lot of people who preferred that playstyle got concentrated there. Another factor in this was that VOIP hadn't really appeared on the scene yet, so the in game chat mechanism was the only avenue of communication available.
Think about it. Lets take 3 games as examples. EQ1, DaoC and WoW. The PVE system of advancement in all 3 games winds up being kill job lots of xyz generic mobs to gain experience to level up. All 3 are grindy treadmills. All 3 games have incentives to socialize but only to the point that you create a wide enough circle of competent acquaintances to be able to perform in game tasks efficiently. Once you hit that point, all the incentives are to STOP expanding your social circle. This is different from normal socializing, where the only real requirements are getting along and enjoying each other's company. What do I mean by this? Lets say you get friendly with a player. That player wants to then do activities with you in game other than talk. You group up, start doing content, and it turns out that player (for whatever reason) turns out to be a serious liability to success. You're now in a very uncomfortible position. Most people will not seek to put themselves in that position willingly. Another example: It is no accident that in WoW, PVE guild sizes throughout the history of the game have mostly closely correlated to the size of the largest raid instance format that provided the best loot. People don't like being left out, and if the guild was large enough to run multiple raids concurently, unless both raids were equally successful it would generate social stress.
DaoC was (briefly) able to provide some incentive towards larger group associations via the whole relic raid concept part of RvR. That didn't last long, because it didn't take long for the players to find out that truly large scale RvR wasn't viable due to the technical limitations of the DaoC game engine. Server lag rapidly became an issue, and if you got enough people concentrated in an area you flat out crashed the server. Smaller scale RvR didn't need the large scale organization and coordination, so it wound up devolving into guilds doing mostly their own thing, the rise of the gank group and small zerg being the preferred styles and the Emain Macha zone becoming for all intents and purposes a BG.
ToA (for those who stuck around and did it) briefly brought back large scale organization, but only long enough to get the majority of the server through the MLs. Once enough people got ML10, interest collapsed again.
So to summarize the effects of game on community (I guess I'll call this Verc's Law): Unless there is a mechanism that makes zergs both desirable and viable, and as long as outcomes matter, the effective unit size of the community will vary inversely with the difficulty of the game up to the maximum amount of players that can participate in endgame activities.
It was...just lots of new players from the console world that had no clue what MMORPG meant and like having everything handed to them (Like in console games, see the connection?) is why it did so well. It was crap as far as being called an MMORPG. It is more a console RPG than a MMORPG. And the reason you haven't seen any new MMO come out that is truly great is because they are all busy emulating WoW to make quick bucks and in the meantime, fading away the MMO genre into instant gratification crud....like WoW.
And again...WoW has timesinks too...just like every other MMO to date...so don't make it seem like only EQ had them. It's just done in different ways now to diguise it a bit more from the otherwise clueless masses.
It's a pretty weak assumption to think that, prior to ads, WOW's population was composed of that many console players.
I'm sure there are plenty others like myself who were normal PC gamers, tried early MMORPGs, and felt that they added all sorts of irritating hassles without really being all that much more fun (actually in most cases they were both less fun and had more hassles.)
So early MMORPGs were successful in spite of terrible user loss due to these inefficiencies, not because of it. Then you have a new MMORPG come onto the scene with substantially fewer hassles, more fun, and consequently higher player retention, which meant that it ended up with a lot more users.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Comparing WoW to EQ, and arguing that the design of the first is better because it got more players is like saying McDonalds is healthy and good for you because it is popular. Is it profitable? Yes. But still their food is shitty. Same for wow.
Using Yahtzees compare, if you are a kind of "coke and pizza" evening guy, go play wow. If you are more for exclusive "glass of wine and cheese" guy, get soem real mmos like EQ. All depends on what kind of palyer you are, and I doubt that WoWs success can be used as an argument when discussing different types of mechanics, unless your only goal in making a MMO is making money, in which case you should stay away from game development all together, got already enough of those whos main goal is money. Yes, I know that develoeprs need to make a living as well, but there is a difference between designing a good game you can live on, or designing a money cow.
One of the major reasons for WoW's initial success has not been mentioned by anyone in this thread so far. It was the MMO version of an already well-established gaming IP, the massively popular PC/Mac RTS-game franchise: WarCraft.
So it had a huge pre-existing fanbase which was almost a guarantee of initial success. It was also the first introduction to MMO's for a great many of the Warcraft fans. And they delivered a quality product, which wasn't revolutionary in design, but took parts from earlier MMO's and combined them into a polished package.
UO was also based on a well-known IP, but when it launched, internet gaming was in its infancy. You played UO via dial-up modem, and 60% of the people I knew didn't even have a PC at home at that time. When WoW launched, fibre-optic internet was already in common use in homes, and by that time almost everyone I knew had at least one PC at home, and all were connected to the internet.
The Ultima and WarCraft games on PC were very different. Whereas Ultima was a open-world, questing-oriented game with rich lore and story, WarCraft was an RTS and focused on COMBAT. There was no "downtime" in WarCraft
Perhaps the roots of the WarCraft IP is a reflection of the game's evolution ?
EQ is a ghost of it's former self, the game is still running with a low population, clinging to life by the skin of it's teeth. That's not success, especially compared to what came afterwards.
Secondly, the OP specifically referred to time sinks as time spent standing around doing nothing waiting for something to happen. Modern games do not have these. Grinding is still playing the game, even if it fulfills the same general function, you're not standing around bored.
The point is, EQ is still running after 13 years...I'd say that is success considering most new MMO's don't make it to the point EQ is after a couple of years.
Secondly...you don't consider standing around in major cities of nearly any MMO you can play spamming for raid groups isn't standing around doing nothing? Once you reach level cap (Usually in less than a month in today's crap MMO's) that is what most of these MMO's consist of if you don't join a huge elitist Guild.
Bingo! That is a time sink. In wow they just put the time sink in at the end so you have already invested into your character and now feel the time sink of raiding is not so bad. Other games have time sinks spread everywhere, during the leveling process.
I personally love how EQ2 does it.....there is so much to do beside try to become an elite snob in a high end raiding guild.
I don't like instant teleportation everwhere , and all this INSTANT & NOW attitude. All this automatization.
Well of course having things like in some games that you have to ride for 40 minutes to get to your point is bad, but nowadays I am seeing extreme just on the other side. You can get everywhere instantly , which is not fun as well.
I mean when I play single player rpg , I need to travel to get somewhere , well it is frequently made that travel is somewhat accelerated , but it is still there , but in WoW I enter click LFG tool , wait and then get instant teleported to instance.
I know many people like this , I don't.
I am all for some very fast travel options between biggest cities , also mounts need to be much more faster than now, not like they are 50-200% faster than running character , should be more like 300-400% faster.
So for me , travel should be made easier between certain points liek big cities , but aside of that not really. Just getting instant teleported evverywhere is not what I consider fun. Kinda feel artifical , silly and I tend to meet people almsot only in instances those days
I know that some people play mmorpg's entirelly to run instances / raids/ arenas , and feel that anything other than instant teleport is a waste of time. Ok sure. If that works for you.
Just hope that not all games will be like that , and some mmorpg's in future will be made for others kind of players as well and not like now that all major games are trying to cater to everyone , but in the end it fails and they just cater to one playstyle.
It is just not working anymore for me and I think that's why It get's so boring so fast.
Some time sinks are not bad imho as long as they are not extreme. ,but nowadays for example WoW is full of extreme long time sinks. Waiting for LFG to get full , tiered treadmill , daily quests , end game is full of time sinks.
I prefer having some small timesinks spread thinlly like butter here and there and not having them massively focused in one place.
My dad is s woodworker and he crafts some pretty amazing things. He made a gorgeous wooden bowl and I doubt that he complained about how long it took. I can say that if he just put the block of wood on the workbench, hit it once with a hammer and *poof* it turned into a masterpiece, it wouldn't have had the same meaning had he invested time into it.
That being said, time sinks and plain 'ol waiting are two different things. Waiting around to play sucks. Investing meaningful time doesn't. I don't like games that have an overabundance of meaningless waiting or pointless time investment. If a game is engaging, I'll put the time in but I don't have time to sit at my computer for 45 minutes just to start playing.
A point to be made is that in WoW before cross server dungeon Queue's and dungeon finder I had very little difficulty finding a group dungeons. That may be due to the fact that I had a decent friends who always wanted me to go with them somewhere or I was starting the group myself and having to turn people down due to being full.
All dungeon finder and cross server dungeon finder did was add the extra badge incentive and pretty much force me to cut 1 potential friend from my group in order to get that random player quota filled for the badges. Unfortunately this person was most likely to be a crap ass hunter seeing as people stopped inviting them to dungeons pre dungeon finder.
I've actually had no problems getting into a group at all or even forming my own in any MMO I've played and like most of us in this forum the played list is pretty huge.
That being said, it is nearly impossible to become immersed in an "Adventure" when the majority of a game is instance based with dungeon Queue's. The reason why MMO's were made was so that we could share a persistent world, but making it instance based eliminates the persistence and therefore the "world" and as a consequence things like "adventure" can't exist. It is now no different the going from a lobby to a combat zone.
Now you have even roleplay eliminated. Is that why people only say MMO now? Because the RPG part is missing? In TOR for example, they want us to focus on the story, saying that it is the 5th pillar of gaming. The actual 5th pillar is probably adventure wihch only seems to happen in a sandbox type game because themeparks have instances intead of persistent worlds. I could be totally wrong but I'm pretty sure Adventure is THE key missing element, and in an MMORPG players are supposed to create and experience adventures which ofcourse is missing in mmo's.
Also, the time spent planning an adventure would be the "time sink" but you wouldn't notice that because you were too excited preparing your character for a nice long random-ish experience. Something could be said for immersion aswell, logging in and enjoying the scenery etc...
Some will disagree but most likely they REALLY respect instance based gameplay aka WoW and TOR. They're not very objective about the fact that all this "content" is identically repeatable...by design but how does doing the same stuff repeatedly leave room for adventure?
Comparing WoW to EQ, and arguing that the design of the first is better because it got more players is like saying McDonalds is healthy and good for you because it is popular. Is it profitable? Yes. But still their food is shitty. Same for wow.
Using Yahtzees compare, if you are a kind of "coke and pizza" evening guy, go play wow. If you are more for exclusive "glass of wine and cheese" guy, get soem real mmos like EQ. All depends on what kind of palyer you are, and I doubt that WoWs success can be used as an argument when discussing different types of mechanics, unless your only goal in making a MMO is making money, in which case you should stay away from game development all together, got already enough of those whos main goal is money. Yes, I know that develoeprs need to make a living as well, but there is a difference between designing a good game you can live on, or designing a money cow.
Time sink are not part adventure.Would a bigger time sink make Mass effect better?Would a time sink make Oblivion better? Yes these games have time sink but not like WoW or other MMORPG why? When you reach max level your urge to play the game lessen,What happens if you could reach to max level in week like in Mass Effect or Oblivion in mmorpg you would start to look for something else.
Time sink= Money
MMORPG need play for months because they need you pay 15 dollars a month.I am willing to bet money the content in Guild wars 2 will be more varied than other MMO why? Because GW2 isn't just creating content to spread time because of subs.
I rather one good mutli layer quest like in Dragon age which takes about 2 to 3 hours than 12 quests in WoW which are varitions of Fed ex,Kill ten rats,Collect 10 items,etc that takes 6 to 10 hours.It is funny people are playing mmo and missing the repetive grind that they complained about at that time.
I rather play a good game over and over which happens with Mass Effect and Oblivion where i would do the same great content over and over than strech out boring grindy repeating quests in WoW.Unlike you some you guys i realize that i am doing the same quest over and over in WoW.Time sink are not part of the adventure
Good post Vercinorix. I agree with a lot of what you say. I too feel we stop trying to get to know others once you form a core of people who have like goals and are competent.
I don't like instant teleportation everwhere , and all this INSTANT & NOW attitude.
Shrug, me either. But I also don't like the original alternative, jogging for 40 levels.
It's amazing how many people equate transit time with difficulty. They'll howl about "dumbing down" the game by making the travel time between A and B shorter. That's always made my scratch my head--jogging iz hard? Really?
The problem isn't one or the other--but too much of either. Teleporting around everywhere isn't a great solution--even Blizzard thought so, after Wrath--but neither is hoofing it everywhere.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Bingo! That is a time sink. In wow they just put the time sink in at the end so you have already invested into your character and now feel the time sink of raiding is not so bad. Other games have time sinks spread everywhere, during the leveling process.
I personally love how EQ2 does it.....there is so much to do beside try to become an elite snob in a high end raiding guild.
It's not a time sink if it's a choice. You choose to stand around looking for a raid group. It's not something imposed on you by the developers. There's a difference.
I don't like instant teleportation everwhere , and all this INSTANT & NOW attitude.
Shrug, me either. But I also don't like the original alternative, jogging for 40 levels.
It's amazing how many people equate transit time with difficulty. They'll howl about "dumbing down" the game by making the travel time between A and B shorter. That's always made my scratch my head--jogging iz hard? Really?
The problem isn't one or the other--but too much of either. Teleporting around everywhere isn't a great solution--even Blizzard thought so, after Wrath--but neither is hoofing it everywhere.
It is actually in some MMO's...where mobs run thick or traverse through opposing player faction territories to get to where you want to go. More so than "click!" I'm there! I'd agree though a good balance of it would suffice. Say an instant teleport every few zones/areas from one another so walking/running travel distances to places without them are within sane and equal reason.
Bingo! That is a time sink. In wow they just put the time sink in at the end so you have already invested into your character and now feel the time sink of raiding is not so bad. Other games have time sinks spread everywhere, during the leveling process.
I personally love how EQ2 does it.....there is so much to do beside try to become an elite snob in a high end raiding guild.
It's not a time sink if it's a choice. You choose to stand around looking for a raid group. It's not something imposed on you by the developers. There's a difference.
What else would you do then at cap? The same dungeons and zones again to amass gold, gear to sell, etc...which is grind, which is a timesink? Craft?...which is a timesink. Or go play an alt...doing all the same stuff again...which is a timesink to keep you playing. There is NOTHING in any MMO that isn't a timesink to one degree or another. So really, there is no choice or way to avoid them if you want to play. That is why MMO's are a different genre from console games....they require time, and a lot of it (Hence a monthly fee..or use to be anyways...sadly). Where console games were made for quick fun and gratification with no breaks in the action.
Originally posted by Toferio Comparing WoW to EQ, and arguing that the design of the first is better because it got more players is like saying McDonalds is healthy and good for you because it is popular. Is it profitable? Yes. But still their food is shitty. Same for wow. Using Yahtzees compare, if you are a kind of "coke and pizza" evening guy, go play wow. If you are more for exclusive "glass of wine and cheese" guy, get soem real mmos like EQ. All depends on what kind of palyer you are, and I doubt that WoWs success can be used as an argument when discussing different types of mechanics, unless your only goal in making a MMO is making money, in which case you should stay away from game development all together, got already enough of those whos main goal is money. Yes, I know that develoeprs need to make a living as well, but there is a difference between designing a good game you can live on, or designing a money cow.
Blizzard charges a premium for their game. New players are spending much more than they would to play EQ. The monthly sub for the games are the same, yet more people choose WoW. The McDonald's type comparisons break down when McDonald's charges the same prices as Hardee's or a sit down restaurant. More people would not choose McDonald's at the same price. More people choose WoW at a higher price.
It is true that everything in the game is a time sink. That's why the games exist. Your time sinks should seem meaningful or at least be fun though. Killing mobs is probably the time sink that takes the most time out of any player's game, but players keep doing it because they want to. It's fun (usually) and it's meaningful to the game. Raid lockout server the same purpose, but they aren't really fun.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
What else would you do then at cap? The same dungeons and zones again to amass gold, gear to sell, etc...which is grind, which is a timesink? Craft?...which is a timesink. Or go play an alt...doing all the same stuff again...which is a timesink to keep you playing. There is NOTHING in any MMO that isn't a timesink to one degree or another. So really, there is no choice or way to avoid them if you want to play. That is why MMO's are a different genre from console games....they require time, and a lot of it (Hence a monthly fee..or use to be anyways...sadly). Where console games were made for quick fun and gratification with no breaks in the action.
I don't play at cap, any character I have that reaches max level gets immediately retired. I find nothing fun whatsoever at level cap. So I'll either start over with another class or, if the game bores me, I'll move on. It's not a time sink, it's a choice that I'm making to go back and replay parts of the game. It's my choice, not the choice of the developers.
We seem to be forever mired in our memories of the games we have played. We also tend to vilify the players we currently meet in games. They are all boorish , greedy and inapt in our calculation. The pool of players in the games we now play are greatly increased compared to when I played Everquest in 1999. Yes there seems to be a great deal of players we seem to want to stay away from. It is harder to find good players with whom you might want to form bonds.
I do not however subscribe to the belief that by creating excessive time lapses between regenerating health and mana or whatever mechanism our fights are controlled ; this will create more likable people. We will encounter the same people they are not going to magically become nicer people because we force them to meditate behind a book or take long boat rides. I also think that the reason we find the people we like so rarely is that many of these people belong to older guilds. They do not randomly join pugs. People who are from older games also tend to have older friends who they might play with even if they do not belong to a guild; might only play with a few friends. So we generally get an even smaller number of players from the older games to group with. The current population has grown up on a different diet of games and they also belong to the iphone, facebook , messenger generation and while they may not be intentionally rude have different priorities.
We forget that we too were once young but we are not so forgiving once we meet them and dismiss them as being unworthy of our time or effort. It is not going to change though if you just introduce timesinks as that is not the problem.
Excellent points. The issue here is that most people grow up and realize that the people they used to enjoy hanging around with, the people who are boorish, greedy and ignorant, are the same people we used to be way back when. But we improved and we no longer want to hang around with the boorish, greedy asshats that largely inhabit these games. We want to be with people who are like we are now, just as we wanted to be around people who were like we were then.
The problem is, when you have forced down-time, the people around you don't get any more mature, intelligent or interesting, they're still the same obnoxious assholes they always were, the people who you don't want to be around in the first place. Putting in artificial time wasters just makes us want to get back to the fun, which for many of us is playing with a small handful of similarly-viewed friends, or playing alone if you cannot find enough decent people worth playing with.
It's not that we forget that we were once young, we always go through cycles of who we want to spend time with and those people are the ones that most closely mirror our own experiences and maturity. The ones who are too old or too young are never our target associates and as we get older, the majority of the players in any particular game are the ones we'd much rather avoid than play with.
I agree with both of you. Adding time-wasting game mechanics isn't going to magically create a better community. If anything, nowadays, it's going to create a smaller community which is exactly the opposite of what publishers want. On the other hand, the speedy gameplay that is so popular right now, does affect how players act towards one another, in my opinion. Players no longer expect downtime, so they see it as a waste and believe that nothing fun or interesting can ever come from it. I believe it can.
Taking time to help or get to know a player can be very rewarding and makes the downtime more bearable. By contrast, it doesn't matter to me how fast my character is progressing if the only reason I'm doing it is to get more powerful. Maybe if there was more down-time and interdependence I would get to meet and actually interact with some of those players from the older games that seem to have disappeared from the modern games. Maybe I could actually tell if they were people that I'd like to hang out with more instead of being just another part of a huge blur created by the warp speed these new games play at.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Comparing WoW to EQ, and arguing that the design of the first is better because it got more players is like saying McDonalds is healthy and good for you because it is popular. Is it profitable? Yes. But still their food is shitty. Same for wow.
Using Yahtzees compare, if you are a kind of "coke and pizza" evening guy, go play wow. If you are more for exclusive "glass of wine and cheese" guy, get soem real mmos like EQ. All depends on what kind of palyer you are, and I doubt that WoWs success can be used as an argument when discussing different types of mechanics, unless your only goal in making a MMO is making money, in which case you should stay away from game development all together, got already enough of those whos main goal is money. Yes, I know that develoeprs need to make a living as well, but there is a difference between designing a good game you can live on, or designing a money cow.
Everquest went down because the food was served cold and the service was sh-tty.
Blizzard made a better game. End of story.
Someone here mentioned football...well one of my pet peeves is when the loser can't just admit the other team outplayed them.
I agree with both of you. Adding time-wasting game mechanics isn't going to magically create a better community. If anything, nowadays, it's going to create a smaller community which is exactly the opposite of what publishers want. On the other hand, the speedy gameplay that is so popular right now, does affect how players act towards one another, in my opinion. Players no longer expect downtime, so they see it as a waste and believe that nothing fun or interesting can ever come from it. I believe it can.
Taking time to help or get to know a player can be very rewarding and makes the downtime more bearable. By contrast, it doesn't matter to me how fast my character is progressing if the only reason I'm doing it is to get more powerful. Maybe if there was more down-time and interdependence I would get to meet and actually interact with some of those players from the older games that seem to have disappeared from the modern games. Maybe I could actually tell if they were people that I'd like to hang out with more instead of being just another part of a huge blur created by the warp speed these new games play at.
But people can learn that on their own and impose their own down time if they wish to do so. Having it imposed on them by the developers is never a good thing. People need to be able to make choices. If they want to rush by and level as fast as they can, that's up to them. If they want to slow down and smell the roses, that's fine too. I don't think it's going to create a better community because most of the people playing these games aren't going to be part of a good community regardless.
Comments
Well, I dislike instances, thus I dislike most/a lot of the newer EQ content even (since LDoN). I play a massive multiplayer game to be in a massive multiplayer world....Not some secret dungeon that only me, or me and up to 5 friends can play in without ever seeing anyone else.
The open dungeons could cause problems, wipes, trains, etc.....BUT they were more exciting imo. Karnors Castle, Seb, and the Sarnak dungeon were some great fun in EQ. I enjoyed having a good group, pushing the pull limit, pulling from as many named phs as the group could, and then having a group good enough to mez/heal /tank adds from someone elses train/wipe train. I found it more fun, when you pushed the limits, verse having an instance and everything being controlled and boring imo.
I know a lot of people like the lfg/lfd tools, which doesn't mean you need an instance, and I don't think it would ruin the fun, you could have a lfg group be transported to outside of a open dungeon (let the group form, then they could pick a dungeon to play). I do not think instance and lfg tools need to exclude open dungeons. I wish someone would make a newer game with atleast 50% open dungeons and was a quality mmo.
It was...just lots of new players from the console world that had no clue what MMORPG meant and like having everything handed to them (Like in console games, see the connection?) is why it did so well. It was crap as far as being called an MMORPG. It is more a console RPG than a MMORPG. And the reason you haven't seen any new MMO come out that is truly great is because they are all busy emulating WoW to make quick bucks and in the meantime, fading away the MMO genre into instant gratification crud....like WoW.
And again...WoW has timesinks too...just like every other MMO to date...so don't make it seem like only EQ had them. It's just done in different ways now to diguise it a bit more from the otherwise clueless masses.
The difference is that Blizzard has historically shown a willingness to reduce the level of pointless timesink.
SoE's lack of paying attention to its own customers ("forced grouping" etc.) complaints is another big factor behind WoW's success. It was guilds leaving EQ that were the first big raiding guilds in WoW. If not for EQ's best players abandoning the game, WoW would never have leaped into dominance so quickly.
SoE had just released (and was only interested in supporting) EQ2, which somehow failed to save the franchise from irrelevance, despite a small headstart in release date. Just the last in a series of fundamental blunders.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Console world, instant gratification... Stereotypes. Strawmen. Exaggeration. Blizzard picked the best from existing MMORPGs, made improvements, and made it user friendly. WoW was one of the first MMOs which were convenient and suitable for casual players. EQ wasn't - atleast not to the extent WoW was.
All this "it is not a proper MMORPG" is just purist hogwash. You ask 100 people what makes an MMORPG and you will likely get 100 different answers.
WoW is the most succesful MMORPG out there without a doubt. I've never been interested in WoW and I can say that.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Timesinks are bad. That doesn't mean everything should be queued instant transport type stuff.
One o fthe problems with some of the older games was you often had nothing else to do while you waited around other than a few things many people didn't like.
You have to be careful with queues they can detract from your overall experience by trivializing certain things. But Timesinks can have the same effect due to a different cause they make an experience less desirable as well. When you consider doing something you contrast its good value vs it bad. Timesinks add to the add and queue can detract from the good.
This is why you get a game like WoW which minimized timesinks but had no queues in its initial release. Maybe queues have crept in and that is the nature of the beast you will keep advancing a feature until you take it too far.
To some extent you will never be able to complete get rid of some timesinks its just the way the universe is made.
Excessive timesinks or excessive queuing will appear equally bad but feel different. As users you may feel confused and vacilate back and forth based upon the difference in feeling, but when push comes to shove you will do a cold hard "enjoyment calculation" and come up with an answer and a decision very fast and surely. In one case you will say "Nah that is too much of pain in the ass; its just not gonna be fun right now" in the other you will say "Meh this is just not that great; I am nto feeling it today". Same result though. Same result. Functionally the same. Experentially different.
Are time sinks part of adventure? Depends on what your definition of a timesink is. Most people I know defined those games bundled into Windows (Solitare, Minesweeper, etc) as timesinks.
I would call the 'activities' most people in this thread are labeling as a timesink 'enforced tedium'.
As a way of putting things into perspective: Would you tolerate buying a 1,000 page book just to find out that half of it is blank pages, spaced randomly throughout in 50 page sequences? Or going to see a movie that had quite a few 2 minute intervals of a blank screen?
I suspect that the fondness that quite a few of you have for this type of thing is more likely a product of a combination of rose-tinted glasses, misattributing the source of 'community' in your respective game, as well as a big dose of Stockholm Syndrome.
Since this thread looks to have become partly a discussion of instances and part of community I will address each one in sequence.
Instances came about because players were being denied access to content. It was no fun for a group to form, travel to a dungeon, then find that every single spawn point was being camped. Because of this, non instanced dungeons are almost certainly a thing of the past.
As long as available playtime is a factor, you're going to have automatic queue systems for instances. There are just far more people who cannot afford to wait for long periods for a group to form, and who don't like having to do the work to put a PUG together.
As long as you have the Holy Trinity system in your game (tank, dps, heals) you will have variable queue timer length, because you can't just slam a random group together. You will also have the side effect that once in the dungeon, communication within the group will be minimal unless it is either A) new content or
your group is in some way incompetent. Otherwise you know your roles, you know the dungeon, know the tactics, and your group performs like a well-oiled machine. No need for talking.
if you don't have the Holy Trinity, then each encounter isn't automatically predefined. You will have to find out what each player can bring to the table, and work out strategies to make best use of what you have... hence more need to communicate.
My own hypothesis as to what made the community in the earlier MMOs had more to do with the fact that EQ1 and UO benefitted from just as much of a 'perfect storm' of conditions as made WoW what it was. Namely, that these games served as a focal point for particular types of players because they were the only places at the time that provided access to a particular playstyle. Before EQ1, co op play was the red-headed stepchild of PC gaming. In EQ1, it was the whole point. so an awful lot of people who preferred that playstyle got concentrated there. Another factor in this was that VOIP hadn't really appeared on the scene yet, so the in game chat mechanism was the only avenue of communication available.
Think about it. Lets take 3 games as examples. EQ1, DaoC and WoW. The PVE system of advancement in all 3 games winds up being kill job lots of xyz generic mobs to gain experience to level up. All 3 are grindy treadmills. All 3 games have incentives to socialize but only to the point that you create a wide enough circle of competent acquaintances to be able to perform in game tasks efficiently. Once you hit that point, all the incentives are to STOP expanding your social circle. This is different from normal socializing, where the only real requirements are getting along and enjoying each other's company. What do I mean by this? Lets say you get friendly with a player. That player wants to then do activities with you in game other than talk. You group up, start doing content, and it turns out that player (for whatever reason) turns out to be a serious liability to success. You're now in a very uncomfortible position. Most people will not seek to put themselves in that position willingly. Another example: It is no accident that in WoW, PVE guild sizes throughout the history of the game have mostly closely correlated to the size of the largest raid instance format that provided the best loot. People don't like being left out, and if the guild was large enough to run multiple raids concurently, unless both raids were equally successful it would generate social stress.
DaoC was (briefly) able to provide some incentive towards larger group associations via the whole relic raid concept part of RvR. That didn't last long, because it didn't take long for the players to find out that truly large scale RvR wasn't viable due to the technical limitations of the DaoC game engine. Server lag rapidly became an issue, and if you got enough people concentrated in an area you flat out crashed the server. Smaller scale RvR didn't need the large scale organization and coordination, so it wound up devolving into guilds doing mostly their own thing, the rise of the gank group and small zerg being the preferred styles and the Emain Macha zone becoming for all intents and purposes a BG.
ToA (for those who stuck around and did it) briefly brought back large scale organization, but only long enough to get the majority of the server through the MLs. Once enough people got ML10, interest collapsed again.
So to summarize the effects of game on community (I guess I'll call this Verc's Law): Unless there is a mechanism that makes zergs both desirable and viable, and as long as outcomes matter, the effective unit size of the community will vary inversely with the difficulty of the game up to the maximum amount of players that can participate in endgame activities.
It's a pretty weak assumption to think that, prior to ads, WOW's population was composed of that many console players.
I'm sure there are plenty others like myself who were normal PC gamers, tried early MMORPGs, and felt that they added all sorts of irritating hassles without really being all that much more fun (actually in most cases they were both less fun and had more hassles.)
So early MMORPGs were successful in spite of terrible user loss due to these inefficiencies, not because of it. Then you have a new MMORPG come onto the scene with substantially fewer hassles, more fun, and consequently higher player retention, which meant that it ended up with a lot more users.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Comparing WoW to EQ, and arguing that the design of the first is better because it got more players is like saying McDonalds is healthy and good for you because it is popular. Is it profitable? Yes. But still their food is shitty. Same for wow.
Using Yahtzees compare, if you are a kind of "coke and pizza" evening guy, go play wow. If you are more for exclusive "glass of wine and cheese" guy, get soem real mmos like EQ. All depends on what kind of palyer you are, and I doubt that WoWs success can be used as an argument when discussing different types of mechanics, unless your only goal in making a MMO is making money, in which case you should stay away from game development all together, got already enough of those whos main goal is money. Yes, I know that develoeprs need to make a living as well, but there is a difference between designing a good game you can live on, or designing a money cow.
One of the major reasons for WoW's initial success has not been mentioned by anyone in this thread so far. It was the MMO version of an already well-established gaming IP, the massively popular PC/Mac RTS-game franchise: WarCraft.
So it had a huge pre-existing fanbase which was almost a guarantee of initial success. It was also the first introduction to MMO's for a great many of the Warcraft fans. And they delivered a quality product, which wasn't revolutionary in design, but took parts from earlier MMO's and combined them into a polished package.
UO was also based on a well-known IP, but when it launched, internet gaming was in its infancy. You played UO via dial-up modem, and 60% of the people I knew didn't even have a PC at home at that time. When WoW launched, fibre-optic internet was already in common use in homes, and by that time almost everyone I knew had at least one PC at home, and all were connected to the internet.
The Ultima and WarCraft games on PC were very different. Whereas Ultima was a open-world, questing-oriented game with rich lore and story, WarCraft was an RTS and focused on COMBAT. There was no "downtime" in WarCraft
Perhaps the roots of the WarCraft IP is a reflection of the game's evolution ?
Bingo! That is a time sink. In wow they just put the time sink in at the end so you have already invested into your character and now feel the time sink of raiding is not so bad. Other games have time sinks spread everywhere, during the leveling process.
I personally love how EQ2 does it.....there is so much to do beside try to become an elite snob in a high end raiding guild.
I don't like instant teleportation everwhere , and all this INSTANT & NOW attitude. All this automatization.
Well of course having things like in some games that you have to ride for 40 minutes to get to your point is bad, but nowadays I am seeing extreme just on the other side. You can get everywhere instantly , which is not fun as well.
I mean when I play single player rpg , I need to travel to get somewhere , well it is frequently made that travel is somewhat accelerated , but it is still there , but in WoW I enter click LFG tool , wait and then get instant teleported to instance.
I know many people like this , I don't.
I am all for some very fast travel options between biggest cities , also mounts need to be much more faster than now, not like they are 50-200% faster than running character , should be more like 300-400% faster.
So for me , travel should be made easier between certain points liek big cities , but aside of that not really. Just getting instant teleported evverywhere is not what I consider fun. Kinda feel artifical , silly and I tend to meet people almsot only in instances those days
I know that some people play mmorpg's entirelly to run instances / raids/ arenas , and feel that anything other than instant teleport is a waste of time. Ok sure. If that works for you.
Just hope that not all games will be like that , and some mmorpg's in future will be made for others kind of players as well and not like now that all major games are trying to cater to everyone , but in the end it fails and they just cater to one playstyle.
It is just not working anymore for me and I think that's why It get's so boring so fast.
Some time sinks are not bad imho as long as they are not extreme. ,but nowadays for example WoW is full of extreme long time sinks. Waiting for LFG to get full , tiered treadmill , daily quests , end game is full of time sinks.
I prefer having some small timesinks spread thinlly like butter here and there and not having them massively focused in one place.
Just my personal 2 cents
My dad is s woodworker and he crafts some pretty amazing things. He made a gorgeous wooden bowl and I doubt that he complained about how long it took. I can say that if he just put the block of wood on the workbench, hit it once with a hammer and *poof* it turned into a masterpiece, it wouldn't have had the same meaning had he invested time into it.
That being said, time sinks and plain 'ol waiting are two different things. Waiting around to play sucks. Investing meaningful time doesn't. I don't like games that have an overabundance of meaningless waiting or pointless time investment. If a game is engaging, I'll put the time in but I don't have time to sit at my computer for 45 minutes just to start playing.
First of all, just wanted to say Nice Thread!
A point to be made is that in WoW before cross server dungeon Queue's and dungeon finder I had very little difficulty finding a group dungeons. That may be due to the fact that I had a decent friends who always wanted me to go with them somewhere or I was starting the group myself and having to turn people down due to being full.
All dungeon finder and cross server dungeon finder did was add the extra badge incentive and pretty much force me to cut 1 potential friend from my group in order to get that random player quota filled for the badges. Unfortunately this person was most likely to be a crap ass hunter seeing as people stopped inviting them to dungeons pre dungeon finder.
I've actually had no problems getting into a group at all or even forming my own in any MMO I've played and like most of us in this forum the played list is pretty huge.
That being said, it is nearly impossible to become immersed in an "Adventure" when the majority of a game is instance based with dungeon Queue's. The reason why MMO's were made was so that we could share a persistent world, but making it instance based eliminates the persistence and therefore the "world" and as a consequence things like "adventure" can't exist. It is now no different the going from a lobby to a combat zone.
Now you have even roleplay eliminated. Is that why people only say MMO now? Because the RPG part is missing? In TOR for example, they want us to focus on the story, saying that it is the 5th pillar of gaming. The actual 5th pillar is probably adventure wihch only seems to happen in a sandbox type game because themeparks have instances intead of persistent worlds. I could be totally wrong but I'm pretty sure Adventure is THE key missing element, and in an MMORPG players are supposed to create and experience adventures which ofcourse is missing in mmo's.
Also, the time spent planning an adventure would be the "time sink" but you wouldn't notice that because you were too excited preparing your character for a nice long random-ish experience. Something could be said for immersion aswell, logging in and enjoying the scenery etc...
Some will disagree but most likely they REALLY respect instance based gameplay aka WoW and TOR. They're not very objective about the fact that all this "content" is identically repeatable...by design but how does doing the same stuff repeatedly leave room for adventure?
Crap I rambled again : cutting it short!
"LOL"
Completely agree on that.
Time sink are not part adventure.Would a bigger time sink make Mass effect better?Would a time sink make Oblivion better? Yes these games have time sink but not like WoW or other MMORPG why? When you reach max level your urge to play the game lessen,What happens if you could reach to max level in week like in Mass Effect or Oblivion in mmorpg you would start to look for something else.
Time sink= Money
MMORPG need play for months because they need you pay 15 dollars a month.I am willing to bet money the content in Guild wars 2 will be more varied than other MMO why? Because GW2 isn't just creating content to spread time because of subs.
I rather one good mutli layer quest like in Dragon age which takes about 2 to 3 hours than 12 quests in WoW which are varitions of Fed ex,Kill ten rats,Collect 10 items,etc that takes 6 to 10 hours.It is funny people are playing mmo and missing the repetive grind that they complained about at that time.
I rather play a good game over and over which happens with Mass Effect and Oblivion where i would do the same great content over and over than strech out boring grindy repeating quests in WoW.Unlike you some you guys i realize that i am doing the same quest over and over in WoW.Time sink are not part of the adventure
Good post Vercinorix. I agree with a lot of what you say. I too feel we stop trying to get to know others once you form a core of people who have like goals and are competent.
Shrug, me either. But I also don't like the original alternative, jogging for 40 levels.
It's amazing how many people equate transit time with difficulty. They'll howl about "dumbing down" the game by making the travel time between A and B shorter. That's always made my scratch my head--jogging iz hard? Really?
The problem isn't one or the other--but too much of either. Teleporting around everywhere isn't a great solution--even Blizzard thought so, after Wrath--but neither is hoofing it everywhere.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
It's not a time sink if it's a choice. You choose to stand around looking for a raid group. It's not something imposed on you by the developers. There's a difference.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
It is actually in some MMO's...where mobs run thick or traverse through opposing player faction territories to get to where you want to go. More so than "click!" I'm there! I'd agree though a good balance of it would suffice. Say an instant teleport every few zones/areas from one another so walking/running travel distances to places without them are within sane and equal reason.
What else would you do then at cap? The same dungeons and zones again to amass gold, gear to sell, etc...which is grind, which is a timesink? Craft?...which is a timesink. Or go play an alt...doing all the same stuff again...which is a timesink to keep you playing. There is NOTHING in any MMO that isn't a timesink to one degree or another. So really, there is no choice or way to avoid them if you want to play. That is why MMO's are a different genre from console games....they require time, and a lot of it (Hence a monthly fee..or use to be anyways...sadly). Where console games were made for quick fun and gratification with no breaks in the action.
Blizzard charges a premium for their game. New players are spending much more than they would to play EQ. The monthly sub for the games are the same, yet more people choose WoW. The McDonald's type comparisons break down when McDonald's charges the same prices as Hardee's or a sit down restaurant. More people would not choose McDonald's at the same price. More people choose WoW at a higher price.
It is true that everything in the game is a time sink. That's why the games exist. Your time sinks should seem meaningful or at least be fun though. Killing mobs is probably the time sink that takes the most time out of any player's game, but players keep doing it because they want to. It's fun (usually) and it's meaningful to the game. Raid lockout server the same purpose, but they aren't really fun.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I don't play at cap, any character I have that reaches max level gets immediately retired. I find nothing fun whatsoever at level cap. So I'll either start over with another class or, if the game bores me, I'll move on. It's not a time sink, it's a choice that I'm making to go back and replay parts of the game. It's my choice, not the choice of the developers.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
I agree with both of you. Adding time-wasting game mechanics isn't going to magically create a better community. If anything, nowadays, it's going to create a smaller community which is exactly the opposite of what publishers want. On the other hand, the speedy gameplay that is so popular right now, does affect how players act towards one another, in my opinion. Players no longer expect downtime, so they see it as a waste and believe that nothing fun or interesting can ever come from it. I believe it can.
Taking time to help or get to know a player can be very rewarding and makes the downtime more bearable. By contrast, it doesn't matter to me how fast my character is progressing if the only reason I'm doing it is to get more powerful. Maybe if there was more down-time and interdependence I would get to meet and actually interact with some of those players from the older games that seem to have disappeared from the modern games. Maybe I could actually tell if they were people that I'd like to hang out with more instead of being just another part of a huge blur created by the warp speed these new games play at.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Everquest went down because the food was served cold and the service was sh-tty.
Blizzard made a better game. End of story.
Someone here mentioned football...well one of my pet peeves is when the loser can't just admit the other team outplayed them.
My youtube MMO gaming channel
But people can learn that on their own and impose their own down time if they wish to do so. Having it imposed on them by the developers is never a good thing. People need to be able to make choices. If they want to rush by and level as fast as they can, that's up to them. If they want to slow down and smell the roses, that's fine too. I don't think it's going to create a better community because most of the people playing these games aren't going to be part of a good community regardless.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None