I did the corpse runs back then in EQ and people accepted the slow travel and grind experience, but no more. If anyone makes an MMO like that again I am staying miles and miles away from it. I want my gameplay and I do want it now, I don't want to wait to get it, I don't want the "meangful travel" and "meaningful death penalty" and all those things which are just code words for timesinks. I want GAMEPLAY.
I don't equate any of that with skill or a hard game, travel doesn't make you skillful, it just means your forward key is going to wear off faster.
I do want an open world, but that has nothing to do with no quests,, travel or slow leveling. A large open world is simply a large open world.
For a lot of us that played old mud/mud type games or even the early mmorpgs like UO and Everquest.
What you think of as time consumingwe took as challenging.
I'm not part of "we", most of it were timesinks. There was no corpse recovery, if you died somewhere in EQ in the Karanas, well have fun running for a few hours, because that's what it took to get your corpse. That wasn't challenging, that was a timesink.
The hell levels weren't challenging, they were just hell levels, the fact that we spent twice as long on some levels as others didn't make the game any more challenging, it just meant we spent twice as long.
Not everyone equates those timesinks as challenges, I don't, there were simply timesinks. Calling them challenging because the penalty was higher shouldn't be sugarcoated as a more challenging game, the game itself was just the same as any other, we just wasted more time recovering and xp'ing.
And to be honest, EQ wasn't challenging, we had maybe 5 action keys at the time, melee had even less. A warrior could attack, kick, taunt and had maybe 2 disciplines that mattered, fearless and defensive. Kids and moms with no prior gaming experience played the game.
Blah blah blah blah. Axehilt, go peddle your pro-WoW style, want everything handed to me, make it a console RPG garbage elsewhere. New sure must be what is wanted since it is buried in this poll.
No one is saying they find inconveinience fun. It's only inconveinient to those who don't like to think or work a bit for rewards (Which is also a form of fun and gratification that most new gamers can't seem to grasp). Yet again...this is what seperates MMORPG's from console gaming. You want rewarded and to feel 1337 quickly, go play console games, or stick to WoW.
The inconveniences we're talking about are travel time or time-consuming death penalty or manual group-finding.
Are you really going to sit there and argue that travel time requires "thought" or "work"? That's preposterous.
Like the twisting of words...as ususal from you. But while you are asking that...yes, it can involve thought or work. Finding and taking shortcuts to a destination for instance. Maybe you found a faster way to get to Town A, but it requires going through a higher level area that is quite dangerous. If you are patient and skilled enough, you can get through it safely.
I have done this countless times in various MMO's. Yes, it requires thought and work to do it. It also makes it exciting to be traversing dangerous areas you shouldn't be in, and even more gratifying to do it and come out unscaved. But, I don't expect you to grasp this since apparently you haven't played anything prior to WoW. But again, thsi requires a truely open world. Not the half-assed open world's today that are really more linear...funneling you to your next objective.
And for death penalties....I just don't see what is fun about rushing into a fight with no thought of tactics or strategy simply because you don't have to because if you fail (Which in most modern MMO's they make you 1337 and able to fight 8 mobs at a time anyways), oh well...i respawn safely 30 feet away to try again with no penalties for idiotic gameplay. Having the fear or possibility of a penalty for careless mistakes makes it exciting...IMO. Yet again...what seperates the MMORPG genre from console gaming...or once did anyways until the casuals took over.
Enjoy your instant travel..successfully skipping over a majority of the map content so you can get your next shiney in 5 minutes with little effort. I just find effort for my rewards more gratifying than being handed it on a sliver plater for moving ten feet from a quest NPC to get the required item they pointed to with a big yellow GPS arrow. Or enjoying the world the dev's created actually going out into it than via travel hubs where I miss most of it if I didn't deviate from the ADD travel path.
For a lot of us that played old mud/mud type games or even the early mmorpgs like UO and Everquest.
What you think of as time consumingwe took as challenging.
I'm not part of "we", most of it were timesinks. There was no corpse recovery, if you died somewhere in EQ in the Karanas, well have fun running for a few hours, because that's what it took to get your corpse. That wasn't challenging, that was a timesink.
The hell levels weren't challenging, they were just hell levels, the fact that we spent twice as long on some levels as others didn't make the game any more challenging, it just meant we spent twice as long.
Not everyone equates those timesinks as challenges, I don't, there were simply timesinks. Calling them challenging because the penalty was higher shouldn't be sugarcoated as a more challenging game, the game itself was just the same as any other, we just wasted more time recovering and xp'ing.
And to be honest, EQ wasn't challenging, we had maybe 5 action keys at the time, melee had even less. A warrior could attack, kick, taunt and had maybe 2 disciplines that mattered, fearless and defensive. Kids and moms with no prior gaming experience played the game.
It was challenging, you didn't have a stone to go back to your binding place if you went too deep in a dungeon, or if you died you didn't spawn at your home with all your gear, or you didn't have a minimap to tell you where you were all the time, etc, list can go on.
Hell levels were a fun thing to comment and laugh about btw. "I think one pixel moved in my exp bar... ah no... not yet".
When i first started gaming I loved teh grind. I loved taking hours to do the simplest things to get my stats increased, my skills buffed etc. Unfortunately, as I have gotten older and have less time on my hands, I find the story to be more entertaining today. I still love a game that levels a little slower and really lets you enjoy "growing" the character, but I just have to many demands n my time now. Job, wife, kids, household chores, shopping for groceries, scouts, sporting events. Anyways, I see no problem with either style of game and I certainly hope they keep making more of both, but I will keep to the more story centered ones.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
When i first started gaming I loved teh grind. I loved taking hours to do the simplest things to get my stats increased, my skills buffed etc. Unfortunately, as I have gotten older and have less time on my hands, I find the story to be more entertaining today. I still love a game that levels a little slower and really lets you enjoy "growing" the character, but I just have to many demands n my time now. Job, wife, kids, household chores, shopping for groceries, scouts, sporting events. Anyways, I see no problem with either style of game and I certainly hope they keep making more of both, but I will keep to the more story centered ones.
I can't speak for myself because I don't have kids, and I have all the time in the week ends but i can speak for my brother, he is 38 with two lil daughters, you perfectly know that that means. Well he has very little time but he prefers to spend 1 hour crossing a mysterious and dangerous forest, for instance, than doing 10 simple quests. It's not the time, it's what you enjoy doing in that time.
I didn't find either of those choices desirable. There's a reason why old-school MMOs were not popular in their time. They were subpar games by design with negligible quality. People tend to have rose-tinted glasses when they look back to those times.
I don't like the "playing it safe"-games out there but going back to sandbox or "old-school" is not the solution either. We want these games to go forward, not backward. I think we've only passed the point where all the devs trying to make money out of Blizzard's success have released their games. Unless SWTOR enjoys the same kind of popularity, I believe we will be past this more or less stagnant state in design. Already there are few refreshingly different games releasing in the near future.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
I didn't find either of those choices desirable. There's a reason why old-school MMOs were not popular in their time. They were subpar games by design with negligible quality. People tend to have rose-tinted glasses when they look back to those times.
I don't like the "playing it safe"-games out there but going back to sandbox or "old-school" is not the solution either. We want these games to go forward, not backward. I think we've only passed the point where all the devs trying to make money out of Blizzard's success have released their games. Unless SWTOR enjoys the same kind of popularity, I believe we will be past this more or less stagnant state in design. Already there are few refreshingly different games releasing in the near future.
The poll said old-school done well. so I wouls say old-school, thinking Archeage in future (assume done well) as an example.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
When I first started gaming I loved the grind. I loved taking hours to do the simplest things to get my stats increased, my skills buffed etc. Unfortunately, as I have gotten older and have less time on my hands, I find the story to be more entertaining today. I still love a game that levels a little slower and really lets you enjoy "growing" the character, but I just have to many demands on my time now. Job, wife, kids, household chores, shopping for groceries, scouts, sporting events. Anyways, I see no problem with either style of game and I certainly hope they keep making more of both, but I will keep to the more story centered ones.
I can't speak for myself because I don't have kids, and I have all the time in the week ends but i can speak for my brother, he is 38 with two lil daughters, you perfectly know that that means. Well he has very little time but he prefers to spend 1 hour crossing a mysterious and dangerous forest, for instance, than doing 10 simple quests. It's not the time, it's what you enjoy doing in that time.
Actually, I said I prefer story, not "10 simple quests". The game doesn't have to be simple to be a lot of fun, but hours and hours of grinding skill points to be able to create the simplest things is not something I have time for anymore. I love to explore personally and the more room I have to do that the better. I could easily explore for hours if I had time, but now i simply don't. So playing a game with an interesting story line works for my schedule. I can "put it down" anytime I want without feeling like I am loosing out. If I don't log back in for days on end I don't feel like my "skill growth" is suffering for it. I tried to play Eve and this was a problem for me. I just don't have the time for it anymore. I would like to see a well made sandbox, but I doubt I would be able to play it unless there were some drastic changes in my life.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
I didn't find either of those choices desirable. There's a reason why old-school MMOs were not popular in their time. They were subpar games by design with negligible quality. People tend to have rose-tinted glasses when they look back to those times.
I don't like the "playing it safe"-games out there but going back to sandbox or "old-school" is not the solution either. We want these games to go forward, not backward. I think we've only passed the point where all the devs trying to make money out of Blizzard's success have released their games. Unless SWTOR enjoys the same kind of popularity, I believe we will be past this more or less stagnant state in design. Already there are few refreshingly different games releasing in the near future.
The poll said old-school done well. so I wouls say old-school, thinking Archeage in future (assume done well) as an example.
They had many poor design decisions aswell. You don't make it better with polish alone. And If you solve those problems, they are no longer "old-school".
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
I didn't find either of those choices desirable. There's a reason why old-school MMOs were not popular in their time. They were subpar games by design with negligible quality. People tend to have rose-tinted glasses when they look back to those times.
I don't like the "playing it safe"-games out there but going back to sandbox or "old-school" is not the solution either. We want these games to go forward, not backward. I think we've only passed the point where all the devs trying to make money out of Blizzard's success have released their games. Unless SWTOR enjoys the same kind of popularity, I believe we will be past this more or less stagnant state in design. Already there are few refreshingly different games releasing in the near future.
The poll said old-school done well. so I wouls say old-school, thinking Archeage in future (assume done well) as an example.
They had many poor design decisions aswell. You don't make it better with polish alone. And If you solve those problems, they are no longer "old-school".
i was referring to the poll. Both options offered can have good and bad design so no point factoring it in.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
When I created my original post, I made it without my opinion to the best of my ability, so we could get a somewhat accurate vote. Now I would like to add my opinion.
I voted old style :
I play an mmo to INTER REACT WITH OTHERS, this is the bottom line. Sure many times I'm soloing, in fact about 60% of the time. But its my decision on the percentage, not the developers !
Soooo many mmo's are on rails, yet you can be fooled. Games on rails with it's great so called great story line get boring real fast. Many players quit and never realize why, they just simply quit and never look back. WELL I KNOW WHY !!!.....I'll give an example :
Rift - This is a well made game. Graphics are nice, it can be played on any computer, rifts are nice dynamic events and well animated. Only two starting zones, but each zone after that is unique including it's own music. Dungeons were nice but short, each had it's Bosses that required special tactics that needed to be figured out. Many at first were saying it could be the new "WoW killer".
I say far from it.
Something that no one realizes that Rift had to be a failiure....Why are people still playing ?....Extreamily strong marketing to keep the ball rolling. Trion is practically giving the game, away along with mass advertisement in doing so. No one played Rift for long.....It's totally on rails going from quest hub to quest hub with 100% chain quest. No one can play with anyone unless you match quest for quest with them. Friends list well forget it. If you you or them play even just one hour apart without the other the sync is broaken.....Same with guilds, no reason to belong to one. No one can play with another unless it's just to help kill a boss....
People find Rift boring because it's a solo game with a few group mini games. Do a group rift with a raid group, 10 min later your on your own again.
This is what we have now for mmo's
- Fast leveling, screw having friends, I'll out level them by 10 levels by tomorrow.
- See that guy having a hard time fighting over there ?....Screw it, he is on a different chain quest.
- Dungeon finder ?....Hay, I don't care about them. But I hope they know there part so " I " can get the achievement.
- Guilds...well there chat boxes. Its the tool I use to ask questions, and ask where everyone is from....The last thing I'm gonna do is ask if anyone from levels 21-24 would like to quest together. We all have chain quest, no one is where I am.
Friends list are worthless, asking in chat for a group is worthless, Guilds are worthless, really trying to be involved on you server is imposible.....New style mmo's are solo games with fast acquaintances that we forget about after one hour....Why pay $15 a month.
I find the constant rhetoric about the glories of the oldest games to be a little dreary and a lot unrealistic, however. Simply by the track record of the products, it seems a lot of players are dreaming of a perfection that probably cannot be acheived.
The first wave MMOs were definitely far from perfection.
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.
When I created my original post, I made it without my opinion to the best of my ability, so we could get a somewhat accurate vote. Now I would like to add my opinion.
I voted old style :
I play an mmo to INTER REACT WITH OTHERS, this is the bottom line. Sure many times I'm soloing, in fact about 60% of the time. But its my decision on the percentage, not the developers !
Soooo many mmo's are on rails, yet you can be fooled. Games on rails with it's great so called great story line get boring real fast. Many players quit and never realize why, they just simply quit and never look back. WELL I KNOW WHY !!!.....I'll give an example :
Rift - This is a well made game. Graphics are nice, it can be played on any computer, rifts are nice dynamic events and well animated. Only two starting zones, but each zone after that is unique including it's own music. Dungeons were nice but short, each had it's Bosses that required special tactics that needed to be figured out. Many at first were saying it could be the new "WoW killer".
I say far from it.
Something that no one realizes that Rift had to be a failiure....Why are people still playing ?....Extreamily strong marketing to keep the ball rolling. Trion is practically giving the game, away along with mass advertisement in doing so. No one played Rift for long.....It's totally on rails going from quest hub to quest hub with 100% chain quest. No one can play with anyone unless you match quest for quest with them. Friends list well forget it. If you you or them play even just one hour apart without the other the sync is broaken.....Same with guilds, no reason to belong to one. No one can play with another unless it's just to help kill a boss....
People find Rift boring because it's a solo game with a few group mini games. Do a group rift with a raid group, 10 min later your on your own again.
This is what we have now for mmo's
- Fast leveling, screw having friends, I'll out level them by 10 levels by tomorrow.
- See that guy having a hard time fighting over there ?....Screw it, he is on a different chain quest.
- Dungeon finder ?....Hay, I don't care about them. But I hope they know there part so " I " can get the achievement.
- Guilds...well there chat boxes. Its the tool I use to ask questions, and ask where everyone is from....The last thing I'm gonna do is ask if anyone from levels 21-24 would like to quest together. We all have chain quest, no one is where I am.
Friends list are worthless, asking in chat for a group is worthless, Guilds are worthless, really trying to be involved on you server is imposible.....New style mmo's are solo games with fast acquaintances that we forget about after one hour....Why pay $15 a month.
EXACTLY!
I think that is why most MMO's are going F2P now. That and the fact these developer's know they are peddling unimaginative reguritated garbage, and that eventually the players will realize it and complain. So they change the business model to F2P, players see "free" and jump. But, in the end...a lot of those players use the cash shop because they can't resist the stupid OP'ed items, or "Hey Look at Me!" items most offer there to entice. In the end, the big wigs are sitting back laughing it up.
Like the twisting of words...as ususal from you. But while you are asking that...yes, it can involve thought or work. Finding and taking shortcuts to a destination for instance. Maybe you found a faster way to get to Town A, but it requires going through a higher level area that is quite dangerous. If you are patient and skilled enough, you can get through it safely.
I have done this countless times in various MMO's. Yes, it requires thought and work to do it. It also makes it exciting to be traversing dangerous areas you shouldn't be in, and even more gratifying to do it and come out unscaved. But, I don't expect you to grasp this since apparently you haven't played anything prior to WoW. But again, thsi requires a truely open world. Not the half-assed open world's today that are really more linear...funneling you to your next objective.
And for death penalties....I just don't see what is fun about rushing into a fight with no thought of tactics or strategy simply because you don't have to because if you fail (Which in most modern MMO's they make you 1337 and able to fight 8 mobs at a time anyways), oh well...i respawn safely 30 feet away to try again with no penalties for idiotic gameplay. Having the fear or possibility of a penalty for careless mistakes makes it exciting...IMO. Yet again...what seperates the MMORPG genre from console gaming...or once did anyways until the casuals took over.
Enjoy your instant travel..successfully skipping over a majority of the map content so you can get your next shiney in 5 minutes with little effort. I just find effort for my rewards more gratifying than being handed it on a sliver plater for moving ten feet from a quest NPC to get the required item they pointed to with a big yellow GPS arrow. Or enjoying the world the dev's created actually going out into it than via travel hubs where I miss most of it if I didn't deviate from the ADD travel path.
Twist your words? No, I'm bringing the conversation back to the actual examples I posted about -- you know, the post you replied to?
Players want challenge. They want gameplay.
They don't want their time wasted. They don't want non-gameplay.
Excessive death penalty and travel time only bring time-wasting and non-gameplay to the table. They bring little (if any) genuine gameplay, and when they do bring gameplay it tends to be very little. Providing a little gameplay much be a saving grace, if it wasn't for the fact that players' time is a zero sum game: time wasted in a gameplay-lite system is time not spent in a gameplay-heavy system (which is usually the destination of the travel!)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Why pick between two aspects which don't really need to mutually exclude eachother?
Story / voice overs / alignment / choice in PVE, freedom in crafting, pvp, territory claimage, house building, pve out in the world, etc. Would love a combo of say, Swor and EVE, for that matter.
If you'd put a gun against my head I'd pick "freedom" though.
When I created my original post, I made it without my opinion to the best of my ability, so we could get a somewhat accurate vote. Now I would like to add my opinion.
I voted old style :
I play an mmo to INTER REACT WITH OTHERS, this is the bottom line. Sure many times I'm soloing, in fact about 60% of the time. But its my decision on the percentage, not the developers !
Soooo many mmo's are on rails, yet you can be fooled. Games on rails with it's great so called great story line get boring real fast. Many players quit and never realize why, they just simply quit and never look back. WELL I KNOW WHY !!!.....I'll give an example :
Rift - This is a well made game. Graphics are nice, it can be played on any computer, rifts are nice dynamic events and well animated. Only two starting zones, but each zone after that is unique including it's own music. Dungeons were nice but short, each had it's Bosses that required special tactics that needed to be figured out. Many at first were saying it could be the new "WoW killer".
I say far from it.
Something that no one realizes that Rift had to be a failiure....Why are people still playing ?....Extreamily strong marketing to keep the ball rolling. Trion is practically giving the game, away along with mass advertisement in doing so. No one played Rift for long.....It's totally on rails going from quest hub to quest hub with 100% chain quest. No one can play with anyone unless you match quest for quest with them. Friends list well forget it. If you you or them play even just one hour apart without the other the sync is broaken.....Same with guilds, no reason to belong to one. No one can play with another unless it's just to help kill a boss....
People find Rift boring because it's a solo game with a few group mini games. Do a group rift with a raid group, 10 min later your on your own again.
This is what we have now for mmo's
- Fast leveling, screw having friends, I'll out level them by 10 levels by tomorrow.
- See that guy having a hard time fighting over there ?....Screw it, he is on a different chain quest.
- Dungeon finder ?....Hay, I don't care about them. But I hope they know there part so " I " can get the achievement.
- Guilds...well there chat boxes. Its the tool I use to ask questions, and ask where everyone is from....The last thing I'm gonna do is ask if anyone from levels 21-24 would like to quest together. We all have chain quest, no one is where I am.
Friends list are worthless, asking in chat for a group is worthless, Guilds are worthless, really trying to be involved on you server is imposible.....New style mmo's are solo games with fast acquaintances that we forget about after one hour....Why pay $15 a month.
EXACTLY!
I think that is why most MMO's are going F2P now. That and the fact these developer's know they are peddling unimaginative reguritated garbage, and that eventually the players will realize it and complain. So they change the business model to F2P, players see "free" and jump. But, in the end...a lot of those players use the cash shop because they can't resist the stupid OP'ed items, or "Hey Look at Me!" items most offer there to entice. In the end, the big wigs are sitting back laughing it up.
Developers THINK WE LIKE THE CRAP THEY ARE PUTING OUT, because box sales are high. They don't read out of game forums like we do. So the next Developer will make there game to follow the last.
SWTOR has some nice features ( for a solo, single player game ) I don't care what anyone says the Voice Acting will kill it as an mmo !!! Yet they will sell millions of copies, and the Starwars fans will last much longer no matter what,,,,,It's Starwars !
So now will have voice acting from every other mmo developer from here on out.
Then again maybe all the big money is really on box sales and first month subs, and they don't really give a rat's nuts about us !
Old school all the way for me. I can't stand features like phasing and instancing, voice acting and heavy story... these things just kill a mmorpg almost instantly for me. Just cut from a different stone I guess.
I guess the OP have not seen OLD school open worlds... Go play some Ultima Online and then come back here.
As for the rest, i rather have a "new school" mmo that keeps me from being greifed if i dont have time to move the game like a second job... If that means swallowing some themepark i'l ask for mine with sprinkels.
For a lot of us that played old mud/mud type games or even the early mmorpgs like UO and Everquest.
What you think of as time consumingwe took as challenging.
I'm not part of "we", most of it were timesinks. There was no corpse recovery, if you died somewhere in EQ in the Karanas, well have fun running for a few hours, because that's what it took to get your corpse. That wasn't challenging, that was a timesink.
The hell levels weren't challenging, they were just hell levels, the fact that we spent twice as long on some levels as others didn't make the game any more challenging, it just meant we spent twice as long.
Not everyone equates those timesinks as challenges, I don't, there were simply timesinks. Calling them challenging because the penalty was higher shouldn't be sugarcoated as a more challenging game, the game itself was just the same as any other, we just wasted more time recovering and xp'ing.
And to be honest, EQ wasn't challenging, we had maybe 5 action keys at the time, melee had even less. A warrior could attack, kick, taunt and had maybe 2 disciplines that mattered, fearless and defensive. Kids and moms with no prior gaming experience played the game.
I was stating what I liked......I would submit to you however that anything can be a time sink....turing on your computer, character creation, leveling, skilling, getting items.......we could all just start with full upgraded characters and play...and some fpsers do. You will tell me perhaps how meaningful your "timesinks" are and how boring mine are, and I understand that's your opinion. I happen to believe that's why it's hard to take pride in ownership of characters in the newer games. If it's easy to get there and everyone else is there with you, reaching the goal wasn't really worth the "timesink" to me. Try SWOTOR, I think it will be your kind of game....they lead you by the nose, making sure you know exactly which way to go and how to accomplish each mission. You and the thousands of others that play the game will have no problem at all getting big fast. I have no problem with games like that, but was pointing out, that there really are some of us that would like a real old style game, and not just "old style enough, so we can feel like we are really hard core, but not so old style as to make us actually have to work for advancement.
Definetly OLD SCHOOL. If I didn't have time to do some major content, I could always go explore a bit, or rearrange the decorations on the wall, or zip into a economy zone and do some shopping, or go check my harvestors, or go do a bit of prospecting.
Like others, I must go hide again, as I too am a refugee.
Developers THINK WE LIKE THE CRAP THEY ARE PUTING OUT, because box sales are high. They don't read out of game forums like we do. So the next Developer will make there game to follow the last.
SWTOR has some nice features ( for a solo, single player game ) I don't care what anyone says the Voice Acting will kill it as an mmo !!! Yet they will sell millions of copies, and the Starwars fans will last much longer no matter what,,,,,It's Starwars !
So now will have voice acting from every other mmo developer from here on out.
Then again maybe all the big money is really on box sales and first month subs, and they don't really give a rat's nuts about us !
Most developers aren't chasing box sales, they're chasing subscriptions -- a much truer indicator of what players want to play.
What type of MMO had the most subscriptions again?
Also I'm a little confused how you feel voice-acting is bad. Unless it's bad voice-acting or unskippable cutscenes (which is the big concern for SW:ToR) it's not bad.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
i dont see why they cant give people both. Give them the right to go anywher edo anything in a game while given them a slow paced overriding story to have fun with that players can have if they choose to go that route.
I don't really agree with this idea that story is new style vs freedom being old. Really, you could have changed the poll to say Themepark vs. Sandbox and pretty much said the same thing.
Comments
I don't want the "old school" anymore. It's done.
I did the corpse runs back then in EQ and people accepted the slow travel and grind experience, but no more. If anyone makes an MMO like that again I am staying miles and miles away from it. I want my gameplay and I do want it now, I don't want to wait to get it, I don't want the "meangful travel" and "meaningful death penalty" and all those things which are just code words for timesinks. I want GAMEPLAY.
I don't equate any of that with skill or a hard game, travel doesn't make you skillful, it just means your forward key is going to wear off faster.
I do want an open world, but that has nothing to do with no quests,, travel or slow leveling. A large open world is simply a large open world.
Old school freedom hands down. Nobody creates better drama than the players themselves resulting in many stories.
I'm not part of "we", most of it were timesinks. There was no corpse recovery, if you died somewhere in EQ in the Karanas, well have fun running for a few hours, because that's what it took to get your corpse. That wasn't challenging, that was a timesink.
The hell levels weren't challenging, they were just hell levels, the fact that we spent twice as long on some levels as others didn't make the game any more challenging, it just meant we spent twice as long.
Not everyone equates those timesinks as challenges, I don't, there were simply timesinks. Calling them challenging because the penalty was higher shouldn't be sugarcoated as a more challenging game, the game itself was just the same as any other, we just wasted more time recovering and xp'ing.
And to be honest, EQ wasn't challenging, we had maybe 5 action keys at the time, melee had even less. A warrior could attack, kick, taunt and had maybe 2 disciplines that mattered, fearless and defensive. Kids and moms with no prior gaming experience played the game.
Like the twisting of words...as ususal from you. But while you are asking that...yes, it can involve thought or work. Finding and taking shortcuts to a destination for instance. Maybe you found a faster way to get to Town A, but it requires going through a higher level area that is quite dangerous. If you are patient and skilled enough, you can get through it safely.
I have done this countless times in various MMO's. Yes, it requires thought and work to do it. It also makes it exciting to be traversing dangerous areas you shouldn't be in, and even more gratifying to do it and come out unscaved. But, I don't expect you to grasp this since apparently you haven't played anything prior to WoW. But again, thsi requires a truely open world. Not the half-assed open world's today that are really more linear...funneling you to your next objective.
And for death penalties....I just don't see what is fun about rushing into a fight with no thought of tactics or strategy simply because you don't have to because if you fail (Which in most modern MMO's they make you 1337 and able to fight 8 mobs at a time anyways), oh well...i respawn safely 30 feet away to try again with no penalties for idiotic gameplay. Having the fear or possibility of a penalty for careless mistakes makes it exciting...IMO. Yet again...what seperates the MMORPG genre from console gaming...or once did anyways until the casuals took over.
Enjoy your instant travel..successfully skipping over a majority of the map content so you can get your next shiney in 5 minutes with little effort. I just find effort for my rewards more gratifying than being handed it on a sliver plater for moving ten feet from a quest NPC to get the required item they pointed to with a big yellow GPS arrow. Or enjoying the world the dev's created actually going out into it than via travel hubs where I miss most of it if I didn't deviate from the ADD travel path.
It was challenging, you didn't have a stone to go back to your binding place if you went too deep in a dungeon, or if you died you didn't spawn at your home with all your gear, or you didn't have a minimap to tell you where you were all the time, etc, list can go on.
Hell levels were a fun thing to comment and laugh about btw. "I think one pixel moved in my exp bar... ah no... not yet".
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
When i first started gaming I loved teh grind. I loved taking hours to do the simplest things to get my stats increased, my skills buffed etc. Unfortunately, as I have gotten older and have less time on my hands, I find the story to be more entertaining today. I still love a game that levels a little slower and really lets you enjoy "growing" the character, but I just have to many demands n my time now. Job, wife, kids, household chores, shopping for groceries, scouts, sporting events. Anyways, I see no problem with either style of game and I certainly hope they keep making more of both, but I will keep to the more story centered ones.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
I can't speak for myself because I don't have kids, and I have all the time in the week ends but i can speak for my brother, he is 38 with two lil daughters, you perfectly know that that means. Well he has very little time but he prefers to spend 1 hour crossing a mysterious and dangerous forest, for instance, than doing 10 simple quests. It's not the time, it's what you enjoy doing in that time.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
I didn't find either of those choices desirable. There's a reason why old-school MMOs were not popular in their time. They were subpar games by design with negligible quality. People tend to have rose-tinted glasses when they look back to those times.
I don't like the "playing it safe"-games out there but going back to sandbox or "old-school" is not the solution either. We want these games to go forward, not backward. I think we've only passed the point where all the devs trying to make money out of Blizzard's success have released their games. Unless SWTOR enjoys the same kind of popularity, I believe we will be past this more or less stagnant state in design. Already there are few refreshingly different games releasing in the near future.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
The poll said old-school done well. so I wouls say old-school, thinking Archeage in future (assume done well) as an example.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
Actually, I said I prefer story, not "10 simple quests". The game doesn't have to be simple to be a lot of fun, but hours and hours of grinding skill points to be able to create the simplest things is not something I have time for anymore. I love to explore personally and the more room I have to do that the better. I could easily explore for hours if I had time, but now i simply don't. So playing a game with an interesting story line works for my schedule. I can "put it down" anytime I want without feeling like I am loosing out. If I don't log back in for days on end I don't feel like my "skill growth" is suffering for it. I tried to play Eve and this was a problem for me. I just don't have the time for it anymore. I would like to see a well made sandbox, but I doubt I would be able to play it unless there were some drastic changes in my life.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
They had many poor design decisions aswell. You don't make it better with polish alone. And If you solve those problems, they are no longer "old-school".
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
i was referring to the poll. Both options offered can have good and bad design so no point factoring it in.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
When I created my original post, I made it without my opinion to the best of my ability, so we could get a somewhat accurate vote. Now I would like to add my opinion.
I voted old style :
I play an mmo to INTER REACT WITH OTHERS, this is the bottom line. Sure many times I'm soloing, in fact about 60% of the time. But its my decision on the percentage, not the developers !
Soooo many mmo's are on rails, yet you can be fooled. Games on rails with it's great so called great story line get boring real fast. Many players quit and never realize why, they just simply quit and never look back. WELL I KNOW WHY !!!.....I'll give an example :
Rift - This is a well made game. Graphics are nice, it can be played on any computer, rifts are nice dynamic events and well animated. Only two starting zones, but each zone after that is unique including it's own music. Dungeons were nice but short, each had it's Bosses that required special tactics that needed to be figured out. Many at first were saying it could be the new "WoW killer".
I say far from it.
Something that no one realizes that Rift had to be a failiure....Why are people still playing ?....Extreamily strong marketing to keep the ball rolling. Trion is practically giving the game, away along with mass advertisement in doing so. No one played Rift for long.....It's totally on rails going from quest hub to quest hub with 100% chain quest. No one can play with anyone unless you match quest for quest with them. Friends list well forget it. If you you or them play even just one hour apart without the other the sync is broaken.....Same with guilds, no reason to belong to one. No one can play with another unless it's just to help kill a boss....
People find Rift boring because it's a solo game with a few group mini games. Do a group rift with a raid group, 10 min later your on your own again.
This is what we have now for mmo's
- Fast leveling, screw having friends, I'll out level them by 10 levels by tomorrow.
- See that guy having a hard time fighting over there ?....Screw it, he is on a different chain quest.
- Dungeon finder ?....Hay, I don't care about them. But I hope they know there part so " I " can get the achievement.
- Guilds...well there chat boxes. Its the tool I use to ask questions, and ask where everyone is from....The last thing I'm gonna do is ask if anyone from levels 21-24 would like to quest together. We all have chain quest, no one is where I am.
Friends list are worthless, asking in chat for a group is worthless, Guilds are worthless, really trying to be involved on you server is imposible.....New style mmo's are solo games with fast acquaintances that we forget about after one hour....Why pay $15 a month.
Either or both. A good game is just a good game.
I find the constant rhetoric about the glories of the oldest games to be a little dreary and a lot unrealistic, however. Simply by the track record of the products, it seems a lot of players are dreaming of a perfection that probably cannot be acheived.
The first wave MMOs were definitely far from perfection.
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.
EXACTLY!
I think that is why most MMO's are going F2P now. That and the fact these developer's know they are peddling unimaginative reguritated garbage, and that eventually the players will realize it and complain. So they change the business model to F2P, players see "free" and jump. But, in the end...a lot of those players use the cash shop because they can't resist the stupid OP'ed items, or "Hey Look at Me!" items most offer there to entice. In the end, the big wigs are sitting back laughing it up.
Twist your words? No, I'm bringing the conversation back to the actual examples I posted about -- you know, the post you replied to?
Players want challenge. They want gameplay.
They don't want their time wasted. They don't want non-gameplay.
Excessive death penalty and travel time only bring time-wasting and non-gameplay to the table. They bring little (if any) genuine gameplay, and when they do bring gameplay it tends to be very little. Providing a little gameplay much be a saving grace, if it wasn't for the fact that players' time is a zero sum game: time wasted in a gameplay-lite system is time not spent in a gameplay-heavy system (which is usually the destination of the travel!)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Why pick between two aspects which don't really need to mutually exclude eachother?
Story / voice overs / alignment / choice in PVE, freedom in crafting, pvp, territory claimage, house building, pve out in the world, etc. Would love a combo of say, Swor and EVE, for that matter.
If you'd put a gun against my head I'd pick "freedom" though.
My brand new bloggity blog.
Developers THINK WE LIKE THE CRAP THEY ARE PUTING OUT, because box sales are high. They don't read out of game forums like we do. So the next Developer will make there game to follow the last.
SWTOR has some nice features ( for a solo, single player game ) I don't care what anyone says the Voice Acting will kill it as an mmo !!! Yet they will sell millions of copies, and the Starwars fans will last much longer no matter what,,,,,It's Starwars !
So now will have voice acting from every other mmo developer from here on out.
Then again maybe all the big money is really on box sales and first month subs, and they don't really give a rat's nuts about us !
Old school all the way for me. I can't stand features like phasing and instancing, voice acting and heavy story... these things just kill a mmorpg almost instantly for me. Just cut from a different stone I guess.
I guess the OP have not seen OLD school open worlds... Go play some Ultima Online and then come back here.
As for the rest, i rather have a "new school" mmo that keeps me from being greifed if i dont have time to move the game like a second job... If that means swallowing some themepark i'l ask for mine with sprinkels.
This have been a good conversation
I was stating what I liked......I would submit to you however that anything can be a time sink....turing on your computer, character creation, leveling, skilling, getting items.......we could all just start with full upgraded characters and play...and some fpsers do. You will tell me perhaps how meaningful your "timesinks" are and how boring mine are, and I understand that's your opinion. I happen to believe that's why it's hard to take pride in ownership of characters in the newer games. If it's easy to get there and everyone else is there with you, reaching the goal wasn't really worth the "timesink" to me. Try SWOTOR, I think it will be your kind of game....they lead you by the nose, making sure you know exactly which way to go and how to accomplish each mission. You and the thousands of others that play the game will have no problem at all getting big fast. I have no problem with games like that, but was pointing out, that there really are some of us that would like a real old style game, and not just "old style enough, so we can feel like we are really hard core, but not so old style as to make us actually have to work for advancement.
Definetly OLD SCHOOL. If I didn't have time to do some major content, I could always go explore a bit, or rearrange the decorations on the wall, or zip into a economy zone and do some shopping, or go check my harvestors, or go do a bit of prospecting.
Like others, I must go hide again, as I too am a refugee.
Playing: Nothing (nothing worth playing)
Favorite: SWG (pre NGE, CU)
Played: WoW, Eve, DAoC, Warhamer, AoC, SWG, Earth & Beyond
Hope: GW2 maybe
Most developers aren't chasing box sales, they're chasing subscriptions -- a much truer indicator of what players want to play.
What type of MMO had the most subscriptions again?
Also I'm a little confused how you feel voice-acting is bad. Unless it's bad voice-acting or unskippable cutscenes (which is the big concern for SW:ToR) it's not bad.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
i dont see why they cant give people both. Give them the right to go anywher edo anything in a game while given them a slow paced overriding story to have fun with that players can have if they choose to go that route.
I don't really agree with this idea that story is new style vs freedom being old. Really, you could have changed the poll to say Themepark vs. Sandbox and pretty much said the same thing.