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What I've realised is people who are playing MMOs, do not actually want to play MMOs...
tixylix
Member UncommonPosts: 1,288
They want to play something like Guild Wars or Diablo where you have social hubs and instanced questing areas. They want an experience that is quick to get into and rewards them constantly for doing nothing like all the ribbons you get in BF3. They don't want to explore vast worlds, have a challenge or do any world content. They certainlly are not interested in the idea of a virtual seamless world like what MMOs tried to offer in the past.
For me an MMO has to have a persistent world that can have a MASSIVE amount of players in any one area. That is the basis of the gameplay because if Planetside 2 only offered 64 player fights and then a social hub to visit it wouldn't be an MMO. Yet we have games these days calling themselves MMOs and they lack any of this.
Every MMO I've ever loved playing has been ruined by all the whiners on the forums. The problem is the developers listen to them, give them what they want and patch by patch we slowly lose the MMO and are just left with a multiplayer game.
It's happening and happened to SWTOR already...
People are already asking for fast travel every, the ability to just warp to any planet from your location. They're already asking for faster vehicles because they hate the travel times which in SWTOR are so small as it is. In beta they added the fleets which basically took everyone out of the worlds and put them in a social hub where they just stay there. Most people now just sit there get groups for flashpoints and battlegrounds and level up on that stuff like what happened to WoW. The worlds have no one in them because these people playing do not want to play an MMO, they just want to play Guild Wars.
We have these amazing cities in SWTOR with no one in them because of that fleet station and it has ruined the MMO in that game. I at least want people to be in those cities and not the fleet station which shouldn't even be in the game in the first place.
What is happening to world PVP now? Well it barely exists outside of the PVP planets and oh look the population cap on them is getting shrunk already. There is even talk about just turning them into bigger battlegrounds like AV. The players on Ilum don't want a world PVP experience, they just want to exploit and farm the game until they ruin it and the developers take out world PVP altogether like what happened in WoW.
Every MMO this has happened to and the last one I truely loved to play (SWG) it happened to that too. Forums whiners slowly got that game dumbed down over time to the point it was ruined well before the CU or the NGE. The CU was the straw and the NGE was just he final Nail, but the truth is that game was well and truely going down the shitter by early 2004.
SWTOR has made me realise that no one wants to play MMOs anymore and I have no interest in carrying on with the genre that clearly died out many years ago. What it has turned into today is all thanx to the casual crowd that WoW brought it and they moaned until they killed that game off too. Mythic had the right idea in not having any forums and the only dveeloper that has managed to keep their MMO true to their vision is CCP, so credit to them for that. I'd watch out though it probably wont be too long before it becomes class and loot based lol.
Comments
I agree, unfortunately.
It is sad but true.
I feel no matter how brilliant a game is made, how "perfect" a new MMO is
I feel that the game will be ruined by the majority of players.
(and I'm not saying TOR is perfect by any means)
The instant gratification generation really has completely ruined just about everything.
Gaming, society, politics, the economy, fast food....
But it's also their yuppy parents that raised them to be "special and unique snow flakes" and turned them into the self centered little shits they are today.
They couldn't handle the fact that OH MY GOD LITTLE KIDS HAVE ENERGY AND ARE BOUNCY so they put them on ADD drugs and look what we've got now!
Parenting failed an entire generation, which is now failing at life.
All for the sake of political correctness.
/rant off
I live in an expansive non-virtual world. I cut firewood weekly through the spring and fall (winter sometimes too). I build fences and barns. I raise goats and horses (and a llama even). I have a garden larger than the typical suburban housing lot. I also have a 40hr job in a factory.
I don't want to do these things in a virtual world. I want to play games. Sometimes, I want to play them with other people.
I understand why some people want sandbox games because I enjoy all of the items I listed above and I'm sure some people can't experience them in the real world. But to say that only sandboxes are true MMOs and everyone else is destroying your sandcastle with their desire for fun gameplay that isn't what you call fun? Grow up.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
SWTOR is a bad example of what you're looking for. It's not being ruined by any player base. It was hampered from the start by what i consider poor MMO decisions. I don't recall anyone asking for 50 loading screens to get anywhere or overuse of phasing which makes the worlds feel empty.
If it was another MMO, then i'd agree with you.
Couple things.
Themeparks. Old and over played.
Sandboxes. Older but forgotten and underplayed.
Give me a sandbox.
Here for hoping Archeage does it right.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
Agreed. I remember when the only ADD parents worried about was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. That was our adderall in the 80's. It occupied our minds and time without numbing our creative energies and making us zombies.
Social Hubs is one of the most important and overlooked aspects to any MMO.
People are pissed because they are tired of the same old crap:
World of Warcraft - Vanguard, Age of Conan, Warhammer, Aion, Star Trek Online, RIFT, SWTOR, etc
The days without the Social Hub, depth, and complexity, are over.
Tottaly agree with OP.
I dont play SWTOR, but your description fits in alot of "mmorpgs" around.
the game doesnt need to be a "sandbox" to have a immersive world, devs are just doing "little things" wrong, like auto-travel.
We dont need auto-travel, just give us, right from beggening, something to travel faster then walking/running but controled by us (mount, skill, whatever), and this is applyed to any game around.
1000% agree.
I think this is why I have lost interest in MMO's. It's not that I am "older" now and have a 40 hour a week job, a daughter, bills, etc. I can still make time for leisure activities...which use to be MMO's to escape the drudgery of my everyday life. But anymore I just can't lose myself in them because they are no longer MMO's, but rather glorified CMPG's (Console Multi-player Games) with chat channels full of selfishness and idiocy. Just felt like I was paying $15 a month to be enrolled in virtual daycare.
Casual gaming is what console games were made for...not MMORPG's.
Vast majority of players treat MMOs as games, not virtual worlds, but it's not because they're spoiled brats. Quite the opposite - most players are adults with full-time jobs and commitments, and they can't afford to waste their entertainment time spending hours working or running in game. This "instant gratification" is reasonable expectation of players who can devote only so much time to gaming, and want to get something out of it. Your idea of fun may be diferent, but it isn't better than theirs.
you're welcome.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
Never stops amazing me that some people feel the need to blame the market, not the Dev's
The Dev's make the games, and then change them:) Why blame the customer? They can ask for what they want, but they can change nothing in a game. Just move on to the next. Which they will do anyhow soon enough.
Who sounds like the spoiled ones really? The ones that want what they want and if they do not get it that call others names, or blame others parents?:
As someone above said, look at CCP. They had a vision of what they wanted. They kept that vision through the slow growth, and pretty much made a game just the way they had envisioned it. Not much caving in to anyone at all along the way.
They could of very well changed that game into a PVE game at any time they wanted and most likely made much more money. But that would not be the game they wanted to make and believed in.
See, Dev's make the choices, the players, and customers do not. Blame the right people:)
And look at Blizzard : WoW is becoming more and more like Diablo and W3 ! Don't they see the incoming problem ??
Why would players pay a sub when they will soon be able to play D3 ?
I really don't understand why they don't want to sell gamed to more people : to players that want fast action (W3/D3/S2) AND to players that want a slow, leaving & breathing world (WoW).
FOR THE LEGION!
I thought regular non-MMO games were for instant gratification.
You are right...they are. But the self-entitlement, selfish masses want all games to cater to them until there is only one genre left apparently. That being instant gratification gimme shinies now and make me feel like an instant hero and badass types. The rat race has enxtended well beyond RL and into the virtual world as well. Gimme gimme gimme now now now.
Funny part is...that in most cases the same people that want such gameplay are also the ones that sit in city hubs complaining that they have nothing to do and they need more content to blow through in a week.
This is other thread where personal preference is trying to define an MMO.
I personally am ok with the current model. When I was a kid, I could live in games and could keep up with the Jones. Now, with family and employment, getting 3 hours is putting in work. Are MMOs not for me? The past decade of releases says otherwise.
They have allowed us to use a microwive to fix a meal rather than make us preheat the stove, boil waters, and prep dinner to get the same results. Does the latter generally taste better? Of course! If I had time to make it, I'd do it every day. The problem lies that I don't have time, and trying to do would only create other time issues. Since there are other options to obtaining my daily diet, the full dinner would go out the window. Eating out and using the microwave to obtain similar results is enough to satisfy me and to keep me going.
The industry pretty much went the route of instead of losing gamers, why not create something that caters to their liking. Unfortunately for stove cookers, the microwave/eat-out/hamburger helper idea went viral and others are joining in on the food nuking. People rarely do family full dinners now because preparing the food, cooking each item, and doing dishes is wasted time. Maybe on Saturdays and Sundays...
Regular non MMO games aren't massive. There's no reason to assume that those players don't want massive online experience, assuming it's approachable, fun and gratifying for their playstyle.
Couldn't have said it better myself OP. It appears that a large segment of non MMO gamers have flooded the MMO market and want everything and they want it now.
It appears these non MMO'ers (whom constantly bitch about "grinding" anything that takes longer than 5 minutes) are going to have their way with some upcoming games...mainly GW2. Everyone will have the same gear, there will be no time investment, you just have to hope the actual gameplay is fun enough to keep you around. I've yet to play a game where the gameplay alone makes me want to play it longer than a month.
I would not necessarily fault the devs for this instant gratification market, these non MMO gamers have done this to our genre. Unfortunately the super casual outnumber the old school MMO player by a large margin. I don't expect to ever see my ideal MMO released as the devs are too afraid to anger the uber casual. I just wish they would go back to their console games and leave MMO's alone.
I don't have the time I used to have ten years ago, but that doesn't mean I want everything dumbed down/sped up due to my current time contraints...what's the rush? It's not like good MMO's are released very often anyway.
Opinion #39048718302946 has been added to the list of opinions that will be spared when my people come to rule this planet.
Taru-Gallante-Blood elf-Elysean-Kelari-Crime Fighting-Imperial Agent
i think you are right
ToR fast travel complaints are completely warranted. WOW barely wasted players' time at all with non-gameplay (travel), so when ToR comes along and takes a step backwards, players are quick to point out how that makes things less fun.
Centralized social hubs like ToR's stations obviously work, and I'm not sure things would be better by diffusing this population over several major social hubs.
That said, the requirement to sit near the social hub to find a flashpoint group is completely ridiculous, because I'd much rather be out playing the game while finding a group than being forced to sit in non-gameplay (at a station.)
As for world PVP and what players "don't want"? Players don't want their PVP to not be about PVP (which is exactly what happens in World PVP, where more than half the game is spent building up and traveling around, and the actual time spent PVPing is a fraction of the overall time spent playing.) It's no big surprise that PVPers want PVP, and that World PVP provides very little (and bad) PVP.
Nobody ever wanted to play an arbitrary definition of what MMORPGs "should be". Most players just want a fun game first, and if it's also a virtual world then great (but if not: no big loss.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You are absolutely right.
The reason I enjoy WOW so much is that you cannot get interesting fun combat, with small group dungeons, and slightly larger group raids in any other games. It is really about having fun co-op combat for me.
My guess is my next main game will be Diablo 3 when it is out. I have already done some research about its combat mechanics and i like what i see so far. (It does not hurt that one of my friend is beta-testing and was telling me good things).
Ahaha the irony of some of the people on the forums. Whether its people clammoring for large-scale PvP then QQing when something like the SWTOR Valor-farm fests happen because its unfair. Or people who complain that society is doomed due to self-centered nature, and then want game developers to make a game catered to them... The irony is strong in him.
OP regardless of the legitimacy of your concerns about the industry and the "dumbing down" effect, you have to see the irony in your statements...
Calling out developers for listening to whiners on the forums and then turning around whining on the forums about the whiners because they aren't making the game you specifically want...
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
Unfortunately you are the majority...if you keep to it SWTOR will speed up everything to virtually instant. Not as if the three week leveling time wasn't fast enough. Immersion or the illusion of a world be damned.