There are maybe some differences between older games and newer ones but the most important point is probably that you have your first years of expirience with mmos/games left behind you.
Its like with your first love, you wont forget your first girlfriend the good time with rose glases In the meanwhile a lot changed and often you wont find such an expirience anymore that deep since it was special. But you remember on it.
They were made for gamers, by gamers, not for masses.
Old games had options for failure. Depth. Risk vs Reward. Unique systems. Heart and soul poured into them.
Modern games don't.
Old MMOs were about coming together as a community against the harsh game world. Modern MMOs are about every individual being the hero and never failing.
Darn, Garvon3 beat me to it and said it better. Well posted Garvon3.
Garvon3: Economical use of words & true, is almost a haiku.
Here's small check-list:
Nostalgia/novelty/impressionable/responsibilities with age all factor as subjective factors oc.
Games were made by smaller teams making a game for gamers not a product by a huge team for a market
Games cost less to develop and as well as creating the genres. A lot of mainstream repeat with better tech only leads to expectation that the gameplay will match the awesome new tech : (. New paintwork/same engine running underneath.
Games were compelling: Eg: League of Evil (iOS) platformer has some of this. The problem with pvp in battlefields is that it can be spontaneous and therefore fun, but each time respawn a wade back in... the consequences don't feedback to "every moment counts/living in the moment" experience, is a problem that creeps in: The challenge feels less interesting/worthwhile even if the gameplay itself is damn fun.
As mentioned also, player x is still just that even when they're Player X ! Some of the older mmorpgs seem to have stand-out players for one reason or another: identities + communities.
That is exactly right! Games of old understood the Risk/Reward function. If there is little risk, there is little reward. I haven't felt the rush of excitement in a game for many many years, because i know that in current games, if I die.....it means jack squat. In the games of old, WHERE you died depended on the severity of the new quest that was just formed "Get Alasti's corpse back". If you died in a rough spot, you worried that you may NEVER get your corpse back, and THAT was what was exciting!
Nah .. that was frustrating and stupid. People have lives. What if i am having dinnerin 10 min and i just die? To penalize players when they cannot devote hours and hours to a GAME is just bad design.
In the old days when i played EQ, there was more waiting, less doing, less variety (killing the SAME mob with a group for the 1000000 times was incredibly boring .. modern dungeon leveling .. even the same dungeons are 100x better).
I am glad the market moves on.
Sorry but I'd much rather kill the same group of mobs 1000000 times with the same group of interesting people who you get to know and care about whether you succeed or fail than run the same dungeons 10000000 times with strangers that never speak. Talk about mind numbingly boring...
That is exactly right! Games of old understood the Risk/Reward function. If there is little risk, there is little reward. I haven't felt the rush of excitement in a game for many many years, because i know that in current games, if I die.....it means jack squat. In the games of old, WHERE you died depended on the severity of the new quest that was just formed "Get Alasti's corpse back". If you died in a rough spot, you worried that you may NEVER get your corpse back, and THAT was what was exciting!
Nah .. that was frustrating and stupid. People have lives. What if i am having dinnerin 10 min and i just die? To penalize players when they cannot devote hours and hours to a GAME is just bad design.
In the old days when i played EQ, there was more waiting, less doing, less variety (killing the SAME mob with a group for the 1000000 times was incredibly boring .. modern dungeon leveling .. even the same dungeons are 100x better).
I am glad the market moves on.
I guess we will just have to agree to disagree. It is precisely that feeling of anxiety I crave and that all of these new games lack. When I died in EQ1, even if I had to leave in 10 minutes, I was scared and I when I did come back on, my first and only priority in the game was to get my corpse/stuff back. THAT WAS the excitement! The fear of losing....I haven't been afraid to lose in so long, and thus I have not been excited to play a game since then.
They were made for gamers, by gamers, not for masses.
Old games had options for failure. Depth. Risk vs Reward. Unique systems. Heart and soul poured into them.
Modern games don't.
Old MMOs were about coming together as a community against the harsh game world. Modern MMOs are about every individual being the hero and never failing.
That is exactly right! Games of old understood the Risk/Reward function. If there is little risk, there is little reward. I haven't felt the rush of excitement in a game for many many years, because i know that in current games, if I die.....it means jack squat. In the games of old, WHERE you died depended on the severity of the new quest that was just formed "Get Alasti's corpse back". If you died in a rough spot, you worried that you may NEVER get your corpse back, and THAT was what was exciting!
Nah .. that was frustrating and stupid. People have lives. What if i am having dinnerin 10 min and i just die? To penalize players when they cannot devote hours and hours to a GAME is just bad design.
In the old days when i played EQ, there was more waiting, less doing, less variety (killing the SAME mob with a group for the 1000000 times was incredibly boring .. modern dungeon leveling .. even the same dungeons are 100x better).
I am glad the market moves on.
So now we just do the same dunguen 1000000000 of times instead and dotn talk while your doing it because 1 - your in a rush to finish it 2- Your always moving 3- everyone knwow what there doing because its so easy 4- there no surprises because there always the same.
In the old games you never knew what was gonna happen for example 1 - Rare named mob spawns at a bad time and now ur fighting a named + some other mobs 2 - Another group train runs through your area 3- your puller accidently pull tomany mobs all these things can put your group on their toes, not to mention seince you dont ened to run to next pull after every fight you could chat to your group and have some fun.
They were made for gamers, by gamers, not for masses.
Old games had options for failure. Depth. Risk vs Reward. Unique systems. Heart and soul poured into them.
Modern games don't.
Old MMOs were about coming together as a community against the harsh game world. Modern MMOs are about every individual being the hero and never failing.
It's so true, and what's so much more frustrating is hearing people newer to gaming blindly defending the dumbed down trash that oozes out now, that's probably an insult to their intelligence anyway, due to some kind of faulty defense mechanism or because they have no basis for comparison.
Don't make generalization that is not true.
I start playing MMOs (or pre-cursors of those) even before UO (kingdom of drakkar), UO and EQ. And i FULLY embrace the new modern MMOs.
You are an exception. The vast majority of people defending modern MMOs never played old MMOs. They say stuff like "instancing is necessary, MMOs would NEVER work without it!" because they've never played an MMO without instancing. They always talk about camping mobs and dungeon griefing: the first of which only happened in early EQ, the latter of which happens in the overworld of all games as well as dungeons. (in theory, I've never had anyone steal my kills)
I defintely don't think they were harder on a game-play level, IE: high HP doesn't make a game harder it just makes it take longer to kill something. A harsh DP doesn't make a game harder, it makes a player take longer to progress. These are time-sinks not good game-play mechanics.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I started playing video games when there was three choices a rather simplistic gaming console that played Pong, the local Arcade that had games like Space Invaders and later Pac Man or a rather expensive home computer, so we are talking late 70's and I don't agree with any of what the other vets bang on about over and over and over and over again. I love playing modern games whether they are an MMO, FPS, RTS, TBS etc... I'm really quite sick of hearing this crap over and over again as if they speak for all video game vets. I love music even more than games and you get the same arguments that proper music stop being produced in 1980 and its the same problem, longing for simpler times or as we now call it nostalgia but of course nostalgia isn't as good as it used to be is it? games as with music have always had good and bad and its no different today the problem as always is with the person not the hobby.
So my solution is for all those that feel the same way as the OP should stop playing any games and do a good bit of personal soul searching because you are the problem not your perceived notion that the gaming world was so much better in the old days because it vwasn't and never was, you were just younger and much more impressionable and now you are older and more cynical. Learn to break that cynicsm and your world will brighten and simpler times will return and you know why I know that? because I was you in the 90's and I never want to go back to that negative state ever again I had to face my longing for simpler times face on and remember all that was bad about those days and when you do you'll be surprised how shit and tedious games were in those days they were slow, clunky, convoluted, visually awful, with god awful plinky plonky bloody music, and the biggest one seriously repetative. Today we have loads of great games from Skyrim to Total War to SW:TOR to GTA to Civilization to Bioshock to Trine to S.T.A.L.K.E.R to The Witcher to Starcraft to WOW but no none of these games exist at all its all crap in a box isn't it?
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The newness factor of the old games certainly had a lot to do with it for me.
When I logged into EQ for the first time, I thought it was just the coolest thing knowing that all these characters I saw were actually other players. It was mind blowing. I made friends that first night that I still speak with today, 12 years later.
Community was everything in EQ, you could do almost nothing alone. Now you can do pretty much everything alone.
To me MMOs have become a great analog to society as a whole. People will all sit together in a restaraunt, and each be texting someone who is not there, and not speaking to each other. This is not now and then, this is prevalent. I think this is reflected in the PuGs these days. People group, don't speak more than they have to, then split, often without a thank you or good bye.
You can never go back to that first hit... She is never the same.
I defintely don't think they were harder on a game-play level, IE: high HP doesn't make a game harder it just makes it take longer to kill something. A harsh DP doesn't make a game harder, it makes a player take longer to progress. These are time-sinks not good game-play mechanics.
The gameplay mechanics were in themselves a lot deeper. Classes had a lot more skills with fine nuances to learn. Raids weren't one trick gimmicks, they had evolving scalable AI that you needed to be on your feet for. The fact that there were consequences for failure meant that you couldn't smack your head into a wall until the problem solved itself. Quests are a lot more challenging and better written.
I am a gamer of the early days. I started with simple C64 games, Sword of Fargoal was the first I can recall by name, Ultima single player RPG, Wizardry and Might and Magic were my fondest memory. Aww, just to be the Avatar of Britannia again, to see Iolo, Shamino and Dupre once more. Once more to wander the realm of Xeen! Or visiting the old Baldur's Gate just for once more.
Those were grand days. And while Elder Scrolls still kinda holds up the torch of old, by and large RPGs in particular and games per se, seem no more what they were to me. Also other game types I used to love, Civilization II, Sim City 2000, Command and Conquer, Warcraft 1 & 2... such games I played for months, sometimes years!
So often I wondered what happend. And while sure I changed, by and large games changed. Of course a main reason is, back then games were made by small companies, a handful creative people and the influence of the publishers was small. Today, once legendary studios like Origin, Bullfrog, Westwood, Sierra and what they all were, perished. And with them many of these legacies.
But if I think about these games of old, I strongly feel about three facts which made the games of old great. They were daring, and they left a lot to imagination of the player and they had soul!
First the daring. If you recall the games of Origin, like Ultima, Crusader and Wing Commander, you know Origin always pushed the boundaries of gaming. Many of their games often demanded an entirely new computer! Each new game was really innovative. Just compare the various Ultimas! Origin's motto "we create worlds" was literally their motivation! And even in Ultima the MMO this was visible. All the things you could do, you could be! Just things like the day and night cycles, the weather changes, how from sowing crops to baking bread and whatnot, what a complete world a game like Ultima VII was. Or how memorable games like Might and Magic World of Xeen or Wizardry VII were. Or how much Civilization II and Sim City were REAL breakthroughs! They dared to make more than just a mass market average product.
Second, they left a lot to imagination! I think this is a VERY vital thing. If you recall Ultima VII or Baldurs Gate or Sim City or Civilisation, you didn't see much. It was advanced beyond the bare minimum graphics, but a lot was still left to the imagination. I never will forget the Ultima V ending, where Blackthorn is banished, and heck, that was 256 coloured pixels with a bit of text! But the imagines in my mind were always greater and better than anything even today's engines can show me. Or maybe they COULD now, but for some reason the game developers don't do it.
Third, the soul. God, call me nostalgic, but for me Iolo, Shamino and Dupre from Ultima always were real persons! And they often didn't even have so many backstories and conversations like, say Dragon Age characters. But WHAT they had was top. I can't even place my finger on it. But chars from RPGs of these days were... memorable. Like Minsc from Baldurs Gate, heck like ALL Baldurs Gate chars. And they didn't need detailled personal dialogues and whatever to stick in my mind! Or the many small chars from these games. Or the cities I built in Sim City (1) and Civ II. I was immersed like in magic! Those games had soul despite their simplicity.
I miss those days. More in single player games, but also in MMOs of today. Even the old Everquest II and SWG had their old fashioned charm, their own magic, despite their many shortcomings. Todays games are so mass market, so smooth, so NOT daring. It is mediocre, playing safe stuff like SWTOR. And this thing of not aiming high, not daring and replacing soul with lackluster copy paste chars... I loathe that development of things.
I'd wish to see the old places again. Yes, maybe even in a new engine. And yes, maybe they would not be as they were. But Ultima, Wizardry, Might and Magic RPGs, Sim City, Civ, King Quest, C&C, Lands of Lore and all these were legends, of which the modern games are only weak epigones. Why their legacy was never again taken up is beyond me.
I miss you, my old friends.
Someone said it before. They were made by gamers for gamers. It was almost as if profit was a afterthought..though I'm sure that was not the case. It felt like it was at the time. These days it feels like games are made by a board of stuffy investors crying "Harrumph!" to anything that don't see on a list of features from that genres most popular game. It is ALL about the bottom line now and they let you know it whether intentionally or not.Plus the media was still fairly new back then so it wasn't hard to impress if you had a genuinely fun and engaging game.
I remember when Atari games were fun.lol. Sword of Fargoal . My first game for the C64 which was on cassette drive.lol. Man it was fun...and very hard at times. then came the AD&D goldbox to start off many endless hours on my greatly missed C64.
I defintely don't think they were harder on a game-play level, IE: high HP doesn't make a game harder it just makes it take longer to kill something. A harsh DP doesn't make a game harder, it makes a player take longer to progress. These are time-sinks not good game-play mechanics.
The gameplay mechanics were in themselves a lot deeper. Classes had a lot more skills with fine nuances to learn. Raids weren't one trick gimmicks, they had evolving scalable AI that you needed to be on your feet for. The fact that there were consequences for failure meant that you couldn't smack your head into a wall until the problem solved itself. Quests are a lot more challenging and better written.
The games I played didn't have quests that I recall, I don't remember any in DAOC as an example, those in SWG in 03-04, weren't even worth doing as the writing was horrible and tasks mundane. SO I really can't relate what you mean by that last part.
YEs many older MMO's did offer more options on what to do when logged in, that doesn't change the way game-play was in those older games, the genre still hasn't moved forward much in terms of game-play IMO, maybe that will change with upcoming games, but i highly doubt it, they'll just incorporate more gimmicks like a dodge button.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
.... longing for simpler times or as we now call it nostalgia but of course nostalgia isn't as good as it used to be is it? games as with music have always had good and bad and its no different today the problem as always is with the person not the hobby....
I hear what you are saying but I simply don't agree.
The MMO genre is different and many of the key elements of the "games of old" simply do not exist anymore.
The Vets are not simply waxing Nostalgia. Case in point after the travesty that is SWOTR, I stumbled across an amazing game that I have been playing for two months and really learned to appreciate how great the old games really are... especially when you find a server with original Pre-kunark rules...
Heavy Grouping, No instances, very limited gear grind, clearly defined classes, combat that takes more then 10 seconds, zones with mixed content and not just targeted to a limted handful of few levels, risk and penalties, you die you lose xp, you die your inventory is trapped on your corpse....
The game could certainly use a fresh coat of paint and there are a few newer MMO innovations that would make things a little nicer but at is heart the game has a soul that no newer MMO can match.
They were made for gamers, by gamers, not for masses.
Old games had options for failure. Depth. Risk vs Reward. Unique systems. Heart and soul poured into them.
Modern games don't.
Old MMOs were about coming together as a community against the harsh game world. Modern MMOs are about every individual being the hero and never failing.
I've noticed the same thing. You could, in the old days, find games that were different.
I still think about System Shock 2... I used to leave my the den with the shakes when I played that game because it was so creepy... And it was brutally hard... Never enough ammo... Never enough heals... You were always so vulnerable.... So you were alwasy moving so slowly, tentatively and with your 'head' on a swivel because you never knew when something was going to get behind you, or come out a side passage and you were going to die...
Sometimes it'd take me hours to figure out the best stratagy to deal with a room. Like the room with the 'spiders'... (They were bots or aliens or some such...)
Now... Everything is so scripted that you can't fail. You're just along for the ride and the story is less interactive than a book because your choices are meaningless and they fully-voice everything so you don't even have room for imagination to flesh out the character...
There are plenty of games out there today that rival and surpass the games of our youth. It seems like people mostly want to wax nostalgic rather than play though.
BioWare hasn't made a good game with anything approaching an original story since Jade Empire. Since then they've just recycled garbage , fed ex quests, and third-rate plots behind the walls of cheesy 8th grade romances and voice acted quests.
But that's not every developer. The Total War series has gotten better and better as it has aged. Bethesda is developing games better today than the fondly-remembered Daggerfall. Obsidian's Fallout New Vegas was incredible. Left for Dead 2 is probably the funnest shooter I've ever played. And I've played a lot of them, from Doom (shareware) and up. The Witcher 2 is a very solid CRPG that if it had the BioWare name on it, would have gotten a 95 rating because every fracking reviewer on the planet cuts them too much slack. Except for the farmed-out boss fights Deus Ex Human Revolution was an incredible game in the way it should have been. Portal 2 continued the excellence from Portal. And, of course, Minecraft. I thought Fallen EArth, a shoestring-budget MMO was pretty good and worth sticking around to play. But the parent company ran out of money, all my friends quit, so I left...
But so many others are just crap. SWTOR was crap. A $250 million steaming pile of donkey crap. Rift was cool until level 12 and I suddenly lost all interest in the game as all I could do was Fed Ex mob killing and Rift closing... It got tedious fast... Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Final Fantasy XIV... The list of total-crap-fest, failure to be anything but dull and boring MMOs, never mind total crap games is getting pretty long...
There are plenty of games out there today that rival and surpass the games of our youth. It seems like people mostly want to wax nostalgic rather than play though.
Certainly, some of it is "old man" whining due to a lack of motivation or willingness to embrace change. Another significant component is that the demographic for mainstream games has changed. Another component is that much of the video game industry did not "grow up" in their presentation and content methodologies as the average age of the player base also grew.
The gaming industry is different now. There is no denying that fact. Sometimes the disillusioned individuals certainly should be looking at more indie titles for the "inspired/hardcore/whatever" designs they crave as mainstream games are not made with them as the target audience. It is no different than any other entertainment industry.
I'll use arcade gaming as an example. When arcade gaming finally "died" for most people there was no outlet for players that desired that type of gaming. The industry simply did not provide anything close to the same experience even though the Internet was a great vehicle for such social high score style gaming. It is only very recently that this style of gaming has started to come back significantly thanks to "social networking" and these individuals have something resembling their niche in the gaming market back.
I see rose-colored glasses is simply a excuse not to really examine the issue and understand the significant changes going on in the industry. Niche market people (old gamers) will always be niche market people. Mainstream development practices will never be as appealing to the majority.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
I defintely don't think they were harder on a game-play level, IE: high HP doesn't make a game harder it just makes it take longer to kill something. A harsh DP doesn't make a game harder, it makes a player take longer to progress. These are time-sinks not good game-play mechanics.
The gameplay mechanics were in themselves a lot deeper. Classes had a lot more skills with fine nuances to learn. Raids weren't one trick gimmicks, they had evolving scalable AI that you needed to be on your feet for. The fact that there were consequences for failure meant that you couldn't smack your head into a wall until the problem solved itself. Quests are a lot more challenging and better written.
The games I played didn't have quests that I recall, I don't remember any in DAOC as an example, those in SWG in 03-04, weren't even worth doing as the writing was horrible and tasks mundane. SO I really can't relate what you mean by that last part.
YEs many older MMO's did offer more options on what to do when logged in, that doesn't change the way game-play was in those older games, the genre still hasn't moved forward much in terms of game-play IMO, maybe that will change with upcoming games, but i highly doubt it, they'll just incorporate more gimmicks like a dodge button.
DAoC did indeed have quests. The game didn't have quest based leveling, so the quests they had were immersive, seemed important, and revealed interesting lore on the world for those who went out of their way to find it. It wasn't burried in with 100000 other fetch quests. There was no map, no glowing waypoints.
I defintely don't think they were harder on a game-play level, IE: high HP doesn't make a game harder it just makes it take longer to kill something. A harsh DP doesn't make a game harder, it makes a player take longer to progress. These are time-sinks not good game-play mechanics.
The gameplay mechanics were in themselves a lot deeper. Classes had a lot more skills with fine nuances to learn. Raids weren't one trick gimmicks, they had evolving scalable AI that you needed to be on your feet for. The fact that there were consequences for failure meant that you couldn't smack your head into a wall until the problem solved itself. Quests are a lot more challenging and better written.
The games I played didn't have quests that I recall, I don't remember any in DAOC as an example, those in SWG in 03-04, weren't even worth doing as the writing was horrible and tasks mundane. SO I really can't relate what you mean by that last part.
YEs many older MMO's did offer more options on what to do when logged in, that doesn't change the way game-play was in those older games, the genre still hasn't moved forward much in terms of game-play IMO, maybe that will change with upcoming games, but i highly doubt it, they'll just incorporate more gimmicks like a dodge button.
DAoC did indeed have quests. The game didn't have quest based leveling, so the quests they had were immersive, seemed important, and revealed interesting lore on the world for those who went out of their way to find it. It wasn't burried in with 100000 other fetch quests. There was no map, no glowing waypoints.
Color me corrected then, I never did any of them, by your description I guess I missed out, I was always happily running a dungeon crawl or PVPing.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
There are maybe some differences between older games and newer ones but the most important point is probably that you have your first years of expirience with mmos/games left behind you.
Its like with your first love, you wont forget your first girlfriend the good time with rose glases In the meanwhile a lot changed and often you wont find such an expirience anymore that deep since it was special. But you remember on it.
+1 for what those other guys said about risk being non existent.
+1 for that guy who pointed out that being young and inexperienced made your awe towards a game stronger
On a related point. I got nostalgic there at one misty afternoon. Put on my rose glasses and called my first girlfriend. She has two kids now, with that guy who I always hated for being a complete tool, but hey, I went on meeting her anyway. Let me say, the "experience" wasn't as "deep" as it used to be, nor was it in any way special after three dozen other experiences and heh, perhaps 10,000 hours doing it in past 15 years.
Played also all my old games through, and even if they were actually slightly more interesting and gave atleast some of the old gut feeling back, I had to confess to my self, I've grown older. Games are different, some are even extremely good, but it is just impossible anymore to create such immersion or game mechanics, or such community, that would give the same feeling of belonging and achievent.
DAoC - 00-06 - And every now and then WoW - Online since launch - and now back again. EVE - Online since 07 - and still on, and on, and on.. WHO - Online 08-10 LOTR-O - Online 06-08 Also played : Asherons Call, EverQuest, EQ2, Dungeons & Dragons, Cabal, Dark & Light, GW, GW2, LA2, Ryzom, Shaiya, SWG, Allods, Forsaken World, ArcheAge, Secret World, Darkfall, Rift, ESO, Tera.
.... longing for simpler times or as we now call it nostalgia but of course nostalgia isn't as good as it used to be is it? games as with music have always had good and bad and its no different today the problem as always is with the person not the hobby....
I hear what you are saying but I simply don't agree.
The MMO genre is different and many of the key elements of the "games of old" simply do not exist anymore.
The Vets are not simply waxing Nostalgia. Case in point after the travesty that is SWOTR, I stumbled across an amazing game that I have been playing for two months and really learned to appreciate how great the old games really are... especially when you find a server with original Pre-kunark rules...
Heavy Grouping, No instances, very limited gear grind, clearly defined classes, combat that takes more then 10 seconds, zones with mixed content and not just targeted to a limted handful of few levels, risk and penalties, you die you lose xp, you die your inventory is trapped on your corpse....
The game could certainly use a fresh coat of paint and there are a few newer MMO innovations that would make things a little nicer but at is heart the game has a soul that no newer MMO can match.
First SW:TOR a travesty? opinion on your part so I'll move on. Loads of F2p play games have all the things that vets mention they loved from games of old so these types of games still exist. Get yourself a few friends and jump into a grind based F2P and you will never pay a thing if you stick together and you never know you might have some fun along the way. But vets will not do this and they will make x excuse about y feature and continue to bitch on forums about the demise of MMO's while the rest of us enjoy playing modern MMO's with our guilds having fun every night so it really must suck to be an "MMO Vet" it really must the constant depression you guys feel must really make your lives crap. But this is really the main thing that is overlooked among all the whinging.....
MMO's started to change towards what we have today way before WOW was released and you know who bitched and moaned or actually developed third party apps to ease the tedious monotony of older games? yes it was was your fellow vets..... Better maps, quest trackers, quest helpers, DPS metres, rage metres etc were all developed by these so called hardcore grouping and community lead vets and then lappped up by all the other "hardcore vets", the games companies have just given us the games we ask for. Now the reason some haven't gained WOW numbers is because of many reason but the biggest was broken and unplayable at launch.... I'm looking at you VG:SOH, AOC, WAR, POTBS, Darkfall, MO or they were bland and uninteresting and generic, Fallen Earth, Rift, Aion bad games are bad games and thats why we see failures not because they are not hardcore sandbox community driven games. The trend is changing with SW:TOR and hopefully with GW2 (no it is not the saviour of MMO's) and TSW you should see WOW numbers continue to drop and these newer quality games should have healthy numbers between them and that will help with diversity but you have to build a quality games first and thats been the problem with MMO's since WOW not that older games were better tthey were the only games of their type available so player played them.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
It is funny, for the C-64 and Amiga there were 5-10 fun games comming out every month. my computer magazine came out every 2 weeks, size of a newspaper with loads of new interesting games made by gamers for gamers.
Now I am happy if that many good games comes out in a year, and even then most of them are sequels of older games.
Games are a lot more pretty now and proffesional but they rarely have the same soul. A few companies are still runned by gamers but even most of them are working for a big corp like EA or Activision.
I am still hoping that Minecraft will open up the door again, it is one of the few games like this that have come out in many years. Valve have already tried to buy them out though, so far unsuccesfully.
Old RPGs like Eye of the beholder, Bards tale, Pools of radiance, Ultima and all the rest were nowhere near the polish of modern RPGs but they were just designed to be the type of game the devs wanted to play and that made them fun in ways few modern games ever can be.
That is exactly right! Games of old understood the Risk/Reward function. If there is little risk, there is little reward. I haven't felt the rush of excitement in a game for many many years, because i know that in current games, if I die.....it means jack squat. In the games of old, WHERE you died depended on the severity of the new quest that was just formed "Get Alasti's corpse back". If you died in a rough spot, you worried that you may NEVER get your corpse back, and THAT was what was exciting!
Nah .. that was frustrating and stupid. People have lives. What if i am having dinnerin 10 min and i just die? To penalize players when they cannot devote hours and hours to a GAME is just bad design.
In the old days when i played EQ, there was more waiting, less doing, less variety (killing the SAME mob with a group for the 1000000 times was incredibly boring .. modern dungeon leveling .. even the same dungeons are 100x better).
Comments
There are maybe some differences between older games and newer ones but the most important point is probably that you have your first years of expirience with mmos/games left behind you.
Its like with your first love, you wont forget your first girlfriend the good time with rose glases In the meanwhile a lot changed and often you wont find such an expirience anymore that deep since it was special. But you remember on it.
Garvon3: Economical use of words & true, is almost a haiku.
Here's small check-list:
Nostalgia/novelty/impressionable/responsibilities with age all factor as subjective factors oc.
Games were made by smaller teams making a game for gamers not a product by a huge team for a market
Games cost less to develop and as well as creating the genres. A lot of mainstream repeat with better tech only leads to expectation that the gameplay will match the awesome new tech : (. New paintwork/same engine running underneath.
Games were compelling: Eg: League of Evil (iOS) platformer has some of this. The problem with pvp in battlefields is that it can be spontaneous and therefore fun, but each time respawn a wade back in... the consequences don't feedback to "every moment counts/living in the moment" experience, is a problem that creeps in: The challenge feels less interesting/worthwhile even if the gameplay itself is damn fun.
As mentioned also, player x is still just that even when they're Player X ! Some of the older mmorpgs seem to have stand-out players for one reason or another: identities + communities.
But old games could be a pain in the ass as well:
The Six Most Infamous Puzzles In Adventure Game History
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Sorry but I'd much rather kill the same group of mobs 1000000 times with the same group of interesting people who you get to know and care about whether you succeed or fail than run the same dungeons 10000000 times with strangers that never speak. Talk about mind numbingly boring...
Bren
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I guess we will just have to agree to disagree. It is precisely that feeling of anxiety I crave and that all of these new games lack. When I died in EQ1, even if I had to leave in 10 minutes, I was scared and I when I did come back on, my first and only priority in the game was to get my corpse/stuff back. THAT WAS the excitement! The fear of losing....I haven't been afraid to lose in so long, and thus I have not been excited to play a game since then.
+1
So now we just do the same dunguen 1000000000 of times instead and dotn talk while your doing it because 1 - your in a rush to finish it 2- Your always moving 3- everyone knwow what there doing because its so easy 4- there no surprises because there always the same.
In the old games you never knew what was gonna happen for example 1 - Rare named mob spawns at a bad time and now ur fighting a named + some other mobs 2 - Another group train runs through your area 3- your puller accidently pull tomany mobs all these things can put your group on their toes, not to mention seince you dont ened to run to next pull after every fight you could chat to your group and have some fun.
You are an exception. The vast majority of people defending modern MMOs never played old MMOs. They say stuff like "instancing is necessary, MMOs would NEVER work without it!" because they've never played an MMO without instancing. They always talk about camping mobs and dungeon griefing: the first of which only happened in early EQ, the latter of which happens in the overworld of all games as well as dungeons. (in theory, I've never had anyone steal my kills)
They had smaller tight-knit communities...
I defintely don't think they were harder on a game-play level, IE: high HP doesn't make a game harder it just makes it take longer to kill something. A harsh DP doesn't make a game harder, it makes a player take longer to progress. These are time-sinks not good game-play mechanics.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I started playing video games when there was three choices a rather simplistic gaming console that played Pong, the local Arcade that had games like Space Invaders and later Pac Man or a rather expensive home computer, so we are talking late 70's and I don't agree with any of what the other vets bang on about over and over and over and over again. I love playing modern games whether they are an MMO, FPS, RTS, TBS etc... I'm really quite sick of hearing this crap over and over again as if they speak for all video game vets. I love music even more than games and you get the same arguments that proper music stop being produced in 1980 and its the same problem, longing for simpler times or as we now call it nostalgia but of course nostalgia isn't as good as it used to be is it? games as with music have always had good and bad and its no different today the problem as always is with the person not the hobby.
So my solution is for all those that feel the same way as the OP should stop playing any games and do a good bit of personal soul searching because you are the problem not your perceived notion that the gaming world was so much better in the old days because it vwasn't and never was, you were just younger and much more impressionable and now you are older and more cynical. Learn to break that cynicsm and your world will brighten and simpler times will return and you know why I know that? because I was you in the 90's and I never want to go back to that negative state ever again I had to face my longing for simpler times face on and remember all that was bad about those days and when you do you'll be surprised how shit and tedious games were in those days they were slow, clunky, convoluted, visually awful, with god awful plinky plonky bloody music, and the biggest one seriously repetative. Today we have loads of great games from Skyrim to Total War to SW:TOR to GTA to Civilization to Bioshock to Trine to S.T.A.L.K.E.R to The Witcher to Starcraft to WOW but no none of these games exist at all its all crap in a box isn't it?
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The newness factor of the old games certainly had a lot to do with it for me.
When I logged into EQ for the first time, I thought it was just the coolest thing knowing that all these characters I saw were actually other players. It was mind blowing. I made friends that first night that I still speak with today, 12 years later.
Community was everything in EQ, you could do almost nothing alone. Now you can do pretty much everything alone.
To me MMOs have become a great analog to society as a whole. People will all sit together in a restaraunt, and each be texting someone who is not there, and not speaking to each other. This is not now and then, this is prevalent. I think this is reflected in the PuGs these days. People group, don't speak more than they have to, then split, often without a thank you or good bye.
You can never go back to that first hit... She is never the same.
The gameplay mechanics were in themselves a lot deeper. Classes had a lot more skills with fine nuances to learn. Raids weren't one trick gimmicks, they had evolving scalable AI that you needed to be on your feet for. The fact that there were consequences for failure meant that you couldn't smack your head into a wall until the problem solved itself. Quests are a lot more challenging and better written.
Someone said it before. They were made by gamers for gamers. It was almost as if profit was a afterthought..though I'm sure that was not the case. It felt like it was at the time. These days it feels like games are made by a board of stuffy investors crying "Harrumph!" to anything that don't see on a list of features from that genres most popular game. It is ALL about the bottom line now and they let you know it whether intentionally or not.Plus the media was still fairly new back then so it wasn't hard to impress if you had a genuinely fun and engaging game.
I remember when Atari games were fun.lol. Sword of Fargoal . My first game for the C64 which was on cassette drive.lol. Man it was fun...and very hard at times. then came the AD&D goldbox to start off many endless hours on my greatly missed C64.
The games I played didn't have quests that I recall, I don't remember any in DAOC as an example, those in SWG in 03-04, weren't even worth doing as the writing was horrible and tasks mundane. SO I really can't relate what you mean by that last part.
YEs many older MMO's did offer more options on what to do when logged in, that doesn't change the way game-play was in those older games, the genre still hasn't moved forward much in terms of game-play IMO, maybe that will change with upcoming games, but i highly doubt it, they'll just incorporate more gimmicks like a dodge button.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I hear what you are saying but I simply don't agree.
The MMO genre is different and many of the key elements of the "games of old" simply do not exist anymore.
The Vets are not simply waxing Nostalgia. Case in point after the travesty that is SWOTR, I stumbled across an amazing game that I have been playing for two months and really learned to appreciate how great the old games really are... especially when you find a server with original Pre-kunark rules...
Heavy Grouping, No instances, very limited gear grind, clearly defined classes, combat that takes more then 10 seconds, zones with mixed content and not just targeted to a limted handful of few levels, risk and penalties, you die you lose xp, you die your inventory is trapped on your corpse....
The game could certainly use a fresh coat of paint and there are a few newer MMO innovations that would make things a little nicer but at is heart the game has a soul that no newer MMO can match.
I've noticed the same thing. You could, in the old days, find games that were different.
I still think about System Shock 2... I used to leave my the den with the shakes when I played that game because it was so creepy... And it was brutally hard... Never enough ammo... Never enough heals... You were always so vulnerable.... So you were alwasy moving so slowly, tentatively and with your 'head' on a swivel because you never knew when something was going to get behind you, or come out a side passage and you were going to die...
Sometimes it'd take me hours to figure out the best stratagy to deal with a room. Like the room with the 'spiders'... (They were bots or aliens or some such...)
Now... Everything is so scripted that you can't fail. You're just along for the ride and the story is less interactive than a book because your choices are meaningless and they fully-voice everything so you don't even have room for imagination to flesh out the character...
BioWare hasn't made a good game with anything approaching an original story since Jade Empire. Since then they've just recycled garbage , fed ex quests, and third-rate plots behind the walls of cheesy 8th grade romances and voice acted quests.
But that's not every developer. The Total War series has gotten better and better as it has aged. Bethesda is developing games better today than the fondly-remembered Daggerfall. Obsidian's Fallout New Vegas was incredible. Left for Dead 2 is probably the funnest shooter I've ever played. And I've played a lot of them, from Doom (shareware) and up. The Witcher 2 is a very solid CRPG that if it had the BioWare name on it, would have gotten a 95 rating because every fracking reviewer on the planet cuts them too much slack. Except for the farmed-out boss fights Deus Ex Human Revolution was an incredible game in the way it should have been. Portal 2 continued the excellence from Portal. And, of course, Minecraft. I thought Fallen EArth, a shoestring-budget MMO was pretty good and worth sticking around to play. But the parent company ran out of money, all my friends quit, so I left...
But so many others are just crap. SWTOR was crap. A $250 million steaming pile of donkey crap. Rift was cool until level 12 and I suddenly lost all interest in the game as all I could do was Fed Ex mob killing and Rift closing... It got tedious fast... Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Final Fantasy XIV... The list of total-crap-fest, failure to be anything but dull and boring MMOs, never mind total crap games is getting pretty long...
I was going to represent community and the playerbase the developers had in mind, but looks like plenty of you have already spoken up for this.
Certainly, some of it is "old man" whining due to a lack of motivation or willingness to embrace change. Another significant component is that the demographic for mainstream games has changed. Another component is that much of the video game industry did not "grow up" in their presentation and content methodologies as the average age of the player base also grew.
The gaming industry is different now. There is no denying that fact. Sometimes the disillusioned individuals certainly should be looking at more indie titles for the "inspired/hardcore/whatever" designs they crave as mainstream games are not made with them as the target audience. It is no different than any other entertainment industry.
I'll use arcade gaming as an example. When arcade gaming finally "died" for most people there was no outlet for players that desired that type of gaming. The industry simply did not provide anything close to the same experience even though the Internet was a great vehicle for such social high score style gaming. It is only very recently that this style of gaming has started to come back significantly thanks to "social networking" and these individuals have something resembling their niche in the gaming market back.
I see rose-colored glasses is simply a excuse not to really examine the issue and understand the significant changes going on in the industry. Niche market people (old gamers) will always be niche market people. Mainstream development practices will never be as appealing to the majority.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
DAoC did indeed have quests. The game didn't have quest based leveling, so the quests they had were immersive, seemed important, and revealed interesting lore on the world for those who went out of their way to find it. It wasn't burried in with 100000 other fetch quests. There was no map, no glowing waypoints.
Color me corrected then, I never did any of them, by your description I guess I missed out, I was always happily running a dungeon crawl or PVPing.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
+1 for what those other guys said about risk being non existent.
+1 for that guy who pointed out that being young and inexperienced made your awe towards a game stronger
On a related point. I got nostalgic there at one misty afternoon. Put on my rose glasses and called my first girlfriend. She has two kids now, with that guy who I always hated for being a complete tool, but hey, I went on meeting her anyway. Let me say, the "experience" wasn't as "deep" as it used to be, nor was it in any way special after three dozen other experiences and heh, perhaps 10,000 hours doing it in past 15 years.
Played also all my old games through, and even if they were actually slightly more interesting and gave atleast some of the old gut feeling back, I had to confess to my self, I've grown older. Games are different, some are even extremely good, but it is just impossible anymore to create such immersion or game mechanics, or such community, that would give the same feeling of belonging and achievent.
DAoC - 00-06 - And every now and then
WoW - Online since launch - and now back again.
EVE - Online since 07 - and still on, and on, and on..
WHO - Online 08-10
LOTR-O - Online 06-08
Also played : Asherons Call, EverQuest, EQ2, Dungeons & Dragons, Cabal, Dark & Light, GW, GW2, LA2, Ryzom, Shaiya, SWG, Allods, Forsaken World, ArcheAge, Secret World, Darkfall, Rift, ESO, Tera.
First SW:TOR a travesty? opinion on your part so I'll move on. Loads of F2p play games have all the things that vets mention they loved from games of old so these types of games still exist. Get yourself a few friends and jump into a grind based F2P and you will never pay a thing if you stick together and you never know you might have some fun along the way. But vets will not do this and they will make x excuse about y feature and continue to bitch on forums about the demise of MMO's while the rest of us enjoy playing modern MMO's with our guilds having fun every night so it really must suck to be an "MMO Vet" it really must the constant depression you guys feel must really make your lives crap. But this is really the main thing that is overlooked among all the whinging.....
MMO's started to change towards what we have today way before WOW was released and you know who bitched and moaned or actually developed third party apps to ease the tedious monotony of older games? yes it was was your fellow vets..... Better maps, quest trackers, quest helpers, DPS metres, rage metres etc were all developed by these so called hardcore grouping and community lead vets and then lappped up by all the other "hardcore vets", the games companies have just given us the games we ask for. Now the reason some haven't gained WOW numbers is because of many reason but the biggest was broken and unplayable at launch.... I'm looking at you VG:SOH, AOC, WAR, POTBS, Darkfall, MO or they were bland and uninteresting and generic, Fallen Earth, Rift, Aion bad games are bad games and thats why we see failures not because they are not hardcore sandbox community driven games. The trend is changing with SW:TOR and hopefully with GW2 (no it is not the saviour of MMO's) and TSW you should see WOW numbers continue to drop and these newer quality games should have healthy numbers between them and that will help with diversity but you have to build a quality games first and thats been the problem with MMO's since WOW not that older games were better tthey were the only games of their type available so player played them.
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Damn, Elikal. You made me nostalgic.
It is funny, for the C-64 and Amiga there were 5-10 fun games comming out every month. my computer magazine came out every 2 weeks, size of a newspaper with loads of new interesting games made by gamers for gamers.
Now I am happy if that many good games comes out in a year, and even then most of them are sequels of older games.
Games are a lot more pretty now and proffesional but they rarely have the same soul. A few companies are still runned by gamers but even most of them are working for a big corp like EA or Activision.
I am still hoping that Minecraft will open up the door again, it is one of the few games like this that have come out in many years. Valve have already tried to buy them out though, so far unsuccesfully.
Old RPGs like Eye of the beholder, Bards tale, Pools of radiance, Ultima and all the rest were nowhere near the polish of modern RPGs but they were just designed to be the type of game the devs wanted to play and that made them fun in ways few modern games ever can be.
Heh ,
1- The grinding
2- The lack of awesome graphics
3- No cash shops to jinx your gaming experience
4- Devs actually took care of botters
5- Being maxed actually meant something (Since it was HARD work)
6- When playing for hours on a friday night you actually felt like you accomplished something
7- The friends you made online back then were alot cooler then your RL friends
Think i'm missing a few but that's the general idea.
just find yourself another hobby.