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What happened to MMO's
seacow1g
Member UncommonPosts: 266
I think most MMO players will agree that todays MMO's are not very good anymore. But why is this? It's a strange phenomenon that we feel that way when the "best" MMO's out there are some of the most refined, functional, user-friendly, graphically beautiful, feature-rich and bug free games that have ever existed. What happened? What's missing? Is it truly the games' fault or is it we as gamers who have changed? To even begin to explore this question one first has to have a firm definition of what they consider an MMO, because in this day and age almost every genre has adopted one or more features from MMO's as their own.
I define MMO's as a game where hundreds or even thousands of players create their own avatars that coexist in a PERSISTENT game world. With their avatars the players complete quests and collect equipment to strengthen their avatars and explore the game world. The harder content can be tackled by groups of varying sizes in order to further strengthen the avatars of the players. Players can also engage in PvP with their avatars for additional competition.
It may very well be that we as the players have become bored of the MMO genre, bored of the grinding and the questing and the endless pursuit of gear. Bored of the hour-long raids and the boss fights and the guilds and the coordination and the showing our rewards off in cities. Bored of the mounts and the battlegrounds and the crafting and.....wait......I really don't think I'm bored of any of that. Are you?
I LOVE making a badass hero and adventuring across a fantastical world to become the mightiest hero in the land. I love organizing and coordinating raids. I love using my shiny rewards to tackle even more challenging bosses or pwning noobs in battlegrounds, duels or world pvp. I love collecting mounts, recipes, achievements and experiencing the epic storylines. I don't think any of that has changed. I still love these activities and long for the next big adventure.....So what's the problem? Why don't I like any of these current MMO offerings? After almost 4 years of asking myself this question as I tried every new major MMO to come out, I think I have found the answer. It's not a simple one, but if I had to put it all into one sentence I would say:
THESE GAMES ARE TOO EASY!!!
Now calling these games too easy may sound like I'm oversimplifying things but it's actually a very loaded statement. When I call these games too easy, I do literally mean they are not very challenging as a whole. Yes many games like WoW, SWTOR and others have "Hard Mode" content that's meant to give its conquerors the best rewards in the game, but what about the rest of the game? It's a grind fest, it's a faceroll, it's a race to the finish to get to "the good stuff". And even when you get there, your sense of achievement is still not there because it's the same bosses that the "noobs" fight but just toned up. And the rewards you get are the same equipment that pretty much anyone can get, just recolored or something and with slightly more stats.
What happened to the days when places in the world were actually DANGEROUS? Where no matter what level you were or gear you had you could and would often get your butt whooped? What happened to the days when you actually had to read the quest description to figure out where to go and how to do it? What happened to the days when you saw some dude with a badass weapon or armor and you asked him where he got it and he said it was crafted with a certain metal that only RARELY spawned in a super dangerous volcano that you would have to go risk dying 10 times over to get to?
Look, I don't consider myself some kind of sadist that enjoys dying all the time. I don't think monsters should be scaled to hit obnoxiously hard just for the sake of artificially making the game harder. I like depth, I like strategy. I'd like to use FFXI as an example. It is my humble opinion that that game SUCKED. You couldn't jump, you could not do ANYTHING without being in a group (with no good group making tools), and more importantly....even when at the highest level with good gear....you would fear aggro'ing and being killed by a BUNNY in certain zones....that's right, a bunny. FFXI was a perfect example of a game that overscaled mobs simply for the sake of making the game hard. It wasn't complex, it wasn't deep, it was just hard. The interface was clunky and there were many things about the game I would call dysfunctional. Yet even though that game "sucked", I experienced alot more excitement when I achieved anything in that game than I have in any other MMO for years now. You know why? Because it actually WAS an achievement. Not many people could max goldsmithing in that game or beat any number of endgame bosses (or even midgame bosses for that matter). It was so special to max goldsmithing that I actually knew the name of every maxxed goldsmither on my server....and I bet they felt special because of it.
I think that's what's been lost in so many modern MMO's, and I think I know why this has happened as well. Quite simply, it's money. When World of Warcraft showed the world how much money can be made with MMO's by appealing to a casual audience they killed the MMO genre for over half a decade (so far). I think Blizzard struck an almost perfect balance of accessibility, polish and difficulty in Vanilla WoW. I only managed to raid about half of the content in Vanilla before TBC came out, but even then I knew that I was enjoying myself because I always had something to aspire to. They managed to accumulate an unheard of number of subscribers by the time its first expansion rolled around and actually managed to maintain alot of the same rewarding feelings well into The Burning Crusade. From then on however it all went downhill; they took casualness too far, their subscriber numbers soared and the sense of reward was lost. Many MMO's have since emulated this model in bids to achieve similar large subscriber numbers. They used huge budgets to produce pretty, polished, accessible and functional MMO's that unfortunately were also too easy.
I can't blame them for trying to get large subscriber numbers though; after all gaming is a business. But if all games follow this model, what's left? A market with a bunch of games where the players don't feel challenged and rewarded for their efforts and don't feel committed to their characters. A market where players don't want to pay a subsciption fee because they can't see themselves playing the same game for years to come. I know there are some "hardcore" MMO's out there like Darkfall but those suffer from another problem; they lack the polish, functionality and beauty that we've come to expect from quality MMO's. Now I can deal with less than stellar graphics, but polish is not something I can do without. Maybe I'm spoiled, but so what? I don't complain about purchasing a game I like or even paying a subscription fee. I know my money is well worth a decent looking, challenging game that is well polished. I've experienced some of the best and the worst that MMO's can offer and I know it can be done if developers stop focusing on making game for millions of subscribers and instead make a game that the players can live in.
What do YOU think?
*MMO's that I have played for 2 months or more: Everquest, Everquest II, FFXI, World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Guild Wars, Dark Fall, Lord of the Rings Online, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Rift, Warhammer Online, Aion, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2*
Comments
It's all to do with profit, a game that is easy to play means you can get more people playing, which in turns means more profit.
That's all there is to it.
Most niche game struggle to survive because low player base = low profits.
Remember these companies exist to make money, thats all, they are providing a paid service in order to make money, thats why they have all become 'ez' mode games.
― Terry Pratchett, Making Money
but but but.. Jean.. I loved camping those Ice Giants in Everfrost.. Some called that tedious.. lol I guess it depends if there is a reward for doing it, whether it be monetary or mats..
Oh I agree, I thought I made it clear with my FFXI example but I'm not a fan of making a game "artificially hard" i.e. making every random mob in the world hit hard (including little bunnies well into the endgame) or having clunky game mechanics or having long grinds just to make the players struggle.
Although I could agree that even Vanilla WoW was too easy in some ways, I was most of fond of the balance they struck between difficulty and function in that game. The game was polished, functional, monsters that kicked your ass made sense (not bunnies) and a large amount of the content was quite hard. Even hardcore devoted players never managed to see some of it and that was ok because it served as a reward for the players that were good enough to tackle it. There were multiple World Zones that were dangerous to travel to and explore even at max level. All in all I think Vanilla WoW could've been a little harder too but I just bring it up as a great example of a game that felt challenging and rewarding and yet was extremely polished and user friendly; that's what MMO's should strive for.
However, even MMO's that i consider "bad" (like FFXI) which were extremely tedious and artificially difficult still felt more rewarding than any of the current MMO offerings and I think that's why I can't get drawn into any of them.
The game needs to be polished enough yet scalable to a current demographic. What do I mean by this you may ask? Well most of the people that played wow were either new to the scene or came from games like Everquest where doing 7+hr raids was the norm. These gamers have now grown up and found jobs and other things to do and while they now posses less time, they still seek the thrill of the combat. A lot of the people that complain about difficulty have not even stepped into a current or previous heroic raids and are just trying to act cool riding the bandwagon.
If you check the WoW PvE competitive scene you would see that the game is far from easy, and there is a lot of burn out on the top tier of raiders from all that is demanded of them. Now I come back and ask you, where is this easy you speak of? A game should be easy to pick up but hard to master, and I have YET seen any of the naysayers, be for WoW or anyother game, actually clear the content that was there in the first place.
So please enlighten me, what are your MMO qualifications and why should I care about your opinions on difficulty? Until you can actually back up your statements with some hardcore experience, I think we are well to see that there is nothing here and we should move on.
At least with a sub game they know that people won't tolerate bullshit and leave. With anet we have no recourse but to buy our own lube so our assholes don't get too stretched out from getting bent over a table at Anets will. - Hrimnir
Until MMORPGS stop being focused on level advancement followed by gear via drops advancement it will never be truly difficult unless developers aim for extremely small amounts of players.
Additionally it is harder to program something to run on an online environment so Ai development will be slow,
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
I've created a couple of posts like this before, and I agree with you 100%.
MMO's are just plain hand-held cake-walks now. The world is NOT dangerous at all. You run around with no fear of dying. I leveled up to max level in Guild Wars 2 and EQ2 EASILY. It wasn't even remotely challenging.
It's not just that, all of these theme-park games, along with many others, are EXACTLY the same game.
1) Make character
2) Get newbie quest(s) until there aren't anymore
3) Go to the next monster spawn that endlessly spawns the same creatures in exactly the same area, level up, get crap drops, etc.
4) Kill the # of mobs you need for your quests and go back to step 2
5) You're probably strong enough now to team up for an instance. A theme-park area where the SAME EXACT mobs are in the SAME EXACT place, EVERY SINGLE TIME. Wow, that's fun! (sarcasm)
6) Repeat step 5 until you get the drops and exp you want, and move back to step 5 going to the next dungeon instance.
Oh yeah, there's also some crafting that doesn't amount you much for the time spent.
Exploration, discovery, danger, etc, is basically non-existent in 95% of today's games. I fondly remember running around in EQ/EQ2 (to a lesser degree), having NO idea where you were going, and that's what was great about it. You could get too close to a wandering high level mob and get smacked down immediately. Same with Ultima Online, and a many other games that started it all. I actually went back to UO recently. All the games today are a pure linear progression. Newb area->next slightly harder area->rinse, wash, repeat.
I'm astounded by the endless stream of Asian grinders, as I like to call them. They are EXACTLY the same game, just with slightly different graphics, different maps, etc. They all have those same EXACT looking anime-ish characters. Just about all of them. The women wear bathing suits into battle, and are all gorgeous, with bouncing breast physics to boot. Pathetic. The men all look the same too, but actually have armor. Almost all of them let you choose from only 4-5 classes. You can guess what they are easily. They are the same in 95% of these games.
I think people have come to expect less these days, and not just with video games. I see you-tube videos where people just video tape their TV, shaky camera and terrible audio included, and actually get 80-90% likes. What? If you posted a video like this 10-15 years ago, you would have gotten your ass flamed off. Garbage is in. Quality is out.
I wish people would speak with their wallets, and I wish at least one game developer (like Richard Garriot is doing) would take a chance on a triple A sandbox game. Go where you want, do what you want, danger and treasure to be found everywhere. People should stop paying for these crap games. But, they pay, so they keep making them. I guess the kids today like their hand-held when playing their games. Sad.
I want a world again. I remember being dumped into the world when I first started DAOC. I was in Mularn on the Mid side, and well had to figure out almost everything. I made great friends, because we needed each other, unlike in todays games, you just follow a glow, a mini map, run to a BIG orange circle, yuck, it s starting to annoy me just talking about it.
All I really want is to see a world again, where I actually have to figure some stuff out, not the game play it for me.
I'd have to agree with you Seacow.
While there were some time investment elements in older MMO's and I didn't initially enjoy on their face value I realized their importance later. It gave the achievement a sense of value, and that is the problem, no achievement in MMO's have value anymore unless they are ridiculously time consuming. Challenge is a multifaceted idea, it can be skill, time investment, coordination, etc. It doesn't just have to be, play for thirty days. Good MMO's strike a balance but they also don't let your breeze through the game like its nothing. Without a certain level of challenge there isn't any value in the game play, its not enjoyable.
My vanilla and TBC WoW days were some of the most enjoyable and memorable days of gaming in recent years. It was a solid mix of challenge and reward. Now it feels like anyone who can play the game and succeed as long as they have a internal body temperature of somewhere roughly in the 90's ^_^.
I think the main issue with mmorpgs today is that they try to make too many people happy. They went from being games defined by their amazing community experience and turned into games you can blaze through as fast as a good single player rpg. The icing on the cake is that they have adopted the primarily solo play nature of single player games and have almost put group/relationship building content on a back burner. Its all about instant gratification now and less about striving for something, making friends, and interdependence.
Things I miss (generalized):
1. Spending more than a day or 2 in a zone.
2. Slower leveling that allowed for a chance to get to know people (instead of todays, group, no talk, finish quest, disband). In todays mmorpg world, if you do not log in for a day or two your outleveled. People used to just enjoy the game and now its all about a boring endgame.
3. Real death penalties. I used to be afraid of dieing and now its no big deal. Real death penalties helped players come together as well as fel accomplishment, and respect the world. I had many great nights helping friends on corpse runs in EQ1.
4. Open world dungeons. It was nice to see other people while running around a dungeon to pull. It was nice to have spawn competition. Not that I do not like instanced dungeons, I do, but I miss quality open world ones as well.
You can speak in generalizations when its true a larger percentage of the time, which the statement regarding Asian MMO is true in most cases. You can stick up for the exceptions if you like but the majority are cookie cutter cash shop clones. That point is not debatable.
Regarding your second point about MMO's evolving? Well they have evolved but to capture a large audience that did not make up the original group of people that played MMO's when they were founded. That group of people is asking the OP's question, not todays "gamer". Isn't that obvious to you? Clearly the evolution of MMO's was not in the founding players image but in the image of the mass's whose interests lie in most cases 180 degree off from early MMO players.
Face it we old school gamers found computer gaming when the barrier to entry was higher than it is today. Meaning you needed to possess in most cases an additional core set of interests outside of gaming. A fantasy or Si-fi junky mixed in with some technical expertise (building and operating early PC's) which makes for a more sophisticated gamers.
Most of todays MMO market are people that don't possess these traits (or skills) I wont go as far to call them mouth breathers but why not. Mouth breathers who want to pick up a gamepad controller and "game" between bong hits and sleeping. Through trying to get a HIgh School diploma might be in there too, and hoping for that job at Best Buy or IN N out.
The market today is aimed not at the sophisticated intellectual but at kids, people with A.D.D. and tire kickers. Us old school gamers can just sit back and weep at the complete commercialization of our genre and hobby.
FTFY. Your original sentence was just too absurd and so in complete denial of actual numbers and facts that I have to assume it was a typo. If not, then what you're suggesting is that most MMO players are playing and paying for entertainment they don't enjoy, which is even more ridiculous.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
1&2: I can agree with you one 1 and 2. If zones were setup like GW2 (I feel zone lvl progression is needed) , I would be happy with that (which is the only game I have played that works in a way similar to your suggestion) as long as scaling down works properly. I feel in GW2 a high level scaled down is still a little too powerful. As for what I posted being boring, I spent a month in LOIO in EQ1. I never got bored and met a ton of people I still play with today., but opinions vary.
3. I understand where you're coming from. My personal favorite death penalty would be Eq1 without the corpse decay. This would allow for a death penalty that still stings/accomplishes what I mentioned above (imho), but one where you would not be forced to stay on way past your planned departure.
4. As for 4, I think this is a good idea, but I still would like to see competitive underbosses throughout a dungeon and some roaming in the open world areas.
can there be any other way Jean-Luc?
if something is hard to get, does that not mean it will have a certain amount of tedium involved?
damn straight it will.
there is nothing in the world, both real and imagined that is classified as hard that does not involve dedication, perserverance, and fortitude to get.
thats something that constantly amazes me, people want hard, but are not willing to put in the time, nor effort.
and the game companies that have catered to this give me everything with no effort mindset have in a real sense have damaged the genre.
risk vs reward is a throw away term used alot on these boards, and yet THERE IS NO RISK.
people blame the console gamers, but really, there is no blame , it is human conditioning to get what you want with as little effort as possible.
you, me , us, we are all the ones who have inadventantly allowed this to happen, will it change? no, but, at least hopefully industry is waking up to the fact that there is a large group of people that do want a challenge in mmorpg gaming, who want some measure of hardness and tedium back in the game.
over 20 years of mmorpg's and counting...
And i hate camping of any sort. I called that tedious. I prefer an instanced dungeon any day. Just put a challenge option on instanced dungeons/raids and i am good.
"too easy" is a matter perspective. Different players like different level of challenges. When CATA was first released, Blizz upped the difficulty of H dungeons, and many complained, and everything was nerfed, and later dungeons was made easier.
The only solution is a difficulty slider.
I disagree.
MMORPGs are 2 games in one. The game you must play in order to get to the game you want to play. When these two concepts are in balance, then you have a proper work vs. reward system. And tedium is part of that balance. The more the industry has shifted the balance from work to reward, the shorter the time the player base stays active and healthy.
These are MMORPGs, the concept is that the game goes on indefinitely. Current AI technology simply cannot provide this in a dynamic fashion. Some decent attempts have been made to simulate that but in the end, even those innovative changes also became repetitive. ArenaNet is now adding what amounts to an 800 skill point grind to it's crafting system in order to give players something more to do.
Given what MMORPGs are and the limits of AI technology. Looping content is not optional. Since around Wrath, every game made has tried to ease the burden of this tedious game play. It simply fails because by removing the tedium, the reward earned factor is also reduced by the same. Players get bored and quit. It has killed the sense that players have earned what they have.
The solution is not to remove tedium. but to embrace it. Grinding is a necessary evil that made this genre what it was. Even at it's height of popularity, WoW still had massive "Tedium". The key is not to remove it, but make it worth doing.
The group "I want everything for free, and I want it now" rolled into town, and the gaming companies said alright that sounds like a good idea, it's not like people should have to spend hours on hours to reach end game..... the rest of us are just dinosaurs anyway.
Anarchy Online was also like this. So was SWG. There was always something you needed to prepare for in order to get to those activities that we all remembered fondly. We want a game to give us new memories. But that's not going to happen without balanced prep work. Traditional Themepark End-Game is only one version of this.
I can't speak for EQ, but I am sure it was the same. But I'll use WoW. When I was in TBC, I remember hitting HFP on my hunter and crafting the felscale leather gloves and using them at 57 and recalling how awesome they were. When I got to 70, I recall making the trip to Azshara to learn Dragonscale Leather-working. I remember grinding away, and I mean grinding. In order to make my Ebon Netherscale armor. I used it to replace my FelStalker set. Why do I recall all this from so many years ago? If I put some thought into it, I can tell you that in Anarchy I had combinations of Combined Mercenary and OFAB armors. I remember my TKM wearing Ubese armor in SWG. All this gear so many years ago, I recall it so well. Why can't I recall the sets of gear I used on my Deathknight?
When it was worked for, it was important and we carry those memories.
Two levels of dungeons (heroic and non-heroic) is a difficulty slider. They need more notches on it.
Of course people want it all. We are talking about electronic entertainment here. What do you expect? Hard work?
That sounds like bad design for an entertainment product. Why do i need to play anything i don't like before i play anything i like?
I only play games that i like .. if there is any thing that is not fun, i am out of there. There are plenty of choices.
And you can disagree all you want. People are going to play games their way. You don't control how other play games.
Pertaining to "People speak with their wallets." With the influx of F2P games, not many speak with their wallets and those that do speak, speak loudly
Yet those not speaking with their wallets get to be included in the F2P MMO numbers as a measure of "success."
What percentage of the million+ players in SW:TOR actually pay anything? Or any F2P game? No longer do we "vote with our wallets", with regard to F2P games.
As far as tech goes, I am unsure if graphics have overcome processing tech or bandwidth, but recent MMOs have not had the capability to host the simultaneous online numbers as they used to. Even Skyrim's new tech could not handle Morrowind's enchant-able pants and shirt tech under armor and had to close off cities from the open world due to tech limitations.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
OK, after thinking about my 1st post and later responses, I can say that I don't totally disagree with you. If such a way could happen where it's not tedious but still retain the well earned reward factor, then sure, I'll change my point of view.
It's just that I can't see effectively worked out from a technical standpoint. But I'll admit, my inability to see it, doesn't mean you are wrong.
So I'll revise my statement.
Ah in principle i have no issue with this. Hence, LFR, normal + hard mode raid is a good thing.
However, in the case of the heroic dungeons, there is a HUGE gap between normal and H. So blizz nerfed H. The correct way of handling it (but requires more resources) is to have more than 2 levels of difficulties.
People do expect hard mode raid to be hard ... but not H dungeons. It is a matter of misplaced expectations.