2) Subbing for a game is just so yesterday. B2P, F2P, unending free trials, freemium .... fit consumers expectation, and needs better.
You say that yet I can't find one of these f2p games fun to play. They cost me nothing but I still don't play them.
Quality is rare and people have no problem paying for it.
That's odd, I can't find a traditional MMO (of any variety) that's fun to play (neither can a dozen or so other people in this thread).
Perhaps our search engines are just fail, or perhaps--the longer the genre continues, and the longer we're exposed to it--the more stringent the 'quality' test becomes. Nothing passes, because the high jump the game must clear to get a "quality" stamp (from us) bar just keeps rising. Eventually, it seems to become impossible.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
2) Subbing for a game is just so yesterday. B2P, F2P, unending free trials, freemium .... fit consumers expectation, and needs better.
You say that yet I can't find one of these f2p games fun to play. They cost me nothing but I still don't play them.
Quality is rare and people have no problem paying for it.
That's odd, I can't find a traditional MMO (of any variety) that's fun to play (neither can a dozen or so other people in this thread).
Perhaps our search engines are just fail, or perhaps--the longer the genre continues, and the longer we're exposed to it--the more stringent the 'quality' test becomes. Nothing passes, because the high jump the game must clear to get a "quality" stamp (from us) bar just keeps rising. Eventually, it seems to become impossible.
Thats pretty much the same boat I'm in right now. I'm just bored of all of them. Trying GW2 again (only did the free weekend a few months ago). Even skyrim is getting dull.
Think I might pick up guitar or something.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Wading back into a fifteen year backlog of accumulated literature, too :P
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Originally posted by nariusseldon2) Subbing for a game is just so yesterday. B2P, F2P, unending free trials, freemium .... fit consumers expectation, and needs better.
You say that yet I can't find one of these f2p games fun to play. They cost me nothing but I still don't play them.Quality is rare and people have no problem paying for it.
That's odd, I can't find a traditional MMO (of any variety) that's fun to play (neither can a dozen or so other people in this thread).Perhaps our search engines are just fail, or perhaps--the longer the genre continues, and the longer we're exposed to it--the more stringent the 'quality' test becomes. Nothing passes, because the high jump the game must clear to get a "quality" stamp (from us) bar just keeps rising. Eventually, it seems to become impossible.
Well I think the first issue is if it is an older game the meat of the game is going to be empty and everyone is going to be stuck in the end game. So just getting to where you can play with others becomes obnoxious when the focus of most of those games were originally the journey. The old games that went F2P in recent years are mostly games that were substandard and couldn't handle a pay to play model even in their primes. Things like Tera, SWTOR etc.
You also aren't getting the true flavor of some of these games. EQ has added companions to level with you, makes it a very different game. Aion doubled XP rates and then added a server that doubles it again so the pacing of the game is all strange now, etc.
A lot of the really old games still have P2P models shockingly enough. Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online etc.
2) Subbing for a game is just so yesterday. B2P, F2P, unending free trials, freemium .... fit consumers expectation, and needs better.
You say that yet I can't find one of these f2p games fun to play. They cost me nothing but I still don't play them.
Quality is rare and people have no problem paying for it.
That's odd, I can't find a traditional MMO (of any variety) that's fun to play (neither can a dozen or so other people in this thread).
Perhaps our search engines are just fail, or perhaps--the longer the genre continues, and the longer we're exposed to it--the more stringent the 'quality' test becomes. Nothing passes, because the high jump the game must clear to get a "quality" stamp (from us) bar just keeps rising. Eventually, it seems to become impossible.
A track and field reference! That's so 70s! And, sadly, the analogy is all too apt.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
2) Subbing for a game is just so yesterday. B2P, F2P, unending free trials, freemium .... fit consumers expectation, and needs better.
You say that yet I can't find one of these f2p games fun to play. They cost me nothing but I still don't play them.
Quality is rare and people have no problem paying for it.
That's odd, I can't find a traditional MMO (of any variety) that's fun to play (neither can a dozen or so other people in this thread).
Perhaps our search engines are just fail, or perhaps--the longer the genre continues, and the longer we're exposed to it--the more stringent the 'quality' test becomes. Nothing passes, because the high jump the game must clear to get a "quality" stamp (from us) bar just keeps rising. Eventually, it seems to become impossible.
A track and field reference! That's so 70s! And, sadly, the analogy is all too apt.
Oh please most of the MMO's I see coming out I would compare to this:
I don't know about other people but I don't care about MMOs. The only MMO I have played in the last 3-4 years (might be even more now) is GW2. The only reason I played it was because I loved GW1. But quickly gave up on it. MMOs are crap. I have played WoW a lot back in the days and it seems that I have seen everything the genre has to offer now just by playing that one MMO. WoW had so many things I loved about it and no MMO has managed to replicate this, it doesn't matter if it came before or after it. UO was my first MMO but WOW was my one and only MMO love. UO and EQ didn't have the atmosphere and lore of WOW and were too buggy for my taste.
I say just move on to play something else. IF you have played WOW, you have seen it all in terms of MMO after it. They are all exactly like WoW but are a vastly inferior version.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
MMOs were never fun to play solo. The fact that they are soloable now only shows how lame they always were. It's the people you play with that made them fun. When you stop playing these games with other people, they stop being what they were intended to be.
I still care about them. They just don't care about me anymore.
So lopsided. You really would care about products produced by uncaring developers?
Personally i just treat them as replace-able products.
It's the expectation of perpetual entertainment for only fifty cents a day that seems to be crumbling. But perhaps it was never all too realistic in the first place.
I agree.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
Originally posted by DamonVile MMOs were never fun to play solo. The fact that they are soloable now only shows how lame they always were. It's the people you play with that made them fun. When you stop playing these games with other people, they stop being what they were intended to be.
Fun is subjective. It is fun for me (and since solo content is popular, probably man other) to play solo. Don't tell me you know what is fun for me better than myself.
And i don't play "what they intended to be", i play games the way i want. It is just entertainment, not going to class.
Plus, given so many MMO include solo content, i doubt they are all intended to play with others all the time.
Originally posted by DamonVile MMOs were never fun to play solo. The fact that they are soloable now only shows how lame they always were. It's the people you play with that made them fun. When you stop playing these games with other people, they stop being what they were intended to be.
Fun is subjective. It is fun for me (and since solo content is popular, probably man other) to play solo. Don't tell me you know what is fun for me better than myself.
And i don't play "what they intended to be", i play games the way i want. It is just entertainment, not going to class.
Plus, given so many MMO include solo content, i doubt they are all intended to play with others all the time.
well...one can have fun drinking liquid soap and blowing out bubbles, but it doesn't mean it's the intended way to blow out soap bubbles. I know what you're trying to say and you have a valid perspective but it is not what many who visit these forums are looking for.
even if you were right, and we were wrong, it's not what we're looking for. We'd rather be wrong... if what we're looking for isn't right.
There is no right or wrong. Only preferences. I prefer solo content. You prefer something else. That is totally fine.
And to be honest, what a game "intended to be" is irrelevant for me. It is either fun, played my way, or not. Having said that, again, given MMO is full of solo content (do you dispute this statement?), it is intended to be played solo for some.
Originally posted by Icewhite Originally posted by EdliOriginally posted by nariusseldon2) Subbing for a game is just so yesterday. B2P, F2P, unending free trials, freemium .... fit consumers expectation, and needs better.
You say that yet I can't find one of these f2p games fun to play. They cost me nothing but I still don't play them.Quality is rare and people have no problem paying for it. That's odd, I can't find a traditional MMO (of any variety) that's fun to play (neither can a dozen or so other people in this thread).Perhaps our search engines are just fail, or perhaps--the longer the genre continues, and the longer we're exposed to it--the more stringent the 'quality' test becomes. Nothing passes, because the high jump the game must clear to get a "quality" stamp (from us) bar just keeps rising. Eventually, it seems to become impossible.
That's possible. It's also possible that while the criteria for quality is rising, the criteria for feature sets isn't shifting as fast for some individuals as fast as it's shifting for the mass of individuals playing MMORPGs.
There are many things I wouldn't agree with Narisseldon on, but in this particular instance, I think Naris is absolutely right.
It isn't the quality of the games that is falling. Not by any objective measure. More people are successfully logging in, more people are playing and more people are spending money than ever before. Even if we limit our discussion to MMORPGs and ignore the MMOs. It's the feature sets that are changing, and they don't fit everyone's preferences. It doesn't make sense that if a game or genre doesn't have the features that are desired by the player that they would enjoy participating in that game or genre. This isn't a quality issue until the number of players year over year drops.
Now, if things ever change to the point that individuals or very small groups can compete on quality, the way craft beers can compete against mass produced beers in terms of quality then we can start talking about the quality of particular sets of features. Wouldn't that be cool.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I don't think "grouping" implies "deep MMO." One could have forced grouping in rather shallow MMOs (vanilla WoW), and a preponderance of solo play in deep MMOs (EVE Online).
To me, I like to go about my business, but I like it when I've got people in my "neighborhood" who I bump into...the smuggler down the road. The prostitute on the next block. The rookie looking to make a name for himself. The old timers talking tall tales about the "good old days." I can't have that kind of environment unless the games are "deep," but the whole "forced grouping" thing interferes with getting to know these characters qua characters....we're all too busy grouping for quests to do much else but...well...group in quests.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Of course they care. Unfortunately, the companies aren't interested in what the gamers are actually asking for. What we have now is short linear game worlds with one central story line, many many many "fetch this" quests, with bad crafting, and raiding/pvp. And nothing else.
Players want very open worlds without loading screens, involved interesting stories (more than one at a time, and more than one per zone), involving and thoughtful crafting, moral choices that matter, and the ability to change the world for good through their own actions and actions with a group.
It's become more and more evident that the game creators aren't listening to the players in any way but superficial ways.
I have accounts on several MMMO's.
I'm currently paying for an account for SWTOR. Yes, moral choices are fine and I like the companions and the main storylines. But nothing we do really matters and, if I make a new toon, that toon will run through the exact same content as every other toon I've made. Crafting is intensely boring. I have no house so no place in the world other than the ship which does nothing but give me additional loading zones and act as the occasional quest hub. And more.
It isn't even as good as EQ2.
I also am currently playing AoC, GW2, and Tera. Frankly, I'm bored. I haven't logged in to any of them, including SWTOR for about 2 weeks.
There are two games that I think may help turn the MMO genre around but I'm not holding my breath. The World of Darkness game (my favorite tabletop game ever. I met my wonderful husband playing this game. This game changed my life forever so I live in anticipation and terror of what they will do with it), and Citadel of Sorcery (though I'm really not pleased with what I see as a the lack of housing and lackluster crafting) has great potential. Will they change the genre? I very seriously doubt it.
Call me jaded. I don't trust the game companies any more. Single player games are better than any online games at the moment.
If the game companies don't start actually giving players what they want, the MMO genre is going to disappear.
These games are costing many many millions to make but they offer less than games that are ten years old. And sometimes (like in the case of TSW, graphics that are ten years old). What they are calling "next gen" just isn't.
I care about MMORPGs a lot. I havent found one like UO and Ive played pretty much all of them.
SWG was my next favorite, but then they changed it around and made it easy mode.
I wont lie, I have been playing free UO servers for awhile now. They cant seem to make a friggin game that can compete, so I wont even bother. Id rather play an old school 2D crap game than to play some next gen BS they have now a days.
Originally posted by DamonVile MMOs were never fun to play solo. The fact that they are soloable now only shows how lame they always were. It's the people you play with that made them fun. When you stop playing these games with other people, they stop being what they were intended to be.
Fun is subjective. It is fun for me (and since solo content is popular, probably man other) to play solo. Don't tell me you know what is fun for me better than myself.
And i don't play "what they intended to be", i play games the way i want. It is just entertainment, not going to class.
Plus, given so many MMO include solo content, i doubt they are all intended to play with others all the time.
I couldn't care less about what's fun for you. You've said it yourself a thousand times ( or whatever your post count is ) You use up the free content and then move on to a new game. Any company that designs it's game around what you want is run by idiots. With the number of times you've said you never spend a dime on a game....I'm not sure how you can even argue that.
Building a game and trying to attract people who will blow through your " content" in weeks and then quit is stupid when you say it out loud. So I'm not really sure how the devs go about deciding to do it when they all get together and make these steaming piles of solo trash.
What mmo offered a better personal story, better exploration, better questing.....better anything for a solo player than what skyrim had ? Other than an mmo is free and any parasite can latch on and suck for a while.
Originally posted by DamonVile MMOs were never fun to play solo. The fact that they are soloable now only shows how lame they always were. It's the people you play with that made them fun. When you stop playing these games with other people, they stop being what they were intended to be.
Fun is subjective. It is fun for me (and since solo content is popular, probably man other) to play solo. Don't tell me you know what is fun for me better than myself.
And i don't play "what they intended to be", i play games the way i want. It is just entertainment, not going to class.
Plus, given so many MMO include solo content, i doubt they are all intended to play with others all the time.
I couldn't care less about what's fun for you. You've said it yourself a thousand times ( or whatever your post count is ) You use up the free content and then move on to a new game. Any company that designs it's game around what you want is run by idiots. With the number of times you've said you never spend a dime on a game....I'm not sure how you can even argue that.
Building a game and trying to attract people who will blow through your " content" in weeks and then quit is stupid when you say it out loud. So I'm not really sure how the devs go about deciding to do it when they all get together and make these steaming piles of solo trash.
What mmo offered a better personal story, better exploration, better questing.....better anything for a solo player than what skyrim had ? Other than an mmo is free and any parasite can latch on and suck for a while.
Don't worry .. i know you only care about your own fun.
Let me tell you a secret .. everyone is the same. I wouldn't care less what is fun to you too.
But do you disagree that devs are catering to solo content in MMO? You may not like it, but i doubt you can stop it.
Plus, i am playing MMOs like a SP games. Tell me, what are you going to do? Try to hypnotize me and change my preference?
I couldn't care less about what's fun for you. You've said it yourself a thousand times ( or whatever your post count is ) You use up the free content and then move on to a new game. Any company that designs it's game around what you want is run by idiots. With the number of times you've said you never spend a dime on a game....I'm not sure how you can even argue that.
Building a game and trying to attract people who will blow through your " content" in weeks and then quit is stupid when you say it out loud. So I'm not really sure how the devs go about deciding to do it when they all get together and make these steaming piles of solo trash.
What mmo offered a better personal story, better exploration, better questing.....better anything for a solo player than what skyrim had ? Other than an mmo is free and any parasite can latch on and suck for a while.
Don't worry .. i know you only care about your own fun.
Let me tell you a secret .. everyone is the same. I wouldn't care less what is fun to you too.
But do you disagree that devs are catering to solo content in MMO? You may not like it, but i doubt you can stop it.
Plus, i am playing MMOs like a SP games. Tell me, what are you going to do? Try to hypnotize me and change my preference?
It isn't about what we think of each others level of fun. It's about what makes a game money. When I have fun I spend money. When you have fun....you still don't.
At some point, something with a brain is going to see the problem designing games for people like you, and anyone that is only there as a tourist. The point you seem to be trying to make is because it's like this now it will always be like this. If you believe that cool. I believe games will always go after the money. most of these games are still fighting after the scraps wow tosses off. One day someone will figure out how to get it again and things will change. Not because it's what I think is fun, but because it's what people spend money on.
Not really any other way for me to phrase it, which bothers me to make this sentence.
His (nariu's) comments have basically repeated reaffirmed the notion that he's in the wrong genre for the wrong reasons. This isn't a mindset exclusive to him either.
Taking a genre and completely ignoring it's potential qualities to replicate the design of a different one makes no sense.
Hence to the point, taking the infrastructure of an MMO and developing a game that has no strong reason to be played online, makes no sense.
You can make the remark 'But I like those games for X reason.', but it has no real consequence on the point. Having a strong and well written story is all well and good, but a delivery system not designed for it is still an inefficient method of going about the whole thing.
A platform with the potential of indefinite play is at the mercy of finite narrative, mechanics, etc that are all holdovers of an entirely different gaming framework.
You can't determine whether or not you actually care about MMOs, because you're not playing one.
EDIT: I realize that last sentence is going to b very confusing, as most can point at a title and go 'yes I am'. It's not a literal point as much as it's a figurative one.
We play MMOs, but whether or not we play an MMO because it's an MMO is the issue.
If there is no perceived value in the multiplayer interactions, virtual worlds, collaborative narratives/events, etc, then it puts the question 'Why is this an MMO?' to the forefront.
So does one play an MMO, or are they playing something else in it's guise?
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Cool, being snippy without reading the context. I explained somewhat what I meant in my post, so do please read it before grabbing one sentence and going on a crusade.
Like, perhaps, the sentence right above the one you quoted.
Error here being, you just asked a rather fruitless question that ends up avoiding what I was just mentioning about game infrastructure and whether or not the game play is aspects that the infrastructure actually supports or of it's elements of a different game design refitted to the current platform.
But good on you for ignoring that and instead reducing the notion to 'This game should be X' instead. Really exemplifies internet forum conversations.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Not really any other way for me to phrase it, which bothers me to make this sentence.
His (nariu's) comments have basically repeated reaffirmed the notion that he's in the wrong genre for the wrong reasons. This isn't a mindset exclusive to him either.
Did you read that, Narius? You're not playing MMOs the right way! *waggles finger*
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
Originally posted by Deivos Cool, being snippy without reading the context. I explained somewhat what I meant in my post, so do please read it before grabbing one sentence and going on a crusade.
Oh? Yeah, context. ROFL!
You can't determine whether or not you actually care about MMOs, because you're not playing one.
So by this logic, because I play MMOs for the 'wrong reasons' (that are defined by you), I am not playing an MMO?
That is some bizzare logic that doesn't make sense to me but I'm sure it does to you somehow.
And seriously, if I care about MMOs, why wouldn't I want better stories in my MMOs?
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Comments
That's odd, I can't find a traditional MMO (of any variety) that's fun to play (neither can a dozen or so other people in this thread).
Perhaps our search engines are just fail, or perhaps--the longer the genre continues, and the longer we're exposed to it--the more stringent the 'quality' test becomes. Nothing passes, because the high jump the game must clear to get a "quality" stamp (from us) bar just keeps rising. Eventually, it seems to become impossible.Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Thats pretty much the same boat I'm in right now. I'm just bored of all of them. Trying GW2 again (only did the free weekend a few months ago). Even skyrim is getting dull.
Think I might pick up guitar or something.
I went with an ARPG (at least this month).
Wading back into a fifteen year backlog of accumulated literature, too :P
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
There are plenty of good fun (obviously subjective) hobbies beside video games. Here just a few that i like.
- wine tasting/collecting
- reading
- anime/manga
- toy collecting
- gunpla
- movies & tv
.......... there is no reason to be sad if one genre of one hobby does not produce something that you like.
Well I think the first issue is if it is an older game the meat of the game is going to be empty and everyone is going to be stuck in the end game. So just getting to where you can play with others becomes obnoxious when the focus of most of those games were originally the journey. The old games that went F2P in recent years are mostly games that were substandard and couldn't handle a pay to play model even in their primes. Things like Tera, SWTOR etc.
You also aren't getting the true flavor of some of these games. EQ has added companions to level with you, makes it a very different game. Aion doubled XP rates and then added a server that doubles it again so the pacing of the game is all strange now, etc.
A lot of the really old games still have P2P models shockingly enough. Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online etc.
A track and field reference! That's so 70s! And, sadly, the analogy is all too apt.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Oh please most of the MMO's I see coming out I would compare to this:
High jump fail
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/I don't know about other people but I don't care about MMOs. The only MMO I have played in the last 3-4 years (might be even more now) is GW2. The only reason I played it was because I loved GW1. But quickly gave up on it. MMOs are crap. I have played WoW a lot back in the days and it seems that I have seen everything the genre has to offer now just by playing that one MMO. WoW had so many things I loved about it and no MMO has managed to replicate this, it doesn't matter if it came before or after it. UO was my first MMO but WOW was my one and only MMO love. UO and EQ didn't have the atmosphere and lore of WOW and were too buggy for my taste.
I say just move on to play something else. IF you have played WOW, you have seen it all in terms of MMO after it. They are all exactly like WoW but are a vastly inferior version.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
I agree.
Fun is subjective. It is fun for me (and since solo content is popular, probably man other) to play solo. Don't tell me you know what is fun for me better than myself.
And i don't play "what they intended to be", i play games the way i want. It is just entertainment, not going to class.
Plus, given so many MMO include solo content, i doubt they are all intended to play with others all the time.
There is no right or wrong. Only preferences. I prefer solo content. You prefer something else. That is totally fine.
And to be honest, what a game "intended to be" is irrelevant for me. It is either fun, played my way, or not. Having said that, again, given MMO is full of solo content (do you dispute this statement?), it is intended to be played solo for some.
That's odd, I can't find a traditional MMO (of any variety) that's fun to play (neither can a dozen or so other people in this thread).Perhaps our search engines are just fail, or perhaps--the longer the genre continues, and the longer we're exposed to it--the more stringent the 'quality' test becomes. Nothing passes, because the high jump the game must clear to get a "quality" stamp (from us) bar just keeps rising. Eventually, it seems to become impossible.
That's possible. It's also possible that while the criteria for quality is rising, the criteria for feature sets isn't shifting as fast for some individuals as fast as it's shifting for the mass of individuals playing MMORPGs.
There are many things I wouldn't agree with Narisseldon on, but in this particular instance, I think Naris is absolutely right.
It isn't the quality of the games that is falling. Not by any objective measure. More people are successfully logging in, more people are playing and more people are spending money than ever before. Even if we limit our discussion to MMORPGs and ignore the MMOs. It's the feature sets that are changing, and they don't fit everyone's preferences. It doesn't make sense that if a game or genre doesn't have the features that are desired by the player that they would enjoy participating in that game or genre. This isn't a quality issue until the number of players year over year drops.
Now, if things ever change to the point that individuals or very small groups can compete on quality, the way craft beers can compete against mass produced beers in terms of quality then we can start talking about the quality of particular sets of features. Wouldn't that be cool.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I don't think "grouping" implies "deep MMO." One could have forced grouping in rather shallow MMOs (vanilla WoW), and a preponderance of solo play in deep MMOs (EVE Online).
To me, I like to go about my business, but I like it when I've got people in my "neighborhood" who I bump into...the smuggler down the road. The prostitute on the next block. The rookie looking to make a name for himself. The old timers talking tall tales about the "good old days." I can't have that kind of environment unless the games are "deep," but the whole "forced grouping" thing interferes with getting to know these characters qua characters....we're all too busy grouping for quests to do much else but...well...group in quests.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Of course they care. Unfortunately, the companies aren't interested in what the gamers are actually asking for. What we have now is short linear game worlds with one central story line, many many many "fetch this" quests, with bad crafting, and raiding/pvp. And nothing else.
Players want very open worlds without loading screens, involved interesting stories (more than one at a time, and more than one per zone), involving and thoughtful crafting, moral choices that matter, and the ability to change the world for good through their own actions and actions with a group.
It's become more and more evident that the game creators aren't listening to the players in any way but superficial ways.
I have accounts on several MMMO's.
I'm currently paying for an account for SWTOR. Yes, moral choices are fine and I like the companions and the main storylines. But nothing we do really matters and, if I make a new toon, that toon will run through the exact same content as every other toon I've made. Crafting is intensely boring. I have no house so no place in the world other than the ship which does nothing but give me additional loading zones and act as the occasional quest hub. And more.
It isn't even as good as EQ2.
I also am currently playing AoC, GW2, and Tera. Frankly, I'm bored. I haven't logged in to any of them, including SWTOR for about 2 weeks.
There are two games that I think may help turn the MMO genre around but I'm not holding my breath. The World of Darkness game (my favorite tabletop game ever. I met my wonderful husband playing this game. This game changed my life forever so I live in anticipation and terror of what they will do with it), and Citadel of Sorcery (though I'm really not pleased with what I see as a the lack of housing and lackluster crafting) has great potential. Will they change the genre? I very seriously doubt it.
Call me jaded. I don't trust the game companies any more. Single player games are better than any online games at the moment.
If the game companies don't start actually giving players what they want, the MMO genre is going to disappear.
These games are costing many many millions to make but they offer less than games that are ten years old. And sometimes (like in the case of TSW, graphics that are ten years old). What they are calling "next gen" just isn't.
I care about MMORPGs a lot. I havent found one like UO and Ive played pretty much all of them.
SWG was my next favorite, but then they changed it around and made it easy mode.
I wont lie, I have been playing free UO servers for awhile now. They cant seem to make a friggin game that can compete, so I wont even bother. Id rather play an old school 2D crap game than to play some next gen BS they have now a days.
Zenvera for the win!
I couldn't care less about what's fun for you. You've said it yourself a thousand times ( or whatever your post count is ) You use up the free content and then move on to a new game. Any company that designs it's game around what you want is run by idiots. With the number of times you've said you never spend a dime on a game....I'm not sure how you can even argue that.
Building a game and trying to attract people who will blow through your " content" in weeks and then quit is stupid when you say it out loud. So I'm not really sure how the devs go about deciding to do it when they all get together and make these steaming piles of solo trash.
What mmo offered a better personal story, better exploration, better questing.....better anything for a solo player than what skyrim had ? Other than an mmo is free and any parasite can latch on and suck for a while.
Don't worry .. i know you only care about your own fun.
Let me tell you a secret .. everyone is the same. I wouldn't care less what is fun to you too.
But do you disagree that devs are catering to solo content in MMO? You may not like it, but i doubt you can stop it.
Plus, i am playing MMOs like a SP games. Tell me, what are you going to do? Try to hypnotize me and change my preference?
It isn't about what we think of each others level of fun. It's about what makes a game money. When I have fun I spend money. When you have fun....you still don't.
At some point, something with a brain is going to see the problem designing games for people like you, and anyone that is only there as a tourist. The point you seem to be trying to make is because it's like this now it will always be like this. If you believe that cool. I believe games will always go after the money. most of these games are still fighting after the scraps wow tosses off. One day someone will figure out how to get it again and things will change. Not because it's what I think is fun, but because it's what people spend money on.
Not really any other way for me to phrase it, which bothers me to make this sentence.
His (nariu's) comments have basically repeated reaffirmed the notion that he's in the wrong genre for the wrong reasons. This isn't a mindset exclusive to him either.
Taking a genre and completely ignoring it's potential qualities to replicate the design of a different one makes no sense.
Hence to the point, taking the infrastructure of an MMO and developing a game that has no strong reason to be played online, makes no sense.
You can make the remark 'But I like those games for X reason.', but it has no real consequence on the point. Having a strong and well written story is all well and good, but a delivery system not designed for it is still an inefficient method of going about the whole thing.
A platform with the potential of indefinite play is at the mercy of finite narrative, mechanics, etc that are all holdovers of an entirely different gaming framework.
You can't determine whether or not you actually care about MMOs, because you're not playing one.
EDIT: I realize that last sentence is going to b very confusing, as most can point at a title and go 'yes I am'. It's not a literal point as much as it's a figurative one.
We play MMOs, but whether or not we play an MMO because it's an MMO is the issue.
If there is no perceived value in the multiplayer interactions, virtual worlds, collaborative narratives/events, etc, then it puts the question 'Why is this an MMO?' to the forefront.
So does one play an MMO, or are they playing something else in it's guise?
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
And who gets to decide what an MMO is and isn't?
You?
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Cool, being snippy without reading the context. I explained somewhat what I meant in my post, so do please read it before grabbing one sentence and going on a crusade.
Like, perhaps, the sentence right above the one you quoted.
Error here being, you just asked a rather fruitless question that ends up avoiding what I was just mentioning about game infrastructure and whether or not the game play is aspects that the infrastructure actually supports or of it's elements of a different game design refitted to the current platform.
But good on you for ignoring that and instead reducing the notion to 'This game should be X' instead. Really exemplifies internet forum conversations.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Did you read that, Narius? You're not playing MMOs the right way! *waggles finger*
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
Oh? Yeah, context. ROFL!
You can't determine whether or not you actually care about MMOs, because you're not playing one.
So by this logic, because I play MMOs for the 'wrong reasons' (that are defined by you), I am not playing an MMO?
That is some bizzare logic that doesn't make sense to me but I'm sure it does to you somehow.
And seriously, if I care about MMOs, why wouldn't I want better stories in my MMOs?
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.