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New MMO's lack interdependence
Viper482
Member LegendaryPosts: 4,101
Yes, another old fogey reminiscing about the good old days....
We all know the new MMO's contradict the genre with the solo play chat room effect. In my opinion this is not the biggest problem with them though. I think unique skills or the lacktherof (speed, teleports, other buffs), auction houses, and crafting are the problem.
In older MMO's you could not craft or gather everything, you needed trades. An armorsmith would have to get in good with a tailor, a weaponsmith with a carpenter, and all would have to rely on gatherers for materials. The key was you could not do everything for yourself. You could be a blacksmith and a miner, but you could not also gather your own cloth and make the linings for your armor, you needed a tailor for that who would also need to either gather materials or buy them from someone else. You did not put your goods up on an auction house or send them through mail, you actually met face to face with the person and traded them.
Seriously when was the last time anyone used face to face trade in an MMO? I can't recall the last time I did!
Anyone play EQ and remember "Will tip for SOW"? For those who never played SOW was Spirit of the Wolf, a spell only one class in the game had. In EQ you had to run everywhere on foot, this spell made that much more bearable because it boosted your speed greatly, I think it lasted an hour. Nowadays this is a cash shop type buff. Or how about mage gates? Used ot be only a wizard could teleport you to a main city, saving you possible hours of time. In Daoc only one class per realm had group run speed, if you were Midgard and were a Skald you would get a group 100% of the time. You were NEEDED. Nowadays everyone has such skills.
I did not even have ot mention soloing, I don't think it is as big an issue for today's communities as these things are. These things created interdependence between players, we relied on each other and we had to socialize to get what we wanted. You felt important in the world, unique. You had something to offer other than some virtual armor rating telling you that you were good to go for some raid, or a generic cookie cutter tank spec and damn you know that rotation and boss tells well for that encounter....what an asset.
I am not saying those games were perfect, this is just something they did right. I think blending some of that in the new formula would go far.
Comments
evil masterminds are where it's at !
i'd rather have interdependence but ever since mmos went for mass appeal... o well
EQ2 fan sites
I feel you're being a bit disingenuous with some of your comments. I haven't personally played very many mmos where all classes had all utility spells, nor where you had access to all crating professions on one character. There is still interdependence built into many mmos, but the biggest difference is that it is not a requirement.
In more modern mmos you don't have to have every single buff available to you in order to complete a given task. Honestly, this is a good thing, because the game becomes less about filling holes and not being able to play without the right make up, and more about the business of playing the actual game. Yes, there is still most viable and best set ups for the min maxers, but these are not hard and fast requirements for everyone.
There are far too many of these types of threads where someone falsely attempts to state that X about Y is true, where nothing has really changed aside from the players. Sure it was more difficult to become autonomous in older mmos, but the challenge was still there. Stating that there is a lack of interdependence is the same as stating that mmos are designed to be less social. Both of which are not true. MMOs are designed more or less the same way as they have been for nearly 20 years. Go into a world, run some form of a treadmill to attain more power, play with other folks. The biggest difference of modern mmos is that much of the inherently built in tedium of the older mmos is gone, and many of the older mmos have also removed the built in tedium as well.
TL;DR: It's not the mmos that have changed, it's the players. If people want interdependence (aka social) then they will seek that out individually. The systems are still there, but most people seem to want to be able to play in their own way and attain their personal goals.
When it right comes down to it, these games changed to become easier for the masses to get in to.
Now saying that, theres nothing wrong with that.
The thing though, is that the early games appealed to the D&D crowd, and and if you ever have tried to get into d&d, it isnt an easy thing. So everyone embraced the new 3d mmos, a definate niche market, then breakout happened, and the new customers didnt play play those games, were more mainstream, and needed easier access , thus changes were made, to what is on the market today.
Do i think theres a market for the old school, only way to succeed is with peoples help games?
you bet, but its still going to be a niche market, as it was at the start.
over 20 years of mmorpg's and counting...
swg and AO were the last ones.
i remember paying/selling buffs. i had an agent and i could buff everything for a short time window and help overequipping.
missions were all in a group and people stayed together for a while. there was even chatting and joking.
there was no unique story to follow which seperated people.
yeah, and swg ... just even more.
Games changed to what they are today because its different people running them. WoW ruined everything. Games aren't artistic anymore and aren't meant to be enjoyed. Games are made now to make the most money. Period. Once everyone figured out you can make movie kind of money off a game it all changed. Its just a greed grinder now. I.E. a crap shoot.
Look at Call of Duty, look at Halo, look at the Assassins Creed games, look at every MMO since 2003. They're all just the same crap with 1 or 2 different bells on it. Pushed out fast to make the most money for a new quarter. Greed ruins everything.
This. Marketing > manufacture.
Interdependence was almost always artificial in old school MMOs. By artificial I mean what was done in these older MMO is the devs would take a class and purposely make it weak so it would need buffs from other players. Devs would then create classes that would fill in the weaknesses in ways that forced grouping to make the classes work properly. Good idea on paper but bad idea in practice. The problem was this type of artificial interdependence tended to be uneven. What they ended up creating were mages that ran out of mana after every kill or tanks that had tiny HP pools that could barely kill anything. This made the already grindy gameplay even more tedious.
Even in the good old days some classes were more needed than others. Every guild wanted utility classes at end game but at the same time nobody wanted to go through the drudgery of leveling one up. Interdependence tends to lead to horrible imbalance outside of groups. Tanks and Healers were notorious for being slow levelers. Players of these classes had to put up with tedious gameplay just in the hope they would be wanted at end game. The devs purposely designed the game to be the opposite of fun which is fail.
Think about it who wants to play a squishy character that dies in two hits and has no DPS? Nobody, it is not logical. The only reason these classes were played at all was because it exploited basic human psychology.
No they were not, Vanguard was made after both those to games.
SWG and UO weren't like that.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Gaming since 1985; Online gaming since 1995; No End in Sight! My YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8POVoJ8fdOseuJ4U1ZX-oA
Some players have never experienced anything different.
Look at minecraft. It's not the players, it's the themepark design.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Funny you should say that, EQ1 was designed exactly that way. And it's the most enjoyable & fun game I've ever played to date. And I've played them all. Just because you, as a casual & solo oriented individual, didn't enjoy the game; does not mean that many other players did not.
The rub lies in the fact that those that did enjoy the game were a Niche market, which is where MMO's started. In order to bring them to mainstream they had to do away with all of those things that appealed to the niche market crowd that originally funded MMO's. Is there a market for an old school niche market MMO today? Sure there is, but it won't ever get beyond 600k subs or so. While that would still be extremly profitable, businesses look at the successes of WOW and other MMO's with subs in the millions, and say why make a niche game that will only ever get 600k at it's peak when we can make a casual broad audience MMO that can rake in millions.
They changed because people are lazy and impatient.
enchanters in EQ1 were the weakest class for damage (unless they charmed mobs) even clerics had better nukes
and I *loved* that class to pieces -- there's more than DPS to have fun w other players, Crowd Control
WOW never had support classes so they are a foreign concept to many gamers
Bards go back to D&D
EQ2 fan sites
i probably should not have mentioned chanters because they were situational depending on the expansion
Velious for example
was heavy with giants and dragons (both immune to CC and charm) and highly magic resistant
my mention of Bards still stands
EQ2 fan sites
Seconded.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Solo combat/quest does not mean a game doesn't have interdependency. SWG had plenty of it but was very solo friendly. EQ and UO's interdependency are vastly different.Being disingenuous with my opinion? With my point of view? I am only going off my experiences, if you were not there you are the one talking out of your rear friend. I am not falsely stating anything, this is MY experience. If you want to disagree have at it, but don't say I am being dishonest with MY experience.
You claim this is not true....where are the unique buffs to certain classes people would actually offer you money cast on them? Where is the face to face trading? Where are the personal interactions when it comes to crafting partnerships?
Please tell me where this magical MMO is I missed. Name it, link it, back your story up. I gave specific examples, where are yours?
Maybe you should read my post and see it was NOT about soloing. Seriously, READ before writing some crap like this. Hell all you had to do was read the first paragraph.....
"We all know the new MMO's contradict the genre with the solo play chat room effect. In my opinion this is not the biggest problem with them though. I think unique skills or the lacktherof (speed, teleports, other buffs), auction houses, and crafting are the problem."
And you're the SECOND dude that did not read my post.
I was a solo UO player in ye olden days. Try to read your post through my eyes.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
I have come to a simple and easy solution to this problem with new MMO's. I just don't play them anymore. I'm back playing Knight Online World which was created in 2004. A game that has interdependence. A game where you rely on your party members to dominate together. A game where you rely on other players to level up, run events, run castle sieges and farm for gold.
I mean we keep talking about "the good old days", well try going back and playing a "good old game". I am much more happy right now playing my old favorite game than I have been playing all these new games.
But in the original post he did mention it wasn't about solo. SWG and EQ have vastly different interdependencies.