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I could sit down for thirty minutes at the starport, log off, and never feel like my time wasn't wel
Beatnik59
Member UncommonPosts: 2,413
The title line is how I felt when I played Star Wars Galaxies, back a year after launch in 2004. That game didn't last long, but the game world was so rich, so immersive, that even logging on and observing what went on was fun in itself.
It wasn't for a lack of things to do. There was plenty to do in SWG, every day, but even when you felt like doing nothing, you didn't want to log off.
Stuff would happen all around you. Gunfights would erupt, people were RPing all over the place in spatial, and the galaxy would be in motion (market activity, entertainers entertaining, pick up groups and loners in far off locales). This was the kind of game where something interesting could happen at any time, and you didn't want to miss out. You'd do your own thing, just hanging out, and BOOM...you'd get a text and it was on!
This kind of interest in staying logged on is rare these days. The only other time I experienced it was in CoH around Atlas Park and Pocket D. And I don't know if it was because the players were different, the games were designed differently, or that the environments were more conducive to staying logged on.
But in today's games, I don't feel the same vibe. If I'm not doing something, there seems to be no reason to stay logged on just to "hang out"...these are not games which encourage you to hang out. They encourage you to keep on grinding or questing or acting in some way to exhaustion and log out. It is as if the games are saying, "if you ain't mashing buttons in combat, you shouldn't be here." But what if I don't want to mash buttons in combat all the time? Sometimes I feel like that and I want something interesting to experience in the game without it all having to rely on me navigating a life and death struggle every second. Is it wrong to want that in an MMO?
__________________________
"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
Comments
MAGA
I have to agree.
The most amazing game of all time cancelled! There must have been some problems, no?
Definitely was a different time in mmorpg's, especially when you have a movie everyone can relate to.
SOE and the rest of the crew at LA really screwed the pooch on SWG by trying to change with the times to the WoW era of mmo mechanics in their game to recruit newer subscribers.
Old school EQ also had dependency on others participating in your online experience. We are just in a different era of mmo gaming where everything must have instant gratification. However back onto SWG, oh the game had many bugs, but we got by someway and somehow and still enjoyed the game through all it's personal player drama.
Back in day, just being online with thousands of other players was cool in and of itself.
I remember spending entire evenings in SWG just sitting at a camp site with my friends chatting via text bubbles and doing emotes, and we had a blast.
Unfortunately, that novelty wore off many years ago which is why most old school MMO gamers will never be able to recapture that magic feeling they had 10-15 years ago. For some reason many keep trying and feel that the games themselves are to blame.
I remember when I first got my driver's license, I would be excited to jump in the car and drive regardless of where I was going... These days, not so much.
It was cancelled after they went from a unique/innovative gameplay strategy to be more in-line with WoW/modern strategies. That's when most people quit.
I played SWG back then but I guess my memory is different. I think the issue is back then every game was like SWG in that they were all non-quest hub centric. Now we look back so fondly on the games of that type because there aren't any AAA games like that these days, all are WoW clones with their forced questing, game on rails, static content being forced down your throats.
Anyway what I remember about SWG was barren worlds where you could venture out exploring but would end up running around for the most part just seeing an empty world very sparsely inhabited by mobs.
Somewhere in the tenure of the MMO genre it got lost and it hasn't found its way back yet.
The classic MMOs like SWG, EQ, UO, AC, FFXI they made soloing difficult and at points unenjoyable. These games were designed so that when you partnered up with people the experience became more fun and easier. By doing so they promoted community growth and instilled the idea into players that making friends and having fun was actually beating the game.
Today's modern MMOs are not like that, they are actually the exact opposite. Playing as a solo is very easy and the limited group content that these games have is often very difficult and very time consuming making it not worth doing. Not only do today's MMOs not promote community growth, they actually discourage it. Whether it's ESO, GW2, WS or FFXIV every group experience is a huge fucking hassle. Blizzard posts a stat that only 1.3% of their player base has ever done a raid compare this to EQ1 with its first 2 expansions where over 90% of the player base had done a raid. From 90% to 1%, is it because the players stopped wanting to raid? Nope, it's because raiding has become this organizational nightmare that isn't worth doing anymore. Gone are the days of 'Hey, let's just bring everyone and have a good time!".
Grouping, raiding, and forming a community should make a game more enjoyable and easier. It shouldn't make the game harder, it shouldn't make it so you have to watch 17 YouTube videos on how to properly play your class, it shouldn't make it so you have to kick your best friend out of the raid because he's not good enough.
As I said, this genre took a wrong turn a long time ago and it still hasn't found its way back yet.
rest assured you don't have a clue. The OP is spot on right here. MMOs know are like the modern day version of a pac-man game....you are either always chomping away and mashing those buttons or you aren't playing. MMOs like EQ, you could always find time to do absolutely NOTHING (and have a blast doing it), and it felt like you were always a part of the game, the community, the living breathing game world that you existed in.
Its actually prolly better that people like you, have no idea what you are missing.
Been bangn' since pong
Not for me. I still love chatting and doing emotes, still am amazed by the virtual worlds being created for use to play in. And in some games I am fortunate to still have those experiences, but the community of the game has something to do with that as well as how the particular game is designed.
I am sorry that you somehow lost that.
Talk about what you know and this aint it.
Been bangn' since pong
I completely disagree with the first part. If devs don't want people to solo in their games, they need to stop advertising to people who mostly solo, rather than take our money and then try to twist our arms to group. The quickest way to turn me into a %100 silent, grouchy solo player who quits soon after is to make it seem like I'm being forced to group.
I agree with the second part. If I have an option to group, it needs to be easy to do so. I need a dungeon finder (you might not agree with me on that part) and I need to know that I can heal or dps without having done it twenty times before with a guild and watched thirty youtube videos. This is why I'll never queue for a Wildstar dungeon.
I'm also sad there are no game worlds like SWG is said to have been. It's a shame Archeage isn't going to have any PVE servers, from my brief time on the Russian servers, it looks like the sort of game where people might hang out, check out people's houses and farms, and maybe find a central area for RP and chatting. It seemed to have the potential to be be a more laid back, social game.
Come to think of it, Entropia is a very social, laid back game like that. But the ridiculous cost to play enjoyably for more than a few hours a week kills it for me.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Most people can appreciate that old classic cars had a sense of grace and elegance that is missing from more modern examples but only a small number of people are willing to put up with the increased maintenance and lack of comfort features that comes with it owning one over a new car.
There is no going back I'm afraid.
Agreed. The big focus is on the moment to moment experience and, while that's very important, they seem to have gone to an extreme there and really ignored the social dynamic.
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
Greatest assessment ever.
At the beginning, there was a great feedback from SOE in the forums and interaction with players who posted. Wines from some players started because there were some uber combos of fighting classes, others because the path to be a jedi was too time demanding. SOE promised to "balance classes" and that was the start of the end of the game. Instead of "balance", they themeparked it and killed the need to socialize. Each game upgrade was worst than the previous one and loyal players felt back-stabbed. SOE asked the players on forums for advice and promised to implement it. Instead, they listened to winners and/or they were blinded by the gold pot of WoW was becoming.
^.^'
This is how I judge whether I want to play a game or not. First, do I enjoy being in that game's world? If it doesn't feel right to me, then I don't even try to play. I knew within 10 minutes that I didn't want to play SWTOR. I don't even have to play Wildstar, just the screenshots alone are enough for me. I don't want to live in a cartoon world. WoW the same way, never played it after the first 10 minutes.
If I do enjoy the world, then I'll try out a bunch of different classes/races/etc until I find one that I like the feel of. I like how it looks, how it moves, how it fights.
It is only after this that I start looking at actual skills. So basically the opposite of min/max'er.
I never played SWG, during that time I played CoH and Ryzom. I still play Ryzom to get that full world feeling. With a day/night cycle, real seasons that affect the mobs and mats. Real weather. Predators that chase prey, and then go to their den to sleep. Herds of herbivores trekking to new ground in the winter. It is a real world, with some gaming elements added on
Today, we get a lot of theme park games. It's like the Mine Train ride at Disneyland. It's not a real mine, not a real train, but a simulation that is fixed and repeatable.
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2024: 47 years on the Net.
Exactly!!
I got your Deliverance!
Where's my banjo?!!
At least we are not discussing Wildstar vs ESO or why ESO is not a sandbox and ArcheAge is a sandpark
But your equating "amazing" with "pulling subs left and right".
There is a difference between being "amazing for a small group of people" and "amazing for a large group of people".
One is one thing and one is the other. It's the dream of developers to hit the center but that doesn't diminish the value of each to its respective group.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Good memory's never fade.....
That aside I don't think we can have another "SWG"
What we had back then was a majority of gamers ingame that threated the game not as a game but as a virtual world.
That's true but at the end of the day your measure of amazing only really matters if you own the game and can control it's direction. It doesn't matter how many people thought SWG pre NGE was "amazing" the people who where in a position to make changes to it didn't agree. Now this might be because the subs where lower than they thought they should be, they took queues from a different group of people than you or they just didn't like what they had in front of them. But for the people holding the pocketbooks something was clearly seen as wrong with the game to make them spend so much time and money to revamp the game like they did.