No need for perserverence, mmo's are in a drought because 'everyone gets a trophy'

Abuz0r

In this annoying effort to take all potentially negative emotions out of mmo gaming, companies have removed competition, challenge, and pretty much all sense of failure.  I know some people love auto-pathing, fast travel (from anywhere), group finder, raid finder, ETC...  these features are all designed lower the goal post so that you don't risk experiencing any kind of frustration.

World pvp... don't get me started.  Dropping an item when you die, we can't have that now since you are carrying "SUPER RARES" that you got in raid finder and having to do that again might take a day or so.

Talent trees, either so overly balanced that you're just re-skinning a total of 12 abilities throughout different classes, or so narrow you only have 2 options and don't take any planning at all.

Leveling up?  You get this glorious sparkle fart over your head and amazing music because you auto-pathed from 1 npc to another and clicked on them, sometimes the auto-pathing clicks them for you when you get there.  It used to be that you actually learned the layout of the city you were in because there might be pvp there....

I love challenging games.  I don't really like twitch combat, or muscle memory battles, more strategy and execution type stuff.  I liked the original vanilla WoW raids where most guilds couldn't down the gatekeeper boss and you had to try to find a really competent group.  They've since made raids super accessible with raid-finder (I'm aware of hard difficulty that you can do with your guild but it's really just watered down monthly until everyone gets that trophy too)

I loved in Aion learning where updrafts were in the wind so I could come in and out of world pvp  and surprise gank / escape, and other people who didn't take the time to learn the environment couldn't stay with me.  (They made it impossible to perma-rift now)

In Lineage 2 you could gank friendlies, but if you did so you were exposed to dropping items when killed.

I guess I'm just asking for a game that will hand you a cold dish of shit soup if your bad, and encourage you to get better-In all aspects... leveling, pvp, raiding.  Make you actually do some work for that glorious sparkle-fart.  I just can't get into games anymore because I feel like I'm either in an auto-pilot game, or a mad dash to the finish line to play this mysterious end game everyone is complaining about-and looking at other people of my class that made it there all wearing identical end-game items that were ' ' SO HARD ' ' to get.

Wow was an anomaly and it's success ruined the niche industry that was MMO games.  Yes it has a WAY bigger audience than any of the others ever thought about, but every other game genre has plenty of games coming out: Racing, Shooter, Survival, RPG (except they've done this whole line of crap to elder scrolls too, that's for a different thread).  Have racing games gotten easier?  Have shooters gotten easier? Did they add auto-aim so you don't miss and get frustrated?  Does the racing game let you switch cars with the winner so you don't have to lose?

Look at Darkfall... it's like the opposite club.  Hard hard hard.  It's a dichotomy, either I play my little ponies in the main stream MMO production line, or a bitter painful game that punishes defeat to the fullest.  I do enjoy darkfall because of the challenge, but I think there's room in the industry for some middle ground.

Bestinna

Yeah, they just want your money and simpletons are highest in population and the most likely to cough it up.

Theocritus

You can say that in most of life really...been that way for the last 25 years or so

Flyte27

I feel the same way, but I don't think it's that people are stupid.  The majority of people out there aren't really looking for something to occupy a lot of their time.  They want something simple they can jump in and play without planning.  They don't care if it's allowing you to live another life in a fantasy world where you have to plan everything out and there are lots of obstacles to overcome like in a real adventure.  That is pretty clear when you see things like out of combat spells being removed from fantasy games.  Spells that allow you to travel under water and role play (for example), but can be of use in combat.  Having to actually explore and find things instead of following a trail around.  I don't believe developers care much about making this type of game anymore.  They just treat it like a job and try to make a logical formula that will present them the least amount of problems to deal, money to spend, and will make them a lot of money.

Scot

Thing is, it has been heading this way a long time, since WoW in fact. WoW did not give us the' MMOs' we have today, but WoW was the stepping stone that sent us this way.  Nor did F2P Jap/Kor/Chinese make us end up with a genre that is nothing like it once was but F2P was a huge factor.

That means for me two things. Firstly no matter how much gamers talked about what was happening they were helpless to prevent the tide coming in. You would think voting with your purchase and continued subscription would have an effect but the gaming companies were chasing a new consumer base so that had little effect. Better MMOs may get our support but it is not enough when a hundred times as many gamers don't care. Secondly the chance of this getting turned around are minimal, this is not something the MMO industry cooked up last year, it is based on a business model that has been evolving over the last 10+ years.

The only antidote I know is find a MMO that at least started as P2P. Find a good guild that sticks two fingers up to what has happened and tries to play it the old way as much as possible. Hardly a cure, but it is the only reason I still play MMOs.

Loke666

I think it is more "lets do content everyone can beat without even understanding how the game works" that is the real problem. It doesn't help that "Super rare" means "common" and "legendary" "uncommon" either nowadays. The "everyone gets a price" kindergarten mentality is just the latest addition to the top of the iceberg. 

Bestinna

I just don't know why everything's about money, sex, and egos these days.

Loke666

Bestinna said:

I just don't know why everything's about money, sex, and egos these days.

 Because it have been since about 700 BC when the Lydians invented money? Before that it was about sex, ego and stuff you could trade.

Bestinna

Loke666 said:

Bestinna said:

I just don't know why everything's about money, sex, and egos these days.

 Because it have been since about 700 BC when the Lydians invented money? Before that it was about sex, ego and stuff you could trade.

Insightful, but I feel at some point when I was younger, it wasn't. There use to be a lot of quality stuff. I always think of fast food chains when pokemon was new, the toys in kid's meals were plates of gold with pokemon imprinted on them. Now everything is cheap plastic with no quality and all that matters is looking cool (even though you're not), making money (with the least amount of talent), and banging chicks (to boost your ego further even though it's boring after the fact). These 3 things might've been present at the time and I just didn't realize it but they've certainly cut out 'quality' entirely. Making money (because you were good at something), looking cool (because you were), banging chicks (because there's nothing else to do)

Loke666

Bestinna said:

Loke666 said:

 Because it have been since about 700 BC when the Lydians invented money? Before that it was about sex, ego and stuff you could trade.

Insightful, but I feel at some point when I was younger, it wasn't. There use to be a lot of quality stuff. I always think of fast food chains when pokemon was new, the toys in kid's meals were plates of gold with pokemon imprinted on them. Now everything is cheap plastic with no quality and all that matters is looking cool (even though you're not), making money (with the least amount of talent), and banging chicks (to boost your ego further even though it's boring after the fact)

Well, there is greed as well, and that one has gone up and down during history. It is at an "up" point now.

For instance the fast food restaurants pay almost nothing for fries and soda so they increased the portions slowly and raised the prices earning more profits and getting people fatter (and hungrier). Who cares when you can make an extra buck?

But the banging chicks too boost your ego was always there, the Romans did it for instance (and to a degree that would still shock most people today). You just notice it more with todays social media. 

Flyte27

Loke666 said:

I think it is more "lets do content everyone can beat without even understanding how the game works" that is the real problem. It doesn't help that "Super rare" means "common" and "legendary" "uncommon" either nowadays. The "everyone gets a price" kindergarten mentality is just the latest addition to the top of the iceberg. 

Back in the early MMOs items didn't have any kind of color code or sets.  I much prefer people make the choice of whats good themselves.  You would take pieces that dropped off different mobs, you brought from vendors, or brought from real people who crafted them and use what seemed best or maybe you just liked the looked of it.  The items were all a bit sub par unless you are talking endgame.  It was interesting that there was a lot more competition over these sub par items because of the lack of instances.  That is really what made items meaningful in MMOs.

Albatroes

I'm still against having 4-5+ modes of the same content, but that's less about care-bear and more about devs just being lazy.

Loke666

Flyte27 said:

Back in the early MMOs items didn't have any kind of color code or sets.  I much prefer people make the choice of whats good themselves.  You would take pieces that dropped off different mobs, you brought from vendors, or brought from real people who crafted them and use what seemed best or maybe you just liked the looked of it.  The items were all a bit sub par unless you are talking endgame.  It was interesting that there was a lot more competition over these sub par items because of the lack of instances.  That is really what made items meaningful in MMOs.

I remember, even though the really early ones were rather thin on that "end game" part.

But you don't need to go that far back, the thing that started to make any raid gear a quick stepping zone or something meaningless was when they changed the leveling speed.

In the good old days it was worth doing extra job to find nice gear below endcap because you usually needed it and it would last days, in some cases weeks. Today they throw stuff on you (with high rarity) but you don't really need it before the endgame, it is not that hard to reach max level only wearing the starter gear.

Somewhere around 2006 leveling just got so fast that any gear below levelcap is only worth how the skin look.

Siveria

Yeah I used to love mmo's then WoW happened, not every mmorpg is bascally a single player game till level cap, and even then, you have raid finders and such. I miss back when raid bosses never had giant circles telling you where not to stand, back when you had to actually learn the range of things. I look at raids today and other than lacking the dps I just don't see how people are able to fail them. Overall though I been noticing mmorpgs have been losing alot of the MMO aspect. I used to love this genre, now though? its hard to find one that interests me because 99% of them are just trying to emulate wow in a diffrent skin. So it just feels like I am playing the same game yet again.

Sadly we'll probally never recover from this anytime soon. since it is what sells today.

Archlyte

MMORPGs are designed around static progression. You always move forward or stand still, never backward. There is no real loss or change in MMORPGs. The only games that have it are full loot games, but that is a pretty surface kind of loss. Given the importance the average player puts on what they did to get an item, they see it as breaking their expectation of forward progression. If another player takes their progression it is a straight up international incident. And the fact that it is always a meaningless act of bullying makes it worse.

I'm not saying you shouldn't want to safeguard your progression, but this think where you can lose nothing, ever, is just boring. If you were to watch a movie with characters that lived lives like these MMORPG characters you would demand your money back. 

Flyte27

Archlyte said:

MMORPGs are designed around static progression. You always move forward or stand still, never backward. There is no real loss or change in MMORPGs. The only games that have it are full loot games, but that is a pretty surface kind of loss. Given the importance the average player puts on what they did to get an item, they see it as breaking their expectation of forward progression. If another player takes their progression it is a straight up international incident. And the fact that it is always a meaningless act of bullying makes it worse.

I'm not saying you shouldn't want to safeguard your progression, but this think where you can lose nothing, ever, is just boring. If you were to watch a movie with characters that lived lives like these MMORPG characters you would demand your money back. 

That's not entirely true.  Everquest had negative progression.  I remember one guy leveled up to get what they called Alternate Advancement.  Then he leveled from max level (60 I think at the time) down to level 10.  He did this so he could beat people in PvP with his AA skills.  Of course this is not the point of losing experience on death.

Mikeha

What drought?

Bestinna

Archlyte said:

I'm not saying you shouldn't want to safeguard your progression, but this think where you can lose nothing, ever, is just boring. If you were to watch a movie with characters that lived lives like these MMORPG characters you would demand your money back. 

I only play MMOs for the PvP and I don't think it's boring.

Loke666

Archlyte said:

MMORPGs are designed around static progression. You always move forward or stand still, never backward. There is no real loss or change in MMORPGs. The only games that have it are full loot games, but that is a pretty surface kind of loss. Given the importance the average player puts on what they did to get an item, they see it as breaking their expectation of forward progression. If another player takes their progression it is a straight up international incident. And the fact that it is always a meaningless act of bullying makes it worse.

I'm not saying you shouldn't want to safeguard your progression, but this think where you can lose nothing, ever, is just boring. If you were to watch a movie with characters that lived lives like these MMORPG characters you would demand your money back. 

That wont help unless you raise the difficulty as well, I think that is even more important. Having a few hard raids is not enough to make a game "challenging", it is beating the odds that really makes my blood boil, not to not loose anything.

That said, Lineage XP loose + the chance (like 1 in 3 or 4) to loose gear was just about enough death penalty. That passing mobs picked up any dropped gear and added it to their loottable was a huge bonus, defeating a mob that killed a party could gain you something really cool the wiping team lost as a extra gift, and if a bunch of teams failed before ....

But my main problem is the difficulty.

Warlyx

same thing happens in RL , u win here is a gold trophy , u lose? here is a consolation price....everybody wins no1 is left out even if u were on the bench the whole match

ZtyX

Have you tried playing Darkfall: New Dawn?

Archlyte

Loke666 said:

Archlyte said:

MMORPGs are designed around static progression. You always move forward or stand still, never backward. There is no real loss or change in MMORPGs. The only games that have it are full loot games, but that is a pretty surface kind of loss. Given the importance the average player puts on what they did to get an item, they see it as breaking their expectation of forward progression. If another player takes their progression it is a straight up international incident. And the fact that it is always a meaningless act of bullying makes it worse.

I'm not saying you shouldn't want to safeguard your progression, but this think where you can lose nothing, ever, is just boring. If you were to watch a movie with characters that lived lives like these MMORPG characters you would demand your money back. 

That wont help unless you raise the difficulty as well, I think that is even more important. Having a few hard raids is not enough to make a game "challenging", it is beating the odds that really makes my blood boil, not to not loose anything.

That said, Lineage XP loose + the chance (like 1 in 3 or 4) to loose gear was just about enough death penalty. That passing mobs picked up any dropped gear and added it to their loottable was a huge bonus, defeating a mob that killed a party could gain you something really cool the wiping team lost as a extra gift, and if a bunch of teams failed before ....

But my main problem is the difficulty.

Challenge should vary with the situation don't you think? If you have characters that can die (or that undergo some change from death, but respawn), then you really should allow for challenge to be something that is germane to the situation. 

Challenge in most games is really about making the choice to do something that you know will be a certain difficulty. There are no adventurous events where the players must react to different things and make decisions about what to do. It's a your level, covered by the wiki, and if you fail all you lost was time in your seat sort of thing in these games. You might even feel a bit better about beating lesser mobs if there is some sense of risk other than seat time.

As an MMORPG player you are always playing a sidescroller. A dimension or two is missing from these games. 

Kabulozo

MMOs nowadays are like SJW safe spaces.

Flyte27

Archlyte said:

Loke666 said:

Archlyte said:

MMORPGs are designed around static progression. You always move forward or stand still, never backward. There is no real loss or change in MMORPGs. The only games that have it are full loot games, but that is a pretty surface kind of loss. Given the importance the average player puts on what they did to get an item, they see it as breaking their expectation of forward progression. If another player takes their progression it is a straight up international incident. And the fact that it is always a meaningless act of bullying makes it worse.

I'm not saying you shouldn't want to safeguard your progression, but this think where you can lose nothing, ever, is just boring. If you were to watch a movie with characters that lived lives like these MMORPG characters you would demand your money back. 

That wont help unless you raise the difficulty as well, I think that is even more important. Having a few hard raids is not enough to make a game "challenging", it is beating the odds that really makes my blood boil, not to not loose anything.

That said, Lineage XP loose + the chance (like 1 in 3 or 4) to loose gear was just about enough death penalty. That passing mobs picked up any dropped gear and added it to their loottable was a huge bonus, defeating a mob that killed a party could gain you something really cool the wiping team lost as a extra gift, and if a bunch of teams failed before ....

But my main problem is the difficulty.

Challenge should vary with the situation don't you think? If you have characters that can die (or that undergo some change from death, but respawn), then you really should allow for challenge to be something that is germane to the situation. 

Challenge in most games is really about making the choice to do something that you know will be a certain difficulty. There are no adventurous events where the players must react to different things and make decisions about what to do. It's a your level, covered by the wiki, and if you fail all you lost was time in your seat sort of thing in these games. You might even feel a bit better about beating lesser mobs if there is some sense of risk other than seat time.

As an MMORPG player you are always playing a sidescroller. A dimension or two is missing from these games. 

That is not entirely true.  You will notice in a lot of MMOs the mobs in the open world are setup intentionally to be easy.  They will stand around and not attack you.  Their aggro radius is small.  Useually they are easy to kill.  

If you go back to older games they had more complex systems.  The aggro was radius was much larger, mobs would call for help, taking down multiple mobs at once was fairly impossible solo in many cases, mobs would cast some really nasty spells on you depending on their class, mobs would wander and aggro on you, and sometimes they would respawn right on top of you.  That all required you to react quickly and you generally didn't need to go looking for those situations.  It's just the way the entire game was designed.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

KalebGrayson

Looks like another ganker post.