MMOs and Fun(MMO review)

Gorwe

For this discussion, I will take that fun = impromptu pleasure on a micro scale. That defeating even a single zombie is somehow fun. I wanted to discuss this with you and hear your opinions. What I am going to do is list MMOs I have played and how much fun they are to me. Part 1 / 2 .

AGE OF CONAN: It is overall quite a good game with a very nice IP(obviously). I just don't find it that fun outside playing your standard tab target classes(Demo, Tempest etc). The directional combat is a nice idea, but that's all I think it is. In the end it just becomes unnecessary extra clicks. And the entire game feels entirely too sluggish. Too much walking to and fro, empty spaces etc. I also felt like it needed more XP, at least +50%. Overall, it is good from time to time if you like Conan.

AION: I remember playing this back when and it used to actually be fun, but ... idk.

BLADE AND SOUL: Now this, this is the definition of fun. It's going to happen again. Given how intricate B&S is with the combat, it just feels beautiful to play. I also quite like the story and the world. This is one of those games where I could see myself just doing nothing and yet it would be having fun. It's a mighty shame I haven't really given it a real go.

DCUO: This is quite a good game that often feels quite a bit "beat em up". It's not bad, far from it and it is actually quite fun, even if it can start to feel a bit repetitive. It's also quite different from most other games you are going to play here. Thus it has quite an introductory period. Regardless, if you like Superheroes, it's well worth a look. I'd wager it's overall well worth a look. Just DO NOT treat it as an MMO! It's not really that. More like Persistent Online Action Role Playing Game.

D&D:O : I haven't tried this one, I really feel like I should.

ESO: Now, here is a game I'd really wish to get into. It is a BEAUTIFUL game with a set of very interesting mechanics(Skill Morphing, for one). It's just ... the combat and the way Quests are handled(without instancing) is ... so immersion breaking, I give up. Also, quite a bit of extra mechanics and changes from the usual (mmo)RPG formula is distracting(like how crafting works, how gearing works etc). And it just feels odd to play, not good at all. For me it is a beautiful game with bland gameplay. And too many unnecessary systems.

EVERQUEST 2: Besides the outdated graphics(you quickly get accustomed to it anyhow), this game is really a gem. It's just ... so ginormously humongous that it is quite intimidating to get into. That's what scared me off, I'll admit. The weight of lore, the size of world, the plethora of systems and activities...overall, if you can look past some 2005 graphics, it's actually quite fun. Depending on class, ofc. I wouldn't give it an A for fun though given that I often need to translate, quite frankly, outdated mechanics etc to get into it. And it feels too open for my tastes.

GUILD WARS 1: Eh, here we go. I can always recommend this one IF you can live WITHOUT jump function. Overall, this game is quite amazing, very nice aesthetics(that are remarkably different than their GW 2 version), a bunch of very nice campaigns that are very fun to get through ... I just wouldn't really call this an MMO. It's more like Persistent Online RPG. And its skill system / combat still holds up and is quite unique. I could probably talk more about GW 1, but for this topic, this will suffice. Moment to moment fun here is super dependant on the class and the build.

GUILD WARS 2: GW 1's more spastic cousin. I wouldn't say that the combat here is better, no. It is just different. And you CAN jump now! I mean, it is a far richer cousin to GW 1, but it's not a successor, no. It's more of a sidegrade than an upgrade. And the artstyle / aesthetics really took a wildswing to the ... whatever side you want. It is an adequate MMO to play from time to time. It's far from what it should've been. Then again, I wanted GW 1++, not what we got.

LOTR:O : Don't get me wrong. This MMO really has quite an awesome community combined with "THE IP"(LoTR) and BEAUTIFUL Aesthetics. But why aren't you playing it then? Because of the second part. See, I really think that it is an outdated game one should play mostly for community and story aspects. The combat, while it has some very nice ideas and mechanics, just feels awful. Early and Mid game also feels quite awful to actually play. And the Animations and Character Models ... this is legendary. I always wanted to get lost in LoTR:O, but its gameplay just FEELS awful. What a shame!

NEVERWINTER: I actually quite like this game. Eventually it becomes quite fun. I just think that the game's tanking an awful lot of its potential due to an overabundance of systems and devs that are, honestly, understaffed for what Neverwinter should be. The best example is the companion system. In theory, this should allow you to play whatever, wherever. Kinda like you can in EQ 2 or GW 1. Just in a rather fun action way. The reality is that these are ... there is so many of them that most of them are /whatever . And the game feels oppressive to play. Heavy Pay 2 Progress. Even without all of that, Neverwinter is very fun. This game would be 1000x better in a private server form.

RIFT: Rifting was actually quite satisfying. And the entire world of Telara was ... good, interesting concept. The gameplay relied too much on counters(think WoW Rogue) for my liking though. And it often felt like you were just going through motions. The ideas were there, the zones were different, the Rift mech is a very interesting idea, but ... it's not entirely fun. Cool, yes. Fun? Not really.

SWTOR: An MMO I don't know what to do with. My relation towards it is ... wow, that's very interesting. Don't get me wrong, SWTOR is super fun on all aspects, it has TOR era Star Wars, the stories ... what gives then? The gameplay is also very satisfactory. I wish I could return here, it really is my kind of game, but ... what Bioware is doing with it is ... annoying to say at least. The story meanders from one weird moment(Zakuul) to another(whatever's happening right now) and I'm just not a fan of that at all. I also finished most of classes, played them, had fun, recorded the story. You understand. Zakuul? That I haven't done and, tbh, it don't belong in SWTOR. If JK -> Ziost is KOTOR 3, Zakuul story could be KOTOR 4. But it's shoehorned in such an awful way that it's, honestly? painful. Currently I have no reason to return even though I would want to. An odd predicament, as I said.

TERA: This was an interesting, if completely forgettable MMO. The gameplay is ok, but the game as a whole was just weird. And when compared to something like B&S, completely pointless imo. Probably is just not my kind of game, seems ok otherwise.

Gorwe

Part 2 / 2 .

TSW: Take a super cool premise and run it into the ground, would you? I actually didn't have anything against the original TSW, was very fun. Yes, even the combat(which happened far too often imo). The setting and the writing was ... awesome! And, if you were savvy, you could punch ahead, skip the grind. Almost everything that was good about it was ruined in the Legends version. Legends belongs right next to CU / NGE for SWG. They only needed to tweak the numbers and the progression of weapons, not to reinvent the entire game! And, having a mercenary system(or combat drones or whatever) would be nice. Can you still play the original version? I don't care about the multiplayer parts here, it was and should've been a singleplayer game to begin with.

WOOF WOOF: Never quite got into it. Idk, it never felt good to play. Maybe its social parts(=something I can't care less about) pull it ahead? Maybe it's better experienced in a private server form, Warmane or something? I can kinda see why people like this game, but there are and were better games even in its age(GW1, EQ2 etc).

WAR: The saddest story ever. This is what I use to gauge fun with btw. Even outside of PvP, people really undersell it. Sometimes it's just fun to do Quests, Public Quests etc with a Choppa with Uge Choppa and WAAAAGH!!! . Something about the way these characters move, how they are animated etc, just pulls me in. Like a sucker. And then there is the Warhammer Fantasy IP. This game feels like the best parts of 5th combined with the best parts of 6th. I really love this game. Even with its RoR overlords. I just wish it had more PvE(or rather better PvE?). The potential of this game is astounding and it's one of the saddest stories MMO genre(or any genre for that matter) can tell. RoR version is very good, but parts of quests are missing and the devs ... I thank them for what they have done(let's put it like that). I also feel like the PvE parts and PvP parts should've remained separate, PvE parts given the 2x xp / INF and Sov rebalanced(or, rather, PvE given its own endgame goal which would be ~5% worse than Sov).

///

Right. So, what next? Where to?

Adamantine

"FUN" is a vague concept. What some like, others dont.

As I've said before, I think of MMORPGs as games you play longterm, and thus MMORPGs in my opinion should be optimized for longterm gaming fun.

The goal in my opinion is thus things like:

- relatively slow progression

- large gameworld with tons of content for sheer exploration fun

- great questlines with many alternative solutions, and multiple questlines per level range to allow different progression on new characters

- interactive combat system that keeps you on your toes

- lots of classes that play very differently

- lots of abilties that allow to try many different strategies

- lots of races which substantly change how you play

- involved crafting sphere that allows an alternative progression to your characters

- other spheres of alternative progression (harvest/resource gathering, hunting/fishing as a possibly even more interactive occupation, diplomacy as a card game like in Vanguard, ...)

- secondary progressions such as housing, mounts, etc. Possibly building of farms, mines, towns, castles for living space, income, harvest production etc.

- complex raid battles that keep the game interesting even at maxlevel

- grouping, guilds, possibly guild alliances and conflicts

- possibly PvP, for example arena battles (groups of players in direct combat fighting over prizes), castle sieges (weekly battle over control over a part of the game world, represented by a castle), battlegrounds (constant fighting over especially resource rich zones), pvp zones (areas in which PvP is allowed, but who have more resources), ... HOWEVER it should be noted that PvP done right is very hard to archieve and definitely requires that player character work differently during PvP (abilities doing less damage, stuns working less long, characters having extra PvP hitpoints they dont have in PvE, etc). Still having great PvP is definitely a bonus to a game.

- supporting other social interactions such as newbie helping

etc etc etc

Vanguard was in no way perfect, but it did many of these things, and it did some of them so very well, too. Especially the great classes and interactive combat system part and the great dungeons and raid bosses.

> It's just ... the combat and the way Quests are handled(without instancing) is ... so immersion breaking, I give up

I dont get that one. Its exactly *instancing* which breaks my suspension of disbelief, and the illusion I'm actually in a world. I so loved that Vanguard had almost no instancing.

Not that I would ever touch ESO with a footpole. I consider TES to be the most imbalanced rulesystem ever. Absolutely nothing stops you in TES to just learn everything. Well, actually finally in Skyrim they fixed that, only to make it available again trough some rulesystem trickery.

> EQ2

Quite honestly I have no clue what you actually complain about there. But EQ never was my thing and I always felt EQ2 was too all over the place to be fun.

> GW1

I was absolutely bored to death after just a few days playing that. Extremely simplistic in every way. You had like, what, 7 or 8 abilities max ? The moment you left the town, you would meet absolutely nobody. And the quests have been beyond superboring. As a Mesmer I had to take all three of these followers to make any progress, after which I still hardly made any progress because the followers stripped away so much XP. Just dullness galore.

> LOTRO

Again I have no clue why you dont like it. You stay super vague there.

Other than that, I'm not a Lord of the Rings fan, and I dont think bards are healers. Maybe a little bit, sure, or maybe as a choice for a subclass, sure, but certainly not main healers out of the box, and the only option for healers to begin with.

> RIFT

I just didnt like their rulesystem at all, when I looked into it.

> SWTOR

I dont even remember why I didnt play that. I think I just couldnt shake my bad feeling about it. Bioware (R.I.P.) changed so much when EA acquired it, and I distanced myself from them.

Anyway I dont think a story focused MMORPG can possibly work. You just cannot create that much story, fullstop. Even WoW with 10+ million players would struggle to finance that many writers to keep each player entertained like this 24/7.

Sovrath

I guess it goes to show "different strokes for different folks."

AGE OF CONAN: I found this game enjoyable though I agree that the combat wasn't "all that." The directional combat didn't really add anything since the directions didn't change all that much during a fight. "ok now I hit  from the left" and that was it. They did a wonderful job with the landscape and artwork. Didn't like the quests at all.

AION: LOVED Aion until they changed it and added silly crap. They didn't do a good job with the flying tutorial at all. They should have made it so that flying could happen everywhere. I understand because originally there wasn't free flying there was supposed to be these destination "air tunnels" that would take you from one place or another but players said that if they had wings they wanted to fly.

BLADE AND SOUL: For me there was absolutely nothing fun about this title. Hated it. I  think partially because I liked the original concept for the characters, especially the summoner. But I found the whole thing dull.

DCUO: Never played

D&D:O : Hated the art design, hate the small map with it's small icons. Love how they did dungeons and quests. Liked the combat. 

ESO: This was the mmorpg I was waiting for but for me it was fun for a small bit. I just don't like the combat and don't like the exploration or quests.

EVERQUEST 2: I really liked the classes but that's it. Hated the art design.

GUILD WARS 1: I loved the original guild wars, the art design and the classes. I was hoping guild wars 2 would just be a larger world version but ,...

GUILD WARS 2: Looks great but some silly stuff with the mounts. Never really liked how they had "hearts" so you knew where to go ahead of time. Combat is ok. Never really warmed up to it.

LOTR:O : great job with the landscape for an old mmorpg but hate the art design of all the equipment. Didn't like them making Moria a quest hub city. The war steeds are laggy and hard to control. I hope they continue to apply fixes/changes. I had a lot of fun in Lord of the Rings Online but the later quests were a bit dull.

NEVERWINTER: Didn't warm up to it. I liked that players could make their own quests but they discontinued this feature. 

RIFT: loved the invasions but some players complained that they got in the way so they ended up being changed. I think the game was sort of a one trick pony in that the invasions were the draw but after a while they didn't really change things in the world and it was just a dull quest grind with quest hubs.

SWTOR: Didn't really like the art design but respected it. I didn't like how they did gear and with their commitment to voiceover sometimes the quests had perfunctory voice over that really didn't add anything. I stopped playing it.

TERA: This is the only game where I REALLY loved the combat. I liked the world well enough but wish it was more open world than maps. I don't really think the developers were up to the task of fleshing out the world and it just became, to me, a proof of concept game.

kitarad

DDO is a great game I really have to get back to. I have been watching Critical Role and the itch to play DDO is very strong.

Gorwe

kitarad said:

DDO is a great game I really have to get back to. I have been watching Critical Role and the itch to play DDO is very strong.

How's it solo?

Sovrath

Gorwe said:

kitarad said:

DDO is a great game I really have to get back to. I have been watching Critical Role and the itch to play DDO is very strong.

How's it solo?

You can solo a lot of it as there is a "solo" mode for many quests. I find that the "regular" setting is fine for solo as "solo mode" for the most part is very easy.

Gorwe

Sovrath said:

Gorwe said:

kitarad said:

DDO is a great game I really have to get back to. I have been watching Critical Role and the itch to play DDO is very strong.

How's it solo?

You can solo a lot of it as there is a "solo" mode for many quests. I find that the "regular" setting is fine for solo as "solo mode" for the most part is very easy.

And here comes the realization that they gave away packs / dlcs for the release of Honor. How much did I miss?

Sovrath

Gorwe said:

Sovrath said:

Gorwe said:

kitarad said:

DDO is a great game I really have to get back to. I have been watching Critical Role and the itch to play DDO is very strong.

How's it solo?

You can solo a lot of it as there is a "solo" mode for many quests. I find that the "regular" setting is fine for solo as "solo mode" for the most part is very easy.

And here comes the realization that they gave away packs / dlcs for the release of Honor. How much did I miss?

Can't say, I only play Dungeons and Dragons Online sporadically. They really do so much right but the things they do wrong just make me lose interest. It's "free to play" so just jump in and see if you like it.

Gorwe

Sovrath said:

I guess it goes to show "different strokes for different folks."

AGE OF CONAN: I found this game enjoyable though I agree that the combat wasn't "all that." The directional combat didn't really add anything since the directions didn't change all that much during a fight. "ok now I hit  from the left" and that was it. They did a wonderful job with the landscape and artwork. Didn't like the quests at all.

AION: LOVED Aion until they changed it and added silly crap. They didn't do a good job with the flying tutorial at all. They should have made it so that flying could happen everywhere. I understand because originally there wasn't free flying there was supposed to be these destination "air tunnels" that would take you from one place or another but players said that if they had wings they wanted to fly.

BLADE AND SOUL: For me there was absolutely nothing fun about this title. Hated it. I  think partially because I liked the original concept for the characters, especially the summoner. But I found the whole thing dull.

DCUO: Never played

D&D:O : Hated the art design, hate the small map with it's small icons. Love how they did dungeons and quests. Liked the combat. 

ESO: This was the mmorpg I was waiting for but for me it was fun for a small bit. I just don't like the combat and don't like the exploration or quests.

EVERQUEST 2: I really liked the classes but that's it. Hated the art design.

GUILD WARS 1: I loved the original guild wars, the art design and the classes. I was hoping guild wars 2 would just be a larger world version but ,...

GUILD WARS 2: Looks great but some silly stuff with the mounts. Never really liked how they had "hearts" so you knew where to go ahead of time. Combat is ok. Never really warmed up to it.

LOTR:O : great job with the landscape for an old mmorpg but hate the art design of all the equipment. Didn't like them making Moria a quest hub city. The war steeds are laggy and hard to control. I hope they continue to apply fixes/changes. I had a lot of fun in Lord of the Rings Online but the later quests were a bit dull.

NEVERWINTER: Didn't warm up to it. I liked that players could make their own quests but they discontinued this feature. 

RIFT: loved the invasions but some players complained that they got in the way so they ended up being changed. I think the game was sort of a one trick pony in that the invasions were the draw but after a while they didn't really change things in the world and it was just a dull quest grind with quest hubs.

SWTOR: Didn't really like the art design but respected it. I didn't like how they did gear and with their commitment to voiceover sometimes the quests had perfunctory voice over that really didn't add anything. I stopped playing it.

TERA: This is the only game where I REALLY loved the combat. I liked the world well enough but wish it was more open world than maps. I don't really think the developers were up to the task of fleshing out the world and it just became, to me, a proof of concept game.

Let's get to your comments.

AoC: What didn't you like about quests? Also, another thing I didn't like about AoC is how dense it was / is about things like proc chance etc. It defines procs per minute, but not the actual proc %. Weird. I will agree that I mostly enjoyed simpler classes here like Demo, Tempest or Priest. I always wanted to enjoy myself some Dark Templar, but a) the option for its natural race(Stygians) was added very late and b) its early-mid game is garbage. You are going to feel the cumbersome nature of AoC with it. Even though thematically, I love it.

AION: Agreed. Didn't like the addition of silly eastern stuff at all. Like that mecha class(AetherTech or whatever). Virtuoso(/Bard) was borderline tbh. The core Aion is very respectable though. Kinda unorthodox though.

B/S: The original concept? I also have next to no idea how it is right now ; the last I played was more than 3 years ago. It felt very good then. Who knows how it is now.

ESO: What didn't you like about Exploration and Quests? I am going to agree that the combat is ... an acquired taste(and then some).

EQ2: What did you hate about the art design? I am going to agree that it hasn't aged gracefully. This interrupts my flow and as thus blocks my enjoyment.

GW1: Fully agreed.

GW2: I just never jived with it. Hated how conversations were done, the shift in aesthetics I also didn't like at all, the combat felt meh(very responsive, but enemies felt too spongy, like they had too much hp or something), freedom of builds was gone, interrupts, playing Healer solo was gone ... man, FUCK GW2! This is a reverse trade. Where you are sold progress but actually get regress.

LOTRO: As I said, everything that doesn't have anything to do with combat is A+ here. You can't have(well, not really, hello there Desert Tale!) combat less MMO. Just ... constant frustration here ; just like with ESO. ESO also breaks the established lore. For an added benefit.

NEVERWINTER: On a base level, from moment to moment, I like it very much and I believe it can be much more. Currently it's not that much AND a lot of "progression systems" just annoy me too much.

RIFT: Fully agreed. It was more of a cool proof of a concept than anything else. Don't get me wrong, there are so many class combos that it's impossible to truly say what's fun and what is not. I loved going 1 class heavy(like Inq or Caba), but even then, the additions can mean so much.

SWTOR: Yes, the art style is an acquired taste. My bigger problem is how outdated it is and you can see it if you compare average character to someone like Valkorion. And my other weird issues with it.

TERA: Fully agreed, it's yet another "proof of a concept" game. For me the Blade and Soul did this element much better. TERA has only combat and nothing else. Which is a shame because it could've been so much more. But the devs focused on the Elin and other garbage. /sigh

OG_Solareus

Conquorer's blade is fun

Gorwe

OG_Solareus said:

Conquorer's blade is fun

Care to explain how or why?

Sovrath

Gorwe said:

Let's get to your comments.

AoC: What didn't you like about quests? It's been a while but I remember tortage was fine and then I went on and it seemed that not only were they fetch quests but that I had  to go to other maps just fetch a thing. One particular one had me going to one area but the thing I was looking for or had to kill never spawned. That's probably more about bugs or how often it was set to spawn. Cutting to the point I just stopped doing the quests and just explored. Same thing with one of the DLC's, the more Mongolian (?) area where I was doing something with flags. Felt like busy work.

AION: I liked the Bard but hated the Mech class and the artist class. REALLY hate the Artist class

B/S: The original concept? The original announcement trailer, which I can't find to save my life had what seemed to me to be a darker concept. The summoner summoned this black demonic spirit that was somewhat reminiscent of something from black desert. I then get into the game and my summons is a kitty cat. I played for a short but but found it so dull. Liked the art style though.

Not what I was thinking of but is any of this in the game today? If it is I'll call "my bad" on this one though I still think it's dull.




ESO: What didn't you like about Exploration and Quests? This is mostly a "me" thing but I thought that the world would be explorable like morrowind or oblviion or skyrim. Instead, you explore to find not much of anything. It's all so deliberate. Nothing truly hidden. Instead of quest hubs you explore to find a quest story. Not bad but just not what I was looking for. I remember playing Elder Scrolls online and there was this murder mystery with the large ^ above the quest objectives. Didn't even need to read anything to solve it. I logged out, booted up morrowind and finding myself discovering a half sunken ship and me going deeper without breathing potions. I rememeber thinking to myself "now THIS is what I want to be doing."

EQ2: What did you hate about the art design? Oh I've always hated the art design. When Lineage 2 went offline for a bit to fix something I made a comic strip of my Lineage 2 dark elf somehow finding himself lost in EQ 2. Everything reminded me of claymation. I remember the strip having a "Sovrath Dark elf" introduce himself as a dark elf and the Lineage 2 version looked at him, a beat, and then said "no you're not." 


GW2: but enemies felt too spongy, like they had too much hp or something this I agree with. I also miss  how to build a character.

LOTRO: Again, I really hate how the characters are but mostly how gear looks. Moria should have been the ultimate dangerous dungeon crawl, possibly with a few major bosses. Not having the dwarves come and take it over with pockets of danger. I also miss the original old forest. Yeah, I'm one of those guys.


SWTOR: Yes, the art style is an acquired taste. My bigger problem is how outdated it is and you can see it if you compare average character to someone like Valkorion. And my other weird issues with it.

TERA: TERA has only combat and nothing else. Which is a shame because it could've been so much more. But the devs focused on the Elin and other garbage. /sigh  I don't Necessarily have an issue with the Elin when seen in a certain light. Asian cultires, at least Korea and Japan, love "cute." I dated a Japanese woman who was born in the US but ended up going back when she was young so lived there for 25 years until she came back to the US. She told me that in Japan it's better to be called "cute" than beautiful. 

Also, all the sort of "pervy" stuff that westerners associate with "cute kid type characters" just got an eye roll from her. It's like there's that one thing that they acknowledge but don't talk about. 

Gorwe

Sovrath said:

Gorwe said:

Let's get to your comments.

AoC: What didn't you like about quests? It's been a while but I remember tortage was fine and then I went on and it seemed that not only were they fetch quests but that I had  to go to other maps just fetch a thing. One particular one had me going to one area but the thing I was looking for or had to kill never spawned. That's probably more about bugs or how often it was set to spawn. Cutting to the point I just stopped doing the quests and just explored. Same thing with one of the DLC's, the more Mongolian (?) area where I was doing something with flags. Felt like busy work.

AION: I liked the Bard but hated the Mech class and the artist class. REALLY hate the Artist class

B/S: The original concept? The original announcement trailer, which I can't find to save my life had what seemed to me to be a darker concept. The summoner summoned this black demonic spirit that was somewhat reminiscent of something from black desert. I then get into the game and my summons is a kitty cat. I played for a short but but found it so dull. Liked the art style though.

Not what I was thinking of but is any of this in the game today? If it is I'll call "my bad" on this one though I still think it's dull.




ESO: What didn't you like about Exploration and Quests? This is mostly a "me" thing but I thought that the world would be explorable like morrowind or oblviion or skyrim. Instead, you explore to find not much of anything. It's all so deliberate. Nothing truly hidden. Instead of quest hubs you explore to find a quest story. Not bad but just not what I was looking for. I remember playing Elder Scrolls online and there was this murder mystery with the large ^ above the quest objectives. Didn't even need to read anything to solve it. I logged out, booted up morrowind and finding myself discovering a half sunken ship and me going deeper without breathing potions. I rememeber thinking to myself "now THIS is what I want to be doing."

EQ2: What did you hate about the art design? Oh I've always hated the art design. When Lineage 2 went offline for a bit to fix something I made a comic strip of my Lineage 2 dark elf somehow finding himself lost in EQ 2. Everything reminded me of claymation. I remember the strip having a "Sovrath Dark elf" introduce himself as a dark elf and the Lineage 2 version looked at him, a beat, and then said "no you're not." 


GW2: but enemies felt too spongy, like they had too much hp or something this I agree with. I also miss  how to build a character.

LOTRO: Again, I really hate how the characters are but mostly how gear looks. Moria should have been the ultimate dangerous dungeon crawl, possibly with a few major bosses. Not having the dwarves come and take it over with pockets of danger. I also miss the original old forest. Yeah, I'm one of those guys.


SWTOR: Yes, the art style is an acquired taste. My bigger problem is how outdated it is and you can see it if you compare average character to someone like Valkorion. And my other weird issues with it.

TERA: TERA has only combat and nothing else. Which is a shame because it could've been so much more. But the devs focused on the Elin and other garbage. /sigh  I don't Necessarily have an issue with the Elin when seen in a certain light. Asian cultires, at least Korea and Japan, love "cute." I dated a Japanese woman who was born in the US but ended up going back when she was young so lived there for 25 years until she came back to the US. She told me that in Japan it's better to be called "cute" than beautiful. 

Also, all the sort of "pervy" stuff that westerners associate with "cute kid type characters" just got an eye roll from her. It's like there's that one thing that they acknowledge but don't talk about. 

AoC: Yes, my problems are mostly the same. Too much, what was it called again? ... oh yes, ricing. And other meaningless quests. Combine that with overall slow travel speed and rather slow leveling ... sorry, but who wants that in a Conan game? Don't seem very Conan to me(either literary or movie Conan don't fit, so...?).

Aion: Uhh...Artist? Wtf is that? I take it that's the second choice for the ... Muse basic class(Artist + Virtuoso)? Don't sound exciting given that I didn't like the Virtuoso too(then again, Bards have to be more of Skalds to entice me). Everything after the Gunslinger was literally the "wtf? /facepalm" for me. The original 8 + GS is just enough imo. Aethertech can be interesting too, but it's implemented wrongly. If I have a Voltron, I want to play as a Voltron, damn it! I don't care about my character then because my character IS Voltron!

B/S: I believe you missed a class actually. Summoner is a rather silly class, yes, what do you expect out of the Lyn race? There is the Warlock or something though, it summons demons afaik. Maybe you should've just gone for a Kung-Fu Master or something to see how deep this rabbit hole goes. VERY DEEP lol.

ESO: That's not exactly my problem with it. I had problems with all these unorthodox systems. I love how SWTOR handles gearing, it's very ... efficient, for the lack of a better word. ESO is an antithesis of that. Not to mention that dialogues with NPCs are NOT instanced! This is ... OH MY GOD! Then there are various lore breaks. I really wish I could create a Daggerfall Pirate and just yohoho! without any issues. But the issues are, unfortunately, baked in. There is good stuff here, maybe I'll give it a fair go one day. I feel like it deserves that.

EQ2: Yes, the Animations + Character Models. This is exactly my issue with LoTR:O. I am undecided how I feel about it in EQ2 though. It does get in the way of fun / pleasure / immersion, yes, but I have other issues with EQ2.

GW2: It just felt bad. And not at all like Guild Wars 2. More like an MMO set in the GW setting.

LoTR:O: Aha, you want less of this cozy feeling and more of what LoTR actually is: Nobledark. I can see and respect this notion.

SWTOR: You forgot to write your reply lol.

TERA: Elin was just an example. The fact that they care about my favorite races(Amani, Baraka) about as much as ... nothing don't really help either. There is an ad for TERA actually right here. Ok, Baraka is in it. Amani ... wtf is with Bluehole(?) and them? Why do they ignore badass Dracodemons? Regardless, the game isn't that interesting to me. Combat can't hold it for long. It had an interesting "The Enemy Within" Main Story, but it got buried under a cubic tonne of random garbage.

Gorwe

Adamantine said:

"FUN" is a vague concept. What some like, others dont.

As I've said before, I think of MMORPGs as games you play longterm, and thus MMORPGs in my opinion should be optimized for longterm gaming fun.

The goal in my opinion is thus things like:

- relatively slow progression

- large gameworld with tons of content for sheer exploration fun

- great questlines with many alternative solutions, and multiple questlines per level range to allow different progression on new characters

- interactive combat system that keeps you on your toes

- lots of classes that play very differently

- lots of abilties that allow to try many different strategies

- lots of races which substantly change how you play

- involved crafting sphere that allows an alternative progression to your characters

- other spheres of alternative progression (harvest/resource gathering, hunting/fishing as a possibly even more interactive occupation, diplomacy as a card game like in Vanguard, ...)

- secondary progressions such as housing, mounts, etc. Possibly building of farms, mines, towns, castles for living space, income, harvest production etc.

- complex raid battles that keep the game interesting even at maxlevel

- grouping, guilds, possibly guild alliances and conflicts

- possibly PvP, for example arena battles (groups of players in direct combat fighting over prizes), castle sieges (weekly battle over control over a part of the game world, represented by a castle), battlegrounds (constant fighting over especially resource rich zones), pvp zones (areas in which PvP is allowed, but who have more resources), ... HOWEVER it should be noted that PvP done right is very hard to archieve and definitely requires that player character work differently during PvP (abilities doing less damage, stuns working less long, characters having extra PvP hitpoints they dont have in PvE, etc). Still having great PvP is definitely a bonus to a game.

- supporting other social interactions such as newbie helping

etc etc etc

Vanguard was in no way perfect, but it did many of these things, and it did some of them so very well, too. Especially the great classes and interactive combat system part and the great dungeons and raid bosses.

> It's just ... the combat and the way Quests are handled(without instancing) is ... so immersion breaking, I give up

I dont get that one. Its exactly *instancing* which breaks my suspension of disbelief, and the illusion I'm actually in a world. I so loved that Vanguard had almost no instancing.

Not that I would ever touch ESO with a footpole. I consider TES to be the most imbalanced rulesystem ever. Absolutely nothing stops you in TES to just learn everything. Well, actually finally in Skyrim they fixed that, only to make it available again trough some rulesystem trickery.

> EQ2

Quite honestly I have no clue what you actually complain about there. But EQ never was my thing and I always felt EQ2 was too all over the place to be fun.

> GW1

I was absolutely bored to death after just a few days playing that. Extremely simplistic in every way. You had like, what, 7 or 8 abilities max ? The moment you left the town, you would meet absolutely nobody. And the quests have been beyond superboring. As a Mesmer I had to take all three of these followers to make any progress, after which I still hardly made any progress because the followers stripped away so much XP. Just dullness galore.

> LOTRO

Again I have no clue why you dont like it. You stay super vague there.

Other than that, I'm not a Lord of the Rings fan, and I dont think bards are healers. Maybe a little bit, sure, or maybe as a choice for a subclass, sure, but certainly not main healers out of the box, and the only option for healers to begin with.

> RIFT

I just didnt like their rulesystem at all, when I looked into it.

> SWTOR

I dont even remember why I didnt play that. I think I just couldnt shake my bad feeling about it. Bioware (R.I.P.) changed so much when EA acquired it, and I distanced myself from them.

Anyway I dont think a story focused MMORPG can possibly work. You just cannot create that much story, fullstop. Even WoW with 10+ million players would struggle to finance that many writers to keep each player entertained like this 24/7.

You expect too much. Narrow down those wishes to most important ones and find the closest thing. If it exists. Compromise is not a bad thing if you are having fun(thinking about various theoremas and potentials ruins the present moment ime). Regardless:

ESO: The problem is that ESO wants you to be super immersed in a storyline, akin to idk TSW or SWTOR, but doesn't go the entire way. These half measures are just ... bad. I like TES as a setting, but its rules are ... not good. I agree. Freedom is ok. But! Remember what some swiss dude said once: Sola dosis ... ah I can't! Don't overdo it, basically.

EQ2: All over the place? Huh?

GW1: Yes, GW 1 is an acquired taste. Then again, I don't treat it or expect the same from it as I would from another MMO. Because it really isn't an MMO. It is an Online RPG, nothing else.

LOTRO: How come? I don't think I'm vague here, am I? The animation / character model issues have been always at the forefront of the complaints against LoTR:O. And a lot of early / mid game is annoying. Feels really old school. Which isn't bad by itself, I am just not looking for it.

Rift: Care to explain?

SWTOR: The point isn't to create a 24/7 story ; rather a memorable story you can share with others without issue. Here, SWTOR gets not A, but A++. It's literally 100%. And I wouldn't overlook a game just because of a dev, that's silly imo.

OG_Solareus

Gorwe said:

OG_Solareus said:

Conquorer's blade is fun

Care to explain how or why?

unit control

unit leveling

unit types

siege weapons

siege mechanices

base line stats during seasons

Weapon choices (hamemr best weapon )

Fun weird encounters with other players in sieges

Straight forward content

One character can learn all weapons

it can get silly late nights early mornings xD

Sovrath

Gorwe said:

Aion: Uhh...Artist? Wtf is that? It's this!

LoTR:O: Aha, you want less of this cozy feeling and more of what LoTR actually is: Nobledark. I can see and respect this notion. Yeah, I wanted grittier. warm and cozy is fine for the shire but the art design of the gear and some of their choices for creating the world leaves much to be desired from where I sit.

SWTOR: You forgot to write your reply lol. Nah, I just didn't have anything to say.

Gorwe

Sovrath said:

Gorwe said:

Aion: Uhh...Artist? Wtf is that? It's this!

LoTR:O: Aha, you want less of this cozy feeling and more of what LoTR actually is: Nobledark. I can see and respect this notion. Yeah, I wanted grittier. warm and cozy is fine for the shire but the art design of the gear and some of their choices for creating the world leaves much to be desired from where I sit.

SWTOR: You forgot to write your reply lol. Nah, I just didn't have anything to say.

You know? That class actually has promise. As ridiculous as it obviously is. The problem is how dead serious everything else is. I have nothing against lulz(remember? I love Smuggler), but it has to fit in. Not certain how good that fits.

Yeah, a lot of LoTR:O looks entirely too safe. It should be rugged beauty or pockets of safety within wilderness, not what we got.

cameltosis

I'm not really too sure what this thread is about (i was hoping for a discussion on what "fun" means...), so I'll just write some mini-reviews of old games i used to play, as that seems to be what everyone is doing. I'll stick to games I played for more than 3 months, so the list will be short.

Star Wars Galaxies

This was my first MMORPG full stop. I started in Dec '03, so I was 18 and in my final year of high school.

First day in game sucked balls. As with most sandboxes, I was dumped in game with no instructions, no goals, and no explanations of anything. Everything i tried to kill, killed me instead. And not only did I die, but when i respawned half my health bars were black (wounds), but i had no clue how to heal up.

I was saved when my best mate IRL logged in and showed me the ropes. He gave me some cash, got me some armour, then escorted me to Anchorhead where i could start joining leveling groups.

I was super casual when playing SWG. Between school, the gym, skateboarding, sailing at weekends and a girlfriend, I just wasn't motivated to spend lots of time in game. I spent the majority of my time either leveling up a new profession, grinding rancor missions for cash, or hanging out in the Geonosian Labs.

I quit Sep '04, purely because i went off to uni and the game was blocked in halls of residence. I'm sure i could have gotten around the block, but you know, i was at uni, I had better things to be doing!

Things SWG got right:

• Full player economy - just soooo much better all around than loot-based economy
• Casual Raids - getting 20 people together to grind missions was easy, relaxing, rewarding and very social. Why do all other MMOs restrict raids to the hardest content?
• Tons of roles - no matter what sort of player you are, there was a role and a profession for you. This resulted in a very diverse, and therefore stronger, community.
  

Things SWG got wrong:

• Too much complexity led to bloat
• All the depth was restricted to the meta-game, the minute-to-minute gameplay was quite shallow
• Jedi as an alpha-class
• So many professions meant it was impossible to balance, so the PvP scene never really took off.
  

Lord of the Rings Online

I started playing on launch day and played on-and-off until part way through the Isenguard xpac. My boss IRL had been playing in the closed beta and spent months stoking my interest, so I joined his guild.

I remember when I first signed up to the guild website posting something like "hi, im really casual, you probably won't see much of me". 3 months later I was leading raids, and not long after that I started guild leading!

Beyond simply enjoying the LotR IP, what I loved most about LotRO was the depth of the combat mechanics. Nothing I have played before or since has come close. By depth of combat mechanics, I mean that success or failure in a fight was mostly based on your decision making. If you chose the right skills at the right time, you won. If not, you lost.

At launch, the game was very group-focused. At launch, the endgame was based around horizontal progression. At launch, the crafting was useful and important.

All these things resulted in an amazing first year of gameplay. Such a great community, plenty of roles, loads of group content, even the PvP was loads of fun! Sadly, each expansions made the game progressively worse, until it was no longer fun.

Things LotRO got right:

• Deepest combat mechanics ever
• Large, seamless open world
• Most aspects of the game were designed to build a great community

Things LotRO got wrong:

• They gave up on their vision (virtual middle earth) and instead went chasing the typical gamified quest-hub / quest markers crowd.....and it didn't work.
  
• They kept removing / abusing the features that helped build an amazing community
• They went F2P

Warhammer: Age of Reckoning

I played for 6 months from release, then came back for another few months later on. Plus I play on RoR occasionally.

Most of this game was garbage.

PvE was not only shallow and boring, you actually harmed yourself by doing PvE. The world design / art style was awful, everything was just a big mess. There was simply too much going on on-screen (in terms of number of colours, shadows, names, numbers etc). The interface was awful. Itemisation in the game was the worst I've ever seen in an MMORPG. The way loot was acquired was also the worst I have ever seen.

So, why did I play?

It was warhammer, so I got to play an orc (warhammer orcs are my fav fantasy race). It has large-scale PvP. And, just very occasionally, you'd get a balanced scenario, and all of a sudden the game would come alive!

Things WAR got right:

• Tanks could genuinely protect people in PvP.
  
• Crowd-control was very well designed for PvP
• Designed to be genuinely massively multiplayer. 500+ player battles were common. One of the few MMORPGs ever that actually designed a massively multiplayer feature

Things WAR got wrong:

• Designed a PvP game around rampant vertical progression
• Balanced the game around groups
• This meant that the game was designed from day 1 to "eat their own young". Predictably, the community quit such a terrible design
• Just about everything in the game was badly designed. Just a truly shocking project. NEVER TRUST ELECTRONIC ARTS!
  

Star Wars: The Old Republic

I played from launch. I was very excited about the game and moved my guild over from LotRO to play it. Biggest mistake I ever made.

I could (and have in the past) write pages and pages of criticism of this game, because they got hardly anything right. They designed this game in the worst possible way in just about every single aspect.

From a personal POV, the two biggest mistakes were that SWTOR WAS NOT MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER, plus exceedingly shallow combat mechanics.

From a wider perspective, we had a game designed around story first, which is not only a bad way to design a game, it's a terrible way to design a multiplayer game. Not to mention, THE STORY SUCKED!!!

The most popular patch in the games history was the patch that allowed you to skip 95% of the game. That should tell you everythign you need to know.

Things SWTOR got right:

• I could play a jedi
• You could feel the influence of the remaining Mythic devs on combat design - combat mechanics in PvP had a lot of more depth than PvE

Things SWTOR got wrong:

• IT WASN'T MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER!!!!!
• Shallow combat mechanics
• Rampant vertical progression
• Story-focused design philosophy, without bothing to hire good authors
• Game engine couldn't handle anything
• Boring roles
• Very restrictive dungeon/raid design
  

Kyleran

In my case "fun" = progression so

EVE Online: a wet dream in terms of nearly endless progression mechanics, skill points, ISK accumulation, Kill boards, planet farming, moon mining, wormhole exploration, industry, station trading etc.

So many in fact you really do need spreadsheets to manage everything, "just like living in paradise" as David used to sing. (Or was it Sammy?)

Fallout 76 - yeah, not a MMO, shut up already.... Never ending leveling, perk cards galore, harvesting materials to store in the subscription exclusive unlimited scrap box.

Can build 3 different camps upgrade gear and create multiple builds.

olepi

I think that fun is a bit of uncertainty. If you knew that attacking the -2 ghouls would always win, what is the fun in that?

We find fun in the unexpected, the new and unknown.

Theocritus

OK that is quite a list of games for sure! I played most of them I think

AoC: was supposed to be a great game, never was....Most people liked Tortage, I was bored of it by level 10. Disappointment

AION: I thought it was generic trash...have no idea how people actually liked that

DCUO: tried it but was never a comics type of gamer.

D&DO: Was expecting better...constantly ran into paywalls and blocked content

ESO: didnt like the combat or animations, the quests were dull and often felt like I was just running all the time....also way too large of a download (100+ gigs for that game?)

EQ2: Was OK, enjoyed the crafting,,,the high level players were way overpowered...Almost always just ended up with running dungeons with guild mates watching them one shot raid mobs....level 120 in this game went beyond stupid.

GW1: dont remember anything special about it....and only 20 levels?

GW2: was ok until around level 20 then no one wanted to do the public quests anymore....got boring very quickly at that point.

LoTRO: liked the world, the lore was nice, the quests got monotonous and couldnt take anymore about level 40....One quest in particular had me run about 10 times from Rivendale to some remote part of the world and it literally took about an hour of running and horseback just to reach the other city, then only to get a couple lines of dialgoue and return back to the first part...frustrating and not fun.

Neverwinter: another D&D game that didnt feel like D&D...I dont really remember anything special about it...Now it only has 20 levels.

Rift: this game rubbed me the wrong way right off the bat....felt like WoW and WAR had a baby and named it Rift...They literally pasted and copied one of the tradeskills directly from WoW.....Hated the "one character can do all" system.

SWTOR: didnt even feel like a MMO to me...felt like a single player game where the player goes through the motions. For teh budget it had, was very disappointing.

TSW: all the hype surrounding this game, I thought it was awful...Probably Funcoms worst game....I would have rather have had them invest the resources into Anarchy Online 2.

Woof woof? I have no idea what this is

Warhammer: I didnt think it was that bad....it had the same issues as GW2 with no one doing public quests after a certain point.....The PVP was OK though it ended up being way too much crowd control and playing a melee fighter was a nightmare. Also the further you get in level the worse the game became...PVP was at it best from 1-20, after that it was not good.

Gorwe

cameltosis said:

I'm not really too sure what this thread is about (i was hoping for a discussion on what "fun" means...), so I'll just write some mini-reviews of old games i used to play, as that seems to be what everyone is doing. I'll stick to games I played for more than 3 months, so the list will be short.

Warhammer: Age of Reckoning

I played for 6 months from release, then came back for another few months later on. Plus I play on RoR occasionally.

Most of this game was garbage.

PvE was not only shallow and boring, you actually harmed yourself by doing PvE. The world design / art style was awful, everything was just a big mess. There was simply too much going on on-screen (in terms of number of colours, shadows, names, numbers etc). The interface was awful. Itemisation in the game was the worst I've ever seen in an MMORPG. The way loot was acquired was also the worst I have ever seen.

So, why did I play?

It was warhammer, so I got to play an orc (warhammer orcs are my fav fantasy race). It has large-scale PvP. And, just very occasionally, you'd get a balanced scenario, and all of a sudden the game would come alive!

Things WAR got right:

• Tanks could genuinely protect people in PvP.
  
• Crowd-control was very well designed for PvP
• Designed to be genuinely massively multiplayer. 500+ player battles were common. One of the few MMORPGs ever that actually designed a massively multiplayer feature

Things WAR got wrong:

• Designed a PvP game around rampant vertical progression
• Balanced the game around groups
• This meant that the game was designed from day 1 to "eat their own young". Predictably, the community quit such a terrible design
• Just about everything in the game was badly designed. Just a truly shocking project. NEVER TRUST ELECTRONIC ARTS!
  

I was talking about the fun mostly on a very micro level. Whether you actually enjoy the game moment - moment. Of course there are large scale concerns when it comes to fun(people obviously need direction and purpose, otherwise even the most fun activity loses its charm), but I focused on micro. I posted the definition in the OP. Note: As long as something isn't uncomfortable, you can waste time there. You don't need to have fun per se.

You did not harm yourself if you did PvE in WAR. Before they implemented the Purple XP Bar, that is. That idea was the final nail in the coffin. After that came the derpforged and such sets and the game literally went into terminal stage. I know that RoR won't touch that, but if you want real WAR, you need to remove the Purple Bar. It ACTIVELY HARMS the game. Maybe it's just me, but PvE was fun in WAR. Not groundbreaking or even that good, but fun. And that's all that matters.

What do you mean by "interface or items were awful"? I am going to agree that Bind on Pickup was a mistake. That shit should be reserved only for top of the line gear, like Sov. Even if Sov wasn't BoP, market would sort it out because it would be HELLA EXPENSIVE!

PoorOld_GamerGent

Gorwe said:

Sovrath said:

Gorwe said:

kitarad said:

DDO is a great game I really have to get back to. I have been watching Critical Role and the itch to play DDO is very strong.

How's it solo?

You can solo a lot of it as there is a "solo" mode for many quests. I find that the "regular" setting is fine for solo as "solo mode" for the most part is very easy.

And here comes the realization that they gave away packs / dlcs for the release of Honor. How much did I miss?

Not much missed, IF you hurry...
(you can log in and activate the coupon for 5 more days)

Nice to see you still play a lot of game, even though it looks like you're still not a friend of LotRO's gameplay... a shame indeed, great game.

Gorwe said:

///

Right. So, what next? Where to?

Since it wasn't mentioned yet, how about CO?
Quite different from DCUO (if that felt like a beat'em up, and something not treated as an MMO), probably worth giving it a shot.

There was a nice Re-Roll piece on it here, a few years ago as I remember.

Adamantine

About Conan, well.

I love the original author to bits. Just some of the damn best fantasy ever. Absolute gems of literature.

But unfortunately the guy suicided at 30 already because he couldnt handle the death of his mother and so his work is, to say the least, very incomplete, just a collection of short stories, not even with consistent style, and with not much of a link between them.

And unfortunately nobody who came after the original author could get it done so well. Not even close.

But I dont think you could specifically say things like slow progression doesnt fit to Conan. Conan himself was supposed to have lived for a long time as an adventurer before he became a king.

Either way I didnt like AOC at the time because if I had made it, I would have added a ton of races and classes, and implemented the whole vastness of the original world. Instead they went for pretty graphics, very few races and classes, and a very small game world.

Well, and at the time I was very happy in Vanguard, anyway, and didnt need any other MMO in the first place.

Also, I wouldnt have allowed Cimmerian as a race. The very point of Cimmerians is that only Conan is ever one in the stories, but nobody else. The rest of the Cimmerians stay in their homeland, believing in their ruthless god CROM, and dont actually travel the world. So if I had designed the game, you could be all kinds of races, but not Cimmerian.

Gorwe

PoorOld_GamerGent said:

Gorwe said:

Sovrath said:

Gorwe said:

kitarad said:

DDO is a great game I really have to get back to. I have been watching Critical Role and the itch to play DDO is very strong.

How's it solo?

You can solo a lot of it as there is a "solo" mode for many quests. I find that the "regular" setting is fine for solo as "solo mode" for the most part is very easy.

And here comes the realization that they gave away packs / dlcs for the release of Honor. How much did I miss?

Not much missed, IF you hurry...
(you can log in and activate the coupon for 5 more days)

Nice to see you still play a lot of game, even though it looks like you're still not a friend of LotRO's gameplay... a shame indeed, great game.

Gorwe said:

///

Right. So, what next? Where to?

Since it wasn't mentioned yet, how about CO?
Quite different from DCUO (if that felt like a beat'em up, and something not treated as an MMO), probably worth giving it a shot.

There was a nice Re-Roll piece on it here, a few years ago as I remember.

Oh, thank you very much! I thought it went until 17th. Gonna pick them up.

As for LoTR:O, it's not gameplay I have issues with. I never did. Classes are very different and if I should want combos, there are choices(Warden being the main one). It's about the interaction of animations / graphics and gameplay. Given that coeff is negative, it ends up hurting gameplay. Which is opposite to WAR. WAR has much simpler gameplay, but the graphical feedback is much better(=it feels better), so ... strictly speaking they end up in the same place. What FEELS better is more important to me though.

That is further compounded by how ancient some of early zone quest designs feel. It is not a good mixture!