Reasons as to why you dont play the big MMOs

Ralphie2449

Your reasons as to what "kills" an mmo for you, there's a few big names in mmo world, so what is your reason for not playing them?

I am currently playing Destiny as I see it being one of the more casual friendly games, no power rewards locked behind raids, everyone can reach equal power in time, great solo dungeon and mission experience and rewarding/fun gameplay.

Now for other mmos I ve played and left:
-FF14
Absolutely great in almost everything but the lack of class customization kills it for me. The incredibly choreographed raid design is also beautiful but not my favourite since you cant do some more crazy stuff you can like in wow's raiding with immunities/heavy defensives and huge mobility abilities. Plus the fact such design rewards memorization far more than reacting quickly.

-WoW
Raidlogging simulator, there's nothing rewarding outside of mythic raiding/m+ so if there's no people for that, there's nothing to do ingame to gain more power other than logout. Plus metaslave central.

-New World
0 story and barely any lore so not very immersive from that perspective, uses moronic outdated design of "this dungeon takes extra fire damage so everyone play fire build even if you dont like it" along the "have a gazzilion sets for different resistances"

-GW2
Lack of Oce servers, not a huge fun of changing weapons all the time, buff stacking system, plus for endgame its only specific builds that do decently, was checking for something bursty like virtuoso master of fragmentaiton/infinite forge but the damage was way way worse, I dont mind playing something with 10% less damage but if its a huge margin its kinda pointless for endgame.

-Swtor
Great story and love the bioware style, sadly population is very small and even worse the devs decided for some absurd reason to try force "raid or die" system in an extremely casual solo focused video game in their latest xpac by putting best gear behind raiding, I do not support such outdated design choices.

hupa

I've grown tired of MMORPGs, because, like looking at OP post, it's all about combat. There's no soul, or feeling like living in the world. I'm hoping BitCraft changes that for me as combat is not the central part of progression.

OG_Solareus

Meh, think the big mmos a phasing out. They've spread their lies to thick and their game play to thin. Really going to take something really special to make me want to play anything.

If I log in and the first thing I do is kill 10 of x, im uninstalling. I've actually uninstalled most mmos at this point. It's not saying they are completely horrible, it's simply become so redundunt.

For example , elite dungeons. The last set of dungeons that I found even remptely challenging was in Age of Conan and the Godslayer xpac. The Necropolis and those ones around the meteor are so hard.  I never got yelled at like those for not doing something right lol.

mmos, need new minds , new ideas and new blood. Having the same tired people producing them amd developing them is not going to bring back any longevity or spark to the genre.

With Throne and Liberty I am hoping to simply slip back into lineage 2 , with new graphics and gameplay concepts.

Kyleran

I'm too sour on playing with random other gamers so any MMO where running group dungeons or raids are total non starters.

I play NW because I still can find ways to progress my character without ever running a group dungeon.

At my age I'd rather split my attention on playing a game and watching Netflix than intensely learning the proper moves or preparation to "Dance with the Stars"

Multiple gear sets in NW?  Not needed for how I play....

delete5230

This one is easy. their made for 5 year old's.

Nilden

Lazy design and cash shops.

OldKingLog

delete5230 said:

This one is easy. their made for 5 year old's.

WUT!? Sir I am offended, you take that back you ... you .. DOODOOHEAD!!

I have to agree, these once fun and somewhat challenging games have been turned into little more than self back patting simulators. Digital kindergartens for the masses. 

At your advice on these forums I tried out TurtleWow and to my great surprise find myself quite enjoying the experience. Many thanks. I wish the industry had a single clue how to make great MMOs again, but sadly all they know how to do these days is shill pointless shit in a cash shop. How the mighty have fallen eh?

Dattelis

I jump in to FF14 from time to time and think it suits my 'taste' best when compared to the other 'big' mmos on the market. That said, I dont 'main' it because most of the mmos kind of feel the same, which is ultimately cosmetic endgame. There's probably nothing wrong with that for most people that play them (hence why they are 'big' in the first place), but to me, that kind of stuff is very subjective to get in to. Not to mention that each one has some kind of 'extra expense' that is involved in a cosmetic sense. Most of the games either operate on 'seasons' or kind of have you 'progression' not mean much in the grand scheme of things (i.e. scaling), so it just makes the long term investment kind of shallow past a certain point. Everyone advances on the same path in most of them and if they dont, then its either irrelevant to begin with or made irrelevant after 1-2 patches. No real longevity or sense of 'hey, I had to do that.' Its kind of why I stopped high-end raiding as well, because it just ends up being a 'personal goal' after a while. If I cared about just checking off personal achievements, then I would stick to single player games, but that's not why I play mmorpgs. I play mmorpgs to exist in a world where how you treat people has weight and matters.

Gorwe

OldKingLog said:

delete5230 said:

This one is easy. their made for 5 year old's.

WUT!? Sir I am offended, you take that back you ... you .. DOODOOHEAD!!

I have to agree, these once fun and somewhat challenging games have been turned into little more than self back patting simulators. Digital kindergartens for the masses. 

At your advice on these forums I tried out TurtleWow and to my great surprise find myself quite enjoying the experience. Many thanks. I wish the industry had a single clue how to make great MMOs again, but sadly all they know how to do these days is shill pointless shit in a cash shop. How the mighty have fallen eh?

What's so special about turtle?

mekhere

I still play everquest 2 to this day. I love old school MMO's. What is with players soul searching for deeper imminent immersion? You want better problems to solve, not a better lore experience. 

new world is going to fail until they fix the pvp ui. its a blur of green and red bars and random clicking on people and hope they die. it's like red and green candles all mixed in on a stock market graph, and the stock always wins the pvp fight. 

gw2 is just an 8man fest.

ffx14 is too Asian grindy. I feel like I'm at work and in a worker's camp.

wow isn't going to replace daoc for me.  I want daoc back.



 

Angrakhan

Easy answer: I don't have time. I have a full time day job and run a martial arts academy at night. On top of that I'm a husband and father. My free time is unpredictable and rarely in big, contiguous blocks. Every MMO out there wants to lock you down for hours at a time in raids with a bunch of other people who you need to coordinate with to schedule the time. Time I just don't have or at least am not willing to commit to for playing video games. I have bigger fish to fry. I have more important things I'm trying to accomplish in life then getting full sets of whatever gear or fancy mounts or cosmetics. All that stuff is south of changing the litter box and taking out the trash in my priority list, so I don't bother playing. In what little free time I do have I stick to single player games and "MMO lite" games like Destiny 2 or The Division. I'm really excited for D4 for that reason.

Anyway don't read the above as me bashing MMOs. I think they're fine the way they are. I may play one again someday after I retire from my corporate job. I'm just outside the demographic they are designed for currently.

TheDalaiBomba

New World's got a huge gear set problem.  Players report running 5+ sets of gear, and that's just not a fun type of "strategy" to include when the game doesn't support gear swapping to that extent short of dropping serious cash on extra set slots in the cash shop.

olepi

I guess the only big-name MMO I still play is LoTRO, mostly solo. I'm a casual gamer who likes to live in a virtual world, and most MMO's are full of people who want to rush through for the gear grind.

FF14 is just too cutesy for me, ESO was fun but I'm burned out. Dungeons were too rushed and scripted also. Same problem with SWTOR, joining a group means I'll be left behind because I want to actually read the quests, smell the roses.

DAOC was fun until TOA came out, then it became: "be on time, do exactly what we say when we say it, and we'll all get through this raid". Vanguard was fun, except for raiding, and of course it's gone now.

I'll drop in to CoH every now and then, still the best grouping game in my opinion.

So to play solo in a virtual world it seems better to just play solo games.

Sovrath

I'm looking more for a world than a "game."

I don't care about quests really but love the exploration. Also miss the Lineage 2 castle sieges.

For the most part, the games you list are theme park mmorpg's. Don't really like those. I don't want to gather quests in an area, do a "few things" and then rinse and repeat.

I also don't like games where you run into barriers unless you've done a quest chain.

Art design is also important to me and many games are just too "cartoony" or their style isn't to my liking.

Hengist

mekhere said:

I still play everquest 2 to this day. I love old school MMO's. What is with players soul searching for deeper imminent immersion? You want better problems to solve, not a better lore experience. 

wow isn't going to replace daoc for me.  I want daoc back.



 

Legit question.


Do you really consider EQ2 to be an old school MMO? 


I remember when it came out, I thought that it embodied some of the best aspects of the original generation, but I also saw the Exodus to WoW, and it's rapid ascension. When I came back to EQ2 a few years later, it's ties to the old school genre seemed more tenuous to me. It is, in my mind really the same generation as WoW. 


I haven't played it in years, so I probably misremember what it actually was, and had to offer. Honestly, despite months playing, it's one of the games I remember the least about, so that's the story behind the question, and why I'm curious. Do you feel that EQ2, is really then one of the last old school style MMO's?

Sovrath

Hengist said:

mekhere said:

I still play everquest 2 to this day. I love old school MMO's. What is with players soul searching for deeper imminent immersion? You want better problems to solve, not a better lore experience. 

wow isn't going to replace daoc for me.  I want daoc back.



 

Legit question.


Do you really consider EQ2 to be an old school MMO? 


I remember when it came out, I thought that it embodied some of the best aspects of the original generation, but I also saw the Exodus to WoW, and it's rapid ascension. When I came back to EQ2 a few years later, it's ties to the old school genre seemed more tenuous to me. It is, in my mind really the same generation as WoW. 


I haven't played it in years, so I probably misremember what it actually was, and had to offer. Honestly, despite months playing, it's one of the games I remember the least about, so that's the story behind the question, and why I'm curious. Do you feel that EQ2, is really then one of the last old school style MMO's?

I think it is in the style of what would become the "new" theme park games.

I knew a person who loved EQ. He moved to EQ2 with his guild and they quickly left. He couldn't stand it.

Theocritus

Occasionally I still play EQ or Anacrchy Online....Thats good enough for me...Those are the ones I find fun....I dont need a "big MMO" to enjoy myself.....Ive played all those on your list except for New World....In general games made for the masses dont appeal to me.... Games like GW2, FFXIV and SWTOR just feel like I am going through the motions.

Darkhawke

Still play them all , currently rotating with Rift , UO,EQ2, and POE  while testing D4.

peanutabc

XIV

I recently quit XIV after playing since 2.0 and I wouldn't even consider it a decent game but definitely a terrible mmorpg in its current state.

Overworld is next to pointless
gearing is next to pointless (everyone outside of a couple nuanced jobs is going to be wearing the same)

They lost any spark/inspiration and the story is as worse than ever unless you love every single anime trope imaginable.

im not the type of person to grind 99 totems for mounts especially when my favourite jobs are becoming shittier and shittier each expansion/rework.

The main problem is that everything is pointless, even having "fun" is not good enough because there's games that do any part of XIV better than XIV and I could be playing those instead.

Also doesn't help when friends of 6+ years quit because of how SE are handling the development now. Catering to the lowest common denomitator more than ever. Even ultimate is a joke for anyone not outright terrible at video games in general. Too bad addons and outright cheats(yes they exist and nothing like DBM) are becoming more prevalent in raiding groups  and generally making the experience a lot worse than a few years ago (stormblood and early to mid shadowbringers)

Maturity of the average player is beyond low and unbearable. When you're running just ACT for logging and you're waiting hours upon hours for the people using splatoon and triggers to catch up to you then they wonder why they're being replaced and will go batshit insane saying you're the problem.


I write this as someone that was on top of every piece of content in the game and has cleared everything since 2.0. I have took part in everything the game has to offer. I have houses on my account. I decorated and enjoyed them but ultimately they're pointless too.

Kyleran

TheDalaiBomba said:

New World's got a huge gear set problem.  Players report running 5+ sets of gear, and that's just not a fun type of "strategy" to include when the game doesn't support gear swapping to that extent short of dropping serious cash on extra set slots in the cash shop.

Five? Was reading a thread recently on NW sub-reddit where players complained of needing to keep up to 20 gear sets on hand.

They literally have a set for each of the 5 or so mutation types, 4 for each gathering type, 4 for each crafting type, chest run sets, PVP sets, luck sets etc etc.

A truely awesome and yet terrifying level of min maxing I've not often seen outside of EVE which has ship types and fittings out the wazoo.

While AGS recently added a gear set manager, you only get first 3 slots free, they charge for more but have a limit of like 10 I think, way under what some desire.

Now some might fault Amazon for this design but I'm sure it's a case of AGS not really comprehending that some of their player base would take optimization to such an extreme, seems a bit of a mental issue to my way of seeing, it's irrational to put that much effort into gaming...but that's just me.

TheDalaiBomba

Kyleran said:

TheDalaiBomba said:

New World's got a huge gear set problem.  Players report running 5+ sets of gear, and that's just not a fun type of "strategy" to include when the game doesn't support gear swapping to that extent short of dropping serious cash on extra set slots in the cash shop.

Five? Was reading a thread recently on NW sub-reddit where players complained of needing to keep up to 20 gear sets on hand.

They literally have a set for each of the 5 or so mutation types, 4 for each gathering type, 4 for each crafting type, chest run sets, PVP sets, luck sets etc etc.

A truely awesome and yet terrifying level of min maxing I've not often seen outside of EVE which has ship types and fittings out the wazoo.

While AGS recently added a gear set manager, you only get first 3 slots free, they charge for more but have a limit of like 10 I think, way under what some desire.

Now some might fault Amazon for this design but I'm sure it's a case of AGS not really comprehending that some of their player base would take optimization to such an extreme, seems a bit of a mental issue to my way of seeing, it's irrational to put that much effort into gaming...but that's just me.

They put that effort in because the devs created a system that encourages it.


Devs really, really need to take new lessons in human psychology.  It only takes a pretty basic understanding to know that humans will as a rule always, always, always seek the most efficient path towards a goal.  They will literally do it in ways that suck much of the fun out of the activity if you design the activity in a way where the most efficient path isn't also the most fun.  It is inevitably human, and trying to condition consumers to something else is like herding cats.  Even reducing the difficulty of the dungeons won't help, because it isn't about simply completing the content.  It's about completing it efficiently.  Specifically here, because AGS made the utterly stupid decision of adding time limits.

If AGS wants the complaints to go away, they need to change the gear and the way they do their endgame.  This specific instance isn't really a matter of poor player priorities.

Kyleran

TheDalaiBomba said:

Kyleran said:

TheDalaiBomba said:

New World's got a huge gear set problem.  Players report running 5+ sets of gear, and that's just not a fun type of "strategy" to include when the game doesn't support gear swapping to that extent short of dropping serious cash on extra set slots in the cash shop.

Five? Was reading a thread recently on NW sub-reddit where players complained of needing to keep up to 20 gear sets on hand.

They literally have a set for each of the 5 or so mutation types, 4 for each gathering type, 4 for each crafting type, chest run sets, PVP sets, luck sets etc etc.

A truely awesome and yet terrifying level of min maxing I've not often seen outside of EVE which has ship types and fittings out the wazoo.

While AGS recently added a gear set manager, you only get first 3 slots free, they charge for more but have a limit of like 10 I think, way under what some desire.

Now some might fault Amazon for this design but I'm sure it's a case of AGS not really comprehending that some of their player base would take optimization to such an extreme, seems a bit of a mental issue to my way of seeing, it's irrational to put that much effort into gaming...but that's just me.

They put that effort in because the devs created a system that encourages it.


Devs really, really need to take new lessons in human psychology.  It only takes a pretty basic understanding to know that humans will as a rule always, always, always seek the most efficient path towards a goal.  They will literally do it in ways that suck much of the fun out of the activity if you design the activity in a way where the most efficient path isn't also the most fun.  It is inevitably human, and trying to condition consumers to something else is like herding cats.  Even reducing the difficulty of the dungeons won't help, because it isn't about simply completing the content.  It's about completing it efficiently.  Specifically here, because AGS made the utterly stupid decision of adding time limits.

If AGS wants the complaints to go away, they need to change the gear and the way they do their endgame.  This specific instance isn't really a matter of poor player priorities.

Go away? Not at all, they just decided to take advantage of it by selling more set slots for cash money.

Perhaps their only mistake was not realizing some of the customers would be happy to pay for a nigh infinite level of set slots.

Sure, players are gonna whine, but in the end many will pay. Those who won't pay are a non-issue, companies really only care for those who vote with their wallets...in the affirmative.

OG_Solareus

Kyleran said:

I'm too sour on playing with random other gamers so any MMO where running group dungeons or raids are total non starters.

I play NW because I still can find ways to progress my character without ever running a group dungeon.

At my age I'd rather split my attention on playing a game and watching Netflix than intensely learning the proper moves or preparation to "Dance with the Stars"

Multiple gear sets in NW?  Not needed for how I play....

NW pugs are decent. I ran them for 2+ months rarely had an issue with mechnics in the elite dungeons.

Dattelis

New World does make me wonder what is their 'true goal' with the game. When you take an outside look at the game, their 'key features' are 'elite' dungeons and I think 1 pvp map (I could be wrong on that since I dont play much anymore). There's no real raids (and no the worm 'raid' isn't really one since its just going to be a single boss in a single instance). I bring this up because without more 'fleshed out' events, it just feels like their 'trying to get to a point' before sunsetting it, to me at least.

Amaranthar

There are way too many things that I don't like to list them all. Heck, I forget many of them until I see them again somewhere, usually on a forum post. 

From Cash Shops to controlled game play (directed through levelling), and all the other things in game designs that aren't focused purely on a great game experience. 

Like others, I want a "World to live in." 
I want that would to allow me the freedom to choose from many options on what I do. 
I want a simulation of reality, "worldly", interactive, where the things you can do withing that realism can matter to the game experience. 

I want a much more social world, where I can get to know other players by interacting with them more than once or twice, making plans and arrangements, joining the like minded on a long-lasting basis, whether though guilds (why limited to one?) or even in a loose arrangement. 

I want to explore and experiment, and I want discoveries in both. I want depth here. 

I do NOT want a bunch of flashiness and unrealistically huge gear/MOBs. 
I DO want immersive atmosphere and to be inspired by the world around me, in-game. 

Ralphie2449

Kyleran said:

Now some might fault Amazon for this design but I'm sure it's a case of AGS not really comprehending that some of their player base would take optimization to such an extreme, seems a bit of a mental issue to my way of seeing, it's irrational to put that much effort into gaming...but that's just me.

But that is what you dont understand, they arent putting that much effort into "gaming", they are putting that much effort in the "single source of self worth they have in their life".

That is why people do extremely degenerate min max things for even a 0.3% dps increase, things they can sometimes even hate themselves, and act as if playing something that does 5% less damage is throwing/trash/trolling.

Though in terms of design, I believe this idiotic design comes from oldschool AGS mmo devs who think its great design to create an encounter that takes 20% more fire damage so the dum dums who change to fire build feel like l33t ultra genius and "enjoy" the """ smart choice""" of play.

Not realizing such design does nothing but forcing people who do high end content to play a class/build they dont like and lead to rampart metaslavery.

Instead of the rational design of making encounters that are meant to be beaten by all classes and builds and possibly allow different ways to tackle the encounter so the things that make each build unique shine.

Until those outdated MMO design ideas are purged, I dont expect much.