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The trouble with MMORPGs: Grinding me down
Clever_Glove
Member Posts: 996
http://www.ferrago.com/story/2377
Nick is a guy that cant seem to get attached to a MMORPG, he played all the major ones and writes what it is that missing for those that don't want a full time job of leveling a character.
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"Playing EQ to the highend is like getting hit in the head over and over. When the hitting stops you start to miss the dizzy feeling. The lack of this "dizzy feeling" will ruin you to other MMORPG's"
A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50%
Games and players have a type. What type are you? click here
Comments
Why... why, why, why. Why kill a level 1 snake, just to go to level 2 to kill the same looking snake, just different name, look and hit points? To go to level 3 to kill a bigger snake.
One can apply this to R. E. A. L. life, however and ask the same thing. Why buy a t-shirt that has a specific logo on it that's 50 dollars more than one that's an off brand, that's the same color and same feel? Why spend thousands of dollars "pimping" out a car, giving it chrome rims, neon lights, and different paint jobs. Does this improve the performance of the vehicle? Why drink alchohol, why smoke? None of these are beneficial to anyone... but yet thousands of people do. Why do people play sports? Why do people watch them, they have no interaction or effect on how the game goes anyway. Why listen to music... or why sing along? You didn't make up those lyrics, they're not yours and the band didn't make the song specifically for you. Why dine-in at a fast food restaurant... why drive-thru? Why is it when someone yawns, or things about someone yawning... other people do?
Why? Answers simple. Because we want to. No scientific equation... philisophical answer, or brilliant light from whatever god you do or don't worship. It's the same reason we choose to wake up everyday... and from a favorite movie quote... "An entire generation of pumping gas, waiting tables... slaves with white collars. Advertising has it's taste in cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy s**t we don't need."
Why doens't a mmorpg suit your needs? I don't know. I know tens of thousands of players understand the fundamentals of how one works. If you don't, go play something else. Thousands of games out there, from Pac-Man to GTA... Sims to Civilization. List goes on, look around a bit.
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
Look, all this guy is saying is that there should be a game that has variety and challenge and allows you to develop a unique and competitive character without butchering a large slice of your identity and serving it to the company along with a monthly EFT.
Time, Energy, and Money. The three commodities in life. This guy is sick of getting raped to the point where we are supposed to percieve it as acceptable.
Evercrack is just one game on this list. Some of us would like to have successful lives AND successful MMORPG characters and enjoy both, not one at the expense of the other.
Permadeath and environmental challenges are the next great step in the evolution of MMORPGs. Only through true adversity will one feel accomplished. Only in truly knowing you can die will true adversity present itself.
The reason people level all the time is like this....
Lots of MMORPG players dont want their character to be good, they want i to be the best. When someone builds up their character and spends all night and gets it up to a higher level than yours, you think to yourself "why is my character so low?". You then begin to level your character longer than you usually would and when someone else notices that you are a higher level than them. They assume that their character is too low and start powerleveling theirs...
Eventually, you get everyone in the game leveling and leveling to try to get theirs the best when you eventually realize that you will never be the best because there are hundreds of thousands of people in the game thriving for that goal.
That is just my theory. So what im trying to get to is that every mmorpg game isn't controlling the difficulty on leveling your character, it's just yourselves that make the game harder.
________________________________
Peter : "Why did all the dinosaurs become extinct?"
Teacher: "Because you touch yourself at night."
Guy makes an intresting case all around.
He is right about class imbalance for one.As newer games come out i find the class imbalance is getting worse everytime.Makes the class imbalance we cried at in EQ look like a sunday stroll.
AO started the is very bad trend of class imbalance(AO seems seems to have started many bad trends for some reason).DAoC took it a level higher and SWG seems to be the king of class imbalance now.Seems to be a growing trend.
While some games have done a good job at removing the rat mentality (eg SWG you can kill a human npc within a day of experiencing) there is still that threadmill.
However he failed to point out that games that are very easy to level are quickly branded for poor content due to the fact that people like so quickly they have nothing to do but explore and the developers can't keep in new content fast enough.Whereas if people are kept in the "the best" experiencing spots they have less time to explore .SWG,AC2 and SB have all suffered from the "bored"player syndrome.
**DAoC - Glalin - 50 Dwarf Thane - MLF Midgard [Retired]**
Aren't all games unbalanced in beta stage?
Doesn't every game producer claim to have balanced classes?
Edit: Btw, isn't horizons PvE, so how can the classes be unbalanced?
This sounds great and all, but it's a bit shallow.
The problem is, people don't know what they want. And the ones that do dont' agree. Look over the hundreds of posts on PvP. Some want play a game unless it's unrestricted, some won't play a game that has PvP in any form. This is true on ever feature of a game.
Game makers pick the market they wish to sell to, and make a game for that market.
You can please all the gamers some of the time, or some of the gamers all of the time. But you can never make a MMORPG for all gamers all of the time.
-=-=-=-=-
"Playing EQ to the highend is like getting hit in the head over and over. When the hitting stops you start to miss the dizzy feeling. The lack of this "dizzy feeling" will ruin you to other MMORPG's"
A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50%
Games and players have a type. What type are you? click here
-=-=-=-=-
Achievers realise that killers as a concept are necessary in order to make achievement meaningful and worthwhile (there being no way to "lose" the game if any fool can "win" just by plodding slowly unchallenged). -bartle
Bartle: A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50% The Test. Learn what it means here.
Yes, many games are unbalanced in their beta testing stage, though I don't see anywhere in my post where I said it is balanced.
No, not all game producers claim to have balanced classes. As a matter of fact most of them openly admit that class balancing is the hardest part in creating a game and that alot of work still needs to be done in the game they have produced. Showme one producer out there who claims his game is completely balanced and I will laugh in their face.
Yes, Horizons is PvE based but that doesn't mean class balancing isn't important. Since I'm still under the NDA, I will use a different games PvE aspect as an example. Take DAoC. Is it considered BALANCED when a level 50 necromancer can solo an entire camp of yellow, orange, red, AND purple con mobs. What normally takes 2-8 people to accomplish, one monster at a time, can be done by a necromancer by himself in less than half the time. Balancing is required in all aspects of gaming, in PvP and PvE.
**DAoC - Glalin Stormlock - 50 Dwarf Thane - MLF Midgard [Retired]**
"Balance" is something that can never be obtained. Why? Because my definition of balance will be different from everyone elses.
True I've never found the perfect balance on a mmorpg... but hell I haven't in LIFE either, and don't think many if ANY one else has as well. Some hate the leveling treadmill. I don't mind the treadmill, I hate the setback when you FALL OFF. Say with EQ, spend 1/2 a day leveling, one screw up, now you're set back to leveling 1 day just to get back to where you were... and try not to die in the process. Now... Earth and Beyond had an awesome system I thought for that. Say... you die and you're set back 1/2 a day of leveling. Well, rather than going back in and level, you can log off... and it had a timer that after a certain ammount of time passed, the xp debt was FORGIVEN... A game that promoted "taking a break"... I thought that was spiffy.
Besides... if you really like roleplaying, and get sick of these game companies screwing everything up... go out to a bookstore, pick up somr RPG game master and player books based on your favorite setting, DM a game and get some players together. Make your own rules, system... whatever. Then find out balance isn't as easy as it sound.
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
Since DAoC all the games are getting prettier and more boring.
Would think the developers would change their focus by now or are ideas extinct.
So here's my concept:
1. So many options in the way of skills, powers, and visuals that you have almost limitless variety and strategy. You could make 100 characters and still want to explore the possibilities. Individuality, and not the power trip, are what separate this game from the others.
2. You can level your character to maximum power with a unique likeness and skills within 8 hours.
3. For every skill, there is a counterskill. For every class, their is an archnemesis that has your number, a counterclass. This keeps gameplay honest.
4. Teamwork keeps you alive and promotes interaction and community. It is essential for certain objectives.
5. Death is final. As in no redos or resets to the previous level. Dead is dead.
6. Kill or be killed except within city limits where enforcers can spank you.
7. A level 10 character is NOT 10 x more powerful than a level one character. Improvement rates on a curve, just like skills and abilities in the real world.
Permadeath and environmental challenges are the next great step in the evolution of MMORPGs. Only through true adversity will one feel accomplished. Only in truly knowing you can die will true adversity present itself.
Dead is dead means very few players will to stay and continue with the game.
A couple of games have tried this permadeath and never even made it to beta due to lack of intrest and no investors.
Good game = good ideas.DAoC was made by a very small company but it had a fresh idea .
EQ brought online the D & D feeling.
Bottom line is if you have no ideas and best graphics your game will fail.
That's fine. Give people a choice then. But I find it to be an exercise in ego-driven masturbation (don't mean to be crass or crude, but it does get the point across) when you have unkillable characters with minor setbacks at best. It then becomes an exercise in fanaticism. (Mine's bigger than yours is! comes to mind).
Before going on, I will own up to the fact that I am a competetive person who values fairness and justice. Knowing this, you will see how these traits have influenced my post.
Without risk, there is no real reward once you've explored everything or fought everything.
Assuming you can control the twinking, AFK skill-whore looping, and hacking - below is the single biggest beef guys like myself have with the current crop of games. I have waited YEARS for a [new version of a] game to surface . . .
Skill (x) and knowledge (y) in a game, beyond motor skills and connection speed, are directly affected by time (Z) in the current MMORPG universe.
(x + y) times Z = power and success.
Z being the dominant factor. So that companies can pull in their EFT for 6 months, and pull you right out of reality and real-life responsibilities if you want to be competitive with the Uber-sickness that has infected the junkies who play 4 + hours a day. . .
It feels like punishment, not fun, when I have to put my butt in a seat for 100 hours of gameplay to be even somewhat competitive.
The maze created for the virtual rat-racers is quite impressive, and utterly repulsive in my view. What else do we know that steals time, money, and identity? hmm . . .
Permadeath and environmental challenges are the next great step in the evolution of MMORPGs. Only through true adversity will one feel accomplished. Only in truly knowing you can die will true adversity present itself.
Yes, many games are unbalanced in their beta testing stage, though I don't see anywhere in my post where I said it is balanced.
No, not all game producers claim to have balanced classes. As a matter of fact most of them openly admit that class balancing is the hardest part in creating a game and that alot of work still needs to be done in the game they have produced. Showme one producer out there who claims his game is completely balanced and I will laugh in their face.
Yes, Horizons is PvE based but that doesn't mean class balancing isn't important. Since I'm still under the NDA, I will use a different games PvE aspect as an example. Take DAoC. Is it considered BALANCED when a level 50 necromancer can solo an entire camp of yellow, orange, red, AND purple con mobs. What normally takes 2-8 people to accomplish, one monster at a time, can be done by a necromancer by himself in less than half the time. Balancing is required in all aspects of gaming, in PvP and PvE.
**DAoC - Glalin Stormlock - 50 Dwarf Thane - MLF Midgard [Retired]**
Good stuff, Vash (the Stampede). However, it might serve you well to reread your post. You did say Horizons(beta), is unbalanced, thus breaking the NDA. But we've come to expect such rashness from Vash the Stampede. But since you're a dedicated beta tester, you know David Bowman is constantly wiping the characters for this very reason. Character wipes, who needs 'em.
Hardest part, what about the millions of lines of server code??? Not to tricky when you've got the trusty six shooter, eh vash? I can't say that the words 'completely balanced' have ever crossed my eyes, but we can gather from 'class balancing' to expect a reasonable amount of balance in a game. (start laughing now)
I have not played horizons and do not care to comment, either. I would like to say that the article does peak my interest and should be quick to say that a 'Diablo 2' style of leveling is a rare accomplishment. I think most people agree, that a game made to be fun is... fun and worth playing. If WoW pulls this off, then more power to them. But so far, it's just another claim.