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You mean I'm not 'playing it right?!'
spankybus
Member UncommonPosts: 1,367
Hey mates, this is a mild rant. Please share your opinions, ether way :-)
I see a load of posts where someone expresses disaffection with a new game they are playing. It's an opinion and they are certainly entitled.
However, this is almost always followed by a host of posts telling the above poster that they simply didn't play the game long enough to know its not fun:
"You have to play the game until at least lvl 20 before it startes to pick up...."
"OMG, you only played the game for the 2 week trial? epic fail!!"
Etc, etc. Exactly how long do you have to keep your hand on a hot stove before you're certain that it's hot?
Simply put, a game should be fun 'to you' as soon as you start playing it, right? All of us have a game that we love, the one that was just insanely fun right from the start! Of course, all games cannot be like this...but it seems lately like some people here simply expect that the game will only be fun a certain percentage of the time.
It's not longer a let down, its expected as the norm?! I don't really understand the motivation for this mindset. Is it that people are only interested in end-game and the rest is just something to 'get through'? Why are people championing games that, in their own words, are only fun after a period of gameplay that is only tolerable, at best? It would seem this has become the mantra of some MMORPG players...
"If its fun, play it.
..If it's not fun, play it until it becomes fun"
This is the point of my rant. Have our standards really dropped this low? Are we really attacking each other over games we enjoy half the time, that we have to pay for more than once to boot?!
I guess if you really believe this is acceptable, your opinion is no less valid than the aforementioned disaffected player. But don't bash them because they expect to be having fun right from the get-go. Instead ask yourself why you don't share their expectations.
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone
www.spankybus.com
-3d Artist & Compositor
-Writer
-Professional Amature
Comments
I don't think it's a rant. I experienced the same thing with Vanguard. I think I played it 20 minutes and realized it wasn't for me.
I agree. Graphics, combat mechanics, quality of writing, the community... these are things you experience in the first few hours of gameplay. If it doesn't grab you, it doesn't grab you.
There are plenty of games I've tried and known within a few hours that it wasn't something I was going to devote my time to.
People pre-order MMORPG games all the time. It's basically the same mentality, and I agree, it's really hurting the industry.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Or in the case of AoC...play it until you don't enjoy it, as the first 20 levels of that were great but past that it became not very good :-)
But on a more serious note, pretty much all of the 'big games' have a starter area that is so very different from the rest of the game and as newer games come out these starter areas are becoming more and more scripted to attract the new player's attention (DK in WoW for example is incomparable to the other class start areas).
So there is something to be said for asking the poster's level in a discussion.
That's true, cressowski -- but I've yet to play a game where the actual mechanics are radically different at level 50 than they were at level 1. Sure, there are more bells and whistles and rewards, obviously. And I'm speaking completely from my own perspective here.
We are almost in the same boat, but I accually gave the game 15 days out of my 30 free ones after I bought it. And it didnt help so sometimes you can accually see pretty early if the game is something or not. I mean just look at the stiff characters in Vanguard for instance, and the memory leaks on the first 2 months was hilarious. I went back one month after i stoped playing it and it was still there.
I can kind of understand the mindset you're talking about. MMOs are relatively more complex games than your typical video game (although that seems to be changing). You really do need to play through at least a few levels before you can have an accurate picture of the game's "fun factor".
Some games aren't fun at first because you're struggling to learn the UI or the lands or the mechanics or whatever. EVE is a great example of this. The point is the game might not initially be fun, but once you become more familiar with it and the game concepts begin to be grasped, it's loads of fun.
That said, there are still some MMOs that you can tell right away just aren't for you. Dofus and Lineage2 are examples for me. Both of those I quit within a couple days.
Current: None
Played: WoW, CoX, SWG, LotRO, EVE, AoC, VG, CO, Ryzom, DF, WAR
Tried: Lineage2, Dofus, EQ2, CoS, FE, UO, Wurm, Wakfu
Future: The Repopulation, ArcheAge, Black Desert, EQN
Unfortunately, like it or not, some games do require an investment of time into them before you sometimes discover they are fun after all.
DAOC, played 2 chars, 1st to level 6, 2nd till level 17 and it wasn't until my 3rd character when I finally found my "fun" and stayed with the game for 2.75 years.
Lineage 2, played for about 6 months, but came to conclusion I couldn't hack the grind after reaching level 51 on my SR. (shame I didn't wait till they made it a bit easier though)
WOW. First character was a Druid to level 14 and I hated the game. Re-rolled a Pally and ended up playing for 1.75 yrs.
EVE. While I took, a shine to this game immediately, (even before I ever played it, just from what I read about it) I've seen countless posters say they didn't get into the game until after their 3rd or 4th free trial completion.
On the converse, I quit EQ1 and DDO after very short stints (1 hour for EQ) I've always wondered if I shortchanged myself and perhaps might have missed at least a few months of gaming fun. (esp with EQ)
So I say yes, sometimes the people are correct when they say a person many not have given the game a fair shake out before deciding if they enjoy it. (I played two chars to 24, 33 in Lotro before I gave up on that game)
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Collectively, yes I think our standards have lowered dramatically. The reality is that most of these games are direct imitations of one another with some shallow surface differences in terms of audiovisual elements. With the exception of truly different games like EVE, this genre has been reduced to the holy trinity and the debuff/pull/tank/spank drudgery that appears in almost every game. Grind levels, grind stats, grind equipment, grind whatever as long as you stay on the subscription treadmill.
Look at Aion, the bright shiny latest and greatest.
I was arguing with a fanbot recently about why, in his own words, the game didn't start until level 20, and his assertion was because 1-19 is needed to 'learn to play your character.' He liked the game, and that's great, but I saw the same DIKU crap I've been playing for the last 10 years, with superficial differences. I had no need to learn to play my character in Aion, because I've done the same thing hundreds of times, and thus it wasn't fun for me.
People who haven't played many MMOs, or who are so addicted that they've convinced themselves they're playing something new and different, naturally have lower standards for what is and isn't fun.
If you have a negative opinion of the game then the fans will always place a new level milestone on "when it becomes fun".
Since Aion was just mentioned lets use that.
"I played to level 10 and Im not having fun"
The first 9 levels are just a tutorial, the fun starts at level 20
"I played until level 20 and Im not having fun"
You havent experienced the Abyss yet which is the main part of the game, the fun starts at level 25
"I played until level 25 and did the Abyss and Im not having fun"
Your character doesnt really start to come into its own until 40 and that when you can get into some good castle seiges
Basic game mechanics can be figured out by level 2. Knowing if you really like what you see can happen as early as level 5. There are some MMO's ive downloaded, installed, created a character and then played 5 minutes, logged out, uninstalled and loaded up WoW.
What you miss out on though when you do that is the Community, extras like the crafting and gathering systems dont get good till 20 some times 30+, unless your talking about wow, you normally dont see dungeons or experience group play.
But, if you didnt like the first 5 minutes, you dont CARE about all that other stuff. You dont have to go to 20, or 30, or endgame to like something. Group play doesnt change the fact that you dont like the world, crafting doesnt make it better. The community can be great, but if you dont like the game, that doesnt matter either.
As individuals we decide what we like and dont like. Theres always gonna be people that say," Your wrong, you didnt do something right because i love it, and if i love it then the world has got to!". But those people are usually less mature socially and dont recognize the fact that others people have opinions that are legit from that persons stand point.
We call those people Douchebags. And yes, you HAVE to call them douchebags..or ill flame you..o.O
The fundements of level based mmo's are that you get better, more caring for your character and status when you spend effort; level your character. So it is only natural that people simulate this to the fun scale. Level 1 is no fun and level 100 is major exclusive fun. Simply said. The fact is that it is very personal which game you like and don't. First comes fun, then the rest.
"This is very serious, Someone on the Internet doesn't like what you're doing"
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
Agree up to a point but a lot of those sort of threads start with something like:
"I'm bored therefore this game SUCKS and is total CRAP."
and not
"I'm bored so this game is probably not my cup of tea."
So a lot of the responding posts are emotional responses from people who like the game and not neccessarily that well thought out.
I think a lot of this "the game starts at endgame" attitude comes from trying to mix PvE games with a PvP endgame (or PvP at all really) - as often the people who want to PvP see the initial PvE bit as a huge grind but at the same time they don't want to PvP at low level (unless they can ubertwink somehow) so they're always aiming to race to max level as fast as possible while hating the levelling process.
I think the mmorpg genre would be much better if PvE and PvP had completely separate games.
The only thing I don't really like are people trying to throw around a review after they got to level 6 and didn't enjoy the game, and then deciding to throw around insults to players who actually do enjoy it.
It's fine if you didn't enjoy it. I can not get into EVE no matter how hard I try. That doesn't mean it's a bad game, it's just not for me. However I am not going to even try to "review" the game.
The problem is that a lot of these players will troll the shit out of the game, attacking it, attacking the players and making a lot of false claims -- before they even experienced the game. I've seen some people, for example, complain that they didn't have enough attacks. When you find out that in actuality they never got to level 10 it does make you wonder, because no one should expect to have a hundred unique abilities at level 5.
So that's my only real beef with it. You certainly can pass your own judgment on if a game is for you within the first few hours of gameplay (maybe more, maybe less). However you most certainly can not form a valid enough opinion on the actual game as a lot of what you try and talk about is all conjecture. I do agree that the "it gets better at xx level" rhetoric is old and tired, but sometimes a player really does need to experience up to a certain point in order to be able to form a decent (review friendly) opinion of the game.
Games also need to stop relying on the endgame for the only fun content. There are MMO's out there that are completely boring and thoroughly unenjoyable by 90% of players as far as progress through the game goes, but they have some of the best endgame content around. And more or less, most MMO's seem to follow the same trend. Endgame is important for retaining players, but it'd be nice to see more MMO's making the journey there fun as well, and not just a mindless onslaught of mob and quest grinding.
Personally, I think this is the biggest problem with games today.
Focus on the destination and not the journey. I think this mentality is why people buy RMT money. Must be Uber, as soon as possible.
I am not sure who's fault it is, The developers or the gamers.
One could argue that its the developers fault. If the game was fun at every level, maybe people wouldn't be in a hurry to get to the end-game. Maybe they wouldn't feel compelled to buy gold to afford items while putting in the minimum effort on their way to max level.Gameplay is only a grind if it FEELS like a grind, otherwise it's fun, right?
On the other hand, we have two different generations of gamers who could be to blame. The Old(me) and the young.
We have the Atari generation of gamers, who are getting older, have jobs and families, and a lot less time to play games now. So they wanna get a lot done in a short amount of time. Casual is the key word here....maximum rewardfor minimum time input. I hate to admit it, but once I became a game artist, and father...my hardcore days were kind of over. I love em, but I just don't have the time anymore....(shakes envious fist at those who still can).
Alternatively, we have the younger crowd. They've been raised in an environment of instant gratification. Cell phones, instant music downloads, instant messaging....instant is the key word. Now suddenly you put a game in front of them and say, "they cool stuff is at the end, have fun!" Is it a nice change or a challenge for them or as frustrating as having to call a friend but your cell's battery is dead.
In the end, I think its a chicken and the egg paradox. Everyone is to blame and no one is....so what does that mean?
I guess it will take one gutsy developer to completely reinvent the wheel, just when everyone is about fed up, and BOOM. true innovation.
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone
www.spankybus.com
-3d Artist & Compositor
-Writer
-Professional Amature
I can certainly appreciate your perspective and I believe you are making a fair assesment of how people should approach a new game.
That said, however, if you consider that most MMOs are designed for dozens, if not hundreds, of hours of "play time" for each character, I don't think it's a particularly unreasonable expectation that you have to put in some significant amount of time to accurately determine if a game is the right game for you or not or if it is indeed "fun 'to you'". Exactly how much time a "significant amount of time" is, nonetheless, is of course up to debate. I think there is a certain amount of truth to the fact that you have to give a game some time to get your mind fully wrapped around the game's "universe" and its mechanics, as well as the mechanics of the particular class you are playing. Granted, there are many mechanics that don't differ much from one game to the next, but sometimes there are nuances that aren't immediately recognizable (of course, some games have no nuance whatsoever).
Originally posted by spankybus
All of us have a game that we love, the one that was just insanely fun right from the start! Of course, all games cannot be like this...but it seems lately like some people here simply expect that the game will only be fun a certain percentage of the time.
I think just the opposite is true. It's not that a game is expected to be fun a certain percentage of the time, rather that some people, such as yourself, expect a game to be "fun" all the time and from the moment your character spawns into the world and this is perhaps an unreasonable expectation for a myriad of reasons.
I am by no means suggesting that one should "play until it is fun" because that is just silly. Just suggesting that sometimes it is true that you have to give a game some time to truly appreciate it fully.
"Ignorance begets confidence more often than does knowledge." - Charles Darwin
"It is far easier to be critical than to be correct." - Benjamin Disreali
"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way." - Mark Twain
It does not take me long to form an opinion of a game ( usually the first day ). In the cases of AoC and WAR, neither of which I liked, I found myself continuing to play for about a week just so I could feel like I didn't waste my money. In hindsight though, I should of just canceled my sub the first day because I still feel like I wasted $100.
To hell with other peoples arbitrary time commitment requirements. Cancel your sub the minute the game stops being fun.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
It depends on why you are saying the game is not for you.
If you don’t like the graphics then you can get a very quick impression of that. If you say you disliked the skill tree system and you only played to level 15 in a 50 level game then people are quite rightly going to question you.
Play it how you want brother...make your own judgement and dont listen to anyone else. Others influence how we feel all the time by spouting their opinions at us and we don't conciously align what others say with the way we feel but it does have a great deal of influence over how we feel. This concept is basically the same as hanging around with someone who is depressed all the time....eventually you too will become depressed.
Bingo. I was getting ready to post pretty much exactly this. I think the reason we see so many people defending the games they like on the forums is because of all of the negative posts.
I don't know about you but if I don't like a game I just don't play it. I don't feel the need to make a brand new post on why the game "sucks" or "failed" or "only idiots/kids/carebears" would like this sort of "crap".
Because of these hostile posts we get retaliatory remarks such the OP listed.
----------------------------------------------
To the OP: I'd like to use another example besides MMO games. Lets take a mountain biking forum, for example. Someone tries mountain biking and doesn't like it. So they go onto mtbikefans.com and post that mountain biking is stupid and gay. It doesn't take any skill to mountain bike and is for fat losers who can't mountain climb. Then they make some comment about going back to mountain climbing because it's hardcore and takes skill.
Then some offended mountain bikers come on and say basically the same things you quoted but replace X game with mountain biking.
Anyway.. what's my point? I forgot.
"There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
Which is perfectly fine. And I agree. People should not talk shit about a game they did not play all that much. They can post why they did not enjoy it, with reasons, and not THIS GAME SUX CUZ I SAID. Yet no matter how they say it, the fanbois of that game come crashing down on that person. Even if this person was just giving an opinion and not a "Don't play this game post".
I maaaaaayyyyyyyyy have done that once or twice with TOR, but obviously I was drunk or something when I said it. I know I have seen people try to tear into me when I mentioned I did not like a specific game.
I have a mixed reaction to the OP's thoughts.
I agree that games should be fun from the start, and that sometimes, you start a game and know really quickly if it's not going to be the game for you. For instance, I am sure that EVE is a great game that many people enjoy, but I only had to play for a very short time before I knew I just wasn't interested in that kind of game.
On the other hand, if you dismiss every game that's slow to start or that has an absolutely horrid tutorial stage, you'll miss some real gems. Also, sometimes it isn't the game, but the class-- some classes in some games just don't hit their stride until you get to a level where you finally get the defining abilities. (Is that poor design? I wouldn't argue if you said it was...)
...
This is where I draw the line: __________________.