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MMORPGs losing their luster?
taurak
Member Posts: 174
What is going on with all the new MMORPG'S today?
Its all the same thing. Instanced dungeons, instanced pvp, instanced raids with lockout timers...
Where is the fun in being in an instance nearly 90% of your game time?
Instances kill community. There is no interraction with other players outside of the random bored person spouting off obscenities in the general chat channels because they are so bored of questing alone. In most of these games there is NO bonus for questing with others whatsoever. Im not saying you should be forced to group to level, but for the love of god you shouldnt give an exp penalty to people that would like to level with friends.
Instanced dungeons? Boring... There is no interraction here either. I remember back in the Everquest days, "Train to zone!" now that was interaction. May have made some people upset at times, but you did get to know people that way. Camp Check? What happened to that?
Not to mention the fact that INSTANCES kill the game for everyone once they hit max level. What can you do? You wait for your little timers or whatever every week, go clear the instance, then youre bored. Nothing random about any of it, not even the days or times. Why even login the rest of the week when your timers are all used up? No random spawn bosses that drop nice items, its all on a pretty little timer that holds your hand for you all the way.
So now we just sit here waiting for that next MMORPG to hit the shelves. The one that has more instances, more pvp instances, and holds your hand for you all the way to max level and beyond. Why do we buy these games? Its because we are so sick of the old ones that we HOPE a new one will be worthwhile, then we have to sit and be disappointed for 2 more years till the next one comes out.
I hope some developers will read this thread, and look back to games like Dark Age of Camelot, and Everquest. Think about these games very hard, and think what led people to play these games for many years.
I think a lot of us games are getting tired of the run of the mill instance grind over and over, with quests that point the way in bright shiny signs. Please make another REAL MMORPG that is about finding new things in the worlds you create. Let us explore and look for new bosses that drop nice items, and PvP in meaningful ways outside of an instance!
Comments
What if the instanced dungeons were all unique for every character/group that entered them? Found in different places each time on the world?
Every time had a unique story, a unique history, a unique lore, unique mobs, and unique treasures you could find there.
Would that be a bit better? Or would you still prefer it to all be the same for everybody, open areas?
We buy the new games to alleviate boredom and for something new. We expect the same cage but with a different animal. Yes, innovation would be nice, but if every game took 5 more years to shove itself into a very extreme corner then we'd be bored in the meantime.
Maybe it's a slow era for innovation in MMOs. It will come with time, with technology and with brilliant minds. Until then, find something that you can play, something that is fun.. oh, what are those.. ah, yes, games.
Objectivity is delivered with a lack of personality made for the mainstream but never used for the mainstream.
Yeah I guess if you're going to have instances they might as well be at least partially procedurally generated.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
Zergfests and ganking FTW?
PvP is better when the numbers and power levels are close to equal. That is why instancing is good.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
It really doesn't sound like instancing is killing the community in the example you gave. It sounds like "Solo is the only way to level" is what's killing the community there.
The solution to that problem being that WOW (and other MMORPGs) really should balance solo vs. group leveling rates, with a slight advantage to grouping (to offset the inherent slowness of grouping.)
I never experienced EQ1 mob trains. Sounds like it results from overaggroing mobs, and penalizes you with an excessive amount of wasted time for such a simple mistake. Is that accurate?
And man..waiting on a 5-min quest boss spawn was bad enough in WOW. EQ sounded like it had a significant amount of gameplay revolving around waiting. Don't you want your time spent in a game to be spent playing the game?
I agree that the raiding game is terrible endgame. And based on the "What type of MMO do you want?" thread it seems a huge majority of players agree with you and I. Personally I just want a series of ever-harder dungeons to tackle, with ever-greater rewards. I'm not too picky about whether they're custom-crafted dungeons (WOW) or randomized (COX), although I think I lean a bit towards WOW style dungeons because the content quality is just so much higher in the long run.
And obviously most MMORPGs have been a bit shaky on providing a nice mix of difficulty. COX probably came closest, since you can set a global difficulty for the content you tackle...right from the start of a new character if you can handle it. And you get rewarded proportionally.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Sort of accurate but I don't think you're getting the full picture. Imagine a non-instanced dungeon with sixty-plus people spread out in the dungeon in groups of five or six. Now imagine one of those groups near the bottom of the dungeon bites off more than they can chew. Too many mobs agro on them at once for whatever reason.
Now imagine that dying means losing several hours worth of experience gain. That group of people near the bottom of the dungeon don't want to die. They run for their lives heading for the zone line at the entrance to the dungeon. Now imagine all the mobs they run past agroing on them as they go by. Now imagine that as these mobs chase the fleeing group through the dungeon they are very likely to peel off and dog pile on anyone who happens to be in their way. They will also agro on anyone they come close to on their way back to their spots.
Now imagine that you're in this dungeon and you see the shout, "TRAIN TO ZONE!" Did you feel a little prickle of fear? You should have. If you're on the path of that train you better get the hell out of the way. Your choices are to squeeze back into a corner or a side room or take off running yourself.
This led to some pretty crazy stuff sometimes. Nearly everyone in a dungeon simultaneously making a mad dash for the exit. Huge free-for-all fights at the zone line when people tried to "wreck" the train. It could definately be frustrating if it happened too often but at the same time it really added something to the game.
Instances, like everything else have their pluses and minuses.
Some people prefer to have do their dungeons w/o the issue of a "train' rolling by, they are more interested in completing the content and the goals they've set up for themselves.
I agree, this leads to a sterile wolrd, and when taken down to the solo level, really destroys what an MMORPG really should be.
Not quite sure how developers can reach a balance and keep everyone happy. I suspect it really can't be done.
As for MMO's losing their luster, I think that's somewhat inevitable. They are all pretty much the same these days, and there's really no value in dropping your current game for a new one other than it will have a higher player population.
At least for a short while anyways.
"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
Just received word that my copy of Champion's Online will be delivered by UPS today. I do not care, I have never been so unexcited about getting a new game in the mail. The boredom you talked about has already set in for me for MMO's in general. I reloaded Elder Scrolls: Oblivion about 2-3 weeks ago, added a bunch of mods and am having a great time playing it. No chat lines with their often moronic discussions of outside the game issues, no need for groups or guilds, just me and the challenge of the game. I may eventually play Champion's but I feel no rush to do it. Maybe when Secret World and/or World of Darkness come out I may feel differently but right now I am having too much fun by myself playing a game that has a storyline that you can play or ignore, and which has a lot to offer beyond the storyline. It also has a leveling dynamic which I have grown to love - no xp for killing mobs... you have major and minor skills - as you level the major skills you level your character. Not all of the skills are combat based so you can actually level without combat. Maybe I am just getting old enough to cherish my own imagination and the actual challenge of a game as opposed to having a lot of people to talk to and a storyline to keep me entertained.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
I used to like EQ a lot however I disagree instancing dungeons is the issue
Im very against instancing cities and social areas ..for example in AoC the guild cities and main ones can instance if to many people are in them to i presume stop everyone lag and crashing..
however when it comes to the old EQ dungeon firstly trains occured because mobs never gave up chasing so you literally had to zone out, they didnt have the intelligence to peel off however until the person zoned so that is inaccurate..once they zoned rather than make way back to position they attack anyone at all on the way back..
this i agree was quite exciting at early levels ..but was a disaster at later bottleneck areas where people fight night and day to camp and maintain camping of a single spawn..so in the end I thinkinstanced pve content is the way to go and allows for better quality design of that content by not having to lag everyone out as much using it.
With each new generation of mmo release I become more and more unhappy with the genre, and I find myself playing more and more single player games where there are no balance issues, no forced grouping to see all the content, no idiots clogging up zones, chat channels, stealing resrouce nodes, camping mobs, etc, etc.
I also find that mmos are slowly turning away from an emphasis on gaming and more to social networking applications where everyone stands around and chats while they do something boring and mundane like grinding for (fill in the blank).
I agree. Once had to turn off the common chat channel in LOTRO because 3 people were clogging it up with a discussion about a car show they were all going to.
It depended on what you were doing. If you were just standing there they would probably run past you but if you were fighting something there was a very good chance that mobs in the train would switch agro to you. And if you were just standing there, if you were close enough to get on their hate list then as soon as the guy they were chasing zoned out they would be coming for you.
Dynamic instancing could be a cool thing. I know they did that in DAoC to an extent, where the level of mobs inside the dungeon scaled based on the level of players inside the dungeon. It still stayed in a set level range, say lvl 10-20, but the mobs became higher level as you moved from 10-20 all the way up to lvl 22ish.
If they could make instances have dynamic mob spawns/placement and perhaps different bosses based on random chance and things like that it would spice things up quite a bit in my oppinion.
I really think they should have static dungeons also, along with instances. Areas that you can go to that have rare spawn bosses on long timers and things like that. Something that gives you a reason to leave capital cities instead of just standing waiting for a boring queue, or group.
The coolest thing with static dungeons is that it gave a leveling area in which you could go to, then ask in general chat if someone needed you for an exp group. You got to know people by exping together, just grinding in groups, or it could be done with group quests and things like that.
I have been playing MMOs for over 10 years myself. I think it is a good thing to have solo play that allows you to level. However, in games like WoW, outside of an instance, you get a big penalty by not questing alone.
I just dont know if there can be a happy median there, I would think yes, but I just dont know.
"I can always make much, much, much more XP in a group in a much shorter time than I can solo, they already have a tremendous advantage but most people still don't group for reasons that go beyond XP and loot."
In WOW? With the average PUG group? That hasn't been my experience. Plowing solo quests is reliably excellent XP, whereas even when I get a group competent enough to make it in the instance in less than 30 mins, it's not that amazing XP.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You'll have to help me out here....why is this a good thing?
To me, all I see is downsides: I'm either moderately penalized (running away = wasted time) or harshly penalized (death) all because some noob who wasn't even in my party pulled too much aggro.
The situation you described isn't fun.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Great post, OP.
You know, instance hatred is becoming more and more common. I'm not sure what finally brought about this change in opinion, but my guess would be the 3.2 WoW patch released recently. We're all experiencing instance overload. A lot of the people who were around for EQ, UO, and AC have been anti-instance for awhile, but it's good that more people are finally beginning to feel the constriction. It's clearly time for a change in design. They need to get rid of the big, flashy, scripted gameplay elements, and bring back the unexpected.
You'll have to help me out here....why is this a good thing?
To me, all I see is downsides: I'm either moderately penalized (running away = wasted time) or harshly penalized (death) all because some noob who wasn't even in my party pulled too much aggro.
The situation you described isn't fun.
well yes and no on the fun bit. It certainly adds FEAR to the game, and since I like challenging situations the element of FEAR does make it fun. I added a mod to the single player game I am playing that changed the spawns. Where once I would face a single mob or maybe 2 now I can face up to 8 or more - will I survive? Should I run away or stand and fight. It is an adrenaline rush, and to me that is fun. The other thing which should be in MMO's is that the aggressiveness lvl of the spawned mob changes with the spawn - sometimes the mob runs away or even sometimes the mobs fight themselves - I was in a dungeon and heard the sounds of a fight going on - the bandits holed up there had mostly killed themselves off before I got there. This was ok for me because you don't get xp for kills in this game and I got the pick of all the loot after I finished off the survivors. The point is that you just never know in this game what is going to happen - will the next mob be more than you can handle? If there is more than 1 will it be you vs them or a free for all? The adrenaline rush is amazing. In my opinion most MMO's that I have played, and I have played about a dozen over the years do not provide that level of adrenaline much. I played the original Asheron's Call a little and it had some, and Shadowbane had some because if you were farming other players would come to kill you... but never to the level I get from the single player game (modded) that I am playing now.
Yeeeahh...I think this may be one of those "you had to be there" things.
When it happened I doubt if very many (if any) people ever sincerely said, "Hey! That was fun! Let's do it again!" But there was a sort of "Damn! Did you see that?" aspect to it, sort of like seeing a huge pile up on a highway.
Look..how do I explain this? It was frustrating but at the same time it broke up the monotony of grinding. It could get you killed and cost you a lot of lost experience but it also gave you a very real adrenaline rush. It might make you angry at the guy who caused it but at the same time it made you feel a sort of bond with all the other people in the dungeon when you all got caught up in this mess together.
The sheer craziness of it generated stories you told to your friends, which is saying something for a video game.
As for wasted time <shrug> all the time we spend in these games is wasted. Getting some genuine excitement out of it occassionally is perhaps not the worst use of our gaming time. And the penalty for dying, which did happen to all of us sometimes in trains, well, as they say we wouldn't appreciate the summer so much if we never had winter.
As for wasted time <shrug> all the time we spend in these games is wasted.
I disagree, anything that takes me out of a stressful life and provides some entertainment is not wasted, is in fact healthy to a point. think of it as therapy. For me coming home stressed and perhaps angry and then killing video monster or bad guys is therapy - I get out my frustration, do not go to jail for hurting real people, and do not have to pay thousands of dollars to a therapist. Just sit at my computer and kill the bad guys... that's how I look at it anyways, so it is not time wasted it is time spent reducing stress - maybe more people should play video games, eh?
While I do feel a lot of MMORPG's are losing their luster, I think it's mainly because it's more of a "been there, done that" kind of thing. Sure you get new things like open public questing and new trends capture the imagination, it really is only a variation of the basic grind.
Instancing is not the problem either. It was a solution to the insane camp grinds and "TRAIN TO ZONE!!" issues that EQ1 had. And yes I played in many a zone where that happened. Karnors was notoriously bad. But add that it may have agroed a lot, most people were either removed from the train by being offset from it or in a different area altogether.
Add that Boss level mobs, non instanced created huge bottlenecks where you either had to get guild leaders from the server together to get raids "scheduled" or it was just a massive zergfest to get to Nagafen and Vox, and the group that raided the earliest won. That's bad design.
Thus instanced raids became vogue in WoW, and it really is/was a better way to raid. Add that raids became toned down to the extent that they weren't 8 hour grindfests to get to a boss. And yes, I played a monk, and I pulled Plane of Hate, and Plane of Fear before Kunark came out too. Those, while fun in the beginning, became mind numbing, especially for the pullers (read monks as they were the only ones equipped to do it back then).
Also add that a big fault of EQ was that after a certain point in the game, unless you were certain classes, you just couldn't solo. Which meant that you had to just hang out for a while, while LFG, that could mean you logged on for 2 hours and spent that time LFG and didn't do anything. That's also bad design. Granted, for the most part, when you did get a group, it typically wasn't bad, because even pugging back then, most players were competent, not like WoW is today where you really don't know what you're gonna get.
Personally, at least IMO, the thing that killed EQ more than anything else was AA's (alternate advance levels for those that never played. meaning you could get side XP instead of normal xp for additional bonuses). The reason I say this is because it got to the point that it wasn't unusual for someone to have 500+AA's. And even at max level, and max AA xps, it was still about 3 AA's per normal leveling XP, thus you had to re-grind all your levels back another 4x. Moste decent guilds required this. Thus it got to the point that it wasn't worth it for new players to even try as it would literally take at least a year for this to happen. Obvious bad design.
But I think in terms of OP's title, what is hurting the new MMO's coming on the market is that they are incomplete. They are releasing games that should realistically have stayed in beta for another 3 or 4 months. That in and of itself causes disallusionment from MMO's. Just look at Warhammer, AoC, and the just released Champions. Things that needed to be done, should be done. The classic example is AoC where they said Directx10 ready on the box, and it wasn't in the game at launch.
"Where once I would face a single mob or maybe 2 now I can face up to 8 or more - will I survive? Should I run away or stand and fight. It is an adrenaline rush, and to me that is fun."
Oh I want difficult games. But nothing about unnecessary brutal punishment makes a game more difficult. It just makes a game less fun.
In most other genres you start a level over or continue from a saved checkpoint. Obviously for non-instanced content in an MMO this can't be duplicated 100% (although for instanced content, reseting players to the start when the entire group wipes is fair.)
"The sheer craziness of it generated stories you told to your friends, which is saying something for a video game."
Similar to above, I want "sheer craziness" moments too. I even want them to be the result of player randomness sometimes. I just don't want to suffer at the hands of player stupidity. That happens enough in normal grouping situations - game design doesn't need to contribute too.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I died in MMO's many times because of grouping with players who either didn't know what they were doing or were in it only for themselves and left the minute they had what they wanted, leaving behind a group without a healer or a tank or whatever. I then played solo mostly till I got annoyed with the people who told me that I was ruining their game by soloing and not joining their group. More I think on it the more I realize that I like single player games better. Only person who complains when I play them is my GF.
Please refine your complaint to private instances, public instances is the way to go. Ever play FFXI? Somewhere around level 30 theres like only one place to go (grind mandragoras), well suck for you if its primetime and every good camp spot is taken. You can go ahead and be rude and camp on top of someone, but most sit idly by and camp check. You cant PVP you out a spot, you just wait. This is just poor gameplay design and where instancing can come in handy.
Well the difference between open world meatheads and the ones in your party is that you have control over whose party you join (or who you invite.)
So much control, in fact, that you can choose to do exactly what you did: solo. :P
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver