It's funny because I can see eaxactly the point he is making.To explain one of the pairings I'll take EQ to WoW. EQ >>> WoW --- A challenge to level >>> Easy to level (and subsequently unrewarding) --- Group oriented >>> Solo oriented (and subsequently non-existant community) --- Primarily non-instanced dungeons >>> Primarily instanced dungeons (again damages community and removes any variation in play experience, everything becomes a repetitive grind as it removes player interaction from the mix) --- Open PvP >>> Instanced PvP (again community is damaged and any variables in play experience are negated)
And you are mostly wrong in these accoutns.
EQ hard to level? Find a green, kill. Wait for it to respawn. Repeat. Not very tough, and nothing is dumbed down from this. You can still do this in any game, its not any dumber.
Group oriented? Eh, not sure on this one. Community. Not really a dumb/not dumb issue.
Instanced. Wrong. Instancing just gives the developer more control over what you encounter. They could just as easily force all your instances to be against reds, and the game would be much harder. But even then, the in the open world games, you could fall back to killing greens. So in principle, the open world games are easier. Dumbed down. In practice its about even.
PvP don't really do it much. But again community is a non issue.
I was not referring to the difficulty of the levelling curve, but the time required. There is no disputing that times to reach the level cap have been reduced or 'dumbed down' in ALL recent MMOs. The devs have done this to appeal to more casual players as well as to respond to the fallacy that the game starts at end-game and thus everyone needs to get there as fast as possible. The problem is that in both cases they are wrong; casual players don't need faster levelling time, they just need to be able to get something done in a short space of time, and a harsh levelling cruve does not affect that. Raiding is not the 'start' of the game, because if that were true then there'd be no point in having levels at all. Levelling has been simplified for the hell of it as the devs can't be bothered to work out another system that would better suit the demands of modern gamers. I'm pretty sure this is why there's such a growing demand for sandbox style character progression now.
The rest of your post is just wrong. You completely dismiss community as a key point in making a good MMO when the entire concept of the genre is that you are interacting with other players. Community is arguably THE most important thing in an MMO and if you haven't played one that actually has a solid community then you don't really have any place responding to this as you wouldn't be able to understand. To put it in RPG terms, 'community' normally operates like the LUCK stat. It never seems to affect anything directly but EVERYTHING is ultimately improved by it. Unless you'd played a community centric MMO and actually become involved in the entire server community it's value would be lost on you. The most significant result of a strong community, I've found, is that levelling becomes much less of a race, you generally have fun just doing anything in the game because you can see the actual contributions you're making and thus you have no inane obsession with reaching the cap just to 'start' playing the game.
As for grouping, when people don't have to group as much they take the path of least resistance and just solo all the time. Everyone will always say 'well the option is there to group' but it doesn't work like that as MMOs are competitive in nature and finding anyone to group with in a game that has no reason to group is like getting blood from a stone. When someone spends most of their time soloing you end up with a series of disconnects with the rest of the game:
--- They have little to no idea of how to play their character in a group environment despite the 'endgame' being entirely focussed on exactly that. This seems rather arbitrary. And remember, you can't argue that they don't need to know before endgame since to do that would be agreeing with me that levelling is pretty much a redundant concept in WoW, and that situation is also the result of being 'dumbed down'. I recognise that this is somewhat resolved in WoW's new dungeon finder but that actually exacerbates the instancing issue which I'll get onto again in a minute.
--- They know absolutely no one. Barring IRL friends, most people I know who've played WoW have not made a significant friendship with another player before they reach the level cap. Again this is arbitrary since the entire endgame relies on players working together and necessitates such relationships.
Instancing, btw, does not just give the devs more tools. It truly does damage the community. As an example I'll look at public dungeons. In an instance you are the only players there, you know the mobs will always follow the same AI routines and you know there is zero chance of any other variable affecting you. This leads to repetitive grind; nothing changes on multiple runs through the instance, it loses any sense of challenge as you grow accustomed to the static encounters, and it quickly becomes boring. You also never meet anyone new, there's no chance of you bumping into anyone halfway down, there's no chance of you arriving just in time to save a group before they wipe, or rez their healer if they already have wiped, there's no chance of you picking up stragglers on the way down, and most of all there is almost no chance of you chatting to anyone. By chatting I mean actually having a conversation, not discussing boss tactics or having a go at someone for screwing up. This is only made worse by WoW's dungeon finder system since most of the players you end up with aren't even on your server so if you somehow did strike up a conversation or make a good friendhsip with them you'd never be able to play alongside them.
To put it differently, in EQ2 (which was actually a pretty good game despite it's teething problems) I ran one dungeon for several weeks. I mean I spent all of my playing time in that dungeon. I never got bored with it because every time I went in things would play out differently. There were multiple routes to the bottom so it never felt like I was running the same content (and, for that matter, reaching the bottom was no simple task, the dungeon was huge which is another example of dumbing down as modern dunegons are linear and extremely short) there were many other players in there both assisting and obstructing our progress and this added a great deal of variation to the experience and kept things interesting. Compare this to WoW's instances... most players are bored of them after a couple of runs but only continue to run them for the loot.
Also the part about "They could just as easily force all your instances to be against reds, and the game would be much harder. But even then, the in the open world games, you could fall back to killing greens. So in principle, the open world games are easier." You do realise that this makes no sense right? Players in instanced games could also just as easily go and kill greens in a lower level instance. The devs could just as easily alter the difficulty of mobs in an open world game to be reds.Players would never actually do this, of course, as these things are built on the concept of risk vs reward. To go and kill greens would give no significant reward and thus no one would bother.
Your point on PvP is actually laughable. You admit to having no experience in it and then go on to suggest you even know what you're talking about. In WoW, PvP community truly is a non-issue, yes. But that that is the direct result of instancing (feel free to re-read that paragraph to remind yourself of why instancing damages communities). No need to argue that WoW has open PvP servers; open PvP died in that game when they released battlegrounds. PvP instances make scenarios feel repetitive again, they turn PvP into a grind, things are overly balanced and sterile. Just like in the dungeons example, there is little room for variations in play experience and thus boredom sets in much quicker.
Now look at open PvP in a game that didn't gut it with instancing. Look at DAOC, there was something in that game commonly referred to as 'realm pride'. It was essentially virtual patriotism to whatever faction a player belonged. Now how can you even think to suggest that community is a non-issue in PvP? By having three factions the players balanced themselves and since everything was open no two fights would feel the same. Everything was dynamic and players had to react to that, it didn't get boring, unlike instanced PvP.
Community is one of those issues that devs need to be aware of so they can know when to ignore player whining, something that Blizzard has seemingly lost the ability to do. Yes it made them a lot of money, but it's also degraded the game and 'dumbed it down' a hell of a lot. The majority of the people that the game now appeals to are casual players who wouldn't notice the issues I've pointed out because they would never have been able to experience the benefits of a strong community in the first place. People whine when they get ganked, they whine when things are too hard, they whine most of all when they need to rely on other players or are forced into interaction. What they never realise is that those interactions are what make MMOs fun, they're what make them different to single player games. Without the community factors players find themselves just grinding day in, day out. They have no fun playing the game any more but continue to log in just for the loot.
I know people are suggesting that the term 'dumbed down' is widely overused, and often incorrectly so, and I'd agree with that. But just look at the term: to 'dumb' something down implies to make it simpler, in a negative way, in the interests of wider appeal. I'll go so far as to admit that it is elitist in nature. Effectively player A likes something, that something is then simplified to appeal more to players B and C who don't play games as much but they make the company more money. Player A no longer likes what the game has become, it is now too easy for him and he finds it boring, it's just not fun any more. Player A leaves the game because it has been 'dumbed down' to appeal to newer players with shorter attention spans, less time to play and no desire to interact with other players. The genre that his subscription fees have helped to create has changed into something he dislikes. You can't really blame him for criticising the process.
Do you honestly not see any evidence of this in modern MMOs?
Far from being a non-issue i would say that community is a very big issue, and i agree with almost everything Alberel says in fact, it is something that will make a good game great, or if handled badly, terrible. Daoc had, without a doubt a really good community spirit, but it was a game that encouraged people to work together, and of course to compete against each other, but not as individuals, SWG was yet another game, awesome community, a game where all you had was a survival knife and a melon... everything in the game was made by another player, there was a great deal of interdependance, a reason really, for players to work together, build cities that were most often guild based, then again of course, there was the factional warfare, it wasnt really handled that well but it was 'good enough' at the time.. to say that community had an effect on the game is highlighted by the fact that when SOE effectively attacked that community, the game almost died, in fact i dont think its ever recovered from it. So imo, the more you dumb down games, the more soloable you make them, the less fun they will be, because imo, MMO's are all about community, social interraction and cooperation.
Dumbed down is when people publish dumb things on a forum about brilliant games. The combined design talent of all mmorpg.com posters is about 0.05% of Blizzards design team. That's a perfect example of "dumbed down". MMORPG.COM is full of it. And apparently there ain't much talent around either when you see the mmo duds of the last 3 years. Who knows some of the above even work for some companies. it would explain a lot.
As opposed to vague mumblings of discontent over .. what exactly? do you disagree with the issue of games being dumbed down, or with specific games that perhaps you think arent? everyone is entitled to an opinion, but far better don't you think, to say why its your opinion?
Dumbed down is when people publish dumb things on a forum about brilliant games. The combined design talent of all mmorpg.com posters is about 0.05% of Blizzards design team. That's a perfect example of "dumbed down". MMORPG.COM is full of it. And apparently there ain't much talent around either when you see the mmo duds of the last 3 years. Who knows some of the above even work for some companies. it would explain a lot.
As opposed to vague mumblings of discontent over .. what exactly? do you disagree with the issue of games being dumbed down, or with specific games that perhaps you think arent? everyone is entitled to an opinion, but far better don't you think, to say why its your opinion?
Well it is quite obvious:
"The combined design talent of all mmorpg.com posters is about 0.05% of Blizzards design team."
That's a perfect example of having dumb discussions about "dumbing down" in designs.
All video games are dumbed down experiences btw.
... or is the grading between intelligent and dumb dependant on the number of hours you are sitting in front of a monitor screen ?
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
If anything 'dumbed down' refers to levelling curve. Something that requires you to be not dumb. Or are you saying the 'dumbed down' phrase can mean practically anything you want, anything bad that is. Yes, the time to the top is shortened, doesn't quite seem to demand the phrase dumbed down. Is anyone complaining and/or starting threads asking for level 2 to take a week instead of a day? "The game would be so much better if i have to kill 1000 bunnies instead of 10 to level!"
What you DO see complaints of is "The game is so easy, i can win just by using auto-attack".
I only dismiss community with respect to the phrase dumbed down. And i am only luke warm on that dismisal. Whether it makes for a good game doesn't apply to this thread. Start another thread and i'd be happy to join in.
My point on pvp was poorly written. I didn't say much, because i don't do it much. I didn't say you were wrong, because i don't have much knowledge on that area. I just reiterated that community seems to have little to do with dumbing down.
Regarding instancing, you state that the players could pick a green instance. And who says they can do that? The devs. Instances will be whatever difficulty they want. Thats the point of instances. It may not be possible for an instance to be green to you (if thats what the devs want). So your argument against instances is wrong. It will usually be harder to level with a game with instances than one without.
Devs increasing open world mobs to be all red? Red to who? There are 2 players there, one level 10, one level 30. The 10 attacks it. Does it change to red to him (but still green to the 30?) Or are you saying it finds the max level of everyone in the area and makes it red so that no one can advance in the game and everyone stays level 1. No, it doesn't work that way. The point of the open world is that they don't do that. The point of instances is that they can change the mob to match the pc so the pc doesn't feel the need to grind to get to the level needed to win.
It doesn't have to do with 'dumbing down', but i often met new people in the STO instances, i had my settings set to 'open instance', which meant that anyone who was doing the same instance could join in.
Evidence of negative simplification? You kind of have to be very specific. Negative? Simple?
Part of me wants to say that RPGS are supposed to be simple. You never needed to know the rules. You never needed to be a genius or athletic. You didn't need to make your own maps. Or keep track of loot tables. A newbie could join with an ongoing game and do just fine. That was the whole point. The complexity was hidden by the GM. They did the tough part, the players just had fun. To the extent people need to consult websites, or make lists of mobs to kill, the games have lost their goal. If the game is simple enough that nonsense like that isn't needed, well, they are approaching the RPG ideal.
But that of course is the easy part, the hard part is in making immersive games with interesting storylines, and thats a different thread.
Dumbed down is when people publish dumb things on a forum about brilliant games. The combined design talent of all mmorpg.com posters is about 0.05% of Blizzards design team. That's a perfect example of "dumbed down". MMORPG.COM is full of it. And apparently there ain't much talent around either when you see the mmo duds of the last 3 years. Who knows some of the above even work for some companies. it would explain a lot.
As opposed to vague mumblings of discontent over .. what exactly? do you disagree with the issue of games being dumbed down, or with specific games that perhaps you think arent? everyone is entitled to an opinion, but far better don't you think, to say why its your opinion?
Well it is quite obvious:
"The combined design talent of all mmorpg.com posters is about 0.05% of Blizzards design team."
That's a perfect example of having dumb discussions about "dumbing down" in designs.
All video games are dumbed down experiences btw.
... or is the grading between intelligent and dumb dependant on the number of hours you are sitting in front of a monitor screen ?
obvious ? hardly, but your allusion to the users of MMORPG is odd to say the least. the rest is mostly irrelevant..
<p>If anything 'dumbed down' refers to levelling curve. Something that requires you to be not dumb. Or are you saying the 'dumbed down' phrase can mean practically anything you want, anything bad that is. Yes, the time to the top is shortened, doesn't quite seem to demand the phrase dumbed down. Is anyone complaining and/or starting threads asking for level 2 to take a week instead of a day? "The game would be so much better if i have to kill 1000 bunnies instead of 10 to level!"</p>
<p>What you DO see complaints of is "The game is so easy, i can win just by using auto-attack".</p>
<p>I only dismiss community with respect to the phrase dumbed down. And i am only luke warm on that dismisal. Whether it makes for a good game doesn't apply to this thread. Start another thread and i'd be happy to join in.</p>
<p>My point on pvp was poorly written. I didn't say much, because i don't do it much. I didn't say you were wrong, because i don't have much knowledge on that area. I just reiterated that community seems to have little to do with dumbing down.</p>
<p>Regarding instancing, you state that the players could pick a green instance. And who says they can do that? The devs. Instances will be whatever difficulty they (the devs) want. Thats the point of instances. It may not be possible for an instance to be green to you (if thats what the devs want). So your argument against instances is wrong. It will usually be harder to level with a game with instances than one without.</p>
<p>Devs increasing open world mobs to be all red? Red to who? There are 2 players there, one level 10, one level 30. The 10 attacks it. Does it change to red to him (but still green to the 30?) Or are you saying it finds the max level of everyone in the area and makes it red so that no one can advance in the game and everyone stays level 1. No, it doesn't work that way. The point of the open world is that they don't do that. The point of instances is that they can change the mob to match the pc so the pc doesn't feel the need to grind to get to the level needed to win.</p>
<p>It doesn't have anything to do with 'dumbing down', but i often met new people in the STO instances, i had my settings set to 'open instance', which meant that anyone who was doing the same instance could join in.</p>
<p>Evidence of negative simplification? You kind of have to be very specific. Negative? Simple?</p>
<p>Part of me wants to say that RPGS are supposed to be simple. You never needed to know the rules. You never needed to be a genius or athletic. You didn't need to make your own maps. Or keep track of loot tables. A newbie could join with an ongoing game and do just fine. That was the whole point. The complexity was hidden by the GM. They did the tough part, the players just had fun. To the extent people need to consult websites, or make lists of mobs to kill, the games have lost their goal. If the game is simple enough that nonsense like that isn't needed, well, they are approaching the RPG ideal.</p>
<p>But that of course is the easy part, the hard part is in making immersive games with interesting storylines, and thats a different thread.<br />
The formatting seems to have screwed up so I apologise in advance if I missed anything in your post.
The problem I'm starting to see through this thread is that it's not possible to look at each of the features of an MMO in isolation with regards to 'dumbing down'. There are a lot of knock-on effects. For example, dumbing down with regards to time it takes to level would be a non-issue if levelling was actually fun. The problem is that it's not fun at all in the current gen of soloable MMOs because the devs build everything around endgame.
And to your point about killing 10 or 1000 bunnies. If you look at it differently in terms of quests... I wouldn't mind if it took 10 quests to reach the cap if those quests were long, involving and fun. The amount of time it takes to level does not necessarily equate to the amount of repetition and subsequent grind. I remember at launch EQ2 had a significantly steeper levelling curve than WoW and thus took a lot longer, yet ironically WoW actually feels grindier as its quests are pointless and uninteresting. In EQ2 I didn't even need to focus on levelling since I got great xp just by dungeon crawling, something I did for the fun of it as opposed to just to get xp. This is the point I was trying to make. Rather than try to make the levelling process any more fun, or interesting, the devs just make it shorter so players don't have to endure it for as long. As a result the game may as well not even have levels as no one finds the levelling fun, and like you said, fun is exactly what they were originally meant to be.
With regards to making instances or open world mobs all red, I'm aware that doing that to an open world environment wouldn't work. I was trying to highlight the arbitrary nature of such a feature in instancing. To prevent players from experiencing lower level content both wastes such content and frustrates the players that actually wish to experience it just for the fun of it. The risk/reward concept that most MMOs employ ensures that players face off against even encounters so that sort of scaling really isn't necessary. Scaling may prevent a grind for players to be able to win, sure, but it actually creates a new grind. Remember how unpopular the level scaling system was in Oblivion? Players don't like scaling because then the challenge always remains the same. Players like to be able to put themselves up against greater and greater odds of defeat... as well as occasionally just some easy trash for the hell of it. Scaling makes things grindy because they never change, which makes the problems I highlighted about instances in my previous post even worse. I won't even start to go into the fact that systems like these make the games feel less and less like virtual worlds and more and more like a game lobby.
I agree that RPGs need to be simple, simplicicity itself isn't the problem. The problems start to arise when this simplicity makes it hard for players to feel like they're actually any good at what they're doing. If things are too simple then anyone can do it and thus any sense of achievement is lost. There needs to be some level of distinction between good and bad players; the good players who can, and the bad players who can't. Without this there is no risk of being unsuccessful and, therefore, no reward when you are successful. This is the negative simplification that I'm talking of. To put it bluntly the genre is oversimplifying things to the point that anyone can do it... When anyone can do something how can you feel like you've achieved anything?
Quest-for-exp systems. In older MMORPGs you could travel anywhere, level anywhere. There weren't any quests telling you: kill 5 scarab beetles, kill them again, kill them again. etc. What's most ridiculous is people defend these quest systems, as if they are more interesting than finding exp spots on their own.
Maps. What happened to looking at your screen when traveling? I guess companies thought players were too dumb to navigate using some kind of /loc system like EQ had. I remember traveling in WoW, you don't even look at the world, you just have your map up and watch an arrow basically. Brainless kind of travel
Instanced PVE. Instances tend to be implemented linearly, you go from start to finish. There is not "lets take this path instead of that one". You always know where to go in an instance. Contrast this with a game like EQ where the zones were massive and you picked what camp you wanted.
I can't think of one instance in WoW where you wouldn't just clear the whole thing.. because the bosses are all on the path to the end. Plus the instances aren't even persistent. The boss locations and spawns are predictable, all you have to do is start a new instance and your bosses are at locations X,Y, and Z. In EQ, it required people to know where rare spawns were, tricks to spawning them, etc.
EQ wasn't linear, and WoW was. WoW is dumbed down and linear, why else would it be popular?
Know what dumbs down MMORPGS? Quest-for-exp systems. In older MMORPGs you could travel anywhere, level anywhere. There weren't any quests telling you: kill 5 scarab beetles, kill them again, kill them again. etc. What's most ridiculous is people defend these quest systems, as if they are more interesting than finding exp spots on their own. Maps. What happened to looking at your screen when traveling? I guess companies thought players were too dumb to navigate using some kind of /loc system like EQ had. I remember traveling in WoW, you don't even look at the world, you just have your map up and watch an arrow basically. Brainless kind of travel Instanced PVE. Instances tend to be implemented linearly, you go from start to finish. There is not "lets take this path instead of that one". You always know where to go in an instance. Contrast this with a game like EQ where the zones were massive and you picked what camp you wanted. I can't think of one instance in WoW where you wouldn't just clear the whole thing.. because the bosses are all on the path to the end. Plus the instances aren't even persistent. The boss locations and spawns are predictable, all you have to do is start a new instance and your bosses are at locations X,Y, and Z. In EQ, it required people to know where rare spawns were, tricks to spawning them, etc. EQ wasn't linear, and WoW was. WoW is dumbed down and linear, why else would it be popular?
.... isnt WoW's format largely based on the EQ one.. ?
Know what dumbs down MMORPGS? Quest-for-exp systems. In older MMORPGs you could travel anywhere, level anywhere. There weren't any quests telling you: kill 5 scarab beetles, kill them again, kill them again. etc. What's most ridiculous is people defend these quest systems, as if they are more interesting than finding exp spots on their own. Maps. What happened to looking at your screen when traveling? I guess companies thought players were too dumb to navigate using some kind of /loc system like EQ had. I remember traveling in WoW, you don't even look at the world, you just have your map up and watch an arrow basically. Brainless kind of travel Instanced PVE. Instances tend to be implemented linearly, you go from start to finish. There is not "lets take this path instead of that one". You always know where to go in an instance. Contrast this with a game like EQ where the zones were massive and you picked what camp you wanted. I can't think of one instance in WoW where you wouldn't just clear the whole thing.. because the bosses are all on the path to the end. Plus the instances aren't even persistent. The boss locations and spawns are predictable, all you have to do is start a new instance and your bosses are at locations X,Y, and Z. In EQ, it required people to know where rare spawns were, tricks to spawning them, etc. EQ wasn't linear, and WoW was. WoW is dumbed down and linear, why else would it be popular?
.... isnt WoW's format largely based on the EQ one.. ?
Know what dumbs down MMORPGS? Quest-for-exp systems. In older MMORPGs you could travel anywhere, level anywhere. There weren't any quests telling you: kill 5 scarab beetles, kill them again, kill them again. etc. What's most ridiculous is people defend these quest systems, as if they are more interesting than finding exp spots on their own. Maps. What happened to looking at your screen when traveling? I guess companies thought players were too dumb to navigate using some kind of /loc system like EQ had. I remember traveling in WoW, you don't even look at the world, you just have your map up and watch an arrow basically. Brainless kind of travel Instanced PVE. Instances tend to be implemented linearly, you go from start to finish. There is not "lets take this path instead of that one". You always know where to go in an instance. Contrast this with a game like EQ where the zones were massive and you picked what camp you wanted. I can't think of one instance in WoW where you wouldn't just clear the whole thing.. because the bosses are all on the path to the end. Plus the instances aren't even persistent. The boss locations and spawns are predictable, all you have to do is start a new instance and your bosses are at locations X,Y, and Z. In EQ, it required people to know where rare spawns were, tricks to spawning them, etc. EQ wasn't linear, and WoW was. WoW is dumbed down and linear, why else would it be popular?
.... isnt WoW's format largely based on the EQ one.. ?
No, not even close
In terms of gear/expansion/raid grind, yes.
In terms of world construction, quests, leveling, social atmosphere, depth, not even close.
Know what dumbs down MMORPGS? Quest-for-exp systems. In older MMORPGs you could travel anywhere, level anywhere. There weren't any quests telling you: kill 5 scarab beetles, kill them again, kill them again. etc. What's most ridiculous is people defend these quest systems, as if they are more interesting than finding exp spots on their own. Maps. What happened to looking at your screen when traveling? I guess companies thought players were too dumb to navigate using some kind of /loc system like EQ had. I remember traveling in WoW, you don't even look at the world, you just have your map up and watch an arrow basically. Brainless kind of travel Instanced PVE. Instances tend to be implemented linearly, you go from start to finish. There is not "lets take this path instead of that one". You always know where to go in an instance. Contrast this with a game like EQ where the zones were massive and you picked what camp you wanted. I can't think of one instance in WoW where you wouldn't just clear the whole thing.. because the bosses are all on the path to the end. Plus the instances aren't even persistent. The boss locations and spawns are predictable, all you have to do is start a new instance and your bosses are at locations X,Y, and Z. In EQ, it required people to know where rare spawns were, tricks to spawning them, etc. EQ wasn't linear, and WoW was. WoW is dumbed down and linear, why else would it be popular?
.... isnt WoW's format largely based on the EQ one.. ?
No, not even close
In terms of gear/expansion/raid grind, yes.
In terms of world construction, quests, leveling, social atmosphere, depth, not even close.
Gear? No. everyone has the same gear in WoW. How many people in EQ would have something like a Sceptre of Destruction or Fungi Tunic? Not the whole server, like in WoW.
Raid grind? No. EQ raids were actually challenging. EQ raids weren't so forgiving either.
If you compare game features at their most rudimentary levels, sure you can try to equate them. EQ had character stats, Wow had character stats. You kill things and do quests for experience in both games. You have tanks and healers in both games. And so on.
But that's not a fair comparison. Checkers and chess are both played on boards. They both involve the movement of pieces. In both games you can capture the other player's pieces, and advance the power of one of your own pieces by arriving at the first rank of your opponent's side of the board. However, checkers is not nearly as difficult and substantive a game as chess.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
You used Command and Conquer 3 as an example. I raise with "Black Shark". PC games can be much more advanced, "intelligent" so to speak, than a console game. "Black shark" is the most extreme example of this.
Know what dumbs down MMORPGS? Quest-for-exp systems. In older MMORPGs you could travel anywhere, level anywhere. There weren't any quests telling you: kill 5 scarab beetles, kill them again, kill them again. etc. What's most ridiculous is people defend these quest systems, as if they are more interesting than finding exp spots on their own. Maps. What happened to looking at your screen when traveling? I guess companies thought players were too dumb to navigate using some kind of /loc system like EQ had. I remember traveling in WoW, you don't even look at the world, you just have your map up and watch an arrow basically. Brainless kind of travel Instanced PVE. Instances tend to be implemented linearly, you go from start to finish. There is not "lets take this path instead of that one". You always know where to go in an instance. Contrast this with a game like EQ where the zones were massive and you picked what camp you wanted. I can't think of one instance in WoW where you wouldn't just clear the whole thing.. because the bosses are all on the path to the end. Plus the instances aren't even persistent. The boss locations and spawns are predictable, all you have to do is start a new instance and your bosses are at locations X,Y, and Z. In EQ, it required people to know where rare spawns were, tricks to spawning them, etc. EQ wasn't linear, and WoW was. WoW is dumbed down and linear, why else would it be popular?
I really wish you were a Developer or some big MMO company would hire you. To bring us all back to REAL MMO gaming, the way it was meant to be...putting thoughts into your actions and paying for mistakes.
I sure know back in the days a 8 yr olds had no clue on the way EQ played or how to survive it, because there were not many young kids at all playing it. (I was playing EQ since Beta)
In WoW today, there are actually 8 yr olds understanding it and playing it. MMO Devs are catering more to a younger crowd than those that put in their sweat and tears to make all the MMOS of today possible.
I'm still waiting for that MMO where you have to use your mind to play it and not AFK your way thru. I want the MMO where 13 yr olds find it too difficult to play or understand.
I want an MMO where penalties hurt your character:
In WoW if you screw up(just an example)..Blizzard pats you on the back, tells you it's ok and you move on..Is that fun? Not really, since you had no adrenaline rush at all during that process.
In a (hope to see) future MMO I want to see you lose gear, exp ect and really feel your heart pound when you screw up, having to re-collect exp, lost gear ect...to really draw you in (UO Pre-trammel).
Your actions really having consequences, not just a repair bill and a slap on the wrist.
I do not want to be fed Gameplay for an 8 yr old. Give me gameplay and content suitable for an older gamers mindset.
MMOs are not supposed to be rated downward...16 and below (It's starting to lean that way in WoW).
Dont get me wrong here..I even played WoW from Beta till about 3 weeks ago. It is a great game for the most part. It's when the challenge gets removed and the handfeeding that starts...contributing to me leaving it for now.
If Cata does not re-introduce the aspects of a harsher death penalty and more challenging gameplay to give us older gamers something to look forward to, I would see no reason to return but wait for an MMO that puts the *GASP* into the game rather than the *YAWN*.
Know what dumbs down MMORPGS? Quest-for-exp systems. In older MMORPGs you could travel anywhere, level anywhere. There weren't any quests telling you: kill 5 scarab beetles, kill them again, kill them again. etc. What's most ridiculous is people defend these quest systems, as if they are more interesting than finding exp spots on their own. Maps. What happened to looking at your screen when traveling? I guess companies thought players were too dumb to navigate using some kind of /loc system like EQ had. I remember traveling in WoW, you don't even look at the world, you just have your map up and watch an arrow basically. Brainless kind of travel Instanced PVE. Instances tend to be implemented linearly, you go from start to finish. There is not "lets take this path instead of that one". You always know where to go in an instance. Contrast this with a game like EQ where the zones were massive and you picked what camp you wanted. I can't think of one instance in WoW where you wouldn't just clear the whole thing.. because the bosses are all on the path to the end. Plus the instances aren't even persistent. The boss locations and spawns are predictable, all you have to do is start a new instance and your bosses are at locations X,Y, and Z. In EQ, it required people to know where rare spawns were, tricks to spawning them, etc. EQ wasn't linear, and WoW was. WoW is dumbed down and linear, why else would it be popular?
I really wish you were a Developer or some big MMO company would hire you. To bring us all back to REAL MMO gaming, the way it was meant to be...putting thoughts into your actions and paying for mistakes.
I sure know back in the days a 8 yr olds had no clue on the way EQ played or how to survive it, because there were not many young kids at all playing it. (I was playing EQ since Beta)
In WoW today, there are actually 8 yr olds understanding it and playing it. MMO Devs are catering more to a younger crowd than those that put in their sweat and tears to make all the MMOS of today possible.
I'm still waiting for that MMO where you have to use your mind to play it and not AFK your way thru. I want the MMO where 13 yr olds find it too difficult to play or understand.
I want an MMO where penalties hurt your character:
In WoW if you screw up(just an example)..Blizzard pats you on the back, tells you it's ok and you move on..Is that fun? Not really, since you had no adrenaline rush at all during that process.
In a (hope to see) future MMO I want to see you lose gear, exp ect and really feel your heart pound when you screw up, having to re-collect exp, lost gear ect...to really draw you in (UO Pre-trammel).
Your actions really having consequences, not just a repair bill and a slap on the wrist.
I do not want to be fed Gameplay for an 8 yr old. Give me gameplay and content suitable for an older gamers mindset.
MMOs are not supposed to be rated downward...16 and below (It's starting to lean that way in WoW).
Dont get me wrong here..I even played WoW from Beta till about 3 weeks ago. It is a great game for the most part. It's when the challenge gets removed and the handfeeding that starts...contributing to me leaving it for now.
If Cata does not re-introduce the aspects of a harsher death penalty and more challenging gameplay to give us older gamers something to look forward to, I would see no reason to return but wait for an MMO that puts the *GASP* into the game rather than the *YAWN*.
But that's just me!
WoW isn't even like an MMORPG anymore. It used to have lots of World Spawns, it never had all the cross server bullshit either. I thought MMORPGS were supposed to offer a World, but WoW is more like Diablo 2 or Guildwars than anything. I can't think of any useful shared zones in WoW. The zones are just scenery you use to get to an instance. It's not an MMORPG. Nothing massive about 5 man instancing all day, or not interacting with anyone on your server.
WoW really dumbed their game down a while ago though. My guild, probably one of the best guilds in the whole country, fled WoW around the time their first expansion was released. Doing content when no one else could, that was the only time I enjoyed WoW. Now, with everyone being equal, and content being trivialized, none of us had any reason to play.
They turned everyone into nobodies by dumbing their game down unfortunately, people just can't be gods in WoW unfortunately. You can do a World first and you're still a nobody because the content wasn't difficult to begin with.
You could be at the top of WoWs endgame, their PvE system and PvP system. Then you go to another MMORPG, try to brag about that one, and they would just laugh you out of the MMORPG anymore. Being at the top of WoW just doesn't have any value anymore. There is not a sense of accomplishment when you're just a statistic.
Basically, anyone looking for a challenge shouldn't go anywhere near Blizzard products.
I wish I was developing MMORPGs too, so I could bring back inequality. People should have to work hard, so they feel a sense of accomplishment when they do something in an MMORPG. I could tear through WoW content now and I wouldn't feel a thing.
You used Command and Conquer 3 as an example. I raise with "Black Shark". PC games can be much more advanced, "intelligent" so to speak, than a console game. "Black shark" is the most extreme example of this. You can check out the manual for it: http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/index.php It is a 27,6 mb pdf file. The manual is 534 pages long. Try to port that one to a console without dumbing it down.
Hell, flightsims are almost impossible to do on a PC without "dumbing it down." Unless you have something like this:
Know what dumbs down MMORPGS? Quest-for-exp systems. In older MMORPGs you could travel anywhere, level anywhere. There weren't any quests telling you: kill 5 scarab beetles, kill them again, kill them again. etc. What's most ridiculous is people defend these quest systems, as if they are more interesting than finding exp spots on their own. Maps. What happened to looking at your screen when traveling? I guess companies thought players were too dumb to navigate using some kind of /loc system like EQ had. I remember traveling in WoW, you don't even look at the world, you just have your map up and watch an arrow basically. Brainless kind of travel Instanced PVE. Instances tend to be implemented linearly, you go from start to finish. There is not "lets take this path instead of that one". You always know where to go in an instance. Contrast this with a game like EQ where the zones were massive and you picked what camp you wanted. I can't think of one instance in WoW where you wouldn't just clear the whole thing.. because the bosses are all on the path to the end. Plus the instances aren't even persistent. The boss locations and spawns are predictable, all you have to do is start a new instance and your bosses are at locations X,Y, and Z. In EQ, it required people to know where rare spawns were, tricks to spawning them, etc. EQ wasn't linear, and WoW was. WoW is dumbed down and linear, why else would it be popular?
I really wish you were a Developer or some big MMO company would hire you. To bring us all back to REAL MMO gaming, the way it was meant to be...putting thoughts into your actions and paying for mistakes.
I sure know back in the days a 8 yr olds had no clue on the way EQ played or how to survive it, because there were not many young kids at all playing it. (I was playing EQ since Beta)
In WoW today, there are actually 8 yr olds understanding it and playing it. MMO Devs are catering more to a younger crowd than those that put in their sweat and tears to make all the MMOS of today possible.
I'm still waiting for that MMO where you have to use your mind to play it and not AFK your way thru. I want the MMO where 13 yr olds find it too difficult to play or understand.
I want an MMO where penalties hurt your character:
In WoW if you screw up(just an example)..Blizzard pats you on the back, tells you it's ok and you move on..Is that fun? Not really, since you had no adrenaline rush at all during that process.
In a (hope to see) future MMO I want to see you lose gear, exp ect and really feel your heart pound when you screw up, having to re-collect exp, lost gear ect...to really draw you in (UO Pre-trammel).
Your actions really having consequences, not just a repair bill and a slap on the wrist.
I do not want to be fed Gameplay for an 8 yr old. Give me gameplay and content suitable for an older gamers mindset.
MMOs are not supposed to be rated downward...16 and below (It's starting to lean that way in WoW).
Dont get me wrong here..I even played WoW from Beta till about 3 weeks ago. It is a great game for the most part. It's when the challenge gets removed and the handfeeding that starts...contributing to me leaving it for now.
If Cata does not re-introduce the aspects of a harsher death penalty and more challenging gameplay to give us older gamers something to look forward to, I would see no reason to return but wait for an MMO that puts the *GASP* into the game rather than the *YAWN*.
But that's just me!
WoW isn't even like an MMORPG anymore. It used to have lots of World Spawns, it never had all the cross server bullshit either. I thought MMORPGS were supposed to offer a World, but WoW is more like Diablo 2 or Guildwars than anything. I can't think of any useful shared zones in WoW. The zones are just scenery you use to get to an instance. It's not an MMORPG. Nothing massive about 5 man instancing all day, or not interacting with anyone on your server.
WoW really dumbed their game down a while ago though. My guild, probably one of the best guilds in the whole country, fled WoW around the time their first expansion was released. Doing content when no one else could, that was the only time I enjoyed WoW. Now, with everyone being equal, and content being trivialized, none of us had any reason to play.
They turned everyone into nobodies by dumbing their game down unfortunately, people just can't be gods in WoW unfortunately. You can do a World first and you're still a nobody because the content wasn't difficult to begin with.
You could be at the top of WoWs endgame, their PvE system and PvP system. Then you go to another MMORPG, try to brag about that one, and they would just laugh you out of the MMORPG anymore. Being at the top of WoW just doesn't have any value anymore. There is not a sense of accomplishment when you're just a statistic.
Basically, anyone looking for a challenge shouldn't go anywhere near Blizzard products.
I wish I was developing MMORPGs too, so I could bring back inequality. People should have to work hard, so they feel a sense of accomplishment when they do something in an MMORPG. I could tear through WoW content now and I wouldn't feel a thing.
Seriously! Look at the phrase. LOOK AT IT!!!! The implication being that at one time a particular game was "intelligent" but has undergone some unholy voodoo and been turned into a version of Chutes and Ladders or, even worse, Ludo. This term is normally used in reference to a multiplatform game that was made for consoles and PC at the same time. What's so confusing is when the term is applied to a brand new franchise that plays exactly the same on all platforms. How can you "dumb down" something that didn't even exsist previously? You can claim that one control type is less efficient than another, but that isn't the same as watering down the core mechanics. Let's take Command & Conquer 3 as an example. Both the PC and console versions of the game use the exact same maps, the exact same factions, the exact same unit caps, and the exact same units. What exactly was "dumbed down?" Same thing with Morrowind. Both the PC and XBox versions had the same maps, the same kind of first/third person minimal interface, the quests, the items, the same NPCs... If it's the exact same game at it's core, how can it be "dumbed down?" You might be able to say this about a game that started out on the PC and was poorly ported to a console, like CiV 2 being placed on the PSX near the end of it's life cycle, but If it was developed for both the PC and consoles or it was a one-for-one port.... And while we're on the subject, was Assassin's Creed "smarted up" by being ported to the PC? I'm calling bullshit on this term and it's use.
Your calling b.s. on this term really just indicates to me that you're not very aware of some of the major game revamps that some MMOs have undergone.
Lucasarts and Sony Online Entertainment, for example, said that their MMO had too much reading and was too complex for the people they wanted to attract. So, they intentionally, and admittedly "dumbed down" the game. They got rid of about 2 dozen professions, deleted the skill system, made the player economy moot, removed numerous combat skills and animations, and turned the game into a mind-numbing, point and click disaster that led to the exodus of what looked to be about a few hundred thousand of their customers.
Does "dumbing down" happen in the MMO genre? Yup, unfortunately.
P.S. Here's a quote from a press release about the dumbing down of the StarWars MMO:
"We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base," said Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director at LucasArts. "There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves."
The formatting seems to have screwed up so I apologise in advance if I missed anything in your post.
The problem I'm starting to see through this thread is that it's not possible to look at each of the features of an MMO in isolation with regards to 'dumbing down'. There are a lot of knock-on effects. For example, dumbing down with regards to time it takes to level would be a non-issue if levelling was actually fun. The problem is that it's not fun at all in the current gen of soloable MMOs because the devs build everything around endgame.
And to your point about killing 10 or 1000 bunnies. If you look at it differently in terms of quests... I wouldn't mind if it took 10 quests to reach the cap if those quests were long, involving and fun. The amount of time it takes to level does not necessarily equate to the amount of repetition and subsequent grind. I remember at launch EQ2 had a significantly steeper levelling curve than WoW and thus took a lot longer, yet ironically WoW actually feels grindier as its quests are pointless and uninteresting. In EQ2 I didn't even need to focus on levelling since I got great xp just by dungeon crawling, something I did for the fun of it as opposed to just to get xp. This is the point I was trying to make. Rather than try to make the levelling process any more fun, or interesting, the devs just make it shorter so players don't have to endure it for as long. As a result the game may as well not even have levels as no one finds the levelling fun, and like you said, fun is exactly what they were originally meant to be.
With regards to making instances or open world mobs all red, I'm aware that doing that to an open world environment wouldn't work. I was trying to highlight the arbitrary nature of such a feature in instancing. To prevent players from experiencing lower level content both wastes such content and frustrates the players that actually wish to experience it just for the fun of it. The risk/reward concept that most MMOs employ ensures that players face off against even encounters so that sort of scaling really isn't necessary. Scaling may prevent a grind for players to be able to win, sure, but it actually creates a new grind. Remember how unpopular the level scaling system was in Oblivion? Players don't like scaling because then the challenge always remains the same. Players like to be able to put themselves up against greater and greater odds of defeat... as well as occasionally just some easy trash for the hell of it. Scaling makes things grindy because they never change, which makes the problems I highlighted about instances in my previous post even worse. I won't even start to go into the fact that systems like these make the games feel less and less like virtual worlds and more and more like a game lobby.
I agree that RPGs need to be simple, simplicicity itself isn't the problem. The problems start to arise when this simplicity makes it hard for players to feel like they're actually any good at what they're doing. If things are too simple then anyone can do it and thus any sense of achievement is lost. There needs to be some level of distinction between good and bad players; the good players who can, and the bad players who can't. Without this there is no risk of being unsuccessful and, therefore, no reward when you are successful. This is the negative simplification that I'm talking of. To put it bluntly the genre is oversimplifying things to the point that anyone can do it... When anyone can do something how can you feel like you've achieved anything?
Sorry about the formatting, not sure how that happened.
I still don't agree that dumbing down is with respect to time it takes to hit max (or whatever). If it does, then i don't feel its a valid phrase because it shouldn't matter how fast or slow you level. Levelling speed should never be a consideration. Some of my funnest mmorpgs times were when i ignored (or actually forgot) where the xp bar was. I just played and played. Levelling speed was, as it should be, forgotten.
Instancing isn't arbitrary, it is, or should be, part of a grand plan. A set of related encounters in a sequence. Some instances are all greens, some are not. Its never the same. You don't get the grindy feeling when its done well. Oblivions scaling was just poorly done, i didn't care for it either. Imho COX did it much better.
However, my point was that no matter how its done, its up to the devs to 'dumb it down or not' whatever that means. The programming trick by itself does not lead by its very nature to anything dumb or smart. Just like the open world does not lead to dumb or smart. Either one could be very hard or very easy.
I don't think players need to feel like they are any good at playing. They just need to have fun. I wasn't any good at simcity, but it was fun making various cities. It was a good game no matter how good I personally was at it. Thats how mmorpgs should be. Whether i bankrupt my character and kill it 100x a week, or keep my streak of no-deaths going for several months, as long as its fun, thats what matters. And if the game can handle noobs like my mom or my neice going all the way, its a testament to how good the game is. A sucky game would be hard and make them quit after 20-30 levels.
Dumbed down is a term used by the nostalgia crowd. I've been playing MMOs since UO and no games are not dumbed down today compared to then. This pretty much does the comparison visually...
Dumbed down, as in World of Warcrap. All the thinking has been done for you. Now go kill ten bears and we will give you a purple hatchet of +1 agility when chopping trees, $18 dollars a month please, thank you come again!
Comments
And you are mostly wrong in these accoutns.
EQ hard to level? Find a green, kill. Wait for it to respawn. Repeat. Not very tough, and nothing is dumbed down from this. You can still do this in any game, its not any dumber.
Group oriented? Eh, not sure on this one. Community. Not really a dumb/not dumb issue.
Instanced. Wrong. Instancing just gives the developer more control over what you encounter. They could just as easily force all your instances to be against reds, and the game would be much harder. But even then, the in the open world games, you could fall back to killing greens. So in principle, the open world games are easier. Dumbed down. In practice its about even.
PvP don't really do it much. But again community is a non issue.
I was not referring to the difficulty of the levelling curve, but the time required. There is no disputing that times to reach the level cap have been reduced or 'dumbed down' in ALL recent MMOs. The devs have done this to appeal to more casual players as well as to respond to the fallacy that the game starts at end-game and thus everyone needs to get there as fast as possible. The problem is that in both cases they are wrong; casual players don't need faster levelling time, they just need to be able to get something done in a short space of time, and a harsh levelling cruve does not affect that. Raiding is not the 'start' of the game, because if that were true then there'd be no point in having levels at all. Levelling has been simplified for the hell of it as the devs can't be bothered to work out another system that would better suit the demands of modern gamers. I'm pretty sure this is why there's such a growing demand for sandbox style character progression now.
The rest of your post is just wrong. You completely dismiss community as a key point in making a good MMO when the entire concept of the genre is that you are interacting with other players. Community is arguably THE most important thing in an MMO and if you haven't played one that actually has a solid community then you don't really have any place responding to this as you wouldn't be able to understand. To put it in RPG terms, 'community' normally operates like the LUCK stat. It never seems to affect anything directly but EVERYTHING is ultimately improved by it. Unless you'd played a community centric MMO and actually become involved in the entire server community it's value would be lost on you. The most significant result of a strong community, I've found, is that levelling becomes much less of a race, you generally have fun just doing anything in the game because you can see the actual contributions you're making and thus you have no inane obsession with reaching the cap just to 'start' playing the game.
As for grouping, when people don't have to group as much they take the path of least resistance and just solo all the time. Everyone will always say 'well the option is there to group' but it doesn't work like that as MMOs are competitive in nature and finding anyone to group with in a game that has no reason to group is like getting blood from a stone. When someone spends most of their time soloing you end up with a series of disconnects with the rest of the game:
--- They have little to no idea of how to play their character in a group environment despite the 'endgame' being entirely focussed on exactly that. This seems rather arbitrary. And remember, you can't argue that they don't need to know before endgame since to do that would be agreeing with me that levelling is pretty much a redundant concept in WoW, and that situation is also the result of being 'dumbed down'. I recognise that this is somewhat resolved in WoW's new dungeon finder but that actually exacerbates the instancing issue which I'll get onto again in a minute.
--- They know absolutely no one. Barring IRL friends, most people I know who've played WoW have not made a significant friendship with another player before they reach the level cap. Again this is arbitrary since the entire endgame relies on players working together and necessitates such relationships.
Instancing, btw, does not just give the devs more tools. It truly does damage the community. As an example I'll look at public dungeons. In an instance you are the only players there, you know the mobs will always follow the same AI routines and you know there is zero chance of any other variable affecting you. This leads to repetitive grind; nothing changes on multiple runs through the instance, it loses any sense of challenge as you grow accustomed to the static encounters, and it quickly becomes boring. You also never meet anyone new, there's no chance of you bumping into anyone halfway down, there's no chance of you arriving just in time to save a group before they wipe, or rez their healer if they already have wiped, there's no chance of you picking up stragglers on the way down, and most of all there is almost no chance of you chatting to anyone. By chatting I mean actually having a conversation, not discussing boss tactics or having a go at someone for screwing up. This is only made worse by WoW's dungeon finder system since most of the players you end up with aren't even on your server so if you somehow did strike up a conversation or make a good friendhsip with them you'd never be able to play alongside them.
To put it differently, in EQ2 (which was actually a pretty good game despite it's teething problems) I ran one dungeon for several weeks. I mean I spent all of my playing time in that dungeon. I never got bored with it because every time I went in things would play out differently. There were multiple routes to the bottom so it never felt like I was running the same content (and, for that matter, reaching the bottom was no simple task, the dungeon was huge which is another example of dumbing down as modern dunegons are linear and extremely short) there were many other players in there both assisting and obstructing our progress and this added a great deal of variation to the experience and kept things interesting. Compare this to WoW's instances... most players are bored of them after a couple of runs but only continue to run them for the loot.
Also the part about "They could just as easily force all your instances to be against reds, and the game would be much harder. But even then, the in the open world games, you could fall back to killing greens. So in principle, the open world games are easier." You do realise that this makes no sense right? Players in instanced games could also just as easily go and kill greens in a lower level instance. The devs could just as easily alter the difficulty of mobs in an open world game to be reds.Players would never actually do this, of course, as these things are built on the concept of risk vs reward. To go and kill greens would give no significant reward and thus no one would bother.
Your point on PvP is actually laughable. You admit to having no experience in it and then go on to suggest you even know what you're talking about. In WoW, PvP community truly is a non-issue, yes. But that that is the direct result of instancing (feel free to re-read that paragraph to remind yourself of why instancing damages communities). No need to argue that WoW has open PvP servers; open PvP died in that game when they released battlegrounds. PvP instances make scenarios feel repetitive again, they turn PvP into a grind, things are overly balanced and sterile. Just like in the dungeons example, there is little room for variations in play experience and thus boredom sets in much quicker.
Now look at open PvP in a game that didn't gut it with instancing. Look at DAOC, there was something in that game commonly referred to as 'realm pride'. It was essentially virtual patriotism to whatever faction a player belonged. Now how can you even think to suggest that community is a non-issue in PvP? By having three factions the players balanced themselves and since everything was open no two fights would feel the same. Everything was dynamic and players had to react to that, it didn't get boring, unlike instanced PvP.
Community is one of those issues that devs need to be aware of so they can know when to ignore player whining, something that Blizzard has seemingly lost the ability to do. Yes it made them a lot of money, but it's also degraded the game and 'dumbed it down' a hell of a lot. The majority of the people that the game now appeals to are casual players who wouldn't notice the issues I've pointed out because they would never have been able to experience the benefits of a strong community in the first place. People whine when they get ganked, they whine when things are too hard, they whine most of all when they need to rely on other players or are forced into interaction. What they never realise is that those interactions are what make MMOs fun, they're what make them different to single player games. Without the community factors players find themselves just grinding day in, day out. They have no fun playing the game any more but continue to log in just for the loot.
I know people are suggesting that the term 'dumbed down' is widely overused, and often incorrectly so, and I'd agree with that. But just look at the term: to 'dumb' something down implies to make it simpler, in a negative way, in the interests of wider appeal. I'll go so far as to admit that it is elitist in nature. Effectively player A likes something, that something is then simplified to appeal more to players B and C who don't play games as much but they make the company more money. Player A no longer likes what the game has become, it is now too easy for him and he finds it boring, it's just not fun any more. Player A leaves the game because it has been 'dumbed down' to appeal to newer players with shorter attention spans, less time to play and no desire to interact with other players. The genre that his subscription fees have helped to create has changed into something he dislikes. You can't really blame him for criticising the process.
Do you honestly not see any evidence of this in modern MMOs?
Far from being a non-issue i would say that community is a very big issue, and i agree with almost everything Alberel says in fact, it is something that will make a good game great, or if handled badly, terrible. Daoc had, without a doubt a really good community spirit, but it was a game that encouraged people to work together, and of course to compete against each other, but not as individuals, SWG was yet another game, awesome community, a game where all you had was a survival knife and a melon... everything in the game was made by another player, there was a great deal of interdependance, a reason really, for players to work together, build cities that were most often guild based, then again of course, there was the factional warfare, it wasnt really handled that well but it was 'good enough' at the time.. to say that community had an effect on the game is highlighted by the fact that when SOE effectively attacked that community, the game almost died, in fact i dont think its ever recovered from it. So imo, the more you dumb down games, the more soloable you make them, the less fun they will be, because imo, MMO's are all about community, social interraction and cooperation.
Dumbed down is when people publish dumb things on a forum about brilliant games.
The combined design talent of all mmorpg.com posters is about 0.05% of Blizzards design team.
That's a perfect example of "dumbed down".
MMORPG.COM is full of it.
And apparently there ain't much talent around either when you see the mmo duds of the last 3 years.
Who knows some of the above even work for some companies.
it would explain a lot.
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
As opposed to vague mumblings of discontent over .. what exactly? do you disagree with the issue of games being dumbed down, or with specific games that perhaps you think arent? everyone is entitled to an opinion, but far better don't you think, to say why its your opinion?
Dumbed down is making a game or game feature easier.
Some people consider accessibility to be a form of dumbing down.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
As opposed to vague mumblings of discontent over .. what exactly? do you disagree with the issue of games being dumbed down, or with specific games that perhaps you think arent? everyone is entitled to an opinion, but far better don't you think, to say why its your opinion?
Well it is quite obvious:
"The combined design talent of all mmorpg.com posters is about 0.05% of Blizzards design team."
That's a perfect example of having dumb discussions about "dumbing down" in designs.
All video games are dumbed down experiences btw.
... or is the grading between intelligent and dumb dependant on the number of hours you are sitting in front of a monitor screen ?
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
If anything 'dumbed down' refers to levelling curve. Something that requires you to be not dumb. Or are you saying the 'dumbed down' phrase can mean practically anything you want, anything bad that is. Yes, the time to the top is shortened, doesn't quite seem to demand the phrase dumbed down. Is anyone complaining and/or starting threads asking for level 2 to take a week instead of a day? "The game would be so much better if i have to kill 1000 bunnies instead of 10 to level!"
What you DO see complaints of is "The game is so easy, i can win just by using auto-attack".
I only dismiss community with respect to the phrase dumbed down. And i am only luke warm on that dismisal. Whether it makes for a good game doesn't apply to this thread. Start another thread and i'd be happy to join in.
My point on pvp was poorly written. I didn't say much, because i don't do it much. I didn't say you were wrong, because i don't have much knowledge on that area. I just reiterated that community seems to have little to do with dumbing down.
Regarding instancing, you state that the players could pick a green instance. And who says they can do that? The devs. Instances will be whatever difficulty they want. Thats the point of instances. It may not be possible for an instance to be green to you (if thats what the devs want). So your argument against instances is wrong. It will usually be harder to level with a game with instances than one without.
Devs increasing open world mobs to be all red? Red to who? There are 2 players there, one level 10, one level 30. The 10 attacks it. Does it change to red to him (but still green to the 30?) Or are you saying it finds the max level of everyone in the area and makes it red so that no one can advance in the game and everyone stays level 1. No, it doesn't work that way. The point of the open world is that they don't do that. The point of instances is that they can change the mob to match the pc so the pc doesn't feel the need to grind to get to the level needed to win.
It doesn't have to do with 'dumbing down', but i often met new people in the STO instances, i had my settings set to 'open instance', which meant that anyone who was doing the same instance could join in.
Evidence of negative simplification? You kind of have to be very specific. Negative? Simple?
Part of me wants to say that RPGS are supposed to be simple. You never needed to know the rules. You never needed to be a genius or athletic. You didn't need to make your own maps. Or keep track of loot tables. A newbie could join with an ongoing game and do just fine. That was the whole point. The complexity was hidden by the GM. They did the tough part, the players just had fun. To the extent people need to consult websites, or make lists of mobs to kill, the games have lost their goal. If the game is simple enough that nonsense like that isn't needed, well, they are approaching the RPG ideal.
But that of course is the easy part, the hard part is in making immersive games with interesting storylines, and thats a different thread.
As opposed to vague mumblings of discontent over .. what exactly? do you disagree with the issue of games being dumbed down, or with specific games that perhaps you think arent? everyone is entitled to an opinion, but far better don't you think, to say why its your opinion?
Well it is quite obvious:
"The combined design talent of all mmorpg.com posters is about 0.05% of Blizzards design team."
That's a perfect example of having dumb discussions about "dumbing down" in designs.
All video games are dumbed down experiences btw.
... or is the grading between intelligent and dumb dependant on the number of hours you are sitting in front of a monitor screen ?
obvious ? hardly, but your allusion to the users of MMORPG is odd to say the least. the rest is mostly irrelevant..
The formatting seems to have screwed up so I apologise in advance if I missed anything in your post.
The problem I'm starting to see through this thread is that it's not possible to look at each of the features of an MMO in isolation with regards to 'dumbing down'. There are a lot of knock-on effects. For example, dumbing down with regards to time it takes to level would be a non-issue if levelling was actually fun. The problem is that it's not fun at all in the current gen of soloable MMOs because the devs build everything around endgame.
And to your point about killing 10 or 1000 bunnies. If you look at it differently in terms of quests... I wouldn't mind if it took 10 quests to reach the cap if those quests were long, involving and fun. The amount of time it takes to level does not necessarily equate to the amount of repetition and subsequent grind. I remember at launch EQ2 had a significantly steeper levelling curve than WoW and thus took a lot longer, yet ironically WoW actually feels grindier as its quests are pointless and uninteresting. In EQ2 I didn't even need to focus on levelling since I got great xp just by dungeon crawling, something I did for the fun of it as opposed to just to get xp. This is the point I was trying to make. Rather than try to make the levelling process any more fun, or interesting, the devs just make it shorter so players don't have to endure it for as long. As a result the game may as well not even have levels as no one finds the levelling fun, and like you said, fun is exactly what they were originally meant to be.
With regards to making instances or open world mobs all red, I'm aware that doing that to an open world environment wouldn't work. I was trying to highlight the arbitrary nature of such a feature in instancing. To prevent players from experiencing lower level content both wastes such content and frustrates the players that actually wish to experience it just for the fun of it. The risk/reward concept that most MMOs employ ensures that players face off against even encounters so that sort of scaling really isn't necessary. Scaling may prevent a grind for players to be able to win, sure, but it actually creates a new grind. Remember how unpopular the level scaling system was in Oblivion? Players don't like scaling because then the challenge always remains the same. Players like to be able to put themselves up against greater and greater odds of defeat... as well as occasionally just some easy trash for the hell of it. Scaling makes things grindy because they never change, which makes the problems I highlighted about instances in my previous post even worse. I won't even start to go into the fact that systems like these make the games feel less and less like virtual worlds and more and more like a game lobby.
I agree that RPGs need to be simple, simplicicity itself isn't the problem. The problems start to arise when this simplicity makes it hard for players to feel like they're actually any good at what they're doing. If things are too simple then anyone can do it and thus any sense of achievement is lost. There needs to be some level of distinction between good and bad players; the good players who can, and the bad players who can't. Without this there is no risk of being unsuccessful and, therefore, no reward when you are successful. This is the negative simplification that I'm talking of. To put it bluntly the genre is oversimplifying things to the point that anyone can do it... When anyone can do something how can you feel like you've achieved anything?
Know what dumbs down MMORPGS?
Quest-for-exp systems. In older MMORPGs you could travel anywhere, level anywhere. There weren't any quests telling you: kill 5 scarab beetles, kill them again, kill them again. etc. What's most ridiculous is people defend these quest systems, as if they are more interesting than finding exp spots on their own.
Maps. What happened to looking at your screen when traveling? I guess companies thought players were too dumb to navigate using some kind of /loc system like EQ had. I remember traveling in WoW, you don't even look at the world, you just have your map up and watch an arrow basically. Brainless kind of travel
Instanced PVE. Instances tend to be implemented linearly, you go from start to finish. There is not "lets take this path instead of that one". You always know where to go in an instance. Contrast this with a game like EQ where the zones were massive and you picked what camp you wanted.
I can't think of one instance in WoW where you wouldn't just clear the whole thing.. because the bosses are all on the path to the end. Plus the instances aren't even persistent. The boss locations and spawns are predictable, all you have to do is start a new instance and your bosses are at locations X,Y, and Z. In EQ, it required people to know where rare spawns were, tricks to spawning them, etc.
EQ wasn't linear, and WoW was. WoW is dumbed down and linear, why else would it be popular?
.... isnt WoW's format largely based on the EQ one.. ?
.... isnt WoW's format largely based on the EQ one.. ?
No, not even close
Dude. Not. Cool. Seriously!
.... isnt WoW's format largely based on the EQ one.. ?
No, not even close
In terms of gear/expansion/raid grind, yes.
In terms of world construction, quests, leveling, social atmosphere, depth, not even close.
.... isnt WoW's format largely based on the EQ one.. ?
No, not even close
In terms of gear/expansion/raid grind, yes.
In terms of world construction, quests, leveling, social atmosphere, depth, not even close.
Gear? No. everyone has the same gear in WoW. How many people in EQ would have something like a Sceptre of Destruction or Fungi Tunic? Not the whole server, like in WoW.
Raid grind? No. EQ raids were actually challenging. EQ raids weren't so forgiving either.
If you compare game features at their most rudimentary levels, sure you can try to equate them. EQ had character stats, Wow had character stats. You kill things and do quests for experience in both games. You have tanks and healers in both games. And so on.
But that's not a fair comparison. Checkers and chess are both played on boards. They both involve the movement of pieces. In both games you can capture the other player's pieces, and advance the power of one of your own pieces by arriving at the first rank of your opponent's side of the board. However, checkers is not nearly as difficult and substantive a game as chess.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
You used Command and Conquer 3 as an example. I raise with "Black Shark". PC games can be much more advanced, "intelligent" so to speak, than a console game. "Black shark" is the most extreme example of this.
You can check out the manual for it: http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/index.php
It is a 27,6 mb pdf file. The manual is 534 pages long. Try to port that one to a console without dumbing it down.
I really wish you were a Developer or some big MMO company would hire you. To bring us all back to REAL MMO gaming, the way it was meant to be...putting thoughts into your actions and paying for mistakes.
I sure know back in the days a 8 yr olds had no clue on the way EQ played or how to survive it, because there were not many young kids at all playing it. (I was playing EQ since Beta)
In WoW today, there are actually 8 yr olds understanding it and playing it. MMO Devs are catering more to a younger crowd than those that put in their sweat and tears to make all the MMOS of today possible.
I'm still waiting for that MMO where you have to use your mind to play it and not AFK your way thru. I want the MMO where 13 yr olds find it too difficult to play or understand.
I want an MMO where penalties hurt your character:
In WoW if you screw up(just an example)..Blizzard pats you on the back, tells you it's ok and you move on..Is that fun? Not really, since you had no adrenaline rush at all during that process.
In a (hope to see) future MMO I want to see you lose gear, exp ect and really feel your heart pound when you screw up, having to re-collect exp, lost gear ect...to really draw you in (UO Pre-trammel).
Your actions really having consequences, not just a repair bill and a slap on the wrist.
I do not want to be fed Gameplay for an 8 yr old. Give me gameplay and content suitable for an older gamers mindset.
MMOs are not supposed to be rated downward...16 and below (It's starting to lean that way in WoW).
Dont get me wrong here..I even played WoW from Beta till about 3 weeks ago. It is a great game for the most part. It's when the challenge gets removed and the handfeeding that starts...contributing to me leaving it for now.
If Cata does not re-introduce the aspects of a harsher death penalty and more challenging gameplay to give us older gamers something to look forward to, I would see no reason to return but wait for an MMO that puts the *GASP* into the game rather than the *YAWN*.
But that's just me!
"My Fantasy is having two men at once...
One Cooking and One Cleaning!"
---------------------------
"A good man can make you feel sexy,
strong and able to take on the whole world...
oh sorry...that's wine...wine does that..."
I really wish you were a Developer or some big MMO company would hire you. To bring us all back to REAL MMO gaming, the way it was meant to be...putting thoughts into your actions and paying for mistakes.
I sure know back in the days a 8 yr olds had no clue on the way EQ played or how to survive it, because there were not many young kids at all playing it. (I was playing EQ since Beta)
In WoW today, there are actually 8 yr olds understanding it and playing it. MMO Devs are catering more to a younger crowd than those that put in their sweat and tears to make all the MMOS of today possible.
I'm still waiting for that MMO where you have to use your mind to play it and not AFK your way thru. I want the MMO where 13 yr olds find it too difficult to play or understand.
I want an MMO where penalties hurt your character:
In WoW if you screw up(just an example)..Blizzard pats you on the back, tells you it's ok and you move on..Is that fun? Not really, since you had no adrenaline rush at all during that process.
In a (hope to see) future MMO I want to see you lose gear, exp ect and really feel your heart pound when you screw up, having to re-collect exp, lost gear ect...to really draw you in (UO Pre-trammel).
Your actions really having consequences, not just a repair bill and a slap on the wrist.
I do not want to be fed Gameplay for an 8 yr old. Give me gameplay and content suitable for an older gamers mindset.
MMOs are not supposed to be rated downward...16 and below (It's starting to lean that way in WoW).
Dont get me wrong here..I even played WoW from Beta till about 3 weeks ago. It is a great game for the most part. It's when the challenge gets removed and the handfeeding that starts...contributing to me leaving it for now.
If Cata does not re-introduce the aspects of a harsher death penalty and more challenging gameplay to give us older gamers something to look forward to, I would see no reason to return but wait for an MMO that puts the *GASP* into the game rather than the *YAWN*.
But that's just me!
WoW isn't even like an MMORPG anymore. It used to have lots of World Spawns, it never had all the cross server bullshit either. I thought MMORPGS were supposed to offer a World, but WoW is more like Diablo 2 or Guildwars than anything. I can't think of any useful shared zones in WoW. The zones are just scenery you use to get to an instance. It's not an MMORPG. Nothing massive about 5 man instancing all day, or not interacting with anyone on your server.
WoW really dumbed their game down a while ago though. My guild, probably one of the best guilds in the whole country, fled WoW around the time their first expansion was released. Doing content when no one else could, that was the only time I enjoyed WoW. Now, with everyone being equal, and content being trivialized, none of us had any reason to play.
They turned everyone into nobodies by dumbing their game down unfortunately, people just can't be gods in WoW unfortunately. You can do a World first and you're still a nobody because the content wasn't difficult to begin with.
You could be at the top of WoWs endgame, their PvE system and PvP system. Then you go to another MMORPG, try to brag about that one, and they would just laugh you out of the MMORPG anymore. Being at the top of WoW just doesn't have any value anymore. There is not a sense of accomplishment when you're just a statistic.
Basically, anyone looking for a challenge shouldn't go anywhere near Blizzard products.
I wish I was developing MMORPGs too, so I could bring back inequality. People should have to work hard, so they feel a sense of accomplishment when they do something in an MMORPG. I could tear through WoW content now and I wouldn't feel a thing.
Hell, flightsims are almost impossible to do on a PC without "dumbing it down." Unless you have something like this:
or this:
Then you're doing it wrong.
I really wish you were a Developer or some big MMO company would hire you. To bring us all back to REAL MMO gaming, the way it was meant to be...putting thoughts into your actions and paying for mistakes.
I sure know back in the days a 8 yr olds had no clue on the way EQ played or how to survive it, because there were not many young kids at all playing it. (I was playing EQ since Beta)
In WoW today, there are actually 8 yr olds understanding it and playing it. MMO Devs are catering more to a younger crowd than those that put in their sweat and tears to make all the MMOS of today possible.
I'm still waiting for that MMO where you have to use your mind to play it and not AFK your way thru. I want the MMO where 13 yr olds find it too difficult to play or understand.
I want an MMO where penalties hurt your character:
In WoW if you screw up(just an example)..Blizzard pats you on the back, tells you it's ok and you move on..Is that fun? Not really, since you had no adrenaline rush at all during that process.
In a (hope to see) future MMO I want to see you lose gear, exp ect and really feel your heart pound when you screw up, having to re-collect exp, lost gear ect...to really draw you in (UO Pre-trammel).
Your actions really having consequences, not just a repair bill and a slap on the wrist.
I do not want to be fed Gameplay for an 8 yr old. Give me gameplay and content suitable for an older gamers mindset.
MMOs are not supposed to be rated downward...16 and below (It's starting to lean that way in WoW).
Dont get me wrong here..I even played WoW from Beta till about 3 weeks ago. It is a great game for the most part. It's when the challenge gets removed and the handfeeding that starts...contributing to me leaving it for now.
If Cata does not re-introduce the aspects of a harsher death penalty and more challenging gameplay to give us older gamers something to look forward to, I would see no reason to return but wait for an MMO that puts the *GASP* into the game rather than the *YAWN*.
But that's just me!
WoW isn't even like an MMORPG anymore. It used to have lots of World Spawns, it never had all the cross server bullshit either. I thought MMORPGS were supposed to offer a World, but WoW is more like Diablo 2 or Guildwars than anything. I can't think of any useful shared zones in WoW. The zones are just scenery you use to get to an instance. It's not an MMORPG. Nothing massive about 5 man instancing all day, or not interacting with anyone on your server.
WoW really dumbed their game down a while ago though. My guild, probably one of the best guilds in the whole country, fled WoW around the time their first expansion was released. Doing content when no one else could, that was the only time I enjoyed WoW. Now, with everyone being equal, and content being trivialized, none of us had any reason to play.
They turned everyone into nobodies by dumbing their game down unfortunately, people just can't be gods in WoW unfortunately. You can do a World first and you're still a nobody because the content wasn't difficult to begin with.
You could be at the top of WoWs endgame, their PvE system and PvP system. Then you go to another MMORPG, try to brag about that one, and they would just laugh you out of the MMORPG anymore. Being at the top of WoW just doesn't have any value anymore. There is not a sense of accomplishment when you're just a statistic.
Basically, anyone looking for a challenge shouldn't go anywhere near Blizzard products.
I wish I was developing MMORPGs too, so I could bring back inequality. People should have to work hard, so they feel a sense of accomplishment when they do something in an MMORPG. I could tear through WoW content now and I wouldn't feel a thing.
Agree 184%
"My Fantasy is having two men at once...
One Cooking and One Cleaning!"
---------------------------
"A good man can make you feel sexy,
strong and able to take on the whole world...
oh sorry...that's wine...wine does that..."
Your calling b.s. on this term really just indicates to me that you're not very aware of some of the major game revamps that some MMOs have undergone.
Lucasarts and Sony Online Entertainment, for example, said that their MMO had too much reading and was too complex for the people they wanted to attract. So, they intentionally, and admittedly "dumbed down" the game. They got rid of about 2 dozen professions, deleted the skill system, made the player economy moot, removed numerous combat skills and animations, and turned the game into a mind-numbing, point and click disaster that led to the exodus of what looked to be about a few hundred thousand of their customers.
Does "dumbing down" happen in the MMO genre? Yup, unfortunately.
P.S. Here's a quote from a press release about the dumbing down of the StarWars MMO:
"We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base," said Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director at LucasArts. "There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves."
Player response documented here: http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/star-wars-galaxies-2005/667893p1.html
If you really want to know what dumbing a game down means, this is it.
Sorry about the formatting, not sure how that happened.
I still don't agree that dumbing down is with respect to time it takes to hit max (or whatever). If it does, then i don't feel its a valid phrase because it shouldn't matter how fast or slow you level. Levelling speed should never be a consideration. Some of my funnest mmorpgs times were when i ignored (or actually forgot) where the xp bar was. I just played and played. Levelling speed was, as it should be, forgotten.
Instancing isn't arbitrary, it is, or should be, part of a grand plan. A set of related encounters in a sequence. Some instances are all greens, some are not. Its never the same. You don't get the grindy feeling when its done well. Oblivions scaling was just poorly done, i didn't care for it either. Imho COX did it much better.
However, my point was that no matter how its done, its up to the devs to 'dumb it down or not' whatever that means. The programming trick by itself does not lead by its very nature to anything dumb or smart. Just like the open world does not lead to dumb or smart. Either one could be very hard or very easy.
I don't think players need to feel like they are any good at playing. They just need to have fun. I wasn't any good at simcity, but it was fun making various cities. It was a good game no matter how good I personally was at it. Thats how mmorpgs should be. Whether i bankrupt my character and kill it 100x a week, or keep my streak of no-deaths going for several months, as long as its fun, thats what matters. And if the game can handle noobs like my mom or my neice going all the way, its a testament to how good the game is. A sucky game would be hard and make them quit after 20-30 levels.
http://www.duelinganalogs.com/comic/2009/12/04/guest-strip-by-ross-nover/
Dumbed down, as in World of Warcrap. All the thinking has been done for you. Now go kill ten bears and we will give you a purple hatchet of +1 agility when chopping trees, $18 dollars a month please, thank you come again!