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Leveling... The been there, done that feeling. Help!
Rockgod99
Member Posts: 4,640
Guys I've been trying to get into a couple quest based mmos and i'm finding myself becoming uninterested in a day or two.
When I start a game up i play it hardcore for like one day and then i get this "Been there done that" feeling and over the next week my playtime drops off then i finally give up.
There are games on the market that I would like to experience fully like EQ2, Lotro and Aion but I just can't shake that feeling.
I mean I leveled maxx characters in EQ, DAoc and WoW but since then i just can't do it anymore.
I can still play Eve because it basically levels without me but if i have to actively go through a motion to raise levels i become uninterested really fast.
Maybe I'm trying the wrong games? any quest based leveling experience that's unique? one that chnges shit up with all types of activities to keep me from getting bored?
I'm for a loss atm.
Comments
Okay, this is a familiar problem with me, it just does that in one single day for me.
Anyone can help?
Basicly exhausted your self in mmos becouse you done a few to max level and now nothing compares to it,
What id do is give anarchy online a go becouse it is only mmo i know where a level 20 can twink them self to use level 200 equipment becouse items go of states and not levels, The game is really depth and really huge i mean 4% wow size and you goto new places from early levels. Also the mechs are cool if you buy all the expansions and there is a free game where you only get basic game no expansions to it. you will love it i do .
http://www.speedtest.net/result/3845509852.png
your brains trying to tell you to leave the mmo's alone for a year or two.
I've been in the same position a few times in the past. It's just burnout.
It sounds like you're focusing on a single game then rapidly burning out again. When it's happened to me, I was able to overcome it by scaling back my time investment and varying my gaming habits. Instead of spending 4 hours in EVE, I'd spend an hour playing an FPS, then a couple hours on a single player RPG and finally popping onto EVE for an hour.
If you really like PvP, try Warhammer Online. It's far from prefect, but you can PvP as much as you like and level that way. Right from level 1.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Aion might be the worst game to experience something new since its design specifically avoided anything new as much as possible. Its more of the same as the older MMOs.
EQ2 is a classic already. So it too has many things old.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Yeah, it's burnout. I find that when it happens to me the only way I can get over it is to give up gaming for a while. It usually happens in the late spring/early summer and usually lasts through the fall. During that time I spend a lot of time riding my Harley or playing with the dog outside, just about any kind of activity that is outdoorsy will usually be more attractive to me than sitting at my desk playing games. On rainy days I'll play but usually for an hour or 2 ten I'll catch up on movies I have wanted to watch but haven't had time to yet.
I also find that as I get older I'm finidng myself less interested in games in general. I start feeling the been there done that feeling towards any vidoe game. Maybe it's because I've been playing them since the atari 2600, maybe it's because I'm closer to 40 than I want to admit. I know for sure though that it's burnout and only time makes it go away.
You think? some people say it's burn out but I havent leveled a character to max level since guildwars lol.
Had like four 70's in WoW and since then just haevnt gotten passed level 20 in any mmo on the market.
I havent really played a quest based mmo in a 2-3 years (other than a trial and a free month here and there).
Someone suggested WAR I already play an unlimited trial its goodtimes.
I would really like to get back into one and put sometime into it.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
I don't think not having maxed toons proves anything, to be honest, if you're sick to death of questing it's hardly surprising you haven't gotten past level 20 in any game recently.
All playing trials and the occasional free month will do is reinforce your opinion (not that I disagree with you) that it's all just the same stuff in different clothes, with the occasional game having some unique quirk that sets it slightly apart. But only slightly.
I'd suggest putting down the trials and free months and walking away from the genre completely for a bit. Come back in a few months and see how you feel. That doesn't work and there's 2 options: 1. Only play true sandboxes, no questing, user-created content that changes the shape of the game. or 2. MMOs as they curently present themselves are not for you.
It sucks that you're not having fun with the genre, but I doubt you're alone in it.
QFT. OP sounds like he is suffering from burn out.
Take a break.
Burn out is nature's way of getting us to try new things.
Last I heard, rockgod was playing Ryzom which doesn't have levels. Why did you give up on Ryzom? Got tired of it?
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
I put Ryzom down for Eve. With my limited playtime I have much mroe of a variety of things to do in 5-10 hours a week in Eve than I would in Ryzom.
Once my time frees up ill resub to Ryzom.
But this is beside the point I was looking for a quest based mmo to enjoy... oh well.
It's come to the point of me (with the exception of 5-10 hours of Eve) playing single player games exclusively.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Have you tried fallen earth Rockgod?
It is not as sandboxy as Ryzom or Eve, but you could fairly easily skip 90% of the missions if you wanted to. Like Ryzom, some things are leveled by use, crafting harvesting. Other things are just leveled by experience and point allocation, more like AO. Almost everything gives you experience, you can level by crafting & harvesting, rifles, or meleeing. The crafting can level you offline as well. That is an oversimplification, but that is it in a nutshell.
Also, it has some of the better written quests out there. And i'm apt to click thru without reading, but 1. as I said they are well written and 2. sometimes they give hints to puzzles that will not be obvious from the saved journal text.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
Well, i myself havent had still yet a single fully leveled character in any F2P MMO yet, only games i've been close are CABAL Online and Drift City. I'd love something fast paced combat with quests but unfortunately, theres only two types, grind with fast combat and questbased with sllloooow combat.
I experience the same thing. Although unlike some here saying you are suffering from burnout, which could be the case for you, but if not....it could be because every MMO now is a cookie cutter of another. The only difference between most of them are the character models and game/NPC names. Gets old faster that way. No originality to speak of anymore, so none of them are fresh changes of pace. Sad state the MMO genre has become.
Someone else said it already, but I find it holds true for me as well. When I find myself in the same position where I'm bored to tears leveling or doing just about anything in any game, I just walk away completely for a while. Go find things to do that don't involve logging in. A lot of times, that's all it takes.
The problem for me is that so many MMOs these days are the same basic thing with different skins that it can and does get a "been there, done that" feeling pretty quickly. Sometimes a break is all that's needed.
Good luck.
Firebrand Art
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
I'm going to disagree with the traditional burnout reason and try to offer another theory. Looking at the title of the thread: leveling, the been there, done that feeling. Why are we generalize our games so much to the point of just tasks and numbers?
Maybe there should be something in an MMORPG that catches your interest outside of the "I want to level a character from X to Y bit". Do it for the story. Do it because you want to be the first at something, anything. Do it because you are competitive and want to be the best at something. Do it because you enjoy interacting with a gaming community. Maybe you just have to place the gaming experience in a different context or light.
Just please, don't generalize the MMO experience to just leveling or else there might not be much reason to look forward to the next game. If you can't find any other reasons to play an MMO outside of leveling, then maybe consider an entierly different genre. If it really was nothing but leveling, you should just be playing single player games, they provide more depth, difficulty (or scalable difficulty) and more "enriched" story experiences (at least until Bioware's SWTOR comes out to prove deep story can work for MMO's).
You can:
1. Play a game with no levels;
2. Wait for a new game that doesn't have levels; e.g., The Secret World;
3. Play a game with a mentor system where you can play with people of different levels; e.g., City of Heroes;
4. Play a game that lets you level by PvPing;
5. Play a game that starts you out at a pretty high level; e.g. original EQ now has a server like that;
6. Wait for a game that doesn't suck so you don't mind the levels, like I am doing.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Im waiting for APB (Beta winkwink) and Forsaken World from Perfect World Entertainment
So you picked Eve over Ryzom?
Dam, I was going to try Ryzome too. Eve reminded me of my job.
At least you got two games.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
And I am going to take it even further and offer a third theory.
"The been there, done that feeling" is not a result of getting burn out, or focusing too much on leveling. It's due to every game offering the exact same gameplay over and over again, with very slight variations. There is no variety.
Imagine leveling your character to 80 in WoW the first time; it's fun, it's exciting, it's new. Now do this the second time. Or third. Or tenth. It's just not as fun anymore, not as exciting; you can still find it enjoyable, but it'll never be like the "first time".
The problem is that when you change from WoW to Aion, nothing changes. Even though it's a different game, it's still the same mechanics, same combat, same easy quests. It's not a "first time" in Aion. It's the "fourth time" in "game that plays like X". It's no wonder you get tired of it.
What people need are new ways to level, new game mechanics to master. That keeps things interesting. When you actually have to learn something and not know the game mechanics thoroughly the first time you log in, that's the fun of it all. New world. New game. New experiences.
It's not just a theory; that's how it is.
[quote]Originally posted by Hyanmen
Now this is the PERFECT example of what I was geting at in terms of how the experience is generalized. Playing MMORPG's are more than just chasing numbers and if that's all you think MMORPGs are about and you are getting tired of it, then maybe its time to consider something else.
Want to know what the differences are between WoW and Aion outside of Leveling? Class systems, priorities between skill/gear choices, PvPvE with a zone dedicated to persistent taking of keeps (in Aion), setting, story, community, the type of "leveling" between the games are far different (Aion reminded me more of classical type level grind as opposed to WoW's sprint to the top, not sure how much Aion has actualyl changed it but it had a much slower feel).
The thing has to be accepted that generally leveling is nothing but acquiring experience. See how easily we can generalize these things, thats why I point towards changing the perspctive into something else and something much deeper. Leveling is giong to be around for a while and if this perception doesn't changed, I'm afraid many likeminded individuals that want to generalize in this fashion are in for a big disappointment.
But it's not only the fault of the player that he's chasing numbers. The current MMO's favor this kind of thinking, and make you a victim at the same time.
The fact of the matter is, that what we're going to be doing most of our playtime in an MMO is battling, and usually at the same time, leveling. Other features can add to the mix, but they'll never be as important as the combat, which is why it's so important that the combat is different. If the rest is different, that's just not going to cut it most (all) of the time.
I don't agree that leveling is nothing but acquiring experience. Leveling is all about combat, if you're not a crafter. Change the combat, change the leveling. The character progression system does not need much tweaking, but it can be good too.
The "deeper" things work to add to the flavor, make a good experience even better; but gameplay in the end is what matters. Good story can make up for the gameplay if it's interesting, but stories in MMO are only a minimal fraction of the game, at best. Not enough to keep me occupied like they do in single player games, where a good story can save the game.
If the gameplay is not that much different, the "leveling" isn't either.
I still keep getting the mmo itch from time to time but I've trained my mind to push it to one side and find other things to do instead. Modern mmos are completely and utterly shit and once you learn to accept this you will feel better for it.
Having said that I did cave in recently. However I refused to waste money on an mmo which I knew I would tire of in less than a week so I downloaded Allods because its free to play. Funnily enough it actually isnt any worse than most of the P2P games. Its pretty much the same as all the other so-called AAA mmos except that its graphics are probably better than most of the dated ones. Thats not to say its a good game mind you because it really isnt. It has the same simplistic, repetitive and dull gameplay that you would expect from any questing mmo of todays standards such as EQ2, WoW or any of the other games like them. No thinking required at all. However its free. Sure there might be some catch later in the game that requires you to buy some crap from the cash shop, although I've read about players getting through most of the game without spending a single penny. But who cares anyway? You're not gonna stick with the game for that long.
So thats what I recommend to you. Download Allods onto your machine. You can have the game up and running within an hour and a half. Play it for a few days until your brain begins to melt from being guided through all the stupidly childish & boring quests and the lack of challenge, stimulation and excitement. Then you can stop playing it safe in the knowledge that you have only wasted a portion of your time on a crap game instead of wasting your money as well.
It might also help to cure you of the addiction. After watching endless streams of player avatars running between npcs doing stupid tasks a 5 year old could manage, you might start thinking "Do I really want to be one of those people? Are they REALLY enjoying themselves or are they just simply bored addicts just like me?".
Or......you can continue hopping from one shitty mmo to another like so many others, supporting and funding companies that make really bad games so that they can continue to make more bad games in the future. If you want decent mmos to play then dont support the ones that you KNOW are crap.
Face it. Hanging around in these forums is more enjoyable than playing any of the current mmos.
The highlighted paragraph jumped out at me. It's sooooooo true. These are online games shared by thousands of players......and all of those players are going into these mmos and having the computer tell them a story. No wonder so many people are getting bored with the current crop of mmos really quickly. There is more focus on interacting with the computer and levelling up than there is on actually doing things with other players. It seems that the "multiplayer online" aspect of mmos has taken on a new meaning now. It used to be large numbers of players interacting with each other in a virtual world, but now it has turned into large numbers of players reading stories and being told what to do and where to go. A new zombie nation has been born.
You are correct. Pre-scripted stories really should only be a small part of the game and yet that isnt the case in mmos nowadays. It seems that the more modern mmos are becoming more and more like single player games......but without the quality you would get from a genuine single player game.
EQ was my first mmo so I'm sure my enjoyable memory of it is heavily biased. However I remember it having virtually no story to guide me through the game world. Sure there was background "lore" and the occasional quest but people were busy having their own adventures and going wherever they wanted. Virtual worlds dont need stories and the freedom I felt in EQ was what made it fun for me. The players also seemed to be so much more sociable then (myself included) because they had to turn to each other to get their "stories". Now though as mmos have become more popular, the developers have begun to strip the players ability to think for themselves and make their own choices. There is simply less incentive to roleplay with each other. Now its more geared towards ploughing through the content. The roleplaying elements have faded away to be replaced by stories that the players progress through by clicking a few buttons, running from one npc to the next for the sake of progression much like a single player game. Loads of players all around you? Who cares?! They're all busy doing their own thing (ie reading stories and doing the tasks the devs have planned for them).
Of course in many mmos the players can ignore these stories and try and make up their own fun with each other but its harder to do this in the current mmos. Its like sitting down and trying to have a game of chess with some friends in the middle of a busy supermarket. The developers have put all of their effort and hard work into those stories and as a result have begun to neglect the actual gameplay, diversity and complexity of their games. They dont want the players of their games to do their own thing (roleplay?). They want them to read their stories. The virtual worlds of previous mmos have now been replaced by scripted stories.......and as people can already get much better scripted stories from single player games in which their actions actually seem to count for something and the gameplay and production values are better, then I guess a number of people are drifting back to those games instead of slogging their way through these long-winded watered down online story games.
Sounds like a good candidate for Darkfall. In Darkfall your character gets stronger by playing the game, even running raises your stats, no xp involved.