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Eliminating "wasted game time" has wasted a lot of my time
Amathe
Member LegendaryPosts: 7,630
Our modern world is filled with things that are supposed to save us time. Microwave ovens. Electric windows. Internet shopping. There are thousands of examples. But somehow, I don't find myself having a lot of free time. Whatever time these conveniences are supposed to save somehow gets filled up with work, not liesure.
To me, mmos are the same way. Back when I played EQ 1, I had long travel (on foot). Spawns needed camping. Dungeons had to be shared. Leveling was slow. Rewards were fewer and took longer to obtain. Epic quests could take a year. Everything was slooooooow.
So along come modern games and take measures to change all that. Time wasting, begone!
So what effect has that had in terms of saving me time?
That saved time got filled up with grinds lol. Run this instance 30 times for factional rewards and to get a particular item. The dungeon awaits me whenever I am ready but I end up having to run it over and over and over and over until I could scream. Rewards come easier but as soon as I get one I am grinding for another. Have to get 4 of this tier armor for the bonus, blah blah.
I was never in a hurry playing EQ. I logged on, maybe I got a group or a raid, maybe not. If not, I casually hooked up with some buddies and found a place to pull some mobs for xp.
In WoW, it was always go go go. Run this now. Run that now. Grind this. Grind that. Sure, none of those tasks individually were as long or as challenging as my old game. But I felt constant pressure to keep up. Sorry bro, your dps isn't enough. Hell in EQ I never knew what my dps was.
I once camped an epic quest mob for 2 days in EQ. That may seem extreme, standing alone. But I can tell you if I typed /played in EQ versus /played in WoW, I probably spent three times more in game in WoW than in EQ, and it wasn't because I was having such a swell time. It was me grinding away for the next shiney thing that never seemed to stop.
My point is, sure games have taken measures to eliminate "down" time. But that down time has been replaced with frenetic and repetitive grinding for items. I therefore don't see how my time has been saved or my fun increased.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Comments
This is the reason I solo 99% of the time.
I take my time, enjoy the game, the world, the quests.....whatever. Grouping these days is nothing more than a zergfest.
I think the EQ generation of games could have reduced downtime without introducing the grind we see today. I mean, those guys included downtime and timesinks specifically to extend subs, they weren't prioritizing the most enjoyable possible game design.
For example, 1st generation harsh death penalties in themepark games were more about extending subs than they were about making people play well and avoid death. WoW itself is the proof.
Or long and difficult travel to play with friends is another downtime I don't like. Instead there should be reasons to explore on foot, together with a fast travel system for convenience.
But the biggest "downtime" that WoW eliminated is coping with mystery and the unknown. That's why the quests are such a grind I think, the game is lacking in mystery.
This goes right along with some of the other issues that have been happening in recent games. Thing is, it used to be a lot more about going on that adventure, and accomplishing some task that was fun & challenging at the same time, regardless of what level you were or how L33T your gear was. You could be level 5, and encounter your first boss, and it felt epic, and you couldnt wait to see how cool & challenging the next boss was.
But instead of being about going on an adventure, games have become all about numbers & stats. Look at game worlds from 5-10 years ago compared to most game worlds now. Have they really expanded all that much? There hasnt been much of a change in vastness, and loads of different places to explore each with their own unique feeling, instead theyve tried to just cram more and more time sinks and crap into the same size or smaller areas & fewer in number areas with all the instancing and fast travel tools. You would think that with the number of players in MMOs now compared to back then they would try to make things bigger and better, and try to encourage massive numbers of people to get together and do things.
Another thing ive noticed is the lack of an increase to the "epicness" of bosses. Just for argument's sake and it being the best example of the large number's, im going to refer to WoW. You would think with millions of people playing, generally several thousand, or tens of thousands, on each server, there would be some truly amazing world bosses which would take a virtual army to take down and prevent it from destroying the cities. Now im not talking raids/warbands/etc with 1 or 2 dozen people, im talking several members of all the major guilds all working together to take it down. (which hell ive got some awesome ideas for things related to stuff like that, just not the skill to make an MMO myself :-( ) If youre going to give me a story that says theres some all powerful demon thats going t caus ethe apocolypse and we're the only ones who can stop it, then give me a damn boss that actually feels like its capable of destroying the world, not some craptastic person/creature that a handful of random people can destroy with ease.
Anyway back on track. Theyve pretty much swapped out the time we used to spend having fun for time spent getting our numbers up so that we can finally get to the supposed fun part, the end game. Thats the carrot thats always dangled in front of our face. Weve traded in "omg i love this game im having so much fun" for "omg im so uber, i pwn everyone" and "omg i cant pwn everyone, this game sucks"
I think your biggest problem is that you are playing WoW. Playing WoW is like going to McDonalds and expecting the food to taste like Filet Mignon. Not every game is a gear grindfest full of 1337 speaking 12 year olds. Eq2, LoTRO, Aion still have some of that old school adventure feel to them. Also dozens of niche' games out there that would better suit your play style. Don't play something that is not fun.
'Down Time' was just replaced with 'Busy Work'.
I have seen more grind in WoW in less time than in all my years playing EQ. Players dont want to admit that the grind is there, but it is and its even larger than it was in older MMOs. The difference is they trick you into thinking its not there. They give you all these small and easy tasks to do such as grind out gear or grind out crafting or grind out PvP where as a game like EQ had you just grinding out progression (leveling). The grind is there, but in new games like WoW they make it seem like you are accomplishing a lot more when in reality you are not.
The leveling grind of old has been replaced by the gear/badge/pvp/crafting/achievement grind of new. The illusion that you are accomplishing more in less time is how they get you. Sure you level up faster, but thats about it. Once you hit max level all there is to do is grind for gear or coin. Which yes, old MMOs had raids too, but it wasn't the point of the game as it is in todays MMOs.
Before WoW, any new MMO that was in the works had people asking what questions like "What features will we see in game?" or "What will crafting be like?" or "What does the skill system look like?". After WoW one of the most asked questions about a game in developement is "How's the end game going to work?" or "How many Raid dungeons are we going to see at launch?".
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
You don't have to do anything in WoW
Many people just hang out and chat.
I don't see your point. Are you saying that because there was stuff you could do, you had to do it?
Why not just stop doing it?
Was this something peculiar that only EQ1 people who quit and joined WoW experienced?
I'm glad there's always something to do in WoW. But I don't always do it. Sometimes I just hang out.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
Beautiful Amathe- absolutely beautiful. A solid play on words with the title that rings absolutely true.
Cell phone- able to call anyone in the world at any second in time! But because of the facility of contacting, nothing substantial is ever said. Decrease accessibility, increase interaction.
Along the same vein: getting fit is entirely more about trimming fat, than building muscle. It's more about abandonning what you don't need than trying to accumulate excess beyond what is required.
The more 'focused' a game design, the less application it has. 'My way or the highway' truly does run counter to its design.
I subscribe entirely to this post, and its many, many tangents.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
Great topic, I agree with the OP 100%.
I have to second this. The OP just seems to lack self-control. Just because a game has a lot of stuff to do, it does not mean that you have to do them all, as fast as possible. The beauty of WoW is that I have a ton of control about what I am doing. I can level a character upteen different ways, run a raid when I feel up to it, or just sit around talking to guildies and other friends.
Built-in extra downtime is just time I have no control over. I want to do one thing in the game and the game will not let me do it for arbitraty time-wasting reasons. I am perfectly capable of wasting hours in the game on stuff that is not 'useful' all on my own. If I want to waste time, I will waste time. If I want to be hyper-productive I will be hyper-productive. It really should be my choice and it is pretty insulting to assume that I have no control over how I play or that I cannot have a social time without the game assigninig me 'play time' and 'rest time'.
Doing nothing =/= Doing something
This is something I've heard a lot lately where WoW players claim that WoW gives them tons of control over what they can do. Which is actually.....false. Every actions points towards the end-game (at least in the case of most MMOs). Regardless of what you do, may it be the players you meet, the quests you complete, the raid party, the crafting, etc, they all point to the end-game. You simply took a longer path, that's all.
Talking about control over what you can do is off-topic though so let's stop here.
What the OP is saying is that what was supposed to save him time to reach the end-game, doesn't save him time. He still has to grind for "epics" to gain access to the next raid and grind more "epics". This is very common in modern MMOs yet most people don't seem to notice it. Most likely because their first MMO was WoW. Gamers who've been playing MMOs since UO, EQ, (and even muds), etc have a very different experience, as shown by the OP.
What he's saying is that choosing to be hyper-productive by doing 12 different things, and then in EQ taking that same amount of time to do just one thing, will benefit your character by the same amount over any course of time. He's saying that they divide up the "grinding" into 4 or 5 different types of grinding, so that before one has the chance to get old you're already doing it for some other stat, or skill, or gear.
This is why a lot of people say WoW is built on player stimulation, because there's always one little thing or another that you can get a new skill point in by devoting 5-10 minutes to it. The game hinges itself on this idea, on pleasing the player by giving him that "+1" even if it doesn't really mean anything in itself. Games like EQ, yeah maybe the only thing that ever got a +1 was your level but that influenced all of your stats across the board, and the time in between the +1 was spent immersing yourself in the greater task at hand or focusing on one large quest, not running around from point A to point B, killing this and turning in that.
I played EQ1 semi-hardcore from Feb 01 to about mid 06.
I have all the time in the world now thanks to being on disability. That said, there is NO way I would ever play a game as harsh as EQ again. Even though it will always be my fav MMO, I just think it silly now looking back at all the time I put into it.
If you have never sat at your PC for 24+ hrs in one sitting, you really have no clue how taxing EQ1 could be. How many folks besides me had to sit all night, and into the very early hrs trying to get their bods back from a failed Hate or Fear raid? Friggen nutz....but you had no choice if you didnt wanna lose your things(bods use to rot).
I would luv to see EQ redone in a different way than WoW took the themepark game, but that in no means indicates I want something even close to what EQ was in time requirements. As indicated, this if from someone who has all the time in the world.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
MMOs are about longevity/persistence and Fun , the wasted gametime concept is a myth. What has in effewct happened is that all the nice trading/community building feature and gameplay have been removed to provide in a lot of cases a slick arena game.
If a game seems like an effort and is not fun don't play it simple.
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Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
Okay, let's start with the theme of this thread, generally, you are "complaining" that video games are being a waste of your time. This kind of is the purpose of video games in the first place.
The second thing, is this term grind? What is a grind? Doing the same thing over and over again to get a desired result? Theoretically we can call shooters a much bigger grind, all you do is shoot people in the face on the same "instances" provided by th company with occassional new releases of more. This doesn't stop many people from actually enjoying the game and are probably less likely to use the term grind for their game experience so why are we?
This term grind has to be thrown out the door because its abused and it really makes no sense at all. Every game has its repititiveness and the different types off repitition is what separates these games into its respective genres. If you are finding any video game, "more work than play", then you should consider another pastime because video games are working as intended, to pass your time and they aren't meant for everyone.
Play AoC, it's like a cross between EQ (tiers of raiding as well as "alternate advancement" skills with the expansion coming out next week), EVE (the world is a warzone, pretty much everyone you see is going to try and kill you (but you can also play on non-pvp servers) and GW, the feel of the game and progression feels kind of similar to it....
I know it had a bad start, I used to say it was a crappy game when it was releasing and refused to play it, but I recently started 2 weeks ago and after playing WoW, Aion, L2, EVE, WAR and a half dozen newer MMO's, I can easily say AoC is the best option out there right now.
The problem is, nothing has really changed. The developers still need a way to keep you paying your monthly fee. In the old days, it was downtime, sitting around waiting for something to happen. People got bored with it. Now it's doing the same stupid crap over and over again. Lots of people are bored with that too. There are only so many ways developers can make you sit around and pay without actually doing much work.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
That's a very interesting statement. If you don't think the grind is there, is it there?
Everyone has a different idea of what constitutes grinding, but the one common theme is "it's boring and I don't want to do it". If it's not boring and you do want to do it, doesn't that mean it's not a grind?
In my opinion a grind is when you go to an area, do the mission/quest/kill in that area and don’t get the thing you need. So you have to come back to that area X times until you get the thing you do need or you just wait. A series of quest, not matter how much a pain it is, is not a grind.
However the spirit of this thread (IMHO) is not grinding. It is the speed of which you get to end game. During EQ1 it was not easy to get to the end game, because of X,Y,Z. With the current progression/evolution of gaming, they only changed the way of getting to X,Y,Z, and they didn’t make it faster.
The reason they didn’t do this is two fold. One is Money, the all mighty greenback. Second reason is people freaking whine when they get to the end game, there is nothing to do.
The only solution to this problem is to have a game with no leveling, skill points, etc. And by having a game with no progression would create a new slew of other problems and/or complaints. So we are back to square one………………
If you want a game that you feel: important, achieving progression and not having to grind. The only answer is a single player game aka Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Final Fantasy (ok maybe not FF), but just about any single player game. Because in a MMO, there is no such animal at least until Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Online, maybe.
Too true OP, too true. Would be nice to have some more choice in modern gameplay so that everyone could find their niche.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez