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Re-discovering your inner noob
Amathe
Member LegendaryPosts: 7,630
I have played mmos for 10 years and have posted often about my concerns for how the genre isn't what it used to be.
So recently I took a year and a half off, and then started playing another mmo. Here is what I discovered after my time away.
If you play these games enough, and if you play enough of them, basically you've seen it all. The artwork changes. Some implementations change. A feature is present or absent. But you are seldom doing anything you haven't done before. Probably a million times before.
It's easy to become tired and cynical. You start hoping that some game will come along that makes everything fresh and new again.
But really a game won't make anything fresh and new - not unless you take 20 years off and come back. Absent pulling a total Rip Van Winkle, you, me, the player - we have to find a way to make the games fresh and new for ourselves. No developer will ever find a way to make a kill 10 of x quest intrinsically fresh.
What made the games fresh and new in the first place was that you bought into the journey. You didn't have to have the best sword and the best armor to enjoy that journey. You didn't have to level in the most efficient way. You didn't have to have the agreed upon and mathmatically proven superior build. That's because as a noob you didn't know any of those things. You just played, for the joy of playing.
To enjoy mmos past the point of playing them for 10 years, I think you have to get back in touch with your inner noob. The mmo I am playing now has tons of design elements I don't like. But I have decided I don't care and won't care because it's not really important anymore. I just want to be a character, exploring a world, fighting monsters and having adventure. The means by which that is done I choose not to question.
I keep catching myself fretting over whether my build is right, or is my gear up to date, or getting angry with myself over a preventable death. But then I stop and remind myself, meh, forget that. Just BE [my character name]. Go find a monster and fight it, in some place I haven't been, just for the thrill of adventure in a virtual world. That's what it's really all about. Everything past that is a long road that ends in frustration and cynicism.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Comments
I'm happy for you if you can do that. I can put the things I don't like aside too. Up until "the last straw that breaks the camel's back". I cannot do that forever. I don't see how I can un-learn what I've learned. Un-see what I've seen.
Last time I had a "wow-moment" was with Mass Effect and before that I can't even remember when. All I know is that they've become extremely rare. I'd hate to think that was my fault.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Question to ponder and build discussion!
How would you react to a game which gave vague item and skill information?
This sword is large with slow and power blows. "or" This sword is thin with fast, light blows.
This shield is light, for moving fast and blocking. "or" This shield is heavy, for sustaining and defending.
Would it build immersion, would it be game breaking for "hardcores", would players actually study the system and make a site of info for best buildz (My solution for this is constantly nerfing best build componenets)?
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
I played Final Fantasy XI for almost 4 years. I had to step away from MMOs for a year. I played SWG for 6 months then I had to step away since game didn't hold up for me.
I started playing DCUO beta and started to get into MMOs again. I look forward to SWTOR in Spring.
I find that I have to take some break from MMO world to really appreciate it again.
Playing at this time: DCUO
Waiting for: SWTOR
Yeah, I agree that time off helps and so does a care free atitude. I was a high level clan leader in Lineage II for over 3 years and I had to not only worry about what my character was doing constantly but what 50 other clannies were doing with their characters as well. The experience totally destroyed MMOs for me for a while but in the last year or so I've been getting back into the genre but I've been taking a very casual care free approach. I tell people all of the time now that if you want to truly enjoy a game don't try to be in charge of anyone but yourself, don't stress out over stats or gear and first and foremost just play the game the way YOU want and have fun. Now I'll find myself doing very noobish things in game and I'm having fun again. I play the way I want and if others don't like it... screw 'em... I'm having fun the way I want on my terms now.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
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beat();
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I have found that time off and just not taking the games so seriously goes a long way toward making them fun for me again, whether I play something new and try to concentrate on discovering the world or go back to game I've already played and try to find something new in it.
As incredibly lame as it is, and how it makes me cringe just to type -- you're only an MMO virgin once. That inner noob feeling never comes back.
It is easy to be jaded, but you don't HAVE to be. It helps to take significant time off between games, to give you the time and space so that they don't all blend together and look the same.
Some recommendations for recapturing your inner noob:
1. Look for interesting details in the world-- pictures hanging on walls, mysterious ruins out in the field, things like that.
2. Read some of the NPC dialogue. (I know when I am hell-bent on the destination rather than the journey, I usually click through to the 'how much of what' part.)
3. Stay off the forums and spoiler sites. They'll nudge you back toward the rat race and away from the adventure, even if you're trying to be mindful about that.
4. If it stops feeling like an adventure and starts feeling like a To-Do list, take a break, even if it is just for a couple of hours.
This seems to nail my experience pretty well, even though I have managed to stay out of leadership positions for a few years now. When I was worrying about where I was in the guild, how I measured up against other characters of the same level and class, I lost the joy and it was more and more about the numbers and less and less about the world or the adventure for me. When I play without worrying about my gear or my stats or what everyone else is doing, it is fun again.
OP, I'm glad this works for you to some degree but I really think it isn't your responsibility, as the customer, to make a product worthwhile. In fact, I hate people like you for supporting games that you know are boring and uninspiring and are not willing to wait for a company to deliver a product that is actually enjoyable.
You're right that we bought into the journey in the early days, but we can still buy into that journey today. One major problem with MMORPG's today is that transparency of the game. If weapons didn't tell us exactly how fast they attacked and for how much damage, if we couldn't see the level of the person standing next to us at the bank or the enemy we're about to engage and if other information wasn't presented to us in this half-assed manner, then we could buy into that journey again. We need ignorance to do that...we need uncertainty.
The above, along with several other retarded and archaic MMORPG staples like aggro systems, UI driven gameplay (god, WoW might as well be a MUD cause theres no reason to look at what's actually happening on screen), super-fast leveling, "end game" focus, non-challenging gameplay, etc...are what keep this genre the piece of shit that it is. The MMORPG genre isn't even reaching towards it's real potential, and games like Rifts and SWTOR that are coming out in the future are following this same uninspired bullshit path.
Just fixing the part that you're complaining about would do wonders for the genre and it starts with eliminating the transparency littered throughout modern MMORPG's...
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"Fixed it. Because that wall of text attacked me, killed me and looted my body..."
-George "sniperg" Light
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Cloudsol/