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MMORPGs are about selfishness
theinvader
Member UncommonPosts: 240
I read a post in this thread that made me think a little about the nature of MMO design and the mentality it creates in players.
Here's the post:
Originally posted by ShizaxxxI would never play such a game, and I doubt any developer would ever make that game.
If there isn't any gold at the end of the rainbow, then why play? Why do a raid, if you won't get rewarded?
Why do pvp, if you won't get rewarded in some way?
Why even level up, if you won't achieve anything, but some better-looking pixels?
It just doesn't make sense. Who would waste several months, powerleveling to, say, level 200, just to be as good as a level 1?
I don't know if this speaks for a majority of MMO players (I'm sure there are a few UO and EQ vets who will disagree) but it's certainly not an uncommon attitude. People do things in games not for the result of what they're doing, but for the sake of their own personal gain; their own progression through the game.
In my perfect dream game there would be no character progression, at least not through stats. You would do things for the result, because you wanted that thing to be done, not because you would gain a reward from doing it (unless the purpose of your actions is personal gain, e.g. robbing a guild treasury).
You would PvP because you have a grudge against another player and want him dead, or because you want to capture territory and resources from another guild, or just because you want to see someone else's castle burn.
You'd explore a dungeon because you genuinely want to know what's down there, or because an important NPC has been kidnapped by a dragon and rescuing him/her would be a benefit to the community, or indeed because there was some phat lewt down there and you want the shiny stuff.
But ultimately it comes down to a question which was asked by Eskil Steenberg, the developer of the sandbox MMO Love (which everyone should totally check out). I'll paraphrase because I can't be bothered to find the actual quote:
"If you sat down and played a game for 2 hours, and at the end of it all your progress was erased, or you had made no recordable progress at all, would you consider it a waste of time? Or would you consider it 2 hours of fun which might even have enriched your life in some small way?"
Always read the small print.
Comments
I don't mean to over-simplify your topic here, but MMOs are a GAME. A game is played to entertain oneself. I don't see how you can completely take that OUT of the realm of selfishness.
Personally, I like both my own character progress and gain in a game MIXED WITH the social aspects, group play, exploration with others, etc. I don't think the two must necessarily be mutually exclusive, but.....when it comes to entertainment, which games are, you're going to have a hard time completely eliminating SELF from the equation without destroying the purpose of entertainment entirely and making a game that no one finds entertaining, since we all have different things we find to BE entertaining.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
yes true. I want to rule the game world. but at my own pace not a linear progression handed to me by developers who deems a system like Wow to be innovative. I want a home I can customize and I want to craft without inpunity. I don't want this or that.
See Playing a MMO is not about other players it's about me. I'm greedy and I pay for a game to allow me to perform feats and deeds that would get me killed or arrested for in RL.
I don't play games for friends because really, can someone who is nameless and faceless be a real friend? Why would I group for the fun of it? sure it may be fun to be in a group but I'm in it for me not anyone else man.
Real Life can be a biach, so games are my "Me" time.
Oh you misunderstand me. I don't want to completely remove selfishness from games, I just want to shift the focus away from doing things because I want xp points, or because the game demands that I do them in order to progress. I want to care about the world and the consequences of what I'm doing, not do things because my quest objective tells me to, or because I want some predefined PvP rewards.
Always read the small print.
I can totally relate to this.
I feel like this half the time I play and the other half the time I want to socialize. I'm female (which is neither here nor there, I suppose). I want it ALL.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
In my opinion, that is part of the problem with MMOs today. They are now considered "games" and developed as such - with a bunch of trivial, self gratification mini-games which bare no significance to anyone other than one's self. What happened to the Virtual Worlds? What happened to logging in to an MMO to be a part of and interact with a virtual living, breathing world and a community?
MMOs died the day players/developers replaced Cooperation with Competition. Just my thoughts.
When devs. money talks. Good MMO's, false advertising, and decency walks.
When did you start playing "old school" MMO's. World Of Warcraft?
So we are playing games to have fun, but why is getting gear and levels the only way of having fun? It seems like that is the only thing that satisfies most players. That is sad to me, and it is reflected in the mmorpgs being developed, there are so many linear mmorpgs with a focus on personal gain. For those of us who enjoy other aspects of a virtual world, we are screwed. So I agree that MMORPGs are about selfishness.
But they don't have to be. That is just how they are designed, and that is driving more players who like that design to play MMORPGs. If we saw different types of MMORPGs designed for different players we would get more social and adventure driven players into the market.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
Even when MMOs were more made as virtual worlds than games per se, they were still at the heart and core entertainment. Entertainment is something that the SELF craves and enjoys. You cannot take the self out of entertainment.
I do however agree with you that games did not used to SEEM quite as selfishly motivated.
You can ask the EQ divorce victims how "unselfish" gaming seemed to them. Oh the virtual worlds were wonderful enough for the gamer to spend countless hours in them helping (selflessly) other people while their families were going.....what the fuck is the deal here?
Self and entertainment just go hand in hand....period. The only difference now is degrees of selfishness, really.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Couldn't say it better, so I will just quote you.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
This kind of goes back to The Skinner box, which has obviously worked for certain games in the mmo industry, and is apparently captivating for some players.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2487-The-Skinner-Box
The video is pretty self explanatory as to why players are getting tired of it, and what other methods game developers could use.
Sure, entertainment is and should be about enjoying yourself. (And on a sidenote, people should have the self control not to let their entertainment time adversely affect the rest of their lifes, like in your divorcee example). But that's not the point I'm trying to make.
MMOs are designed at present to put your character at the centre of everything. They have linear stories based around you being a hero and performing heroic deeds. Everything you do directly rewards you with exp points and items to the point where that's all the player cares about. Him/herself.
But I feel that this goes against the Massively Multiplayer element of these games, the very element that makes them stand out from every other video game genre. If I choose to play a game populated by thousands of other people it's not because I want all the focus to be on myself but because I want to interact with all these people. I don't want my progress in this world to be measured by numbers, because that way all I end up caring about is those numbers and how to make them higher. I want my progress to be measured by the things that I do. After months of play I don't want to be rewarded by the game telling me "congratulations, you've reached level 80!" I want the game to say "congratulations, you, with the aid of your comrades, have succesfully defeated a horde of evil monsters and saved the great kingdom." or "congratulations, you have crushed all your enemies, seen them driven before you and heard the lamentation of their women!"
In short, the game should be about doing things, not raising stats.
Always read the small print.
Thanks for the reference. The guys at Extra Credits make very sound analysies.
Always read the small print.
I'm going to start selling "Milk +1". It will be in a purple jug and will be labeled as slightly superior to milk in every nutritional value (but actually it will just be milk). Look for it soon at your local grocer. For those that are unable to consume milk I will sell Graham Crackers +1 as well.
This made me chuckle.
Always read the small print.
MMO's need to recapture the sense of community, the 'world' feel, that set them apart from traditional games. If something is fun, a good time to be had with ones friends, then it is essentially rewarding.
An example. Me and a buddy got hooked like crack on Thief: The Dark Project at release. We played that game OVER and OVER. We would take turns hot swapping the drivers seat on his comp from level to level. We even found a way to complete the first mission, Lord Baffords Manor, on hard mode in less than 5 minutes. (go on, I dare ya, lol.) There was no reward in running that mission a hundred times other than the great time spent with my bud.
If more MMO's strived for this, feeling, they would reclaim their niche as social activities and lose their negative 'game lobby' moniker.
Warhammer fanatic since '85.
I like this analogy. We are all gamers and we enjoy talking about games. So why do we play mmos? It would seem like the perfect fit for people who like to play and discuss video games. Create a virtual world where people can play together and talk about their adventures. When did that get overshadowed by loot? Maybe when crafting became an afterthought or perhaps just the presence of non combat professions. Who knows, but I too would like to see more mmos come out that are rewarding to play for the sake of being a gamer and not just a gear treadmill.
I shall ask you one thing...How much of the content in these mmorpgs are actually just plain fun to do?
In most of the players
Progression is the most enjoyable aspect. Because of the "Omaigawd that skill sounds awesome! I get more skill/talent/stat points!"
When that is finished they either want to test out their new skills on actual content or get more gear.
90% of these games have little content and the gear is limited to grinding out what little content there is.
So yah o.O Its not the selfishness its the fact that there is so little fun stuff to do o.o most of the time at least. In WoW, I farmed for 2 or so days to craft around...100 tonks for my tonk war event and yes farming wasnt very fun but the tonk war and the 2 hours it lasted was friggin epic! @_@ ;
But yah..because of the limited content, they just make it so you run the same things over and over again to get slightly better gear o.o And if you dont do that, there arent other just fun stuff to do aside from pvp which also means grinding to be ...
Oh forget it i forgot what I was going to say.. *goes back to watching big bang theory*
''/\/\'' Posted using Iphone bunni
( o.o)
(")(")
**This bunny was cloned from bunnies belonging to Gobla and is part of the Quizzical Fanclub and the The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club**
Are you serious? Of course MMO’s are about selfishness and anyone who says different is a complete and utter pompous ass.
People so not play MMO’s for altruistic means. They play for pure enjoyment. The actions that people enjoy may be different but at the end of the day it is still al about the player’s enjoyment.
Just another thread where people try to turn MMO’s into something more than they are. Another thread where people talk about how much better their play style is than someone else’s. No surprise here. Self importance of “old school” players is always shocking no matter how much you see it.
--John Ruskin
the answer is "yes". It is a waste of time. Even for single player games, if you play for 2 hours, you will make some story progression, may be get to the next area.
That is why quests are popular because players feel like they have DONE something. In fact, even not for the gear/gold reward, people complete quest so that they get the quest achievement .. that is a form of progression too.
hmmm as long as you have time to be selfless in the real world. mmorpgs are fine
"The world's still the same - there's just less in it."
The thing about doing stuff to get rewarded is an easy way to keep people's interest. Many people will see doing quests as a waste of time if it doesn't give any reward. It's kind of hard to change that system, since again, giving rewards is a good way to keep a person from playing, just like rewarding a child for him/her to obey you.
You suggested that it would be better if there's like a particular quest in which you need to save an NPC, and when successfully done, will bring good things to the entire community. That would be possible for an RPG since there is a story. So if you save the princess, for example, the "community" or the people in the story, will now have a leader (something like that). But in MMORPGs, you have a lot of people playing. So if you save the princess, she would be saved for the rest of her life, and that means other people who have just started playing cannot save the princess anymore since she was saved already by another person. You get what I mean? It's pretty difficult to design an MMORPG that will benefit others once you do something. Maybe somewhat closer to that is the relic system in Aika where squads of players in a certain nation can get the relics of other nation. And when done successfully, the relic will give buff not only to the squad who raided the other nation, but the whole nation. This is probably the closest thing that you could get. Anything more is not possible, as of now.
Played: Runescape, Adventure Quest
Currently playing: Aika Global, Atlantica Online
Waiting for: Cardmon Hero, Dynasty Warriors Online
OP, just pretend you're not getting a reward the next time you complete a quest in a game... problem solved.
That's basically what you're saying, right? You don't want the game to be about the rewards, the only reward you want is the satisfaction of knowing you completed something and didn't get rewarded for it?
I wish my boss wouldn't pay me for all my hard work.
I'm pretty sure your boss would let you work for free.
I do not know how one could fail to realize that most games focus on rewarding the childish and selfish instincts of a player in the modern age. I mean, "almost every game on the market" is about "killing something and taking its stuff..."
Sure, I wish games would develop a new model for rewarding players that wasn't so rooted in blood, loot, and childish pwnage, but I just don't see it happening in my life time.
my boss likes to punish his employees by rewarding them with money. Seriously, what kind of sick and twisted person does that? People should be expected to work for free, and be happy about it!