Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
MMORPG's biggest problem? Us.
Angier2758
Member UncommonPosts: 1,026
Maybe I'm jaded, but I've seen many games now ruined more because of the player than the game itself. We keep expecting a game to "promote" roleplay, encourage grouping, make pvp worth it and the list goes on.
We've lost a sense of any originality: For multiple games now whatever is the best even by 1% is what you pick...WoW devs change a spec so it does 1 or 2% more theoretical damage and the player base jumps ship off their original spec. Is that the only thing that matters? I'd say maybe this is the new "Wow Mentality!" like some grumpie old gamer... but truth is I saw it in EQ; it just wasn't nearly as pervasive due to just general lack of game knowledge out there.
We expect *perfect* balance... in pve and pvp. We've interchanged viable with theoretically best, but no one seems to understand the difference... if you do 5% less healing you're suddenly not viable? WTF is that exactly?
We don't pvp for the sake of pvping anymore. WoW had borderline no reason to pvp when it came out... yet people pvped A LOT. I remember there being a massive low tauren gank squad that used to roam stone talon. They'd gank you and then ALL do the peanut butter jelly time dance on your body. Now we have ultra safe pve areas (or the pvers cry) and we have to have super incentive pvp (or the pvpers cry).
PVE isn't hard anymore.. if it's too hard we cry. Yet we want to encourage grouping! What's the point of grouping if the content is so easy a trained moneky could do it? I use the term *hard* loosely here, but damn I liked running through kithicor forest at night in EQ1 and knowing that if I stopped I'd die. (evil skeleton laughs would actually worry me)
My last rant point? I've dropped some hints along the way.....People don't realize that they will ALWAYS view their first MMORPGs as amazing regardless of what was actually true or not. Yes EQ was harder than say Rift or WoW, but it was harder not for actual difficulty, but because of lack of information AND environmental factors/rules. Imagine how rough Molten Core would have been if the respawn was higher and you lost your gear when you died. People still act like EQ raiding was tough ... it wasn't, but system you raided in was shitty as hell. Heck I remember having a tank death rotation. Still humorous though.... even though raids had a metric ton of tanks (like a third of the raid?) groups still had trouble finding tanks.....same goes for healers lol.
Whatever happened to us playing an MMORPG just for fun?
Comments
Are you sure you are not taking the sum of all opinions you have read from the entire player base and treating them as if they were coming from a single individual?
I'm sure what you say is true about some people, but none of those points are true about me. In fact, I feel the opposite about 3 or 4 of them.
Regardless, the common playerbase in mmorpgs has definitely gotten progressively suckier over the last 10 years. Despite that, I still think the developers have gotten even more sucky, taking the mmo industry in the wrong directions, creating terrible games, ruining the good games.
They do good sometimes. EQ1 Fippy Darkpaw is good. Eve is good. A few others are good. As a whole though, the industry could be in a golden age of awesomeness if it weren't for the developers whose focus is on the massive mindless playerbase and not the challenge seeking minority.
EDIT:
Edited to add my bottom line:
MMORPG's biggest problem isn't us. It's the developers.
I thought the point was that I was taking the sum of opinions I've heard and showing how nutty they are.
And Jimmac... of course there are those of us who totally disagree, but unless we all got together it really doesn't matter. The majority out yells us. If you were a developer you're stuck having to listen to the majority...... how are they going to make a good game when the feedback they get is garbage?
Fair enough. I think 1, 2, and 4 apply to a big majority of mmo players nowadays. 3 and 5 are probably closer to an even split, but that is just me making wild ass guesses.
Most people, yourself included, are extremely wrong when they make this kind of statement.
I know a lot of people who started in EQ/UO, but love WoW, because they hated all the meta-game crap that emerged because of the design decisions of those other games.
Hell, I know my first MMO's aren't even close to my favorites. GS3 mud, UO, EQ, AC1-beta, E&B, CoH, FFXI, SWG. Meh. My favorite MMO I've ever played, above anything else, is Fallen Earth.
Point being, most people, and by that I do mean the massive, silent, does not read forums at all majority, who played all those other games in the past, all left them for good reasons, and I've met a lot more people who'll never look back rather than play Elton John dress up and toss on the rose-tint's.
And realistically, and financially, there isn't actually a problem. I'd wager, that like most studies have shown from inside the people running these games, that roughly 70% of any games players never read the forums, never post on the forums, and don't give a crap about what the people on the forums may or may not be saying.
A thread on here a week ago about BF:Heroes had amazing numbers, 70:28:2. 70% Never have even loaded the forums, 28% have read but not posted, 2% of 3 million registered users, with an average weekly concurrency of over 1.5mil unique accounts during the time period, actually posted on the forums.
Mind you, that 2% complained the most and the loudest, and in turn, opened their wallets the widest to the games cash-shop, but a factor of 10x. But thats another topic.
MMO's aren't in trouble, just people who wish they could make other people like the MMO's they prefer. They're in trouble, because you can't force someone to play a game they don't want to play.
Lets Push Things Forward
I knew I would live to design games at age 7, issue 5 of Nintendo Power.
Support games with subs when you believe in their potential, even in spite of their flaws.
I'd have to 100% disagree... I guess I should qualify it as the first MMORPG they really got into. I played UO for a few weeks then switched to EQ.
A lot and I mean A LOT of people look at their first true love MMORPG (better term?) with rose colored glasses.
I never said that it doesn't apply to some people, but it's not an absolute though. Not everyone will just defacto-defend a game blindly against logically supported argurments that expose genuine faults. Just because any number of people do, doesn't mean they all will/do.
Lets Push Things Forward
I knew I would live to design games at age 7, issue 5 of Nintendo Power.
Support games with subs when you believe in their potential, even in spite of their flaws.
You kind of contradicted yourself here.
@OP: a community isn't one entity, it's made up of a whole lot of individuals, each with their own specific preferences, viewpoint and approach that only roughly can be divided into groups. I think that your arguments indeed do count, each applies to a segment of the MMO playerbase, that together make up a change in MMO community and mindset that's overall different from the ones encountered 10 years ago.
Will this change for the better? Hard to say.
Those first years of MMO gaming were also partially because of an Age of blissful ignorance, that won't come back anymore.
It's like sex, the first months you've started doing it are magical, wondrous. However after 10 years of having sex, maybe for a long time with the same partner, it doesn't feel as magical anymore as in the beginning. Sure, sex can still be great and awesome, but it'll have lost that special magic that comes with exploring a whole new world of experiences and entering a world of wonder for the first time.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
No, you just didn't discern the full analysis I made. Instead, you choose to see my explanation as saying it has to be one or the other responsible: the players or the developers. That isn't what I said.
My point was that while the playerbase has it's problems, the developers are much more at fault than the playerbase. It isn't a zero sum game when it comes to "who is crappy and who isn't." Sure, the players aren't perfect. Most communities are crappy. But is a crappy community primarily responsible for a crappy game? Of course not, at least not always, and my point was that in most of the major mmorpg's, it isn't the community but rather the developers at fault.
As I explained, the developers are much, much more responsible for the crappy products, not the percentage of players which are trash. This would have been apparent had you read my post in full and considered all of what I said together. To quote myself, "Regardless, the common playerbase in mmorpgs has definitely gotten progressively suckier over the last 10 years. Despite that, I still think the developers have gotten even more sucky," followed by a few examples of developers sucking.
I would even go as far to say that "crappy community" is usually completely unrelated to whether the game is good. Most of the programming occurs before players ever touch the game. Etc.
OP, I agree with all your points.
I've been playing MMORPGs for ever a decade. Too many gamers think they are they are best players in the game, and with respect to WoW, look at how many people ingame refers other to elistjerks on builds. Everyone wants that ultimate numbers build and that is why they let some math guru show them how to build their toon and with what gear. The person looking at the builds forget one huge factor not taken into account... how one plays.
Power to the Sheeple
You lost me here, because I disagree. Older MMO's were in fact more challenging, had more depth in their gameplay mechanics and no, I do not view my first MMORPG fondly (Lineage 1) and while my 2nd DAOC was great experience, it isn't because it was new, it is because it offered game mechanics that I haven't seen successfully duplicated since its early days.
Since then I've played several other great MMO's including EVE and dare I say it, WOW when it was first launched. Had Blizzard chosen to evolve the game a different way (more like DAOC) I'd probably be still playing today, but they went a different road and we separated.
But in the end, the problem is never really the players, it is up to the creators to overcome the challenges of game creation and come up with something many people (not all) will enjoy.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
This isn't just in MMO's... Think about how hard your old Nintendo games were. You buy a game these days and you can beat it in 6-12 hours. Everythign has been catered the the un-skilled player.
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
I think you misunderstood, or maybe I didn't put it in the right words, I should've worded it something like 'your statement already shows a contradiction'.
The contradiction is that if according to you and people of the same mind, the majority of the playerbase is mindless and seemingly inferior to the 'challenge seeking minority', then that majority won't change if MMORPG's are different, in the eyes of you and others like you that 'mindless majority' still makes up most of the MMO playerbase, filling up communities and servers with their mindless needs and gaming fun, doing their mindless actitivities and consistently asking devs as a majority their mindless, non-challenge-based requests that will overshout any request of the challenge seeking minority.
Since devs want to create a game that a lot of people will play, they'll listen more to the requests of that mindless majority, according to your statement, which makes them the main problem and the root cause for devs going for less-desirable design directions.
When taking a further step back, the problem becomes even more an MMO playerbase one, namely people who see most of the other MMO gamers as mindless and something inferior, for the simple reason that those people have different tastes and preferences in their gaming fun. Here we have a segment of the playerbase that looks down upon everyone who doesn't share their narrowed, limited gaming taste, who have become jaded after years of gaming, intolerant towards newer MMO game designs and those who enjoy it, and who overall have become a disgruntled, burnt out, dissatisfied, frustrated and/or overall negative group who can't enjoy most if not as good as all MMORPG's anymore that are around. A group that has become so hard to please that practically nothing in MMO gaming really pleases them anymore.
I think they're pretty much a part of the problem, ironic since it's them that see the current MMO genre as suffering big problems
Just because you didn't feel it like that, doesn't mean that other oldschool gamers share your experience. There are enough who acknowledged that 'first love' effect had an impact how they still regard their 1st MMORPG they loved to play.
Also, you're talking about a problem, but only MMO gamers who aren't enjoying themselves at the moment see it as a problem, there's still millions and millions of MMO gamers playing MMO's and liking it. For example, I doubt very much that Blizzard is seeing this 'problem' the past years. Looking at the revenues generated in the MMO industry, and the number of people playing them, the problem is smaller than disgruntled, (ex) MMO gamers might think or hope for.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
While I certainly can't prove it, I'm willing to bet there are far more people "not" playing WOW but could be convinced to play something if only some different game mechanics were employed.
As far as how I "perceive things' there are enough folks who have validated my feelings on the rose colored glasses effect that I feel secure in knowing I'm certainly not alone. I find in general most folks who subcribe to the rose colored theory are new players who are trying to invalidate my opinion. Won't work, never will, since no opinion can really be right or wrong except to the person who holds it.
And no matter how you slice it, there are certainly many unhappy gamers out there who would welcome a chance to play something different, even if you can't easily quantify their numbers.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
In a sense i can agree with you but it boils down to the old "nature vs nurture" debate.
Take Dark age of Camelot for instance. Non-instanced world, PvE bosses required a reasonably big chunk of the population to take down and PvP (well RvR) was for the sake of your realm as well as personal progression - not gear that was outdated come next season.
Allthough the PvE encounters are much better in WoW compared to DaoC most of them are instanced and done almost exclusively with guild groups until they are outdated. (i only know of one other PUG that di well in icc25 hcs besides the one i led)
This, and the unfinished pvp system in place was my biggest disappointment when i started playing wow.
Daoc nurtured a sense of unity for the entire realm (your faction on the 3 sided war) both in pve and pvp, forcing you to cooperate to achieve anything. The community here was absolutely brilliant. If someone was farming somewhere, people would ASK if it was ok to share the spawns. Leaders rose to the occasion in RvR to organise huge battles of conquest or defense.
There was absolutely a lot of "gank groups", 8 man teams running around kicking ass. On some servers they were disliked - on Pericval we were used as special forces to take out enemy reinforcements during relic raids.
I just feel that most games these days don't nurture a healthy attitude towards your fellow gamers outside perhaps the guild you're in. Do we really need a reason to be nice? Evidently a lot of people do and even fo those who don't, would it hurt?
Time will tell how rift will fare with epic rift invasions requiring people to come together for a common goal or if it's just a bandaid on an already festering sore.
I am hopeful about Teras political system and the RPG population "invading" SW:TOR
Since the invention of the internet the worlds rotation has been solely propelled by English teachers rolling over in their graves.
MMO player since Meridian 59
I love my first MMO (AO). I love it not because it was perfect or because it is better than current games - it isn't. I love it because it showed such possibility and potential in this amazing new (back then) genre.
The reason I'm disappointed in most games today (including ones i play heavily) is because in the 10 years since AO, they've completely squandered all that initial potential.
I don't need the perfectly exectuted game. I don't need a game without bugs or with perfect balance. I need game that gives me the feeling of "wow, there is so much potential for being in this other world".
I felt like that a few times since AO - with Shadowbane, EVE, SWG and Tabula Rasa. And I've while I've certainly enjoyed certain features of many of today's major games (EQ2, Rift, VG, LoTRO), they never felt like they were trying to build on the potential inherent of the genre, they just wanted to distill one single particular feature and flesh it out. None of them wanted to "have it all". I guess that's too much to ask.
So yeah, i agree. I am the problem. I grew up, the games didn't.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
- I dont want "original" gaming. I want fun gaming. The most fun I had was in fact in Vanguard, which is original in many respects, but the core of the game can only be called conservative. Thats good because the resulting game was fun. I'd say make it right instead of making it original for the sake of being original.
- Perfect balance is impossible to archieve, but for a fun game, yes you have now and always the need to have a good balance.
- PvP for the sake of PvP is stupid, and has always been stupid. Games that only have PvP as simple banditery arent really fun.
- Blablabla ... what do you want to say ? Games, in terms of challenge, always had to hit the sweet spot between frustration and boredom.
- Yawn. No matter how often its disproved, the "first love" theory is always bought up again and again and again... my first MMO was Lineage 2 and there is no way in hell I would call it an extraordinary well MMO.
And there are enough folks who have admitted the rose colored glasses effect that their first MMO's had.
Even for those who don't admit and who keep saying that 'everything was better in the past' (right
), you'll see that they keep wanting game mechanics that their first MMO's they loved had - whether that's UO, EQ, SWG, or WoW vanilla - and ignoring or dismissing the flaws those first MMO's had, as well as ignoring the positive changes that were made that came with later MMO's.
Like you said, opinions can differ so yours isn't representative as well for the whole oldschool generation, only for a small part of that group.
Another thing, if gameplay was so much better in the old MMO's than in the newer ones, then why aren't those disgruntled ex MMO gamers putting their money where their mouth is, and play those old MMO's? If they were so good, outdated graphics shouldn't be much of a hindrance. For example, EQ has 2 classic EQ servers, and they're great fun. However, I don't see more than a few thousand on those servers, a lot less than this whole horde that's supposed to exist and claims that those old MMO's were so much better.
As for 'something different', of course there's quite a number of gamers who want something different just as there's quite a lot of gamers who're still enjoying themselves. Only time and the future will tell in what numbers it'll result, when the new MMO's GW2, TSW, Firefall, ArcheAge, SWTOR and WoD will come out, 1 positive is that people can't complain about lack of diversity or choice anymore when those MMO's will arrive
You grew apart, you went one way and the games went another, still evolving and growing up, but in a direction that you didn't expect or like. It happens in relationships as well, that's often the moment where both parties part ways, or take a period of separation from eachother to see if things feel different after that period.
That's because it's often the case and proven again and again.
I once stated elsewhere 'what old school gamers really want isn't particularly innovation, but a new MMORPG that's how their 1st MMO they really loved was, but then upgraded to graphics and mechanics/tech of this time'.
That one got quite some people that stated that this was exactly what they'd like. An UO but then fully 3D and remade into an MMORPG of this time, or an EQ with upgraded graphics and improved mechanics, or a WoW vanilla with maybe upgraded visuals but the same core gameplay etc.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
That bottom line is awesome. Might steal that for a sig later
Also agreee 100%. Although it wasn't AO for me but UO.
I think the biggest problem is information overload. Back when people played their first MMOs there weren't many options and some people never knew that any other similar games existed. Now every time I turn on my computer I have so many choices it makes my head spin. Also the information overload added so much transparency to games now it brought on the problem you spoke of with the specs changing 1 or 2% and people changing how they played. If that information wasn't so readily available to the player then those changes might go unnoticed and people can just enjoy the games.
With all the media sources trying to grab our attention it also makes sense the "casual" nature of games. I don't want to say EQ was more "hardcore" like you said it wasn't that much tougher, it was just more time intensive and unforgiving. But people don't want to spend 4 hours playing their MMO, they want an hour of HDTV, an hour reading their kindle, an hour watching netflix, and an hour in their MMO.
Are developers the problem? Meh they are designing games with today's culture and media overload in mind.
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
You could say that, although given that pretty much everything that games offer today in terms of gameplay was available 10 years ago, i wouldn't exactly call that "growing in another direction", i think "stagnation" is much more appropriate. But yeah, that's semantics.
I also don't think your relationship analogy is particularly applicable. A person feels the loss of another person, it may be a positive or negative emotion, but it's something that is intimately felt in most cases. A game or especially a game genre feels nothing when it loses a particular customer, so there is no chance for any kind of catharsis on the part of the game.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
Naah, I think that's just your 'oldschool love/new MMO aversion' mindset talking
Every analogy is limited in its merits, but it strikes true in the sense that games have grown in their mechanics and delivery, only not in a direction that you'd have liked to see.
So, you deny any evolution, progress or improvement that has happened for the simple reason that they weren't changes that you liked or favored anyway. But saying that MMO's are still the same and haven't changed at all since 2000 is beyond silly of course.
Out of the top of my head, changes/innovations/evolutions that have happened during that time: quest based leveling, phasing, instancing, instanced battlegrounds, arena pvp, mounts, flying and flying mounts, shooter based mechanics, public quests, dynamic PvE content, AH, LFG tools/dungeon finder, cross server content, situational and environment-interactive combat (Vindictus), UGC tools (user generated content) and those are just the first I could think of. I'm sure that if I give it some more thought, there's quite some more to find since 2001.
But sure, those all mean little to you, and that's why in a sense they're 'as nothing' to you, so for that for you nothing has changed to the positive for your gameplay. That doesn't mean that the MMO genre didn't evolve in the meantime and made its improvements and changes all the time while on that course.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Ok, ok. I'll accept that. I simply don't share the same issues.
I never respeced in WoW. I did in UO, but the motivation was usually a mix of role-playing and natural specialization of alts.
I do not expect perfect balance.
I never PvPed to begin with.
I never asked for hard PvE, I ask for textured PvE ...that includes hard paths and easy paths.
I've always known that my first MMO experience is viewed through rose-coloured glasses (well sort of - my first MMO was actually not a positive experience but I was determined to "find the good" on my second expedition)
I think the biggest problem MMO's have is that they addict players to the point that some players are unwilling or unable to decide when it's time to move on to something else.
If you've spent a healthy chunk of time on MMO message boards, you can always recognize the signs of disgruntled players who are simply burnt out on the game they're playing, the players who should be moving on but just cannot let go.
And no, that's not directed at the OP, but just a general observation. You see the same message board patterns repeating in game after game, year after year.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.