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Whats " I don't have enough time anymore" comment
Lucioon
Member UncommonPosts: 819
I have heard this argument used over and over through out various topics in these and other forums. But is this comment really a vaild statement.
When did MMO's become a game that you can only play for weeks instead of years. When did MMO's become a game that you have to get to cap as fast as you can? Is that What this genre of gaming becoming?
I always believed that MMORPG are a genre of gaming that you will spend months to understand and explore, and years to master , and that the game starts as soon as you log in, not till you reach cap and the rest are just fillers.
These posts of " how long will it take to reach cap" , " can I level per hour sessions " ...etc are pissing me off, and making me believe that these games are now games that you can play for a few months then forget about, instead of games that you can get attached to.
"I don't have enough time anymore" whats really keeping those times, an hour of gaming is still an hour of gaming, it has nothing to do with your new life as parents, an hour is still an hour if thats all you have, is your time now relates on how fast you level, how much exp you gain, how much loot you get, or is it how much did you explore, how many new friends you just made, and what challenges you have just overcome.
IS leveling really that important, is there anyone else that find this statement of "not enough time" annoying because I understand where they are coming from, but what can games change so that this mentality can change... So that the gaming world can benefit from it. And i am not saying to create time sinks, just alternatives ideas that can change this mentality
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
Comments
I have never seen those comments in contrast to levelling speed. I have only seen them being used both by myself and others when it comes to being a casual gamer vs somebody who can keep a raid schedule
Pretty much this.
Really only comes into play when you are looking at content that requires hours of time, or when it comes to rewards that requires a lot of repetition and hours upon hours of time to complete.
That is what MMO's are....or were anyways. It is what seperated them from console gaming. If people want quick gratification, that is what console games are made for. I have seen that comment TONS on these and other forums...and wasted my breath saying what I just did here...because new gamers just don't get it.
There for...the genre is fading away into glorified console RPG's full of community killing instancingfests, microtransaction and cash shop ridden games that gimp you to force you to buy, and extremely boring gameplay that is easy enough for any foam helmet wearing drool bib recipient to complete in a month or less. I also don't know why the term, or game mechanic of "end game" exists in MMORPG's at all. MMO's are suppose to be about the journey, NOT the destination.
Meh, I disagree with the above 2 posters. I have heard this argument quite a few times. Sometimes with raiding...sometimes not.
With the raiding thing it kinda cracks me up. I mean I used to play 6 hours a day. but then I got a job, got married, had a kid...and somewhat of a life.... I still play MMO's but my gaming time is like....mmayybbee 2 hours on the weekend at best. But it hasn't stop'd me, I played WoW untill level 69.. didn't have time to raid, and quite. my choice.
I think the thing that cracks me up the most are the people who are like "I don't have tiiimmmeeee ;; "
Well if you really don't have that much time GET OFF OF THE COMPUTER! I mean really....who in there right mind hops on and says "I have 45 minutes untill work" and then thinks they are going to get alot done...?
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Agree 100%
example, I play'd FFXI for 4 years....and didn't get to every corner of the game....probably not 50% of it (and I was playing 6 hrs a day)
Play'd WoW for 3 months..and pretty much saw everything.
I want that feeling to come back that says "I could play this MMO for at least a year or two" instead of.....well...this might last till christmas.
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I'm jumping on this bandwagon. I have plenty of "time" when you spread it over the course of a year. But finding a block of four hours? Or blocking out a weekend day for raiding? Yeah that's hard.
You basically just get more responsibilities that take precedence over gaming. Work, relationships, children, college, real-life social activity, etc.
It's really hard to book a big block of time for gaming when you have all these competing for your time. And I know that I'm not going to make any commitments to a guild in game because they are going to be at the bottom of my priority list. If my fiance needs me and I have a raid scheduled, then bye bye raid.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I haven't played an MMO in about a year now because they are all garbage....but when I did....I had responsibilities (Still do), a job, kid, bills to pay, places to go, friends to visit, etc, etc. Still played MMO's, and still was able to average at least 15 hours of game time a week (Not always, but on average...EQ). If you have 4 hours to do a raid or something, great...if not...no problem...do what you can. There is nothing saying you HAVE to dedicate "x" amount of time to make an MMO worth it....because that is what MMO's are about....community and time. They have monthly fees (Or did anyways) because they required time.
There are too many now that want to complain they don't have the time, so they want the MMO's to change to meet there requirements instead of either playing games that more fit there time frames (console games), or adapting to a schedule that allows them time to play an MMO and make it worth the fee for them. And sadly...this type is now the majority....so...bye bye MMO genre...hello console like RPG's.
I think that games that push you to end game as fast as possible are souless. I also played FFXI for years before army buddies got me to switch to WoW. I was only in FFXI for 2 years and I was beginning to scratch all the content. I am not praising FFXI over other games because I didn't like all the waiting around to do stuff. Hell I bet nearly half of my playing time was waiting around. But the world itself felt large and the game didn't rush you to the cap.
I am now married and in college so I think I could agree that I don't have enough time to play games that have a FFXI leveling system in place, but I wouldn't say it's necessarily a bad thing, only not for me. Sure when I was single and could devote an entire weekend to gaming, but not now. But at the same time I don't want the game to be designed to be a short ride to the hampster wheel either. I like a long climb to the top, just not a lot of that time devoted to waiting around to have fun.
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
I agree, but the problem, as I see, is that they "force" you (designing the game) to spend that "x" amount of time to feel some sense of accomplishment. At least from most of the MMO's out there. It's like they tell "You HAVE to grind/raid to have fun." Or "fun".
I think the reason why Raid has become the main argument is that Raids are made like its the only thing to do at the end, but MMORPG's shouldn't have an End, there is not suppose to be an ending, the end is when you quit and unsubscribe.
I have played MMO's for an hour or 45 minutes before, and I got lots things done, I went to all my alts, moved items around, put items on auction, move this toon from this town to the next, finished a few quests and then I logged. Didn't level, got minimal exp but I still feel I accomplished alot to myself. And I think thats whats important. When I don't have enough time to group up I don't group up, when I can group I tried to group.
If you really don't have 1 hour to play a game, then I suggest that You should't be playing games like MMO at all, I have console games that I play 20 minutes, then i got games that I play 5 hours. I don't play the 5 hour games in my 20 minute slots , because then that would be stupid.
Its really not an issue of casual vs non casual, I am a casual player that plays Hardcore, I get only a few hours a day when I am lucky, but when I do get those hours, I play non stop and accomplishes all the quests that i can find.
But whats really annoying is that I am feeling that I have been affected by the rush bug , I find myself no longer reading the quest texts, have just been moving from one quest giver to another clicking yes to all the quests that I can find and then go to the spot and kill everything insight and hoping that the things I kill counts toward one of the quests. having no clue on why i am killing them, just that If i do, i will get exp and money and maybe some drops.
Is there anything that can be done to change this mentality??
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
@mfuk: IDK what MMO's you have been playing....but almost NONE lately force you to spend more time in them to get fun. Although I siad I haven't played an MMO for about a year...as in religiously, I have tried a few trials...and did the Rift beta. In all accounts...without even really trying even, I could level with ease, complete quests and dungeons without assistance (because no one wants to group anyways) and got bored REALLY fast. They just don't "grab" you and pull you into the world.
The only MMO's I have seen that "force" you to do anythign are the microtransaction and cash shop types. They force you to buy to keep up. And adly...this is the model most are asking for. Makes little sense to me. Other than most don't want monthly subscriptions because they don't have the time. Vicious circle.
@ FlawSGI: That's because these new players want it that way. The console generation moved in because (And IDC what anyone says otherwise) Blizzard/WoW's massive advertising and mainstreaming of the genre brought them in. They seem to think all MMO's are suppose to be like WoW.
Don't want long quests, don't want to even read the quests and follow the lore in most cases, want fast leveling to get to raid content and shiney items, want battlegrounds, stat boards, instant repop spawning with no penalties, (like console games ironically), community killing instancing, want to feel like the hero of the world and be God-like.....
I work with a kid (20 yr. old chubby gamer...go figure) that started with WoW, and thsi is how he thinks even! Sad state the genre has become. And it's players fault more than developer's by a long shot. If they didn't ask for it, the dev's would design it another way. So....again, the genre is fading away from what is started as into just another form of instant gratification...but on a PC.
Exactly. EQ is STILL going some 13 years later. EQ has so many expansions it's ridiculous. I played it for almost 5 years and never even saw all the content. Pick an MMO npw and you can see everything in a month or so. Hell...in Rift beta I got to lvl 38 and saw all but 4 zones in 2 months worth of phases. Why I didn't sub to it.
THIS.
I have a hardcore mindset, but at the end of the day, I like to have the freedom over my time. Sure, as a casual, there are days I might spend more time playing than a hardcore member.
But that's not what hardcore is about; being [truly] hardcore basically means you can drop whatever to raid. I remember back from my hardcore days, how there was the unwritten rule that encouraged you to play as much as you could. And it's understandable. The guild is your family; the better you know them, and the better they know you, the better it is for the guild.
Of course, very few people would be online on Thanksgiving, or New Years for example, so I am definitely not saying raiders/hardcore members do not have a life.
But with hotkey MMOs (as they are today), it is very clear that it really is all about time. The more plugged into the game you are, the better.
"Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."
I need to take this advice more.
When it comes to the "not enough time" complaint, there are really two problems: not enough time, total, and not enough time in long blocks.
The latter is the problem at the center of the "hardcore vs casual" debate. "Hardcore" players generally have situations where they can play for arbitrarily long periods of time (not because they are all unemployed or college students skipping class . . . but, well, a lot of them are). "Casual" players can't play for hours and hours on end, due to real-life commitments, and may even have a hard time meeting a fixed gaming schedule. Consequently, "casual" players feel locked out of so much end-game content that requires commitments of several hours at a time, several hours a week.
The former problem is just that MMOs take a lot of time total, and some gamers have less time than others. That problem, however, is also exacerbated by the "casuals" versus "hardcores" situation. The "hardcore" gamers have bottomless time, and rapidly exhaust the available content, and then cry to the developers for more; the developers meet that request by creating new content that demands ever-increasing amounts of time, with the result being that "casual" gamers look at what is needed to complete the content and complain that they simply don't have the time.
The solution, as I see it, is to throw out the model of limiting content based on time sunk into the game and limit content based on other factors, particularly player skill. If end-game content is provided based on, for instance, rankings in competitive play, that is something that "casual" gamers can hit with relatively few hours (if they are very skilled), but "hardcore" players can sink bottomless hours into. That is essentially the approach that the MOBAs like LoL and DotA have taken, and it more or less works; since the limitation is skill, not hours sunk into the game, there is a feeling that the game is accessible to a wide range of people with varying time available.
@Goatgod76 ;
I've been playing only f2p/item mall mmo's, that's why
And.. people don't like to read quests? English is not my native language, but I really like to read quests, knowing why I have to kill 10 rats or be an errand-boy.. even if it's just a silly story.
I think OP needs to understand one thing:
from my biased perspective; I believe that nobody is against the idea of a game that takes years to finish and master. But people are agains tthe thought that a game should require you to play for hours in a single stretch. Raids are frowned upon because you can't take a break, and if someone in the raid does it, they destroy it for everyone.
The key is in less time consuming content durations.
Secondly, some people enjoy pvp and the max level end game, and thus they try to get to it, because they hate the grind, they hate fetch quests and don't enjoy it. So those people are trying to get past the boring parts that frustrates them.
Yes, although it would be a radical change.
The first would be to get rid of levels and change to a flat skill system that only marginally changes the characters' abilities. It needs to be remembered that the leveling system is a holdover from the pen-and-paper RPG days, and was not really designed for a large multiplayer games.
Ditching the "leveling" system and switching over to an open-ended, non-capped skill-tree system (more or less on a level with the "talent" system that many games feature), while adjusting content so that it is open to players with a wide range of skill development, would have several beneficial effects. One benefit would be that players could simply work on the content they find to be most enjoyable, rather than be limited to the content available to them at their character level. Players would be able to play with their friends more readily.
But most importantly, a skill-tree system would eliminate the feeling that players have to race to the end-game to experience the best content and be taken seriously by other players; without character levels, they could take on whatever content they choose (although some will be much more difficult than others) and will not have to deal with contemptuous treatment from other players who won't look at anyone whose character isn't level capped.
With respect to quests, it has been mentioned by others before, but the key is to get rid of the hand-holding. No more maps with flags in them, no more fixed spawn for quest mobs or quest objects, no more set-piece dungeon runs with scripted encounters. Have quest descriptions be open-ended, requiring the player to figure out what is needed, require some interaction with NPCs (e.g., choosing appropriate options in a dialogue with the NPC, with real and adverse consequences for bad choices), randomize quest mob locations and travel paths enough that the player has to seriously look, put quest objects in places that make sense but are also semi-randomized (e.g., can be in several places at a given location), and finally, get rid of the kill counts and the item gathering counts. The player should generally be required to complete tasks that make sense, rather than killing X creatures because the quest-giver said so.
What modern MMO requires a 4 hour block of time to accomplish anything? Most games have gone to instanced dungeons which take less than 30 minutes each even on hard-mode or instanced PvP matches which last 10-20 minutes each. Raids boss fights typically have mechanics built in that end a fight after 5-10 minutes to make 10-25 man raiding more challenging. Death penalties and corpse runs are all but a thing of the past so you can usually recover from a wipe and be ready to restart the encounter in 2-3 minutes easily.
I used to love leading raids in EQ that started forming at 7pm and would finish up at 1-2am, but there are very few games left that support that sort of play-style. We started raided in WotLK scheduling 3 hours 2 nights a week and soon found that we could clear the entire zone doing 2 hours 2 nights a week. Hard-modes take a bit more time and planning, but I don’t know of anyone claiming to be a casual player running current tier hard-modes.
I know this is slightly off the topic, but it just pisses me off every time I see someone make the claim that they have a real life or don’t have 4 or 5 hours a night to devote to playing an MMO. The people who play that many hours do it because they enjoy it, but that does not make it a requirement to experience 90+% of the content in an MMO.
I'm currently playing both sides of the fence (raiding and PvP) and having a wonderful time without spending more than an hour or two per night that I try to do an organized event with my guild or corps. I raid a couple of nights a week with my EQ2 guild and after 2 hours we are gone. The other nights I try to go on an alliance PvP roam in EVE. If nothing is scheduled I will throw one up and take the boys into enemy space, stir up the hornets for an hour and call it a night.
So what is it that you guys are doing that requires 4 hours?
Well this already changed. There is no much games left that need 4-6 hours or more to do raids. THAT'S GOOD.
But at same time games go for "shoeten total time" , thus making levelling / character advancement ridiculosely fast , game world ridiculosely small , quests boring and obvious , quest trackers showing you EXACTLY where and what to do, and automatically finding you a group for dungeons and telepoting you there form every place in a game. WHICH IS VERY VERY BAD.
I am all for removing big blocks of time needed, I am very against shrinking game world , killing immersion and dumbing game down to "shorten total game time".
Not to mention disasterous imact things like Dungeon Finder and Dungeon Telports have on "community". Everyone is feeling anonymous so they do bitch , moan , call other players dumb , and race through instances. Game eveloprs just strenghten that by putting barter systems everywhere , where you gather medallions , tokens ,etc to exchange for various things.
Sad. Just sad. And boring.
I have the same amount of time I've always had to devote to hobbies and leisure. I wish a company would make a game to fill it…usually now I just read books or watch old shows instead.
When a game is really good...when players get attached to their characters, the community, and get immersed in the world...people will MAKE TIME to play. Most people don't have time for MMORPGs anymore because there hasn't been one in a long while that was worth spending a lot of time on.
Most of the games in the last six years actively discourage players from getting really into the game, because of some warped, big nanny idea that players will turn into suicidal zombies and lose their jobs and spouses and friends if the game doesn't actively force them into taking breaks. Also, lazy and stale design has led to game play that becomes basically unbearable after more than half an hour of contiguous play...so it's no wonder everyone's pushing the idea of shorter chunks.
That's actually how I'm going to know when the next great MMORPG arrives...when we start hearing the sensationalized stories of players losing their whole lives because they stayed logged in for 14 months straight without sleep or bathroom breaks. Politicians and mothers everywhere will be raising their pitchforks and torches...and I'll know that someone has finally made a worthwhile game.
Progression raiding still takes as long as it has.
As for PvP - my experience of competitive PvP is WoW only - to be compettive on the arena scene, you need to play as much, if not more.
Personally, I think you're playing the wrong "modern MMOs" or not accepting the challenge when they place the gauntlet in front of you if you think they are not time consuming like the MMOs of old.
Much of what made the relics of the past "hard" or time consuming was all the nonsense people had to endure in the middle. The gaming interface has become much more slick which is why, with the rubbish gone, the game can seem easier. But the difficulty is very much there, I assure you.
"Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."
I need to take this advice more.
That's pretty much my case also. Sure I still game. I grab my nighttime meds, fire up a client and goof around in PVE until too buzzed then go crash. I doubt a raid team would want me in that condition
or with that sort of schedule.
I usually use 'i don't have time anymore' comment in regards with time needed for daily activities like say dungeon run for example. i am pretty sure players don't mind spending months in MMORPG for characters progression and doing challenging content.
But yes at this stage of my life i do not have enough time to spend 4 to 5 hours daily playing MMOS. However, i am happy playing an hour a day for months, i will get things done on my own speed.
Simply said, two things happened:
a) todays MMOs have endgame grind, be it gear, instance or raid grind, but a timeconsuming, VERY repetitive way to keep player subscribed since levelling got super easy and fast, and the companies need to compensate that with UBER grind.
b) gamers got older and have no patience/time for such absurdities
Just developers didn't realize this, alas.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
What Starpower said. Also:
I think few people would complain if a game has years and years of fun content, but also takes a really long time to get to cap. but most MMO's to date that have long levelling curves haven't created years of content in their games; rather, they force players into time sinks where they spend time doing something tedious and dull in order to spend some time doing what they want to do. Camping/memorizing spells in EQ, for example.
And so, for those that aren't talking about raids, they are talking about being forced deliberately by game mechanics to spend an hour buffing, traveling, gathering supplies... in order to experience 10 minutes of enjoyable play... it's a horrible payoff ratio for someone who doesn't have alot of free time.
I guess that's why "Wait in Line for Rollercoaster Online" didn't do so hot.